Margit Carstensen
Margit Carstensen (29 February 1940 – 1 June 2023) was a German theatre and film actress, best known outside Germany for roles in the works of film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Carstensen was born and raised in the northern German city of Kiel. Upon graduation from the local high school in 1958, she studied acting at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. This education led to her first stage appearances in Kleve, Heilbronn, Münster, and Braunschweig. In 1965, Carstensen began a four-year engagement with the German Playhouse in Hamburg.
In 1969, she gained a local profile for her work in the Theater am Goetheplatz in Bremen, where she first met director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. She then worked under his direction in a comedy by the 18th-century Venetian Carlo Goldoni, The Coffee Shop (which was recorded for television in 1970), bringing her national attention in West Germany. She subsequently played the role of serial murderess Geesche Gottfried in the premiere of Fassbinder's own play Bremen Freedom (also televised, in 1972), and then in the title role of his Henrik Ibsen adaptation Nora Helmer (televised in 1974) derived from A Doll's House. Outside of theatre, Carstensen played leading roles in the Fassbinder films The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), her best-known role for him; Martha (1974), analysing a traditional marriage in a contemporary setting; Fear of Fear (1975); Mother Küsters' Trip to Heaven (1975); Satan's Brew (1976); Chinese Roulette (1976) and Women in New York (1977). She also appeared in episodes of two Fassbinder television productions: Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (1972), and Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980).
From 1973 to 1976, Carstensen held a steady acting engagement in Darmstadt. In 1977, she moved to West Berlin where she performed on the highly regarded Staatliche Schauspielbühnen. In 1982, she moved to Stuttgart in order to work with director Hansgünther Heyme, where she appeared in a series of plays directed by him.
During this time, Carstensen also worked in international film productions, such as Andrzej Żuławski's Possession (1981) and Agnieszka Holland's Angry Harvest (1985); the latter was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. By the late 1980s, she had developed ongoing working relationships with German directors Werner Schroeter, Christoph Schlingensief, and Leander Haußmann.
For the 2003–04 season, Carstensen appeared in the Vienna Burgtheater, in the premiere of Elfriede Jelinek's play Bambiland under the direction of Schlingensief. During the 2007–08 season Carstensen assisted with the Austrian-German TV documentary Mr. Karl – A Person for People, directed by Kurt Mayer.
In 2016, she was still on television, appearing in the long-running series Tatort.
Carstensen received many awards in her career. Among these were the 1973 German Film Awards (Gold), for her acting in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and the 2002 Bavarian Film Award, for her acting in Scherbentanz. In 1972 she was chosen by the German Film Critics Guild as Best Actress of the Year. In 2019, she was awarded the Götz-George-Preis for her life's work.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Margit Carstensen, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Known For | Acting |
---|---|
Most Rating | 6.465 |
Birthday | 1940-02-29 |
Place of Birth | Kiel, Germany |
Also Known As |
2004
Agnes and His Brothers
6/30
Focuses on three very different siblings, all searching for happiness. Hans-Jörg is a sex addicted librarian, who is interested in young students. Wer...
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Agnes and His Brothers
1974
Martha
7.1/57
After the death of her abusive father, lonely librarian Martha finds herself caught up in a strange, sadomasochistic relationship with a monstrous hus...
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Martha
1972
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
7.3/196
Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer)...
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The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
1981
Possession
7.3/1021
A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he susp...
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Possession
1977
Chinese Roulette
7.226/84
A husband and wife lie to each other about their weekend travel plans, only to both show up at the family's country house with their lovers.
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Chinese Roulette
1975
Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
7.846/26
After a worker kills a superior and commits suicide, each of his family members attempts to forge a path forward in life.
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Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
1997
The 120 Days of Bottrop
5.3/15
An eccentric homage to the Rainer Werner Fassbinder days of German filmmaking.
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The 120 Days of Bottrop
1976
Satan’s Brew
6.463/27
A famous poet who hasn't written a word in two years unconsciously plagiarizes the work of Stefan George, while dealing with several mistresses, his d...
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Satan’s Brew
1975
Fear of Fear
6.522/23
After having her second child, a German housewife suffers from post-partum depression before inexplicably falling into a continually misdiagnosed ment...
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Fear of Fear
1977
Women in New York
5.7/3
The main characters in this film are wives of rich men who have nothing to do because they have staff – like the cook, the maid, the hairdresser, the...
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Women in New York
2007
It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine.
7.4/5
Paul, a man suffering from cerebral palsy, lives an unfulfilled life in a nursing home. Sitting in his wheelchair, he fantasizes about a life in which...
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It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine.
1989
100 Years of Adolf Hitler – The Last Hour in the Führerbunker
6.4/8
On 30 April 1945, dictator Adolf Hitler, his wife Eva Braun, and prominent members of the Third Reich live out their final hour in the Führerbunker.
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100 Years of Adolf Hitler – The Last Hour in the Führerbunker
1983
Die wilden Fünfziger
2/1
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Die wilden Fünfziger
1979
The Third Generation
6.1/42
A wildly anarchic satire of guerrilla terrorism in which a band of leftist radicals inadvertently become puppets of the West German government, which...
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The Third Generation
1973
Tenderness of the Wolves
5.6/40
A German serial killer preys on boys and young men during the so-called years of crisis between the wars. Based on the true story of Fritz Haarmann, a...
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Tenderness of the Wolves
1992
Terror 2000
5/13
Germany, right after the re-unification. The people are out of control, blind hatred towards immigrants is common sense. In this time, a social-worker...
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Terror 2000
2013
Finsterworld
6.4/53
The film tells different stories in a kind of parallel Germany about love, affection and hatred.
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Finsterworld
1972
Bremen Freedom
6/5
A very stylized TV version of the Fassbinder play. The set consists of a few pieces of furniture in front of a large screen on which coastal scenery i...
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Bremen Freedom
1970
The Coffee House
5.3/3
Avant-garde adaptation of a Carlo Goldoni play. Well-to-do Venetians congregate in a coffee house and discuss their problems.
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The Coffee House
2000
Manila
5/3
Due to a delayed flight a group of German flight passengers have to wait in the hall of the airport of Manila. The crowd is quite mixed, ranging from...
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Manila
1985
Angry Harvest
6.5/11
In the winter of 1942-43, a Jewish family leaps from a train going through Silesia. They are separated in the woods, and Leon, a local peasant who's n...
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Angry Harvest
2007
Hands off Mississippi
6.8/17
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Hands off Mississippi
1970
The Niklashausen Journey
6/7
Can a small group of people start a proletarian revolution, asks the "Black Monk" in a leather jacket. The medieval shepherd, Hans Boehm, claims to ha...
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The Niklashausen Journey
2008
Mister Karl
0/0
A documentary about the life of Karlheinz Böhm from his film career to his charity activities in Ethiopia.
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Mister Karl
1977
Adolf and Marlene
6/2
When Hitler watches Marlene Dietrich in a movie, he falls in love with her. He persuades her to come back to Germany to be with him, but upon her arri...
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Adolf and Marlene
2002
Shattered Glass
6/5
To find a bone marrow donor for himself, fashion designer Jesko visits his upper-class family in southwest Germany where he has to confront mental ill...
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Shattered Glass
1982
Liebeskonzil
0/0
Oskar Panizza’s The Council of Love (1895) is a blasphemous play set in 1495, during the first recorded outbreak of syphilis, which Panizza satiricall...
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Liebeskonzil
2015
Fassbinder: Love Without Demands
6.4/7
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was probably Germany’s most significant post-war director. His swift and dramatic demise at the early age of 37 in 1982 left...
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Fassbinder: Love Without Demands
2015
Fassbinder
6.2/8
A film portrait of the influential Bavarian actor, director and screenwriter who publicly confessed
his homosexuality.
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Fassbinder
1974
Nora Helmer
7.3/6
A childish wife reveals surprising strength when faced with blackmail. Based on A Doll's House by Ibsen, this is a video recording made for German tel...
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Nora Helmer
1998
Gesche's Poison
0/0
Gesche's Poison is a psychological portrait loosely based on the true story of Gesche Gottfried who became notorious in 19th century Bremen for killin...
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Gesche's Poison
1999
Sun Alley
6.792/106
A group of kids grow up on the short, wrong (east) side of the Sonnenallee in Berlin, right next to one of the few border crossings between East and W...
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Sun Alley
2000
John Gabriel Borkman
0/0
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John Gabriel Borkman
2002
Der Narr und seine Frau heute Abend in Pancomedia
2/1
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Der Narr und seine Frau heute Abend in Pancomedia
1978
Spiel der Verlierer
0/0
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Spiel der Verlierer
2009
Eine Kirche der Angst vor dem Fremden in mir
0/0
The movie version of Christoph Schlingensief's stageplay.
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Eine Kirche der Angst vor dem Fremden in mir
2020
Schlingensief – A Voice That Shook the Silence
6/7
Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work...
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Schlingensief – A Voice That Shook the Silence
1971
The Ancestress
0/0
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The Ancestress
1985
La moitié de l'amour
0/0
Unable to possess Ivy in reality, Adrian organizes himself so as to know everything about her, to possess her story. Like the viewer, Adrian will be a...
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La moitié de l'amour
1998
Rider of the Flames
0/0
Feuerreiter is an elegant period drama that begins in Frankfurt in 1796. Through his friend, Baron von Sinclair, romantic and rebellious poet Friedric...
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