Dagmar Hirtz

Dagmar Hirtz, one of Germany's most respected film editors, didn't originally plan to enter show business at all. Originally a student of musicology, she discovered editing by accident and was immediately taken by the work. It was a short path from there to feature films -- while still in her early twenties she got her first assignments from noted director Kurt Hoffmann, cutting three of his movies, "Praetorius," "The House in Karp Lane" (both 1965), and 1966's "Hokuspokus oder: Wie lasse ich meinen Mann verschwinden...?" Proving that she could handle a demanding workload with skill and a good eye, Hirtz became a very in-demand editor for decades. One of her top collaborators was actor and occasional writer/director Maximilian Schell. The two first worked together on a German movie adaptation of the Franz Kafka novel "The Castle" (1968), for which Schell wrote the script and starred as the lead character. Hirtz would go on to edit several films directed by Schell, including "The Pedestrian" (1973), and 1984's "Marlene," a documentary about Marlene Dietrich. The talented Hirtz stepped away from the editing bay from time to time, taking the director's chair for numerous movie and TV offerings, such as the 1995 feature "Moondance" and two episodes of the late 2000s procedural "Der Kriminalist."