Luis Trenker

An important and talented director, actor and screenwriter, Luis Trenker is a sadly neglected figure in film history. An Austro-Italian, Trenker began in German "mountain films" in the 1920s and was a popular lead by the end of the decade. He directed some splendid films in the 30s, but the general neglect or misunderstanding of the films he made during the pre-Nazi and Nazi eras consigned his career to obscurity. And yet, to quote film historian William K. Everson: "The mountain film was to Germany what the Western was to America, and Trenker, as its leading practitioner, was in a sense Germany's John Wayne and John Ford rolled into one."