Phil Jutzi, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetPhil Jutzi
German film director and cinematographer
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Altleiningen, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
About Phil Jutzi
- Phil Jutzi (sometimes known as Piel Jutzi) (22 July 1896 – 1 May 1946) was a German cinematographer and film director. Born Philipp Jutzi in Altleiningen as the son of a tailor, Jutzi was self-educated.
- (He seems to have been generally known by the Palatinate dialect form of his given name, Piel, but a lawsuit by Harry Piel forced him to go by "Phil," though many journalists continued to use "Piel.") In 1916 he made posters for a small movie theater in the Black Forest, having been rejected by the military during World War I because of a physical disability.
- In 1919 he was an administrator of the Internationale Film-Industrie company in Heidelberg, which specialized in detective movies and westerns.
- In 1923 he married Emmy Philippine Zimmermann, the sister of the actor Holmes Zimmermann (born Johannes Zimmermann, 1900–1957), who acted in seven of his films; in May 1926 a daughter, Gisela, was born. In 1925 Jutzi moved to Berlin, where he worked as a documentary cameraman for the Communist film company Welt-Film; in 1928/29 he directed the semidocumentary film The Shadow of a Mine.
- From 1926 he worked as a director for the leftist Prometheus Film, and on the basis of such films as Mother Krause's Journey to Happiness (1929) became known as a leading director of proletarian films.
- At the beginning of 1928 he became a member of the Communist Party, but left it at the end of 1929. After the completion of Berlin-Alexanderplatz (1931), based on the Alfred Döblin novel, his political orientation changed drastically.
- In March 1933 Jutzi joined the Nazi Party, and under the Nazi regime became a prolific director, from 1933 to 1941 directing 49 short films (he was rarely allowed to make feature movies because of his political past).
- In 1934/35 he directed the German spy film Asew with Fritz Rasp and Olga Chekhova, following it with the Austrian spy drama The Cossack and the Nightingale with Iván Petrovich und Jarmila Novotná.
- But he was not by any means a renowned director, and continued to have financial difficulties until the end of his life.
- During the 1940s his health worsened and he became unfit for work.
- After the end of World War II he returned to his native Altleiningen; he died the following year in Neustadt an der WeinstraĂźe.
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