Isabelle Huppert vampire film “The Blood Countess” lost as much as 20 minutes against the wishes of its director, Ulrike Ottinger, the veteran German filmmaker said at the Tokyo International Film Festival, which is hosting a retrospective of her work. In “The Blood Countess” (“Die Blutgräfin”), Huppert plays a vampire countess who resurfaces in present-day Vienna. Lars Eidinger and Burgtheater actor Birgit Minichmayr co-star.
The film world-premiered at the Berlinale in February. Ottinger said her preferred version ran 15 to 20 minutes longer. Then I began cutting it because everyone was forcing me to.
Once I started shortening it, the rhythm no longer worked,” she said at a German cinema evening at the festival. She then had to recut the whole film to restore its balance at the shorter length. She had wanted 40 shooting days but the production gave her 30, and her crew topped 100 people.
She said she would rather have worked with half that number, more closely together, and had more days in return. Some of them are very important, but a great many are completely excessive, senseless and bureaucratic,” Ottinger said. When she produced her own films, she could make them at high quality for €2.5 million–€3 million ($2.9 million–$3.5 million).
Today, she said, meeting all the requirements means a budget of no less than €7 million–€8 million ($8 million–$9.2 million). The principal cast were all her own picks. Ottinger said Huppert had stayed with the project for 20 years, while Eidinger was very enthusiastic about taking part.
Vienna supplied much of the inspiration, from the Narrenturm and an underground lake to the Habsburg burial sites and the dynasty’s practice of triple burial. That’s also why I chose the vampire genre,” Ottinger said. Nihon University German film professor Shibuya Tetsuya, who gave an introductory lecture on German cinema, noted that the film even features a vegetarian vampire.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
