It’s always a thing with biopics. Can you even come close to doing justice to these larger-than-life people? Difficult. Anyone who then takes on the figure of light who became man with “The Emperor – According to a True Legend” is indeed faced with a tremendous challenge. The bulging life of Franz Anton Beckenbauer on a feature film? About as impossible as kicking a soccer ball into the goal wall from a full wheat beer glass.
The voice alone: How are you supposed to hit the unmistakable idiom of the most famous of all Giesingers? Andreas Sippel says: not at all. The man is a speaker teacher at the Otto Falckenberg School and was the dialogue coach for the main actor Klaus Steinbacher for the first Sky original film: “The challenge was to find the language style without imitating it,” says Sippel. After watching the 100-minute (from December 16 on Sky) you have to say: it worked.
There are plenty of warm words in the Arri cinema, as is the case with film premieres. A scene in the jam-packed foyer of the Arri is out of the ordinary: a young man, wearing a baseball cap and wearing a thick down jacket, approaches Heinz-Josef Braun and carefully asks: “You played the father, didn’t you? That was it great, thanks for that!” Then the promised thanks.
While many colleagues reenact what is known (the brilliant Stefan Murr as manager Robert Schwan, Ferdinand Hofer as Maier Sepp), Braun plays in the fictional, private part of this biopic and does so very impressively. “In the death scene, the director already had to cry during the rehearsal,” says Braun, who also shed a few tears at the screening in the Arri, as he says: “Beckenbauer’s father has a lot from my father, a bricklayer, and he died a few years ago.”
Large train station: Ferdinand Hofer (left) and director Tim Trageser.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
Braun is full of praise for director Tim Trageser, who is built close to the water: “An extraordinarily philanthropic director who makes you feel free and safe at the same time.” The protagonist Steinbacher, a graduate of the August Everding Theater Academy, also gets a lot of praise: “He has developed very well as an actor. He played the dying scene like Hollywood.” But football fans are more interested in how well the man can kick the ball, as he plays the most elegant of all ball kicks. And you have to say: He also does it à la bonne heure, doesn’t need a double for the outside instep pass. No wonder: the man has been playing football in the club since he was five, at SC Reichersbeuern, A-Class, as a youth libero, now as a center forward.
Four months before shooting began, the main actor’s cruciate ligament tore
How does someone like that react when you offer him the role of Emperor? “When my agent told me about it on the phone, I hung up immediately,” says Steinbacher, “I had to calm down first.” There was another problem: four months before shooting began, his cruciate ligament tore. “Even at drama school they always said to me: Better leave football alone!” he says.
The so-called “drawer test” at the doctor’s office revealed: OP inevitable. That would have meant at least a six-month break from football. Steinbacher tried it without surgery, with a lot of physiotherapy and muscle building – and was lucky: the trade scarred, and the way he thunders the balls into the net in the film, you would never think that the man no longer has a cruciate ligament.
He now wears his hair razor short, which gradually thins out in the film from 1963 to 1990, when the biography mercifully ends. Unfortunately, he never met the emperor in person, says Klaus Steinbacher. Although Franz Beckenbauer was initiated into the film project and invited to the screening, he did not report. “I wouldn’t be angry with him if he didn’t come out anymore,” says the film’s Franz, “it was particularly important to me to make him happy with this film”.