Michael Alexander Verhoeven (13 July 1938 – 22 April 2024) was a German film director, screenwriter, film and television producer, and actor. He was also a qualified Doctor of Medicine.
He was considered a political filmmaker. He also achieved international success with films such as The White Rose and The Nasty Girl (1990). He was a filmmaker with a strong stance who dealt intensively with topics such as repression, guilt, and unresolved aspects of German history.
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Biography
Michael Verhoeven stemmed from a theatre and film family, the son of the German film director Paul Verhoeven (1901–1975) and actress Doris Kiesow (1902–1973).
Verhoeven met Austrian actress Senta Berger at the Berlinale in 1960, and they played together in front of the camera in the 1963 film Jack and Jenny, where he was supposed to kiss her in one scene. The two fell in love during filming.
Verhoeven and Berger married in 1966 and stayed together until his death in 2024 – in what is considered one of the longest-running scandal-free marriages in show business. Their sons are screenwriter/director/actor Simon Verhoeven (born 1972) and producer/actor Luca Verhoeven (born 1979). Both sons started out as actors and also work in the family business, Sentana Filmproduktion.
Verhoeven died after a short and serious illness in the presence of his family at his home in the Munich suburb of Grünwald, on 22 April 2024. He was 85. He is survived by his wife Senta and the two sons and three grandchildren.
Career
Michael Verhoeven began his career as an artist as a nine-year-old in plays (including a stage adaptation of Pünktchen und Anton based on the novel by Erich Kästner, a friend of the family) and subsequently appeared in films in the 1950s (such as Kästner's The Flying Classroom, The Juvenile Judge and The Crammer with Heinz Rühmann). He directed his first play at the Tübingen Zimmertheater in 1962.
As a young adult, however, Verhoeven decided to study medicine against the wishes of his parents, who encouraged him to continue his acting career. He obtained his doctorate in 1969 with a thesis on psychiatric masking of brain tumors with special consideration of misleading findings and worked as a doctor for several years – including in the USA, where he had followed his wife Senta Berger, who was acting in Hollywood films in the 1960s alongside stars such as Charlton Heston, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Richard Widmark, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, and Yul Brynner.
Back in Munich in 1965, he founded Sentana Filmproduktion together with his wife and began directing films – starting with The Dance of Death based on August Strindberg's play of the same name. He followed up with two frolicky '60s lifestyle comedies Up the Establishment with Mario Adorf and Gila von Weiterhausen in the leading roles (1968), and Student of the Bedroom (1969), both produced by Rob Houwer.
Verhoeven's political and experimental 1970 anti-Vietnam War film o.k. was entered into the 20th Berlin International Film Festival, but led to a scandal that forced the collapse of the festival without the awarding of any prizes: The then-jury president George Stevens felt offended and threatened to remove the experimental film from the program because of its supposed anti-American invective. The Berlinale regulations were subsequently reformed. Later that year, o.k. went on to win the German Film Award in Gold. For its 50th anniversary, MoMA conducted a special screening in 2021.
In the 1970s, Verhoeven worked increasingly for television, including directing one of the first episodes of Germany's longest-running crime procedural series Tatort (for which he would direct another episode 33 years later in 2005). After becoming a father for the first time in 1972, he wrote and directed the anarchic children's series Krempoli in 1975, in which he played a smaller part and also cast his father Paul Verhoeven and his sister Lis Verhoeven alongside Senta Berger. In 1980, he made the television film Die Ursache with Otto Sander. In the same year, his theatrical release Sunday Children (Sonntagskinder) got screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
Awards
1970 German Film Award in Gold for o.k.
1990 Silver Bear for Best Director, 40th Berlin International Film Festival for The Nasty Girl
1995 Bavarian Film Awards, Best Production
1999 Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (with Senta Berger)
2000 FIPA Award of International Festival of Audiovisual Programmes in Biarritz for Uncover of a Marriage
2001 Robert Geisendörfer Award for Uncover of a Marriage
2002 Order of Merit of the Free State of Bavaria (with Senta Berger)
2005 Marion Samuel Prize
2006 Bavarian Film Awards, Honorary Award
Selected filmography
Director
Film
The Dance of Death (1967) – based on The Dance of Death by August Strindberg
Up the Establishment (1969) – screenplay by Franz Geiger
Student of the Bedroom (1970) – screenplay by Volker Vogeler, based on a novel by Finn Søeborg
o.k. (1970)
He Who Loves in a Glass House (1971)
MitGift (1976)
Scrounged Meals (1977) – screenplay by Elke Heidenreich and Bernd Schroeder
Sunday Children (1980) – based on a play by Gerlind Reinshagen
Die weiße Rose (1982)
Killing Cars (1986)
The Nasty Girl (1990)
My Mother's Courage (1995) – based on a story by George Tabori
Let's Go! (2014) – based on an autobiographical novel by Laura Waco
Television
Der Kommissar: Dr. Meinhardts trauriges Ende (1970, TV series episode)
Tatort: Kressin und der Mann mit dem gelben Koffer (1972, TV series episode)
Ein unheimlich starker Abgang (1973) – based on a play by Harald Sommer
Krempoli – Ein Platz für wilde Kinder (1975, TV series)
Producer
Die Spider Murphy Gang (dir. Georg Kostya, 1983)
Welcome to Germany (dir. Simon Verhoeven, 2016)
Actor
The Flying Classroom (1954), as Ferdinand
Marianne of My Youth (1955), as Alexis
The Crammer (1958), as Peter Wieland
That's No Way to Land a Man (1959), as Horst Burkhardt
The Juvenile Judge (1960), as Fred Kaiser
Mit 17 weint man nicht (1960), as Richard Denger
The House in Montevideo (1963), as Herbert
Tales of a Young Scamp (1964), as Karl Schultheiss
Onkel Filser – Allerneueste Lausbubengeschichten (1966), as Karl Schultheiss
Der Kommissar: Dr. Meinhardts trauriges Ende (1970, TV series episode), as Harro Vogt
Der Kommissar: Kellner Windeck (1971, TV series episode), as Johannes Windeck