Paul Rudolf Parsifal "Percy" Adlon (1 June 1935 – 10 March 2024) was a German director, screenwriter, and producer. He is associated with the New German Cinema movement (ca. 1965–1985), and is known for his strong female characters and positive portrayals of lesbian relationships. He is best known for his 1987 film Bagdad Cafe, starring Marianne Sägebrecht, CCH Pounder and Jack Palance and subsequent films such as Rosalie Goes Shopping (1989), Salmonberries (1991) and Younger and Younger (1993). Adlon's films were shown in competition regularly at international film festivals, such as the Cannes Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, and others.

Early life

Adlon was born on June 1, 1935 in Munich, Germany. He grew up in Ammerland, Starnberger See. He studied art, theater history, and German literature at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilian University; took acting and singing classes; and was a member of a student theater group.

Career

Adlon started his professional career as an actor, became interested in radio work, was a narrator and editor of literature series and a presenter and voice-over actor in television for 10 years. In 1970, Adlon made his first short film for Bavarian television, followed by more than 150 documentary films about art and the human condition. His first was a one-hour portrait of French artist and writer Tomi Ungerer, entitled Tomi Ungerer's Landleben. Adlon became fascinated by Ungerer after meeting at an exhibition in Munich and spending time at his home in Nova Scotia, so decided to make him the subject of his first film. Adlon's first feature film Céleste (1980) was about the relationship between the French writer Marcel Proust and his cook Céleste Albaret during the last years of Proust's life. In 1987 he directed Bagdad Cafe, starring Marianne Sägebrecht as a German tourist, CCH Pounder as a motel and truck stop cafe owner in the Mojave Desert, and Jack Palance. Critically acclaimed, Roger Ebert awarded the film 3½ out of 4 stars in his review, stating that "[Percy Adlon] is saying something in this movie about Europe and America, about the old and the new, about the edge of the desert as the edge of the American Dream" and that the charm of Bagdad Cafe is that "every character and every moment is unanticipated, obscurely motivated, of uncertain meaning and vibrating with life". The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited Bagdad Cafe as one of his 100 favorite films. In 1989, Adlon directed Rosalie Goes Shopping, starring Sägebrecht, Brad Davis, and Judge Reinhold, which was screened at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. The film met mixed critical reviews, with Deseret News describing it as "dark satire masquerading as bright comedy" and a comment on American consumerism, while Rita Kempley of The Washington Post considered it to be "deficit of dramatic tension" and thought that Adlon's message was "scatterbrained". In 1991, Adlon directed Salmonberries, a picture starring k.d. lang as Kotzebue, an orphaned Eskimo and young woman of androgynous appearance who has a lesbian relationship with an East German widowed librarian. The film was generally well-received, with Kevin Thomas of the L.A. Times describing it as "endearing, remarkably assured and stunning-looking" and noted that Adlon with sensitivity "raises crucial questions of cultural and sexual identity", though Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it a "halting, awkward effort" with "stilted direction" and "sharp camera angles, arty editing". In 1993, Adlon directed the film Younger and Younger, starring Donald Sutherland, Brendan Fraser and Lolita Davidovich. The film won Adlon the Silver Raven Award at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival. Leonard Klady of Variety considered it to be an "unusual human comedy", a family yarn which "spins out from its simple premise into fantasy, music, black comedy and innumerable offbeat digressions." Klady further noted that the film illustrated "Adlon's unique method of tackling everyday life", which has "ironically been the greatest strength and most problematic aspect to his commercial appeal". In 1997, Adlon co-produced Eat Your Heart Out, a romantic comedy film filmed in Venice Beach, California, which was directed by his son, Felix Adlon. Adlon co-directed his final picture, Mahler on the Couch (2010) with his son Felix, a period film about an affair between Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius, and the subsequent psychoanalysis of Mahler's husband Gustav Mahler by Sigmund Freud. In a review for The Hollywood Reporter, Kirk Honeycutt wrote that the film "manages to pose a serious, intimate study in obsessive jealousy while, like a gaga celebrity hunter, bumping into just about everybody who's anybody in Viennese society circa 1910... The film's great gift, though, is Romaner... She fully inhabits the role of this complex personality whose passion for love and art collides with her role of wife and mother."

Personal life

Percy Adlon was the great-grandson of Lorenz Adlon, the founder of the Hotel Adlon. He was the grandson of Louis Adlon Sr., and the son of opera tenor Rudolf Laubenthal. His son, Felix, also a film director, is the former husband of American actress Pamela Adlon and the father of her three daughters, including actresses Odessa and Gideon Adlon. Percy and Eleonore Adlon lived in Pacific Palisades, California. Percy Adlon died there on 10 March 2024, at the age of 88. Thomas Meyerhöfer is a half-brother of Percy, 15 years younger and son of Emil Meyerhöfer.

Awards

Filmography

Other work