Géza von Cziffra

Géza von Cziffra was a prolific novelist, screenwriter and director, born in Arad, Hungary, of ethnic German ancestry. He began his career as a journalist in Vienna in 1918 and later worked in Berlin as a political commentator and film writer for the publications Berliner Tageblatt and Welt am Abend. In 1922, he became apprenticed in the film business as an assistant director for Alexander Korda at Sascha Films. By 1932, the multi-faceted Cziffra divided his time running a cabaret on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm and writing film scripts, plays and novels. For much of this output he used a plethora of pseudonyms, including John Ferguson, Karel Kubela, Horace Parker, Enrique Anden, Thomas Harrer, Albert Anthony and Peter Trenck.

Cziffra directed his first four feature films (all Hungarian-language productions) in Budapest between 1934 and 1935. His next directing assignments, the ice revue Der weiße Traum (1943) (one of the most profitable German films of the period) and the romantic comedy Hundstage (1944), set the tone for his subsequent output, which would consist almost entirely of light commercial entertainments: musical comedies, marital farces, crime potboilers and Heimatfilms. In the pleasure-starved post-war era, such unambitious films were often pure box-office gold.

After the war, Cziffra established his own production company, Cziffra-Film GmbH, under American license in Vienna. It ceased operation in 1949. Undeterred, Cziffra soon co-founded another company in Hamburg, Arion-Film GmbH, which also existed for a mere four years (1952-56).

Cziffra's most popular post-war films as writer/director include Gabriela (1950), Tanzende Sterne (1952), Banditen der Autobahn (1955), Der müde Theodor (1957) and no less than twelve musical comedies starring the Austrian entertainer Peter Alexander. Cziffra retired from films in 1974, but continued to publish novels, memoirs and a collection of anecdotes well into the late 1980's.