Lola Montez” seduced him – into film. At the age of 18 Michael Ballhaus is invited to watch the shooting of the film by Max Ophüls. He observes how the director, a friend of the family, achieves the expansive camera movements. He watches the way cinematographer Christian Matras arranges the lighting in the huge Bavaria Studios. And he is fascinated by a take that looks like a circular tracking shot. That clinches it: he decides to work in film. The career that follows is like something taken from a movie.
Ballhaus works with the most famous actors and the best directors, and he rises to become a star in Hollywood. He receives an Oscar nomination three times and is voted “Cameraman of the Year” by Hollywood’s film press twice in succession. The 360-degree travelling shot, his expansive camera movements and the stylized lighting characterize the “Ballhaus look”. The Director of Photography enjoys unprecedented privileges. For a long time he is the only one in the USA who can bring along a permanent team.
Ballhaus starts off as a cameraman with Südwestfunk television in Baden-Baden. He films his first cinema production with Peter Lilienthal: Abschied. In the early 1970s he gets to know the eccentric director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Intuition and meticulousness, spontaneity and conscientiousness come into encounter and complement each other perfectly. Fassbinder and Ballhaus make fourteen films together. In Martha Ballhaus uses the 360-degree travelling shot on the actors for the first time. It’s like a vortex, a shot that’s hard to forget. The Marriage of Maria Braun in 1979 is the last of their productions together, and it’s a big box-office success. Their artistic collaboration breaks down during preparations for Berlin Alexanderplatz as a result of Fassbinder’s excessive lifestyle.
Back again with Peter Lilienthal, Michael Ballhaus is in New York at the beginning of the 1980s for the filming of Dear Mr. Wonderful. He gets to know Martin Scorsese who is in the midst of a creative crisis following the King of Comedy flop. Ballhaus builds him up. In 1984 they work together for the first time on After Hours. Their collaboration becomes more intense, more creative, and their friendship deepens. Ballhaus discovers the partner with whom he can make the films that interest him: films about great emotions and their rituals, their destructiveness and their visionary power. The pool-hustler film The Colour of Money is one such masterpiece. But Ballhaus regards the 100-million-dollar epic Gangs of New York as the pinnacle of his career. Here he succeeds in making sequences of primeval strength. The Departed is Ballhaus’ last film with Scorsese, and after 38 films he says farewell to the USA.
After the death of his wife Helga in 2006, Ballhaus decides to return to Germany. The cameraman, who sees Tom Tykwer as the most gifted up-and-coming German director, decides to teach at German film academies to promote young talent. He also dedicates himself to a climate protection project. In autumn 2008 Michael Ballhaus directs a documentary cinema film about Berlin. In it twelve prominent people, including Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick and actress Angela Winkler, reveal their personal view of Berlin. Ballhaus says it is “a declaration of love to his native city and an attempt to try and understand it”.
