Biography:

Bruno Mondi was born in Schwetz, Germany (now Swiecie, Poland) on September 30, 1903. After an apprenticeship with Deutsche Bioscop, he studied at the School of Photography in Berlin. Mondi’s first cinema work was as an assistant cameraman, including on Fritz Lang’s silent film Der müde Tod. In the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, he mainly worked on entertainment and revue films with directors such as Richard Eichberg, Jaap Speyer and Erich Schönfelder. The 1935 production Krach im Hinterhaus was the start of Mondi’s longtime collaboration with director Veit Harlan. Together they created the key Nazi anti-Semitic film, Jud Süß, and the Nazi propaganda film Kolberg.

After WWII, Mondi joined the DEFA film studio. His premiere at the newly-founded studio was the 1947 Büchner adaptation Wozzeck. His use of point-of-view shots helped make this movie into one of the most important works of early postwar cinema. Mondi also worked on DEFA films with Erich Engel (Der Biberpelz) and Paul Verhoeven (Das kalte Herz), two directors he had already worked with during the Nazi era. In the 1950s, he mainly filmed entertainment movies in West Germany and Austria, including the Sissi trilogy (dir. Ernst Marischka), featuring actress Romy Schneider. Critics called Mondi, the cinematographer of over 100 films, “the master of light” and “pioneer of Agfa color films.” He died on July 18, 1991 in Berlin.