The Star of Africa (1957)

Interesting facts

• Filmed in: Canary Islands

Der Stern von Afrika is a 1957 black-and-white German war film portraying the combat career of a World War II Luftwaffe fighter pilot Hans-Joachim Marseille. The film stars Joachim Hansen and Marianne Koch and was directed by Alfred Weidenmann, whose film career began in the Nazi era.

Production

Writer Herbert Reinecker and director Alfred Weidenmann had started a productive streak of collaborations in 1941, when Reinecker had published a historical novel in a series of children's books edited by Weidenmann. Weidenmann had directed his first feature film for the Reichspropagandaleitung of the NSDAP, Hauptamt Film in 1942.

As specialists for propaganda specifically targeting the German youth the two teamed up as writer and director in 1944 to make Junge Adler (Young Eagles), one of the most successful and renowned Nazi propaganda movies. After the war Weidenmann helped Reinecker to reenter the film business. During the 1950s they did several movies of various genres together, among them documentaries, comedies and crime films, but also the spy movie Canaris (1954).

Reinecker based his script of Der Stern von Afrika upon a "factual report" by journalist Udo Wolter in the magazine Revue.

Several actors, who would later become well known stars of German cinema and television such as Hansjörg Felmy and Horst Frank, made their screen debut with Der Stern von Afrika. The Cuban Roberto Zerquera, who was cast by Weidenmann on the spot when they accidentally met on an aircraft, would later make a decades-long career in Germany as a singer under the stage name Roberto Blanco.

The movie was edited by Carl Otto Bartning, who had worked on the Nazi aviation propaganda movies Feuertaufe and Kampfgeschwader Lützow with director Hans Bertram. In 1941, Bartning had also collaborated with effects cameraman Karl Ludwig Ruppel to make the semidocumentary Front am Himmel (Front in the Sky). Ruppel worked on Der Stern von Afrika. Here he used British traveling matte techniques to incorporate model airplanes.

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