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He had already lost his immortality in The Wings of Desire , cult film of Wim Wenders in the 1980s. More than 30 years later, Bruno Ganz, one of the great Swiss actors, just succumbed to cancer at the age of 77 years after 50 years of career and as many films. In France, he was best known for his role as Adolf Hitler in The Fall of Olivier Hirschbiegel.
Bruno Ganz was known to have played an angel and a dictator: Damiel, touched by the grace and beauty of a trapeze artist in The Wings of Desire , and the angry incarnation of Adolf Hitler in The Fall .
Bruno Ganz, born in Zurich of a mechanic father and a mother of Italian origin, comes from the theater. He left Switzerland for Berlin and became co-founder of the Berliner Schaubühne troupe in the early 1960s.
With his soft face and expressive phrasing, he soon became one of the most important actors in German-language cinema. In the mid-70s, he is the revelation of the new German cinema, notably embodied by Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders or Volker Schlöndorff.
His career quickly grew internationally. He toured the United States with directors Ridley Scott and Francis Ford Coppola. For the film Schindler's List , he refuses the role of the German industrialist who saved more than 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust.
Off camera, he inspires the character of a Paris protester, Nikopol, to the comic book author Enki Bilal.