Bruno Ganz, a Swiss-born actor who was best known for playing Adolf Hitler cooped up in his Berlin bunker in the 2004 film “Downfall” and for portraying an angel in Wim Wenders’s “Wings of Desire” in 1987, died Feb. 16 at his home in Zurich. He was 77.
His death was reported by the German news agency DPA. He received a diagnosis of colon cancer last summer while he was working at the Salzburg Festival in Austria.
Mr. Ganz, a prominent figure in the German-language theater world, shifted into movies in the 1970s, appearing in Werner Herzog’s “Nosferatu” and Wenders’s “The American Friend,” among others. In one of his more recent roles, he played Sigmund Freud in “The Tobacconist,” released last year.
In 1976, Mr. Ganz gained renown for his performance in a television production of Max Gorky’s “Summerfolk” and in Éric Rohmer’s film “The Marquise of O,” set in the 18th century.
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A year later, he appeared with Dennis Hopper as a hired killer in Wenders’s “The American Friend,” based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith. In 1978, he played a sinister German professor, cast alongside Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck, in the Nazi-hunting thriller “The Boys from Brazil.” He was cast opposite Klaus Kinski, who had the title role in Herzog’s “Nosferatu the Vampyre.”
Mr. Ganz had one of his most celebrated roles in Wenders’s “Wings of Desire,” a fantasy in which he played an angel who chose a mortal life on earth after falling in love with a trapeze performer.
He won Italy’s equivalent of the Oscar, the Donatello award, for his performance in the romantic comedy “Bread and Tulips” (2000) and was in Jonathan Demme’s remake of “The Manchurian Candidate” (2004). He played a professor in the 2008 Holocaust drama “The Reader,” for which Kate Winslet won an Oscar for best actress.
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His 2004 portrayal of Hitler in “Downfall,” a German-language film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, was considered something of a tour de force. It was the first major German film about the Nazi leader.
Share this articleShareMr. Ganz’s performance showed Hitler as a complex figure of nuanced emotional range, sometimes suffering from the effects of physical or possibly mental ailments. In a memorable scene from inside Hitler’s bunker, Mr. Ganz loses control, launching into a furious rage against aides and military leaders he believes have betrayed him.
Historian Joachim Fest, who wrote a book on which the film was based, said, “That really is Hitler.”
Bruno Ganz was born March 22, 1941, in Zurich. His father was a mechanic and his Italian-born mother a homemaker. Mr. Ganz was drawn to acting from an early age and performed in stage productions in the 1960s.
He was married to Sabine Ganz, with whom he had a son. They were separated but never divorced. Survivors include his longtime partner, photographer Ruth Walz.
Mr. Ganz appeared in frequent stage and film roles until shortly before his death.
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