Her first internationally acclaimed film was Le Pissoir dans le Margin de Nuit (The Outhouse on the Edge of Night, later remade as Ponca City After Midnight). From the day that Pissoir was hailed as the toast of Cannes to the unveiling of her latest epic, Absence of Mind, she has exerted an influence on the cinema unequaled since the death of Sonny Tufts.
We were fortunate enough to obtain a series of interviews with the aging but still tempestuous auteuse. Unfortunately, her husky German-Italian accent made her words difficult to understand, but we believe we have captured the gist, the marrow (as it were) of her speech.
It was a dark and stormy night when Gertrud diLouzi was born, a veritable night of Sturm und Drag. The year was 1910, the city Heidelberg. Her mother was Anna Maria diLouzi, waitress in a renowned Rathskeller; her father was rumored (by Anna Maria) to be the young Kaiser. Fraulein diLouzi was popular with the young men of the city, although she spoke only an obscure dialect of Italian: she may well have encountered the young leader on some busy night.
Be that as it may, young Gertrud was never acknowledged by her father. Anna Maria diLouzi vanished with her daughter soon after the girl's birth. (However, it has been rumored that Gertrud diLouzi's directoral career began at the age of four, when she made a blue home movie starring her parents. The film, which would be a valuable piece of cinematic history, has been lost for several decades.)
Anna MAria and her daughter resurfaced after World War One, in Hamburg. Fraulein diLouzi's means of support were, as the police reports put it, "obscure," but she and her daughter lived relatively well in the inflationary days that followed.
It was in this time that young Gertrud first entered the magical world of the cinema. She and her mother appeared as extras in many films of the day: Das Kabinett von Doktor Caligari (1919), Metropolis (1926),
Viktor und Viktoria (1933).
By this time Gertrud was 23 years old, and ready for her own career behind the cameras. She helped direct crowd scenes for Leni Riefenstahl (Triumph of the Will, 1936) and solidified her lifelong opinion that such scenes were the heart of the cinema. Because of this early conviction, each of her subsequent films contains not only the Hugo Gernsback Memorial Bridge, but also at least one crowd scene.
"Uff course I vent ofer-a budget some-a times," she says with a shrug. "But look at-a D. W. Griffith. Did ze budget schtop-a heem?"
Shortly after Triumph of the Will, Gertrud left Germany, vowing that she would never make films for the oppressive Nazi regime (it is not recorded that she was ever asked). While other political refugees fled west to Hollywood, Gertrud went to Australia. It seems likely that her thick accent caused some confusion at the ticket counter, since she had intended to go to Austria. Gertrud recalls spending several days after her arrival in Sydney vainly trying to find the Vienna Opera House.
She soon joined the burgeoning Australian film industry. Here she was to make her first major series of films, the unjustly neglected Duckbilled Platypus cycle. As a war refugee with a virulent hatred for the Nazis, Gertrud was put to work making propaganda films for the Allies. While working on this project, diLouzi saw her first duckbilled platypus. Enchanted with the peculiar animal, she began planning a series of films starring a tap-dancing platypus.
"Eet is zuch a strange-a creature," explains diLouzi. "Ve do not-a haf any of zees in-a Chermany. Besides, no vun else vas-a doing it."
The first film in the series, Duckbilled Platypus Goes to War, was well-received by the patriotic Australians. One critic wrote, "DiLouzi's use of the platypus to symbolize Australia shows the true breadth and scope of her cinematic vision." However, subsequent entries in the series, such as Duckbilled Platypus's Elephant and Duckbilled Platypus Has a Baby, caused some puzzlement. Gertrud was removed from the propaganda project and spent the rest of the war making short subjects.
After the war, Gertrud was sent to Japan with a newsreel crew to document MacArthur's reconstruction efforts. It was here that diLouzi met the film-maker who was to become the guiding force in her life: Inoshiro Honda of Toho Studios, the creator of Godzilla.
"Eef I had-a known of hees-a techniques earlier," Gertrud recalls, "I vould not-a have had to teach-a dot platypus to dance. I could haf-a used a man in a rubber zuit."
After serving an apprenticeship with Honda, diLouzi set out to fulfill her life's ambition: to locate the Hugo Gernsback Memorial Bridge. This structure has exerted an almost hypnotic influence over Gertrud ever since her childhood days in Munich, when she saw the bridge on a travel poster. The bridge appears in all of her films -- on a postcard, as a miniature being stomped by a giant armadillo, and in a toyshop window built of alphabet blocks.
Her search led Gertrud to Oklahoma. As artist-in-residence at Swanson County Vo-Tech, she lives in a chalet on a hill, within sight of the Hugo Gernsback Memorial Bridge. The house is filled with memorabilia, such as the top hat worn by the Duckbilled Platypus in Paddling Down to Rio.
The high pollen count in this area has made diLouzi's allergies act up. This affliction inspired her to film the Nasal Series: Days of Wine and Noses, I Never Promised You a Nose Garden, and the recently-completed NOSFARATU.
DiLouzi's latest film, Absence of Mind, is a study of journalistic forgettability.
"Eet vill be a big-a hit, uff course," predicts its creator. "It stars-a vhat's-her-name, ze one mit-a ze beeg (censored)."