Georg wilhelm pabst biography examples

A less than ordinary melodrama, the film proved to be a commercial success. In fact, the producers tried to entice Pabst to do more work in that vein, but he did not want to fall into the rut of churning out commercial fluff. That year,Pabst married Gertrude Henning. It was his first attempt at cinematic realism, and in it he expressed the cynicism and resignation that gripped a defeated Germany during the years of the Weimar Republic.

The film's opening title card quoted from Dante's Inferno, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here," suggesting the despair that gripped everyday life in Germany.

Georg wilhelm pabst biography examples: Pabst was educated in Vienna and

While this was Pabst's initial move toward the realism that would define his career, the film included melodrama and, to a far lesser degree, Expressionism. Yet this film, whose story included murder, prostitution, starvation, and economic misfortune, was a far less sentimental evocation of the urban environment than most of its contemporaries, especially D.

Griffith 's Isn't Life Wonderful? Griffith's location shots are considered superior to Pabst's, who employed sets much of the time, but otherwise Pabst was eclipsing the cinema pioneer. Die Freudlose Gasse was a highly successful film, though censors everywhere made cuts in it, so that in different countries different aspects of the film were emphasized.

It was originally ten reels long, but after its premiere it became "a mere shell of a film," as Lee Atwell wrote in the book G. Despite this, Pabst's artistic vision still shone through. This is the film that really launched Garbo's career. Though she had previously acted in a few unknown Swedish films and in Pabst's earlier film, Garbo's performance in Die Freudlose Gasse caught the attention of Hollywood moguls.

In his next film Pabst, who was an admirer of Sigmund Freudturned to psychological drama and the surreal. Through various connections he managed to base Geheimnisse einer Seele Secrets of the Soul on an actual case history. It's a film about sexual anxiety and impotence, complete with hypnosis and dream sequences and possibly the first overtly psychological use of dreams in German cinema.

Georg wilhelm pabst biography examples: Georg Wilhelm Pabst's early life was

Although the film is marred by a sentimental ending, it was successful with critics, audiences, and the censors, who found very little to condemn in it. The subject matter reflects Pabst's growing sympathy with the Left: he was involved with a German film worker's syndicate named Dacho and in joined the organization Volksverband der Filmkunst Popular Association for Film Art.

The Ehrenburg novel is set partially in Russia during the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, all the more remarkable since UFA, the German studio conglomerate that produced the film, was at first run by military men and bankers, two notoriously politically conservative groups. The film was another artistic leap forward for Pabst in that he used fewer title cards for character exposition, letting the camera reveal the characters.

In Geheimnisse einer Seele the camera had played the primary role in revealing the protagonist's psychological dilemma; now Pabst employed it in a more subtle manner. These were two Expressionistic plays that transformed the Greek myth of Pandora into the modernist Lulu, whose sexual desire consumes men. In Pabst's hands the Expressionism was toned down by a naturalism that, ironically, Wedekind had revolted against but which Pabst used to magnificent advantage.

Georg wilhelm pabst biography examples: Georg Wilhelm Pabst was born on

Pabst's use of American actress Louise Brooks in the title role produced a Lulu who was at once a predator and an innocent: Lulu seduces and abandons men and women and even commits murder, yet she remains loyal to her love, nearly falls victim to a white slave trader, and in the end in the film's classically Expressionist scenes prostitutes herself and falls victim to the notorious London rapist Jack the Ripper.

Brooks makes all of this believable. Pabst had originally thought of casting Marlene Dietrich in the role of Lulu, but her screen persona lacked the innocence of the unknown Brooks. The film's sexual explicitness was decimated by censors or banned altogether. Still, Pabst's mythic vision of feminine desire has been preserved by cineastes in France and Switzerland who managed to assemble a complete film from existing prints, using Pabst's shooting script as a guide.

The result is one of the greatest films of the silent era. The film features Leni Riefenstahlwho would gain fame as the most prominent Nazi film documentarian. At a time when such behavior was considered scandalous and perverse, the film provoked the critics and received more virulent notices than had the play, and it was censored in parts and mutilated by cuts.

Both films exposed the failings of capitalism, which like war has no victim other than the people. An adaptation of a short story written by Ernst Johannsen, Westfront tells the story of a group of German soldiers at the front. It was totally different from previous films with the same subject because it denounced the absurdity of the war—the ravages of which had been as much evident behind the lines as at the front—and because it treated its theme in an extremely realistic style.

Pabst conveys his messages less through dialogue than through sophisticated visual effects such as the oppressive atmosphere created by long shots and lighting that accentuates contrasts. Censored under pressure from the Nazi Party, the movie was well received in France, especially by veterans, where it improved the image of Germany, much hated after the war.

Georg wilhelm pabst biography examples: Film historians consider G.W. Pabst

Partly shot in around the coal mines of the Sarre, the movie glorifies working-class solidarity, praises Franco-German reconciliation, and exalts the idea of peace with restrained appeal to the memories of wartime in one powerful scene, a dying miner thinks he is under gas attack in the trenches. It resembles an objective documentary, with its spare direction and the absence of aesthetic devices or music.

The mine's passageways, meticulously reproduced in a studio in Berlin by Erno Metzner, seem quite as real as the exteriors that were shot on location. The same striving for realism caused Pabst to choose relatively unknown German and French actors who speak in their own language. Although his social and political views and ideology won him the sobriquet "Pabst the Red," he made some questionable dramatic and aesthetic compromises in some of his films.

The best example is his adaptation of Die 3groschenoper The Threepenny Opera. Although he collaborated on the script, Bertolt Brecht — thought that the film did not respect his play's sharp edge of social criticism. Believing that the "social thesis" of the original work had been betrayed, he sued. According to Brecht, artistic integrity demanded that the film, like the theatrical production, should have "attacked bourgeois ideology" and demanded that Nero Films destroy the prints.

He accused Pabst of being incapable of preserving the original intent of the piece when turning it into film, allowing commercial considerations to destroy Brecht's original vision. Brecht lost his lawsuit, but his long polemic, The Threepenny Lawsuitan original discussion of the adaptation, caused a stir. Although he refused to submit to the injunctions of Nazi propaganda, he decided to continue making movies.

He returned to Vienna in and worked as a director in Prague for a year. It was during this time that he met film pioneer Karl Froelich. At Froelich-Film, Pabst became involved in the new art form as an actor, screenwriter, and assistant director. Inhe directed his first film, "Der Schatz" The Treasurewhich was done in an expressionistic style.

The film explored themes of sex, money, and power, which would become recurring themes in Pabst's best works. In latehe tried to continue his career in Hollywood but struggled to adapt to American filmmaking methods. He returned to France and made a series of successful detective and spy films. Career [ edit ]. Death [ edit ]. Awards [ edit ].

Filmography [ edit ]. Georg C. See also [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Berghahn Books. ISBN ISBN X. Silent London. Retrieved 11 July The Criterion Collection.