August 25 - G. W. Pabst

 

Happy Birthday, G.W. Pabst! Born today in 1885 as Georg Wilhelm Pabst, this Austrian screenwriter and film director started out as an actor and theater director before becoming one of the most influential German-language filmmakers during the Weimar Republic. 

  

While growing up in Vienna, he later studied drama at the Academy of Decorative Arts and initially began his career as a stage actor in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. 

In 1910, Pabst traveled to the United States, where he worked as an actor and director at the German Theater in New York City, New York.  

 When World War I began, Pabst returned to Europe, where he was interned in a prisoner-of-war camp in Brest, Brittany, France.  

  

While imprisoned, Pabst organised a theatre group at the camp. Upon his release in 1919, he returned to Vienna, where he became director of the Neue Wiener Bühne, an avant-garde theatre  

  

Pabst soon after began his career as a film director at the behest of German film pioneer and film director Carl Froelich, who hired Pabst as an assistant director. 

  

Pabst later developed a talent for "discovering" and developing the talents of actresses, including American film actress and dancer Louise Brooks, Swedish-American film actress Greta Garbo, and Danish silent film actress Asta Nielsen. 

  

This also included German film director and actress Leni Riefenstahl ('Triumph of the Will', 'Olympia Part 1: Festival of the Nations', 'Olympia Part 2: Festival of Beauty'). 

  

Pabst's earlier and most famous films concern the plight of women. 

Most notably, these include the 1929 German silent black and white drama/romance film 'Die Büchse der Pandora' ('Pandora's Box') and the 1929 German silent black and white drama film T'agebuch einer Verlorenen' ('Diary of a Lost Girl'). 

  

Both of these films starred Brooks, although Pabst is best known for co-writing and directing the former. 

  

In this acclaimed German silent film, Lulu (Louise Brooks) is a young woman so beautiful and alluring that few can resist her siren charms.  

  

The men drawn into her web include respectable newspaper publisher Dr. Ludwig Schön (Fritz Kortner), his musical producer son Alwa (Franz Lederer), circus performer Rodrigo Quast (Krafft-Raschig) and Lulu's seedy old friend, Schigolch (Carl Goetz).  

  

However, when Lulu's charms inevitably lead to tragedy, the downward spiral encompasses them all. 

  

Sensationally modern, the film follows the downward spiral of the fiery, brash, yet innocent showgirl,whose sexual vivacity has a devastating effect on everyone she comes in contact with.  

  

Daring and stylish, 'Pandora's Box' is one of silent cinema's great masterworks and a testament to Brooks's dazzling individuality. 

  

The film had been based on German playwright Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist [Earth Spirit] (1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (1904). 

  

Upon release, 'Pandora's Box' was a critical failure, dismissed by German critics as a bastardization of its source material. Brooks' role in the film was also subject to criticism, fueled by the fact that she was an American.  

  

In the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, 'Pandora's Box’ was shown in significantly truncated and re-edited versions, which eliminated certain subplots, including the film's original, downbeat ending. 

  

By the mid-20th century, 'Pandora's Box' was rediscovered by film scholars and began to earn a reputation as an unsung classic of Weimar German cinema. 

  

After the coming of sound, Pabst made a trilogy of films that secured his reputation. 

  

In 1938, Pabst was caught in France whilst visiting his mother. This was when WWII was declared, and he was forced to return to Nazi Germany.  

  

Under the auspices of German Nazi politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels, Pabst made two films in Germany, during this period. 

  

Pabst passed from in Vienna, Austria on May 29, 1967. He was 81. Pabst was later buried at the Zentralfriedhof (Vienna Central Cemetery), one of the largest cemeteries in the world by number interred. 

  

Pabst was a giant of early cinema before his reputation went behind a cloud. However, what possessed this liberal, cosmopolitan filmmaker to return to Austria in 1939 and direct films for the Third Reich? 

  

With films of which were among the most artistically successful of the 1920s. 

Pabst's works are marked by social and political concerns, deep psychological insight, memorable female protagonists, and human conflicts with culture and society. He is also noted for his mastery of film editing. 

  

Pabst had been active from 1901–1957. 

  

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