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G. W. Pabst

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G.W. Pabst
G. W. Pabst during production of the film L'Opéra de quat'sous (The Threepenny Opera) in 1931
Born
Georg Wilhelm Pabst

(1885-08-25)25 August 1885
Raudnitz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic)
Died29 May 1967(1967-05-29) (aged 81)
Vienna, Austria
Resting placeZentralfriedhof
Years active1901–1957
Spouse
Gertrude Hennings
​
(m. 1924)​
ChildrenMichael Pabst (1941-2008)

Georg Wilhelm Pabst (25 August 1885 – 29 May 1967) was an Austrian film director and screenwriter. He started as an actor and theater director, before becoming one of the most influential German-language filmmakers during the Weimar Republic.

Early years

Pabst was born in Raudnitz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (today's Roudnice nad Labem, Czech Republic), the son of a railroad official. While growing up in Vienna, he studied drama at the Academy of Decorative Arts and initially began his career as a stage actor in Switzerland, Austria and Germany.[1][2] In 1910, Pabst traveled to the United States, where he worked as an actor and director at the German Theater in New York City.[1]

In 1914, he decided to become a director, and he returned to recruit actors in Europe.[3] Pabst was in France when World War I began, he was arrested and held as an enemy alien and interned in a prisoner-of-war camp near Brest.[4] While imprisoned, Pabst organised a theatre group at the camp and directed French-language plays.[4] Upon his release in 1919, he returned to Vienna, where he became director of the Neue Wiener Bühne, an avant-garde theatre.[1]

Career

Pabst began his career as a film director at the behest of Carl Froelich who hired Pabst as an assistant director. He directed his first film, The Treasure, in 1923.[2] He developed a talent for "discovering" and developing the talents of actresses, including Greta Garbo, Asta Nielsen, Louise Brooks, and Leni Riefenstahl.[5]

Pabst's best known films concern the plight of women, including The Joyless Street (1925) with Greta Garbo and Asta Nielsen, Secrets of a Soul (1926) with Lili Damita, The Loves of Jeanne Ney (1927) with Brigitte Helm, and Pandora's Box (1929) and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) with American actress Louise Brooks. He also co-directed with Arnold Fanck a mountain film entitled The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929) starring Leni Riefenstahl.

After the coming of sound, he made a trilogy of films that secured his reputation: Westfront 1918 (1930), The Threepenny Opera (1931) with Lotte Lenya (based on the Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill musical), and Kameradschaft (1931). Pabst also filmed three versions of Pierre Benoit's novel L'Atlantide in 1932, in German, English, and French, titled Die Herrin von Atlantis, The Mistress of Atlantis, and L'Atlantide, respectively. In 1933, Pabst directed Don Quixote, once again in German, English, and French versions.

After making A Modern Hero (1934) in the USA and Street of Shadows (1937) in France, Pabst (who was planning to emigrate to the United States) was caught in France in 1939, when war was declared, whilst visiting his mother, and was forced to return to Nazi Germany. Under the auspices of propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels, Pabst made two films in Germany during this period: The Comedians (1941) and Paracelsus (1943).

Pabst directed four opera productions in Italy in 1953: La forza del destino for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence (conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos, the cast included Renata Tebaldi, Fedora Barbieri, Mario del Monaco, Aldo Protti, Cesare Siepi), and a few weeks later, for the Arena di Verona Festival, a spectacular Aïda, with Maria Callas in the title role (conducted by Tullio Serafin, with del Monaco), Il trovatore and again La forza del destino.[6]

He directed The Last Ten Days (1955), the first post-war German feature film to feature Adolf Hitler as a character.[5]

Death

On 29 May 1967, Pabst died in Vienna at the age of 81.[7] He was interred at the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna.[8]

Awards

Filmography

Grave of G.W. Pabst, his wife and son at the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Bock, Hans-Michael; Bergfelder, Tim (September 2009). The Concise Cinegraph: An Encyclopedia of German Cinema. Berghahn Books. p. 355. ISBN 978-0-857-45565-9.
  2. ^ a b Langham, Larry (2000). Destination Hollywood: The Influence of Europeans on American Filmmaking. McFarland. p. 80. ISBN 0-786-40681-X.
  3. ^ "The Treasure (Der Schatz, 1923): GW Pabst's compelling debut excavates the root of all evil". Silent London. 26 March 2018. Retrieved 11 July 2022.
  4. ^ a b
  5. ^ a b "Opening Pandora's Box". The Criterion Collection. 2006.
  6. ^ "Music: Pabst's Blue Ribbon". time.com. 10 August 1953. Archived from the original on 28 May 2008.(Subscription required.)
  7. ^ "G. W. Pabst, Maker Of Films Abroad. Early Viennese Producer and Director Dies at 82". New York Times. Reuters. 31 May 1967. Retrieved 19 March 2010. G.W. Pabst, the Austrian film producer and director, died here last night. He was 82 years old.(Subscription required.)
  8. ^ Bahn, Paul G. (2014). The Archaeology of Hollywood: Traces of the Golden Age. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 236. ISBN 978-0-759-12378-6.
  9. ^ "ASAC Dati: Premi". Retrieved 30 September 2014.

Further reading

  • Amengual, Barthélémy. G.W. Pabst. Paris, Seghers, 1966
  • Atwell, Lee. G.W. Pabst. Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1977
  • Baxter, John. "G.W. Pabst" in International Directory of Films and Filmmakers. Chicago, 1990. pp. 376–378
  • Groppali, Enrico. Georg W. Pabst. Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1983
  • Jacobsen, Wolfgang (ed.) G.W. Pabst. Berlin, Argen, 1997
  • Kagelmann, Andre and Keiner, Reinhold. "Lässig beginnt der Tod, Mensch und Tier zu ernten: Überlegungen zu Ernst Johannsens Roman Vier von der Infanterie und G. W. Pabsts Film Westfront 1918" in Johannsen, Eric; Kassell (ed.) Vier von der Infanterie. Ihre letzen Tage an der Westfront 1918. Media Net-Edition, 2014. S. 80-113. ISBN 978-3-939988-23-6
  • Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton, Princeton university press, 1947
  • Mitry, Jean. Histoire du cinéma: Art et industrie (5 volumes) Paris, Editions Universitaires – J.P. Delarge, 1967–1980
  • Rentschler, Eric (ed.) The Films of G.W. Pabst. An extraterritorial cinema. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1990
  • Pabst, Georg Wilhelm. "Servitude et grandeur de Hollywood" in Le rôle intellectuel du cinéma, Paris, SDN-Institut International de Coopération Intellectuelle, 1937. pp. 251–255
  • Van den Berghe, Marc. La mémoire impossible. Westfront 1918 de G.W. Pabst. Grande Guerre, soldats, automates. Le film et sa problématique vus par la 'Petite Illustration' (1931), Bruxelles, 200
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