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]
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).
^ abcBock, Hans-Michael; Bergfelder, Tim (September 2009). The Concise Cinegraph: An Encyclopedia of German Cinema. Berghahn Books. p. 355. ISBN978-0-857-45565-9.
^ abLangham, Larry (2000). Destination Hollywood: The Influence of Europeans on American Filmmaking. McFarland. p. 80. ISBN0-786-40681-X.
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. ISBN978-3-939988-23-6
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