Film Screenings / Programs / Retrospectives
EDGAR G. ULMER
October 31 – November 6
Edgar G. Ulmer (1904-1972) enjoyed a thirty-five year career as a film director. Born in the Austro-Hungarian town of Olmütz, in today’s Czech Republic, he immediately relocated to Vienna, where he spent his youth, eventually training with Max Reinhardt (he first came to America, in 1924, with Reinhardt’s company to help stage THE MIRACLE at New York’s Century Theatre). His sprawling, eclectic filmography includes daring and original horror films; a startling variety of ethnic pictures from the 1930s; numerous acclaimed B-pictures of diverse genres, from Westerns and screwball comedies to costume dramas and weepies; and finally, several influential entries in the pantheon of American film noir. Long overshadowed by the cohort of his peers Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, and Fred Zinneman – the last three of whom collaborated with Ulmer on his directorial debut MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG (PEOPLE ON SUNDAY, 1930) – Ulmer is now, four decades after his death, gaining his due appreciation.
Presented on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Ulmer’s death, this series also coincides with a roundtable discussion at NYU’s Deutsches Haus on November 2 at 6:30, featuring Austrian film critic Stefan Grissemann, author of MANN IM SCHATTEN (MAN IN THE SHADOWS), the first full-scale biography of Ulmer, Austrian filmmaker Michael Palm, director of the 2004 documentary EDGAR G. ULMER: THE MAN OFF-SCREEN, and film critic J. Hoberman, in conversation with The New School film scholar Noah Isenberg, author of the forthcoming biography EDGAR G. ULMER: A FILMMAKER IN TRANSIT (California), reevaluating the import of Ulmer’s work 40 years after his passing. For more info, visit: http://deutscheshaus.as.nyu.edu
All film descriptions are by Noah Isenberg.
