Austrian film director (–)
Georg Wilhelm Pabst (25 August – 29 May ) 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.
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 , Pabst traveled to the United States, where he worked as an actor and director at the German Theater in New York City.[1]
In , 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 , he returned to Vienna, where he became director of the Neue Wiener Bühne, an avant-garde theatre.[1]
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 [2] He developed a talent for "discovering" and developing the talents of actresses, including Greta Garbo, Asta Nielsen, Louise Brooks, and Leni Riefenstahl.[5]
Film theorist Karel Reisz noted that Pabst was among the first filmmakers to time his cuts to specific movements, using cutting on action to create seamless transitions and enhance the fluidity of his films.[6]
Pabst's best known films concern the plight of women, including The Joyless Street () with Greta Garbo and Asta Nielsen, Secrets of a Soul () with Lili Damita, The Loves of Jeanne Ney () with Brigitte Helm, and Pandora's Box () and Diary of a Lost Girl () with American actress Louise Brooks. He also co-directed with Arnold Fanck a mountain film entitled The White Hell of Pitz Palu () starring Leni Riefenstahl.
After the coming of sound, he made a trilogy of films that secured his reputation: Westfront (), The Threepenny Opera () with Lotte Lenya (based on the Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill musical), and Kameradschaft (). Pabst also filmed three versions of Pierre Benoit's novel L'Atlantide in , in German, English, and French, titled Die Herrin von Atlantis, The Mistress of Atlantis, and L'Atlantide, respectively. In , Pabst directed Don Quixote, once again in German, English, and French versions.
After making A Modern Hero () in the USA and Street of Shadows () in France, Pabst (who was planning to emigrate to the United States) was caught in France in , 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 () and Paracelsus ().
Pabst directed four opera productions in Italy in 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.[7]
He directed The Last Ten Days (), the first post-war German feature film to feature Adolf Hitler as a character.[5]
On 29 May , Pabst died in Vienna at the age of [8] He was interred at the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna.[9]
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Further reading