G. W. Pabst


Georg Wilhelm Pabst 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, 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. In 1910, Pabst traveled to the United States, where he worked as an actor and director at the German Theater in New York City.
When World War I began, Pabst returned to Europe, where he was interned in a prisoner-of-war camp in Brest. 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.

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. He developed a talent for "discovering" and developing the talents of actresses, including Greta Garbo, Asta Nielsen, Louise Brooks, and Leni Riefenstahl.
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, 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 1918, The Threepenny Opera with Lotte Lenya, and Kameradschaft. 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 in the USA and Street of Shadows in France, Pabst was caught in France in 1938 whilst visiting his mother, when war was declared, 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 1953: La forza del destino for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, and a few weeks later, for the Arena di Verona Festival, a spectacular Aïda, with Maria Callas in the title role, Il trovatore and again La forza del destino.
He directed The Last Ten Days, the first post-war German feature film to feature Adolf Hitler as a character.

Death

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

Awards