Pabst, Georg Wilhelm

(1885-1967)

   film* director; with Fritz Lang* and F. W. Murnau,* counted among the premier filmmakers of the Weimar era. Born in the Bohemian city of Raudnitz, Pabst was raised in Vienna, where his father was a railway official. He began engineering studies at Vienna's Tech-nische Hochschule, but was soon attracted to the theater.* Against family wishes, he transferred in 1904 to the city's Decorative Arts Academy and joined a traveling repertory troupe in 1906. In 1914 he was recruiting actors in France when war broke out. After being arrested as an enemy alien, he was held in custody for over four years. In 1919, soon after his release, he became artistic director of the New Vienna Stage. He relocated to Berlin* in 1920 and was assistant director for Carl Froelich's* first postwar film, Im Banne der Kralle; the experience converted him from actor to filmmaker. In 1923 he directed the Expressionist* Der Schatz (The treasure), his first film.

   Pabst came into his own after 1924, when he became a proponent of Neue Sachlichkeit.* He pioneered the fragmenting of scenes by shooting and editing; the technique was powerful in Geheimnisse einer Seele (Secrets of a soul, 1925), a film treating psychoanalysis in which fragmentation depicted pieces of a dream. But it was Die freudlose Gasse (Joyless street, 1925) that brought him (and, incidentally, Greta Garbo) international acclaim. His first effort at social realism, Die freudlose Gasse portrayed the demise of a middle-class Viennese family during the runaway inflation* of 1923. In three films—Abwege (Crisis, 1928), Buchse der Pandora (Pandora's box, 1928), and Tagebuch einer Verlo-renen (Diary of a lost girl, 1929)—he focused on feminine psychology against the backdrop of a decayed society; sexually permissive by period standards, they were severely censored. Early sound films—Westfront 1918 (1930), Die Drei-groschenoper (The Threepenny Opera,* 1931) and Kameradschaft (Com-radeship, 1931)—wrongly established him as a pacifist, social critic, and internationalist; Pabst was more interested in portraying reality than in changing it. Perhaps best known for Dreigroschenoper, he so improvised on the script that Bertolt Brecht* sued him.

   Pabst was working in France when Hitler* seized power. In 1934 he accepted an invitation to direct in Hollywood, but he returned to France in 1935. In 1939 he went to the family home in Austria,* by then part of the Third Reich, to prepare for immigration to the United States; the outbreak of war prevented his departure. He produced three films in Germany during World War II and con-tinued directing in Europe until 1956.

   REFERENCES:Atwell, G. W. Pabst; Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood; Lotte Eisner, Haunted Screen; Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler; Masterworks of the German Cinema.