GW Pabst

100 Years of… Secrets of the Soul

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Herr Fellman in the throes of a dream

Is it Secrets of a Soul or Secrets of the Soul? Both variations of the title seem to be in play. It was Geheimnisse einer Seele in the original German, which suggests it’s the indefinite article – do with that what you will. Either way this is a strange film from the silent era. Expressly designed to take key concepts of psychoanalysis and give them cinematic life, it was directed by GW Pabst, who really wanted Sigmund Freud to contribute. Freud was less keen – his work was more than mere entertainment – so declined, but Pabst did persuade a couple of Freud’s collaborators to take part at the writing stage, including Karl Abraham, … Read more

Joyless Street

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Greta Garbo close up

There’s a lot going on in Joyless Street (Die freudlose Gasse), GW Pabst’s epic “Straßenfilm” about the Weimar era in Germany, made during the Weimer era in Germany. Greta Garbo is in it, which tends to draw a lot of attention, and because the film survives only in a print with a good half hour missing, it’s often described as her film. It certainly looks that way from the 150 or so minutes now available. But Asta Nielsen was top-billed when it came out and she thought she was the star. So spare a thought for poor old Asta as you watch a tale of two impoverished young women doing what they have … Read more

Paracelsus

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Paracelsus with a sword in his hand

Paracelsus, the great Swiss renaissance physician. Who could want a film about him? Adolf Hitler, it turns out. Maybe in the story of the proud loner standing against received wisdom, the tribune of the Volk and all that, Hitler saw a kindred spirit – the Führerprinzip in action before the Führer. The director was the GW Pabst, who’d been caught in France en route to the USA at the beginning of the war and was then forced to turn out films for the Reich. With a lot of foot-dragging and a determination to keep Nazi ideology as much as possible out of the finished product, the great Austrian made only two in five … Read more

The Love of Jeanne Ney

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Jeanne and Andreas

The Love of Jeanne Ney is one of those torrid love stories told against a backdrop of roiling conflict. Or that’s what it looks like at the outset. But by the end it’s become more like a showcase for everything the great Austrian director Georg Wilhelm Pabst could do – all the genres in all the styles. By this point in his career, Pabst had given Greta Garbo her first starring role two years before in 1925’s Joyless Street (aka Die freudlose Gasse). Two years later he would turn Louise Brooks into a global icon with Pandora’s Box. If Jeanne Ney was a bit of bait designed to lure Hollywood into hiring him, … Read more