Edgar G. Ulmer - The man in the off
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Edgar G. Ulmer - The man in the off |
| Country of production | Austria , USA |
| original language | German , English |
| Publishing year | 2004 |
| length | 77 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Michael Palm |
| script | Michael Palm |
| production |
Georg Misch Ralph Wieser Arianné Ulmer Cipes |
| music | Georg Misch |
| camera | Joerg Burger |
| cut | Michael Palm Marek Kralovsky |
| occupation | |
| |
Edgar G. Ulmer - Der Mann im Off is an Austrian - American documentary about the film director Edgar G. Ulmer from 2004.
content
Edgar G. Ulmer (1904–1972), born in Olomouc, grew up in Vienna and Sweden , worked for Max Reinhardt and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau , emigrated from Austria, became the “king” of B-movies in Hollywood , was forgotten, rediscovered and finally a cult figure. Until the 1960s, Ulmer u. a. with Boris Karloff , Hedy Lamarr and Jean-Louis Trintignant around fifty feature films (including Detour , The Black Cat and Naked Dawn ). Two years before his death, Ulmer had a long conversation with Peter Bogdanovich , which, along with other materials, is available from his private estate .
Director Michael Palm traces the winding paths in Elmer's bio and filmography , lets himself into gaps, contradictions, falsifications and irritations and, through the staging of his film, conveys a feeling for the constant restlessness, the constant illusions in Elmer's life.
Most of the interviews with the protagonists were conducted in moving cars - on the streets of Hollywood and Berlin - or in rear-projection settings. The protagonists of the film do not just appear as informants, but are integrated into staged ones, so that the question of the relation to reality and truth of their statements always resonates. Ulmer himself functions as an “unreliable” voice-over narrator , often misleading the viewer, making him doubt things that can be heard or seen. The montage is used to simulate dialogues between individual protagonists that did not take place in this way in order to refer to the made-up and the cinematic construction of history and reality, but without taking away the relevance of the characters' statements , without being satisfied with simple truths . The film is a playful commitment to the illusion machine, to the productive illusory world of film, but also an analysis of the highly capitalized illusory world of Hollywood, which actually "only exists in the head" (John Landis) - "a gigantic, blurred rear projection" (Joe Dante) - by who was attracted and repelled at the same time throughout his life.
Film clips take on the formal gesture of the documentary, archive material narrative tasks. For example, the protagonist from Ulmer's Detour functions repeatedly as an allegorical Ulmer representative, as his alter ego ; and the main character from Ulmer's Beyond The Time Barriers is just as fascinated by the wastelands surrounding a futuristic city of the future as Ulmer is perhaps at the gates of the glamorous world of Hollywood.
The staging, visual style and montage are committed to the “attitude to life” of the B movies, their fast, driving narrative pace, their roughness and simplicity , their high density and directness, without their style, Elmer's style, being imitated. Accordingly, this film is not only a dazzling mythography of an extremely influential Hollywood maverick, but also explores the question of what still fascinates us today about the barreness, efficiency and agility of B-movies.
background
Edgar G. Ulmer - Der Mann im Off was first broadcast on September 4, 2004 on 3sat .
Web links
- Edgar G. Ulmer - The Man Off in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Edgar G. Ulmer - The man in the off on Mischief Films