Pare Lorentz

Pare Lorentz (born December 11, 1905 in Clarksburg , West Virginia , † March 4, 1992 in Armonk , New York ) was an American documentary filmmaker and journalist.

Life

Pare Lorentz was born Leonard MacTaggart Lorentz in West Virginia . His mother was a singer, his father, whose first name Pare he later took over, printer and publisher. Lorentz graduated from Buckhannon High School and studied first at West Virginia Wesleyan University, later at West Virginia University . From his youth he played the violin; during his student days he edited the magazine Moonshine and belonged to a group of journalists. He left university without a degree, moved to New York City, and began writing for the New Yorker . From 1925 he was editor of the Edison Lamp Sales Builder and then switched to Judge as a film critic , but at the same time also wrote film reviews for numerous other papers. In 1930 he produced Censored with Morris Ernst . The Private Life of the Movies . In 1931 he married the actress Sally Bates . He wanted to finance his honeymoon to Europe through an assignment from William Randolph Hearst : He promised him interviews with René Clair and Alfred Hitchcock . A little later, however, he lost his job because he had discussed the film Svengali very ungraciously. John Barrymore , Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur , who got off very badly in Lorentz's review, were guests at Hearst of all places when the text appeared.

Consequences of the dust storms in 1936

This was followed by an employment with Vanity Fair as a film critic, which he lost after he was too close to Nelson Rockefeller . He then got another job at Hearst, this time in Washington. He had tried unsuccessfully while at Vanity Fair to raise money for a film project called The Roosevelt Year , and ended up writing a book of the same title instead. It was published in 1934 and described the economic and political difficulties in the United States. This book was supposed to give him access to Henry A. Wallace , but after he wrote an article about Wallace, Lorentz was again fired by Hearst. In 1935 he managed to get in touch with Wallace, who in turn introduced him to Rexford Guy Tugwell . Tugwell was enthusiastic about Lorentz's film ideas, but asked for 18 films instead of a single one, which, however, should be of outstanding quality according to Lorentz's ideas. Lorentz suggested the Dust Bowl as the first topic . He then received an initial budget of $ 6,000. He only worked on site, not in the studio, and without professional actors. Instead of making sound recordings on site, he added background music to the film and let a narrator speak from the off. The film eventually received the title The Plow that Broke the Plains . After eleven composers had been approached in vain, Virgil Thomson finally agreed to write the music for the film. He received the $ 500 that Lorentz had left from his budget. Alexander Smallens created the recording with musicians from the New York Philharmonic , Thomas Chalmers spoke the text. The Plow that Broke the Plains ended up costing $ 200 in production in 1936 and premiered at the White House in 1936. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was just as enthusiastic about the work as numerous critics. However, it proved difficult to get the film on national distribution because it was often dismissed as a propaganda film. Only a performance in the Rialto Theater in Times Square brought the breakthrough.

Lorentz made the next film on Tugwell's suggestion in 1936 about the Mississippi . When he thought he had completed the work, the great flood of 1937 led him back to the river again. This film, too, was first shown to the President and was highly praised by him. The official world premiere then took place in New Orleans . The film was also successful in Europe; In 1938 it was shown at the Venice Film Festival . There he got the first prize for a documentary film, outdoing Leni Riefenstahl's Olympic documentary . At the same time, The River was the first American film to receive an award in this category.

Roosevelt set up the United States Film Service. During this time Lorentz created The Fight for Life . He then became a pilot and squadron commander in the Far East and later head of a foreign department of the War Ministry. In this capacity, after the end of the Second World War, he helped Carl Zuckmayer to a post as civil servant for German issues, which made it possible for him to return to Germany soon after the end of the war. The acquaintance between Zuckmayer and Lorentz came about through his second wife Elizabeth, a daughter of Agnes E. Meyer and Eugene Meyer , who had already visited the Zuckmayer family in Henndorf . Elizabeth Meyer had worked on the preparatory work for The Fight for Life . During his time as an aviator, Lorentz filmed numerous bombing attacks during World War II, and later he had to edit extensive film material on the Nazi atrocities and the Nuremberg trials . The result, Nuremberg , was a great success in Europe, but again had a difficult time in the USA.

Lorentz's first marriage resulted in a daughter and a son.

Web links

• Pare Lorentz in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• biography
• The Plow that Broke the Plains, Part 1

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Carl Zuckmayer, As if it were a piece of me. Listening to friendship , S. Fischer Verlag 1986, ISBN 3-10-096534-5 , p. 530