ULMERFEST:
DISCOVERING EDGAR G. ULMER – EUROPEAN | AMERICAN FILMMAKER
International Conference, Sept 14 – 17, 2006
Palacký University of Olomouc | Czech Republic
contact|info|registration: Bernd Herzogenrath (organizer) brundlefly@web.de
see also http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/englisch/berressem/herzogenrath/ulmer
September 2006 will see the First Academic Conference devoted to the life and work of filmmaker Edgar G.
Ulmer – taking place in Olomouc, the city where he was born. This event is sponsored and supported by the
German Research Foundation (DFG), the Jewish Museum Prague, and the Goethe-Institute Prague.
Speakers include Ulmer's daughter Arianné Ulmer-Cipes; Sharon Pucker Rivo, Executive Director of The
National Center for Jewish Film; Michael Palm, director of the noted documentary Edgar G. Ulmer – The Man
Off-Screen; and Stefan Grissemann, author of the only Ulmer monograph on Ulmer, Mann im Schatten: Der
Filmemacher Edgar G. Ulmer. A critical appreciation of Ulmer is so far still missing – this conference aims at
filling that gap. In addition, this event wants to regard itself as a ‘starting signal’ for a bi-annual Ulmerfest in
Olomouc.
Bringing Edgar G. Ulmer Back to Olomouc
The prayer helped. They didn't forget me, they've as good as hired me at
Paramount. As producer-director – my God! We're back home and on
our way.
(Letter from Edgar G. Ulmer to his wife Shirley, July 1, 1941)
There was nothing smooth about the life of Edgar Ulmer, the son of Jewish parents born in Olomouc, Sept 17,
1904. Ulmer suffered the classic fate of an emigrant: in 1920 he worked with Max Reinhardt at the Theater an
der Josefstadt in Vienna. Soon thereafter, he left Vienna with Reinhardt and did not return until the mid-50s,
because of the fear of coming back to a city in ruins, the city of his youth that was “probably full of murderers”
(Ulmer in a letter).
In 1921 he first started working in movies with the director Friedrich W. Murnau in Berlin, from 1924 on, he
worked as a set decorator on several film productions in the USA (among others in Murnau's Sunrise), in
1928 he returned to Berlin, where he made the semi-documentary masterpiece People on Sunday with
Robert Siodmak and Billy Wilder. In 1929 he finally immigrated to the USA for good.
The only film Ulmer makes for a big Hollywood studio is the horror film The Black Cat (1934, with Boris Karloff
and Bela Lugosi), a classic of the genre. Shortly thereafter, he moves to New York, where educational and
industry films keep him above water. He begins making ethnic movies in 1937: a feature film in New York's
black community, various works with Mexicans and Navajo Indians, a Ukrainian movie, and, most notably,
four Yiddish movies which have become classics of the Jewish Cinema. This films, shot when Hitler’s terror
was raging in Europe, come close to being both a search for his own identity, and a monument to a culture
that Ulmer saw in danger of becoming extinct. In general, in quite some of Ulmer’s films, there is often a
persistent if shadowy link between civilization and sickness—a fitting observation, I would argue, for a Jewish
intellectual in the first quarter of the 20th Century. As Ulmer’s daughter remembers, Ulmer “had based most of
his thinking on the great minds of the German language, only to find that it led to a stupid monster of an
Austrian painter named Hitler. For the rest of his life he tried to understand how civilization could end up in
barbarism.”
In 1942 Ulmer is hired as a contract director at PRC, one of the small poverty row studios. PRC produces Bmovies, i.e. movies meant to be shown as the first movie before the big, major-league, Hollywood Aproduction in a double feature. There is virtually no prestige involved, they're always extremely low-budget
productions, and the shooting schedules are very tight. But these constrictions brought out the best in Ulmer
and forged his highly individual style. He made some of his best works at PRC, among them films like Club
Havana, Strange Illusion, and Bluebeard, as well as Detour, probably Ulmer's most important work.
Ulmer leaves PRC after a falling out and works from 1946 on a free and independent basis, forever in search
of projects, always financially strapped. Ulmer leads the life of a nomad, makes films in the USA and in
Europe, travels with his family from one location to the next. This is how he makes films such as The Strange
Woman, Ruthless, The Man From Planet X, The Naked Venus, Beyond The Time Barrier, L’Atlantide, The
Cavern, among others.
Having come from the haute-bourgeoisie, he tries to enhance his usually trivial subject matter—often pulp
fiction—by adding cultural surplus-value. He is forced to make compromises. But in the process he develops
his typical Ulmer style: rough and minimalist, sometimes garish and overambitious, but always personal and
original, with a concentrated atmosphere—the contrast with the smooth style of the big Hollywood studios
could not be bigger.
Despite all these qualities, which are destined to be recognized only generations later, Ulmer's career takes
a tragic course. In the late 60s he tries in vain to make his comeback in Hollywood despite several strokes,
but most of his projects never pan out. Two years before his death and already gravely ill, he lets the director
Peter Bogdanovich interview him. It is a several-hour-long recorded conversation and can be regarded as
Ulmer's legacy. Ulmer dies in 1972, impoverished, in a nursing home in Woodland Hills, California. The
motto on his gravestone reads: Talent Obliges.
Ulmer's artistic and private life was always full of unexpected turns of events, brief soaring moments, hard
setbacks, and missed opportunities, and it probably wouldn't be too far from the truth to see Ulmer's own life
as a B-movie: full of detours and the need to improvise—poor but inventive.
His hopes of making it into the ranks of the big Hollywood directors during his lifetime wouldn't come true.
Hollywood, that Ulmer laconically called “home,” remained for him for the most part just an object of desire:
for financial security, for artistic recognition. On the other hand he insisted on artistic independence and for
this he was willing to work on the fringes of the dream factory, almost always on an extremely low budget, at
a breakneck pace. One might say that in every way Ulmer's life and work took place on the fringes, offscreen.
After he is discovered in the early 60s, mainly by critics and directors of the nouvelle vague, Ulmer is
celebrated and revered as a cult director, as auteur. François Truffaut quotes Ulmer’s Naked Dawn as one of
his favorite films and major inspiration for his own Jules et Jim, and sees Ulmer as “the most underrated of
all American filmmakers. His movies surprise us with their freshness, directness, and inventiveness.” His
admirers recognize Ulmer's talent of being able to bring out the artistic maximum on a minimal budget, his
pessimistic stories and existentialist heroes, and above all his virtuosity with lighting and camera.
Ulmer was forgotten, rediscovered, and finally ended up a cult figure. He was and still is the nonconformist,
non-classifiable filmmaker par excellence. He, the émigré director, represents the ‘other’ History of the
Cinema—not the history of powerful and canonized successes, but the ‘counter-history’ of a minor and
extremely agile cinema. In his text ‘Mediators,’ Gilles Deleuze, who unfortunately never mentioned Ulmer in
his Cinema-books, seems to be talking about him at last: “A creator who isn’t grabbed around the throat by a
set of impossibilities is no creator. A creator’s someone who creates their own impossibilities, and thereby
creates possibilities. … All writers, all creators, are shadows.” All his life Ulmer straddled the shadowy line
between art, solid craftsmanship, and trash—a Ulysses of the cinema who was not destined to return home,
but who, on his long voyage through various genres and film cultures, spanned the entire spectrum: cool
modernity alongside lascivious speculation, cheap trash beside classic virtuosity.
Finally, he is destined to return home—when Truffaut and the critics of the Cahiers du Cinema interviewed
the man, he gave ‘Vienna’ as his place of birth. Seeing himself as a representative of European High Culture,
Ulmer almost ‘naturally’ felt the urge to repress provinciality. The ship manifests and visa papers on his entry
to Ellis Island in 1924, however, prove that Ulmer’s last permanent residence was in fact Vienna, but his
actual place of birth was Olomouc. Vienna may have sounded more urbane and chic, but in fact it really
would have suited a film director soaked in the repertoire, style, and mis-en-scene of German Expressionism
much better had the legend incorporated the fact that he was born in Olomouc, and not in Vienna. And
finally, after months and months of digging in various archives, I was finally lucky and uncovered the address
where Ulmer was born in Olomouc. In 1904, the address was “Resselgasse 1, Ort Neugasse.” Today, the
name is Resslova 1, in the part of town now called ‘Nová ulice’—Ulmer finally can return to Olomouc!
(Ulmer’s passport, citing Olmuetz [Olomouc] as his place of birth)
The end of the conference will consist of a ‚pilgrimage’ to the house in Olomouc where Ulmer was born –
plans are to have a memorial plaque commemorating the place. This last day of the conference is September
17, 2006, Ulmer’s 102nd birthday—given all the detours of his life and work, Ulmer would have loved the fact
that we missed his 100th birthday by 2 years, I’m sure!!
Filmography
The Border Sheriff (US 1926)
Menschen am Sonntag (D 1930)
Damaged Lives (CAN/US 1933)
Mr. Broadway (US 1933)
The Black Cat (US 1934)
Thunder Over Texas (US 1934)
From Nine to Nine (CAN/US 1935)
Natalka Poltavka (US 1937)
Green Fields (US 1937)
Vida bohemia, La (US 1937)
The Singing Blacksmith (US 1938)
Cossacks in Exile (US 1939)
The Light Ahead (US 1939)
Moon Over Harlem (US 1939)
Let My People Live (US 1939)
Americaner Shadchen (US 1940)
Goodbye, Mr. Germ (US 1940)
Cloud in the Sky (US 1940)
Another to Conquer (US 1941)
Prisoner of Japan (US 1942)
Tomorrow We Live (US 1942)
My Son, the Hero (US 1943)
Girls in Chains (US 1943)
Isle of Forgotten Sins (US 1943)
Jive Junction (US 1943)
Bluebeard (US 1944)
Strange Illusion (US 1945)
Club Havana (US 1945)
Detour (US 1945)
The Wife of Monte Cristo (US 1946)
Her Sister's Secret (US 1946)
The Strange Woman (US 1946)
Carnegie Hall (US 1947)
Ruthless (US 1948)
I Pirati di Capri (I/US 1949)
The Man From Planet X (US 1951)
St. Benny the Dip (US 1951)
Babes in Bagdad (E/GB/US 1952)
L’ Amante di Paride (I/F 1954)
Murder Is My Beat (US 1955)
The Naked Dawn (US 1955)
Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (US 1957)
The Naked Venus (US 1958)
The Perjurer (BRD 1959)
Annibale (I/US 1960)
Beyond the Time Barrier (US 1960)
The Amazing Transparent Man (US 1960)
Atlantide, L' (F/I 1961)
Sette contro la morte (I/BRD/US 1964)
Conference Program
Thursday, Sept 14:
09:00 Introduction | Opening of the Conference [Bernd Herzogenrath | Matthew Sweney]
09:45 Keynote Address: Arianné Ulmer Cipes – “Bringing My Father Home”
10:45 – 11:00 Coffee Break
Questions of Genre: [Central]European Background[s]
11:00 Ludvik Václavek [Palacky University, Olomouc] – “The ‘Moravian Germans’ – Ulmer’s milieu
in Olomouc”
11:45 Marcel Arbeit [Palacky University, Olomouc] – “The Possibilities of the Absurd in the Genre
of Horror“
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch Break
Individual Films I
14:00 Petra Löffler [University of Regensburg] – “Ulmer in Germany – Menschen am Sonntag.”
14:45 Julia Meier [University of Hannover] – “BecomingManBecomingWoman: Edgar G. Ulmer’s
The Strange Woman.”
15:30 – 15:45 Coffee Break
Individual Films II
15:45 Michael Palm [Filmmaker, Vienna] – “All About Edgar: Filming Edgar G. Ulmer – The Man
Off-screen."
16:30 Screening Edgar G. Ulmer - The Man Off-screen
18:00 Screening Moon Over Harlem
Friday, Sept 15:
Ulmer’s Ethnic and Yiddish Films
09:00 Frank Mehring [Free University of Berlin] - “Moon of Alabama | Moon over Harlem: AfricanAmerican Culture and German Imaginations from Bertolt Brecht to Edgar G. Ulmer.”
09:45 Jonathan Skolnik [German Historical Institute, Washington] – "Exile on 125th Street:
Germans, Jews, and African Americans in Moon Over Harlem.”
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee Break
11:00 Noah Isenberg [New School for General Studies, New York] – “An Ethnic Intermezzo:
Ulmer’s Foray into Minority Cinema of the late 1930s.”
11:45 Sharon Pucker Rivo [Brandeis University and National Center for Jewish Film] – “In Search
of Jewish Identity.”
12:30 – 14:30 Lunch Break
Individual Films III
14:30 Miriam Strube [University of Dortmund] – “From American Matchmaker to Woody Allen –
Jewish Neurotics in Ulmer’s Yiddish Films.”
15:15 Michal Peprnik [Palacky University, Olomouc] – “Old World vs. New World: the Plurality of
Choices and Styles in the Work of Edgar G. Ulmer”
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee Break
17:00 Screening American Matchmaker
Saturday, Sept 16:
Questions of Genre: Noir | B-Movies
10:00 Stefan Grissemann [Author, Vienna] – “Camera Obscura: Aesthetic Courage and Criminal
Economy in Ulmer's Neglected Films.”
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 Martin Jirousek [Film Journalist, Olomouc] – “Edgar G. Ulmer: German or Czech
Expressionist?”
12:15 – 14:00 Lunch Break
Individual Films IV
14:00 Jan Kripac [Palacky University, Olomouc] – “The Realism of Detour.”
14:45 Philipp Hofmann [University of Cologne] – “Geocinema and Geophilosophy – Edgar G.
Ulmer's The Cavern.”
15:30 – 15:45 Coffee Break
15:45 David Zářecký [Masaryk University, Brno] – “‘This, I must have:’ The Question of Ethics in
Ulmer’s Ruthless.”
16:30 Brigitte Czaja [Journalist, Aachen] – Detour and Gender Performance
20:00 Concert Cello-Duo Tara Fuki (Chapel of the konvikt)
Sunday, Sept 17:
Individual Films V
10:00 Herbert Schwaab [University of Dortmund] – "On the Graveyards of Europe: The Horror
of Modernism in The Black Cat “
10:45 Alena Smieskova [University of Constantine the Philosopher, Nitra] – “Ulmer and the noir
femme fatale.”
11:30 – 11:45 Coffee Break
11:45 Petra Hanáková [Charles University, Prague] – “Ulmer and the Nudist-Picture.”
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch Break
Individual Films VI
14:00 Ekkehard Knörer [University of Konstanz] – “Generic Variations: Murder is my Beat and
Daughter of Dr. Jekyll in the Context of Pulp and Horror.”
14:45 Stefanie Diekmann [Europe-University Viadrina, Frankfurt | Oder] – “The Finale – Ulmer’s
Last Movie The Cavern”
15:30 End of the Conference – Final Remarks | Prospects [Herzogenrath | Sweney]