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From Hollywood Failure to Hitler’s Filmmaker

JL;DR SUMMARY David Mikics' article delves into the morally complex decisions faced by G.W. Pabst, a once-prominent Weimar director, who returned to Nazi-controlled Germany to continue filmmaking. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Nazi GermanyMoral CompromiseThird ReichFilmmakingCollaborationWeimar CinemaDaniel KehlmannG.W. PabstLouise BrooksHollywood Failure

Places mentioned

Ostmark, Bavaria, Germany
"A few years later, he has returned to small-town Austria, now called Ostmark, after the German takeover, to care for his sick mother."
Berlin, Germany
"In a late section of The Director, Kehlmann imagines the British comic novelist P.G. Wodehouse at the premiere of Paracelsus, where he is impressed by the uncanny Dance of Death sequence."
Hollywood, California, United States
"His English is poor, and he is clearly an also-ran in the cutthroat world of American moviemaking."
California, United States
"we realize that someone has been murdered. After he stopped working with Brooks, Pabst never came close to such heights again."
France
"But after directing one movie in Hollywood and several in France, Pabst returned to Germany in 1939."
Prague, Prague, Hlavní mešto, Czechia
"There is no hard evidence that Pabst did this, though Nazi film productions often used slave laborers. The Molander Case, based on a potboiler by a favorite Nazi author, Alfred Karrasch, was never finished, since production broke off when the Red Army liberated Prague; all its footage has disappeared."

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Cairo Item ID 59665
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Retrieved 2025-08-20 05:31:22 UTC
Curated 2025-08-20 08:30:38 UTC