Edgar G. Ulmer
USA-Germany-Austria, 2004, 77, color

This year FANT pays tribute to Edgar G. Ulmer (1904-1972), maker of some of the most brilliant low-budget films. Born in Czechoslovakia, he designed stage-sets in Vienna for the great theater director Max Reinhardt, and he collaborated with Robert Siodmak, Fred Zinnemann and Billy Wilder in the German long film Menschen am Sonntag (1930). His filmography as a film director began in Hollywood, where he shot the terrifying horror masterpiece Satan with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. He also filmed movies about local customs and manners in Yiddish and Ukrainian, westerns, films about classical music and Z-movies of science-fiction. He shot films of all kinds in several European countries: adventure films like I Pirati da Capri (The Pirates from Capri,1949), several sword and sandal movies and even various oriental fantasy films such as Babes in Bagdad (1952), which he co-directed in Spain with Jerónimo Mihura, the brother of Miguel Miura. Perhaps the golden period of his career was the time he spent at the Film Company B PRC (1943 to 1946), where he filmed impeccable movies in just one week.

In a not-to-be-missed double session, FANT 16 will screen two of Ulmer’s masterpieces, Bluebeard and the mythical Detour, and the section Film Poison will present the splendid documentary Edgar G. Ulmer. The man offscreen, where fans of his work such as Wim Wenders, Joe Dante, Roger Corman, John Landis and Peter Bogdanovich will describe, with good humor and a hinge of sadness, some of the many brilliant moments of his incomparable career