Series Site
December 7, 2024–February 28, 2025
“He knows how to create a strange world, whose elements are borrowed from daily life. Beyond this precious gift, he knows how, better than anyone else, to direct actors. His characters emerge like his own children, created from the fragments of his own heart and mind.” — Jean Renoir
Born in Bohemia, Georg Wilhelm Pabst (1885–1967) turned to directing after a twenty-year career as an actor. He made his first film, The Treasure, in 1923, but his breakthrough came two years later with The Joyless Street. The film sparked a new period of realism, characterized by a concern with social conditions, in a period previously dominated by Expressionism and Kammerspielfilm.
Pabst was known for recognizing and developing talent in actors (Louise Brooks, Greta Garbo, Brigitte Helm, Asta Nielsen) and worked with them in a variety of genres and styles, from romance (The Love of Jeanne Ney) to melodramas centered on deeply observed female roles to the sexually charged collaborations with Brooks (Pandora’s Box, Diary of a Lost Girl). The frankness of his films from the late 1920s resulted in the films being heavily censored. His first three sound films (Westfront 1918, Kameradschaft, and The Threepenny Opera) proved to be technically innovative and thematically advanced.
We present a selection of the films Pabst is best known for, made during the Weimar Republic, plus two French productions from the 1930s: an adaptation of Pierre Benoit’s novel L’Atlantide filmed in German, English, and French; and The Shanghai Drama. This series assembles several restored films and rare archival prints. We are delighted to present the silent films with live piano accompaniment by Judith Rosenberg.
— Susan Oxtoby, Director of Film and Senior Film Curator