Crime Street presents
The Edgar G. Ulmer Film Festival

Sept 23 and 24 on Channel 31 at 9:30 pm (see schedule below)
 

Crime Street

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100 Plus Years Later - Doomed or Blessed?

Doomed to a life of working on Hollywood's Poverty Row or strangely blessed with the challenge of creating films under impossible time and budget constraints? That is the question that is at the surface of all debates about director Edgar G. Ulmer.

Once again, Alameda TV celebrates the Sept. 17th birth of Edgar G. Ulmer, with a marathon festival of five of his films.

Major to Minor

Born in Vienna in 1904, Mr Ulmer studied architecture before becoming a set designer for legendary stage director Max Reinhardt. He next moved on to a position as assistant to the great film director F.W. Murnau.

He accompanied to Muranu to America to work on Sunrise, a cinema masterpiece. Soon, he began directing on his own, making an auspicious debut at Universal Studios with The Black Cat, but he quickly fell from major studio production projects into assembly line work of the low budget studios.

His fall from grace from the majors has been credited to his need for creative control and his affair with the wife of a nephew of Universal's founder Carl Laemmle. Ulmer married the woman (Shirley Kassel Alexander) and the marriage lasted the rest of his life, as did his banishment from assignments from all the big studios. There were a few exceptions to his low-budget sentence (The Strange Woman and Carnegie Hall).

Never-the-Less We're Still Viewing

Many of the 120 some odd films Ulmer claimed to have directed are lost. Many most likely are not worth the attention of their short running times. Still, of those that have survived, there are more than a handful worthy of close viewing today. The same cannot be said far more prominent directors and films of his era. Though his accomplisments are more an accumulation of unexpected great cinematic moments than individually great films, a concentrated viewing of Mr. Ulmer's efforts offers rewards to the cinematically inclined.

-- Ed Schneider - Alameda TV

Ulmer in Action

Shown in chronological order:

For more on...

All Lost in Wonder - an in-depth essay by Tag Gallagher

Erik Ulman on Ulmer - from Senses of Cinema

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