Of the Hollywood outsiders of the 1930s and 1940s, perhaps no one was as marginal (the French dubbed him maudit) as Edgar G. Ulmer (1904–1972). A man steeped in European culture and exiled from Vienna by Nazism, Ulmer put his early training as a German Expressionist set designer (and collaborator of Murnau) to work in Hollywood, only to become known as the King of Poverty Row. With about 120 films to his name, Ulmer turned out visually striking, atmospheric, and strangely compelling B and low-budget films in every imaginable genre, from Yiddish comedies to film noir and science fiction. Whether hastily constructing thatched roofs on a New Jersey farm or pumping fog into a makeshift set in a Culver City studio, he made an art of deprivation, using every imaginable device to create a world for “lost souls” as diverse as the Jewish beggars in The Light Ahead, Boris Karloff's madman in The Black Cat, and Detour's existential fall guy. Ulmer himself said of his work, “The road I have followed veers between Kafka and Camus.” What would a little cash have brought to his films? Like the Man from Planet X, “it might have been the greatest curse or the greatest blessing.”
Judy Bloch
Join us on April 1 and 2 when we welcome Arianné Ulmer Cipes to talk about her father's mulitifaceted career. A new documentary produced by Cipes entitled Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen will be shown in the upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival.