Book Review: The Director

[osprey_archer]

Most of the time when I read book reviews in The Atlantic, I think “Mmmm, glad someone else read this so I don’t have to.” But when I read their review of Daniel Kehlmann’s The Director, I was like “I need this in my eyeballs NOW.”

The Director (translated from German by Ross Benjamin) is a novelized biography of G. W. Pabst, one of the most important directors in the post-World War I German film scene, most famous today for discovering Greta Garbo and Louise Brooks. (Diary of a Lost Girl with Louise Brooks is the one floating in my vague “I’d like to see that one day” mental cloud.)

After Hitler rose to power, Pabst left Germany and looked for work in Hollywood. He struggled to find work in America, returned to Europe not long before the outbreak of war, and ended up making films in Nazi Germany.

These are the basic outlines of Pabst’s life, and they’re a matter of historical record. From here on out, I’m going to be referring specifically to the Pabst of the book, who clearly has some points of divergence with the real Pabst. For instance: book!Pabst has a son of military age, who is clearly standing in for the experience of the Average German Youth, while the real Pabst’s baby son was born during the war.

Now clearly the central question of the book is, how do you go from hating a regime so much that you flee to another country to uneasily collaborating with it? Part of the answer being that Pabst, in his own mind, is not collaborating: he’s not making propaganda films, he’s making non-political films! And he just happens to be making them in, okay, Nazi Germany, but does making art under an evil regime necessarily make that art evil?

And, okay, yes, technically his films are funded by the Nazi film ministry because that’s the sole source of funding in Nazi Germany. But what if you’re taking the funds from the Nazi film ministry and making a film like Paracelsus, which has what might be taken as an anti-Nazi message…? The whole sequence where a madman starts dancing, and everyone else starts dancing in time with him……?

But, I mean. Is that an anti-Nazi message, or is that just Pabst fans trying to come up with a justification for why “made films for Nazi Germany” is not quite as bad as it looks?

And then you have Pabst’s next film, his lost Molander, based on a book by a Nazi party hack named Karrasch. (There’s a hilari-terrifying scene where Pabst’s wife finds herself in a book club entirely devoted to Karrasch, who sounds like Nazi Nicholas Sparks). The subject matter is foisted on Pabst, but he digs beneath the surface of the story till he can make the script his own, then heads to Prague to film it.

The city is being continually bombed, and the Soviets are getting closer every day. Pabst’s assistant Franz comments, “Don’t you find it strange, Pabst, that we’re making a movie like this in the middle of the apocalypse?”

“Times are always strange,” Pabst tells him. “Art is always out of place. Always unnecessary when it’s made. And later, when you look back, it’s the only thing that matters.”

They’re supposed to get a battalion of soldiers for extras, but the battalion is called away to the front right before they film. So - Pabst turns to the local concentration camp.

I should say that this is not a spoiler - we learn it in the first chapter - and also that Pabst’s concentration camp extras, specifically, are historical speculation. There really were directors who used concentration camp inmates as extras (famously Leni Riefenstahl), but there’s no evidence if Pabst used them in Molander, as the film really was lost. But that’s what everyone was doing to make up labor shortages. It’s plausible.

And Pabst tells his assistant, “All this madness, Franz, this diabolical madness, gives us the chance to make a great film. Without us, everything would be the same, no one would be saved, no one would be better off. And the film wouldn’t exist.”

Only in the end, the film is lost. So it doesn’t exist, after all.

Comments

[radiantfracture]

I do like that ending.

[osprey_archer]

It's a good ending. And it's also something that we're told in the first chapter of the book, which I think makes it more effective than if it had been a reveal at the end.

[kore]

Karrasch, who sounds like Nazi Nicholas Sparks

//eyes spinning around like Roger Rabbit

[osprey_archer]

I think the book club scene may have been my favorite in the book tbh, in part because it never occurred to me that there would be a famous novelist of saccharine Nazi light literature, only OF COURSE there was, if you're trying to create an entire Nazi universe then that's a literary niche you gotta fill, right? But also the sheer book club from hell vibes of "You gotta find something positive to say about this schmaltzy book you hate or else you may get kicked out of the book club, labeled politically unreliable, and die in a concentration camp. Have another cup of coffee?"

[sholio]

I haven't read the book, but that actually is a really interesting set of moral issues to grapple with for a creative person. I mean, obviously for most people the choice is not QUITE that - uh, clear-cut ... but given the trade-offs involved in making art and trying to make a living off art, you can definitely see how far down the slippery slope of moral compromises could potentially go, and how far into your own head you could get about it, if you don't get out of your own head now and then. Very interesting write-up!

[osprey_archer]

Yes, and Nazi Germany would be a great place to get all up in your own head about it, because you couldn't ever truthfully discuss the issues you're facing without saying something potentially subversive that might end up with YOU in a concentration camp. How could you discuss the moral dilemma of getting extras from a concentration camp when the party line is that concentration camps are just fine?

And of course Pabst has an extremely vested interest in deciding that the compromises are (a) not THAT compromising, and (b) artistically worthwhile.

[asakiyume]

“Art is always out of place. Always unnecessary when it’s made. And later, when you look back, it’s the only thing that matters.” Wow, three statements I don't agree with! The first: simply no; not true (not unless you define art as creations that are always out of place). The second: necessary? If art is ever necessary, it's as [likely to be] necessary when it's created as at any other time. The third: simply no. That's the kind of statement that artists like to make, but no.

Still, the novel definitely sounds relevant for our times!

[osprey_archer]

Pabst I think is going full Art Cliche in order to explain his actions to himself: if art is the only thing that matters, then it follows that you're allowed to do whatever it takes to get it made, right? Yes? No? Maybe so? We're not supposed to be agreeing with him that art is the only thing that matters and therefore it's fine if you gotta get your extras from a concentration camp.

[sovay]

There really were directors who used concentration camp inmates as extras (famously Leni Riefenstahl), but there’s no evidence if Pabst used them in Molander, as the film really was lost. But that’s what everyone was doing to make up labor shortages. It’s plausible.

If Pabst did or didn't, though, it makes a difference to me, as a detail to include in a closely fictionalized book.

(rushthatspeaks and I watched Diary of a Lost Girl ages ago after seeing Pandora's Box and I definitely recommend it.)

Have you seen or read John Hodge's Collaborators? It was a National Theatre production in 2011 that got a broadcast through NT Live and is unhelpfully for this comment not currently streaming on their website, but the relevance is that it is a fantasia about the complicity of art through the characters of Bulgakov and Stalin. Its distance from reality is highly variable, but not more so than some of Bulgakov's own autobiographically inflected stories, which made it work for me.

[landofnowhere]

as a detail to include in a closely fictionalized book

Based on what I know about Kehlmann's Measuring the World (I have not read it, but I've seen the movie and have read enough reviews to know that I would actively dislike the book), and the divergences mentioned in this book review, I'm not sure he's capable of "closely fictionalized". In Measuring the World he tends to diverge from the historical record in ways that are unflattering to his subjects (particularly to Gauss); it sounds like that might also be the case here.

[sovay]

I'm not sure he's capable of "closely fictionalized".

Understood. Without having read the novel, the imagined production of a once extant film did not feel so distant from reality to me that Kehlmann's Pabst feels more like an artistic metaphor than the Pabst of the historical record. I understand that's a danger with all fiction where the similarity to actual persons or events is totally intentional, but then I start to feel weird about invented atrocities. (I can also feel weird about the softening of historical figures, I feel as though I've just encountered the other thing more often.)

In Measuring the World he tends to diverge from the historical record in ways that are unflattering to his subjects (particularly to Gauss); it sounds like that might also be the case here.

That's an interesting tendency.

[landofnowhere]

*nods* 20th century filmmaking is not my fandom, and indeed I don't think I'd heard of Pabst before this, but I can imagine that if it were I would have opinions about whether Pabst would or wouldn't do such a thing. It seems wise of Kehlmann to put this up front in his novel, so that people who feel that Pabst wouldn't can nope out right away.

[sovay]

It seems wise of Kehlmann to put this up front in his novel, so that people who feel that Pabst wouldn't can nope out right away.

I don't even have opinions about whether Pabst personally would or wouldn't! It's just the kind of detail where it makes a difference to me whether it is considered historically likely or whether it has been transplanted onto Pabst from directors who definitely did for the sake of the point.

[osprey_archer]

I don't think anyone knows for sure if he did or didn't, although I'm sure Pabst biographers have an opinion whether it's "possible but unlikely" or "well we can't prove it but PROBABLY."

However, I am pretty sure that Kehlmann did Leni Riefenstahl dirty in this book (in terms of his portrait of her as an artist; she definitely did historically get extras from the local concentration camp), so although it's possible that he was 100% fair to Pabst, I also wouldn't be surprised to find an irate article from a leading Pabst scholar next week.

I haven't seen Collaborators, but a story about Bulgakov and Stalin sounds right up my alley.

[sovay]

However, I am pretty sure that Kehlmann did Leni Riefenstahl dirty in this book (in terms of his portrait of her as an artist

Interesting! How so?

I haven't seen Collaborators, but a story about Bulgakov and Stalin sounds right up my alley.

I loved it so much, I tried to buy a DVD from the National Theatre in 2011 and I still wish it had been possible. (I bought the script instead, which was not the identical thing.) Whenever it comes back around on National Theatre at Home, I highly recommend it.

[osprey_archer]

There's a scene where Pabst pops by to act as assistant director for a movie she's both directing and starring in, and she acts the part the exact same way in every take. Now it's possible that Leni Riefenstahl specifically just couldn't act, but it seemed to me to fit maybe a little too neatly with the idea that the problem with the Nazis is an inability to empathize. Given the number of good actors who behave badly in real life, it seems clear to me that there are plenty of people who can empathize with/get into the head of/inhabit a character without perhaps being able or willing to extend that ability to other human beings.

[sovay]

Given the number of good actors who behave badly in real life, it seems clear to me that there are plenty of people who can empathize with/get into the head of/inhabit a character without perhaps being able or willing to extend that ability to other human beings.

That makes sense to me. I have zero knowledge without research of Riefenstahl's acting as opposed to directing abilities.