Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins by Noah Isenberg

This month Turner Classic Movies is showing five films by Edgar Ulmer and Noah Isenberg's book (University of California Press, 2014) is a useful companion.  Ulmer was born in Vienna in 1904 and was always an outsider, making Yiddish and African-American films and spending most his career at Poverty-Row studio PRC (Producers Releasing Company), followed (after the demise of the B-picture) by years of wandering and exile. For those of us who care relatively little about production values and so-called "star" actors Ulmer is an impressive and passionate director who made bleak films under difficult circumstances and produced an impressive body of personal work, often about those on the margins of society. The films on Turner are:

Her Sister's Secret (1946).  Isenberg quotes Jan-Christopher Horak, in a survey of German exile cinema:  For a B-picture the film demonstrated an unusual sensitivity for the complexity of human emotions, for the giddiness of great love affairs, for the difficulty of motherhood and for the barely repressed jealousy of siblings. The film is beautiful and moving.

Carnegie Hall (1947).  Isenberg writes:  Ulmer captured not merely the spirit of the hall and its  evocative grandeur but the international spirit of American musical culture of the late 19th and early 20th century.  There are 18 performers in the film, of which only two were born in the U.S., and there are wonderful performances by Rise Stevens and Jascha Heifetz, among many others.  One might consider the framing story corny (it is, somewhat) but the music is glorious.

Murder is My Beat (1955).  Isenberg says, about this film (and it could also be said about a number of other Ulmer films):  The film exudes an air of rawness, its players and settings notably gruff and downtrodden, a relatively accurate reflection of the bargain-basement production.

Detour (1945).  This is simply one of the great films noir.  It was made for PRC with basically two actors and some back projection and captures the mood of America when the war ends, as well as Ulmer's fatalistic views.  As Isenberg says: Indeed, the tawdry confined nature of the film is reflected in the characterization of its protagonists.

The Amazing Transparent Man (1960).  Isenberg writes: Underpinning the larger drama that ensues in the act of becoming invisible -- and the break-in at a local power plant made possible only because of the invisibility -- is the gathering threat of nuclear disaster.

My other favorite Ulmer films, which I hope TCM will show soon, include Ruthless (1948) a low-budget answer to Citizen Kane,  and Naked Dawn (1955), a bizarre and beautiful Western.  One can read more about Ulmer in John Belton's Howard Hawks, Frank Borzage, Edgar Ulmer (The Tantivy Press, 1974), and Peter Bogdanovitch's Who the Devil Made It (Knopf,1997) includes a long and fascinating interview with Ulmer.