Search - Edgar G Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen on DVD

Hollywood Legend Gets His Due.

Hal Owen | Burbank, California USA | 10/10/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Edgar G. Ulmer - The Man Off Screen" is a much overdue tribute to a film director perhaps best known as the king of Hollywood's Poverty Row. Between 1933 and 1961, Ulmer directed countless low budget and no budget films in Hollywood, Mexico, Italy, and Spain that were catagorized not as "B" movies but "Z" movies. Starting with one of his most famously ignored classics, "The Black Cat", Ulmer managed to create minor masterpaces in various languages over the years to include English, Yiddish, Ukrainian, Italian, German, and Spanish. In addition to such title defining dramas as "Girls in Chains" and "Babes in Bagdad", Ulmer's extensive resume includes writing and directing such documentaries as "Let My People Live" and "Another To Conquer." Born in Vienna in 1904, Edgar Ulmer originally studied architecture and philosophy before working as an actor, set designer and eventually director under such veterans of German cinema as Max Reinhardt and F. W. Murnau. Like many others, Ulmer's European film career choices were cut short by the rise of Nazism and he eventually moved to California. One can only speculate as to why Ulmer seemed destined for Poverty Row pictures and relative obscurity most of his directing life. But Ulmer's place in Hollywood history was somewhat restored in the 1960s when French film critics rediscovered his work - even declaring him a "minor auteur" before his death in 1972. Watching "Edgar G. Ulmer - The Man Off Screen" might help you come to the same conslusion. Enjoy."