San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

Edgar G. Ulmer

Edgar G. Ulmer (September 17, 1904 – September 30, 1972) was an Austrian-American film director. He is mostly remembered for the movies The Black Cat (1934) and Detour (1945). These stylish and eccentric works have achieved cult status, but Ulmer's other films remain relatively unknown.
Ulmer was born in Olomouc, in today's Czech Republic. As a young man he lived in Vienna, where he worked as a stage actor and set designer while studying architecture and philosophy. He did set design for Max Reinhardt's theater, served his apprenticeship with F. W. Murnau, and worked with directors including Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, and Eugen Schüfftan, inventor of the famous Schüfftan process. He also claimed to have worked on Metropolis (1927), M (1931) and Der Golem (1920) but there is no supporting evidence for this. Ulmer came to Hollywood with Murnau in 1926 to assist with the art direction on Sunrise (1927). In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, he also recalled making two-reel westerns in Hollywood around this time. The Black Cat (1934), starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, is an early example of Ulmer's striking visual style.
He directed his last film, The Cavern (1964) in Italy. He died in 1972 in Woodland Hills, California after a crippling stroke.