Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

EDGAR G. ULMER
b. Olmütz, Austria-Hungary, 17 September 1904, d. 30 September 1972
Few names are as closely associated with the B movie as
Edgar G. Ulmer. After studying architecture and working
in the theater and cinema in Europe (notably for F. W.
Murnau), Ulmer settled in the United States. He directed
films in a variety of low-budget forms, including
exploitation movies (Damaged Lives, 1933), Yiddish films
(Green Fields, 1933), and dozens of Bs.
One of Ulmer’s earliest efforts, The Black Cat
(1934), is considered one of his best. Although the movie
boasted Universal’s first teaming of Boris Karloff and
Bela Lugosi, it was made quickly, on a B budget. Ulmer
gave the bizarre tale of vengeance and necrophilia a sleek
modern look that suggested spiritual corruption. He
pulled a sympathetic performance from Lugosi and made
Karloff, as a devil-worshipping architect, a genuinely
malevolent figure. The Black Cat still ranks as an early
horror classic.
In 1942 Ulmer began a four-year association with
PRC,wherehedirectedGirls in Chains (1942), one of
the first women-in-prison films, and Strange Illusion
(1945), a low-budget take on Hamlet. Bluebeard
(1944) starred John Carradine as a puppeteer and
painter in mid-nineteenth century Paris who is driven
to strangle women who remind him of the model who
helped him achieve his artistic breakthrough. An
elaborate costume production, especially by PRC
standards, the film featured one of Carradine’s most
subtle performances and Ulmer’s typically baroque
visual touches. Detour (1945) is doubtless Ulmer’s
most enduring production. The fatalistic story of a
hapless hitchhiker (Tom Neal) mixed up with murder
and a femme fatale (Ann Savage), it ranks as the darkest
noir film of the 1940s. Savage’s Vera is one of the nastiest
creatures ever captured on film, and the whiney Neal
some Bs made by the majors, could come close to the
quality of A films, the only obvious difference being
shorter running times. But a B running time could affect
the final product. For instance, in Warner Bros.’s Smart
Blonde, noted above, the studio attempted to fit a complex
mystery into a fifty-nine-minute slot. Wise-cracking
reporter Torchy Blane and her police detective boyfriend
Steve McBride attempt to solve the murder of the man
seems to wear the weight of the world on his shoulders.
His confessional voice-over is filled with metaphysical
emptiness. Ulmer excels in capturing the lonely world of
roadside diners, cheap motels, and dark streets, which
often verge on abstraction. Similar qualities are at work
in his 1954 western, The Naked Dawn.
While at PRC, Ulmer also made gangster films
(Tomorrow We Live, 1942), musicals ( Jive Junction, 1943),
and costume films (The Wife of Monte Cristo, 1946). Later
Bs for other companies include Ruthless (1948), often
referred to as a poor man’s Citizen Kane, and The Man
from Planet X (1951), both of which were invested with a
fine sense of atmosphere.
Ulmer finally achieved some critical attention from
auteurist critics during the 1960s and 1970s. Although
some individuals made better Bs or more of them,
Ulmer is still remembered as one who was able to
occasionally rise above the time and budget restrictions
of the form to make stylish and thematically compelling
films.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
The Black Cat (1934), Bluebeard (1944), Strange Illusion
(1945), Detour (1945), Ruthless (1948), The Man from
Planet X (1951), The Naked Dawn (1955)
FURTHER READING
BMovies
Belton, John. The Hollywood Professionals, Volume 3: Howard
Hawks, Frank Borzage, Edgar G. Ulmer. New York: A. S.
Barnes, 1974.
Bogdanovich, Peter. ‘‘Edgar G. Ulmer.’’ In Kings of the Bs:
Working within the Hollywood System, edited by Todd
McCarthy and Charles Flynn, 377–409. New York:
Dutton, 1975.
Eric Schaefer
set to buy the holdings of nightclub owner Fitz
Mularkay. A dizzying array of characters with barely
sketched motivations are tossed into the trim film, producing
so much confusion that in the final scene Torchy
and Steve must give an accounting of the characters, their
relationships and motives, and the reasoning they used to
solve the case. Even with the elaborate explanation, the
plot remains maddeningly obscure. With smaller company
SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM 157