THE DIRECTOR

A freely imagined conjuring of the life and career of celebrated German-language film director G.W. Pabst by one of Germany’s boldest contemporary novelists.

Pabst, an Austrian, first got involved in the arts while being held in a French prison camp during World War I. He formed a theater group there, then made his reputation with the silent films The Joyless Street, starring Greta Garbo, and Pandora’s Box, starring his forever infatuation Louise Brooks. Taking his pioneering cutting technique to Hollywood, he has his ideas brushed aside by producers who, paying little mind to his lofty reputation, force him into taking on a flimsy project that is dead on arrival. Even with World War II going on, he returns to Europe, where he makes shameless compromises with Nazi authorities to get his films financed. Desperate to finish what he considers his masterpiece, The Molander Case, before the advancing Red Army can shut everything down, he throws all caution to the wind. But his “sparklingly modern” work, based on a pulp novel, gets lost on a train—and lost to history, leading to debates over whether it ever existed. Sticklers for biographical accuracy may quibble over Kehlmann’s inventions and rewriting of history. But the sheer wizardry and audacity of the storytelling, which masterfully dances along the cusp of realism and surrealism, comedy and tragedy, deflates those objections. Scene after scene amazes, including one where the Nazi-sworn caretakers of Pabst’s Austrian castle (where his discombobulated mother resides) banish his family to the basement and another displaying Pabst’s ghoulish use of gaunt, war-depleted soldiers to fill concert hall seats for a crucial scene in Molander. All in all, an amazing performance by Kehlmann, who as a bonus immerses us in the filmmaking process.

A wickedly entertaining, eye-opening book.