Edgar G. Ulmer - The Man Off-screen (2004)

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The accomplished documentary editor Michael Palm (I Am From Nowhere, Calling Hedy Lamarr) takes his directorial bow with the nonfiction film Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen. Filmmaker Ulmer raised low-budget, B-picture production to the level of an art form, via careful aesthetic choices and an… More The accomplished documentary editor Michael Palm (I Am From Nowhere, Calling Hedy Lamarr) takes his directorial bow with the nonfiction film Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen. Filmmaker Ulmer raised low-budget, B-picture production to the level of an art form, via careful aesthetic choices and an intelligent hand, producing such time-tested, sensationalistic 'cult classics' as Bluebeard, Detour, The Black Cat and Murder is My Beat. Yet he had, by all accounts, a relatively shadowy and well-hidden private life - so well-hidden that few have attempted to undertake a feature-length cinematic investigation of the helmer's world. Via film clips, rare audio recordings, music cuts, interviews, and recollections from such recent Ulmer protégés as John Landis, Joe Dante, Roger Corman and Wim Wenders, Palm reconstructs piece by piece of the Ulmer story. Throughout, Palm and his participants wields the facts of Ulmer's life that later became legends, from his rise to prominence at the UFA studios in pre-Reich Berlin, to his period of impoverishment in Tinseltown, to his temporary industry banishment for absconding with a studio exec's daughter-in-law. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi