A number of early reviews have started showing up in the American press about a new novel imagining the life of German director G. W. Pabst. The book, titled The Director, is by the internationally acclaimed German writer Daniel Kehlmann. Not surprisingly, this just released novel includes passages referencing Louise Brooks, the American actress who made two films under Pabst's direction, Pandora's Box (1929) and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929).
Some of the reviews and articles I've come across include those in the New York Times, Los Angeles Timesand Wall Street Journal.
I would especially recommend the New York Times piece by David Segal. It is long form and thoughtful. It notes that Kehlmann "centers his novel on the largely forgotten G.W. Pabst, an Austrian film director who gained fame in the era of silent movies and flamed out in Hollywood in the 1930s. Through an unfortunate happenstance — he’d returned to Austria to check on his ailing mother just as war broke out — Pabst was stuck when the Nazis slammed shut the borders. Eventually, he worked for the German film industry, which was overseen by the propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels....
[Kehlmann] dug into film archives and libraries,
studying the career of one of the great auteurs of the Weimar Era. Pabst
peaked early. He helped make Greta Garbo an icon with “The Joyless Street” in 1925 and four years later launched Louise Brooks in “Pandora’s Box,” which Quentin Tarantino has called one of his favorite films. To
understand how the left-leaning Pabst ended up as one of the Nazis’
marquee directors, Kehlmann read deeply about Germany’s slide into
autocracy."
I first blogged about this book back in 2023, when it was released in Germany under the title Lichtspiel and reviews started showing up in the German press, including the Berliner Morgenpost and elsewhere. And, as I mentioned then, these and other reviews made mention of "Die Büchse der Pandora die US-amerikanische Schauspielerin Louise Brooks." That's what caught my attention.
I haven't yet got a-hold of the English-language American edition of Kehlmann's novel, but from what I understand from the various reviews I've encountered, the novel largely focuses on the years in which the Austrian-born Pabst, unable to leave Nazi Germany, continued making films while the Nazi regime was in power. Pabst's earlier life, including the years in which he made films with Garbo, Asta Nielsen, and Louise Brooks, is depicted in flashbacks. Kehlmann has written a novel, not a biography or work of film history. As Publisher's Weekly describes the novel, "It’s a searing look at the mechanics of complicity."
Kehlmann is a highly respected bestselling author. His novel Die Vermessung der Welt (translated into English as Measuring the World, 2006) is the best selling book in the German language since Patrick Süskind's Perfume was released in 1985.
His subsequent novels reached the number one spot on German bestseller list, and each were translated into English. Interestingly, Kehlmann collaborated with Jonathan Franzen and Paul Reitter on Franzen's 2013 book The Kraus Project, a book of translations of Karl Kraus's essays. Notably, in 1904, Kraus aided Frank Wedekind in his first ever staging in Vienna of his controversial play Pandora's Box, which was later turned in a film directed by Frank Wedekind and starring Louise Brooks.
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| Louise Brooks, second from left, with G.W. Pabst, far right (though he was a leftist). |
Daniel Kehlmann's The Director is available wherever better books are sold, including amazon.
THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2025. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.