The Director

Daniel Kehlmann made his name with Measuring the World (translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway), a novel set in the first half of the nineteenth century telling of the attempt by German mathematician, Carl Friedrich Gauss, and geographer, Alexander von Humbolt, to do exactly that. His last novel, Tyll (translated by Ross Benjamin), is set in the seventeenth century during the Thirty Years War. It would be fair to say, therefore, that he is something of a master of the historical novel, and in The Director (again translated by Benjamin) he turns to the more recent history of the twentieth century and a period of time that is perhaps inevitable for a German writer, the Nazi regime and the Second World War. Kehlmann overcomes the challenge of having something new to say by focusing on the real-life film director, Georg Wilhelm Pabst.

Pabst makes for an interesting example of how both the film industry and the Nazi dictatorship work. Known as ‘Red Pabst’ he was certainly not a supporter of Hitler, and left Germany for America where we find him at the start of the novel trying to convince the studio to back his film about a ship where the passengers think war has broken out – “You have a small ship with the entire world inside” – but instead they offer him A Modern Hero:

“A wretched script, a paltry budget, and the producer constantly interfering. Can you believe it, he dictated the shots to me!”

Unhappy in America, he recrosses the Atlantic to make a film in France, and, when that falls through, he decides to visit his mother in Austria as she has telegrammed to say she is unwell. While there, Germany invades Austria, war is declared, and the borders are closed. However, Pabst is given the opportunity to make ‘non-political’ films for the Reich, with the alternative implied rather than outlined. When Pabst asks if he will be arrested if he does not go to see the minister as requested:

“Kramer smiled. For a few seconds he didn’t answer, then he clapped his hands and stood up.”

The Minister is more explicit though the tone remains friendly:

“It is what it is, and I say what it is, and all you say here is: I’m sorry! And you say: Now I know better! And: I have recognised my mistakes. And I want to do my part to build a new Germany.”

He takes a phone call during their meeting, however, during which he smashes the phone to pieces on his desk, conveying the potential for violence should Pabst not cooperate. Kehlmann brilliantly conveys the atmosphere of oppression in Nazi Germany (and Austria) in the novel from the moment Pabst arrives in the country. He cleverly focuses on the viewpoint of Pabst’s young son, Jakob, as he watches those trying to escape in the opposite direction being taken off a train:

“More people are getting off the train, many of them crying. A man shakes his fist, shouting something that Jakob can’t make out. Farther back, at the end of the platform, a woman collapses and lies down right there on the concrete.”

Kehlmann also creates some wonderful characters to convey the bullying nature of Nazism, none more so than the caretaker of the castle where Pabst’s mother is staying, Jerzabek, who is also the leader of the local Nazi group. He has, of course, no need to hide his views when he picks the Pabst family up at the station:

“On the way he spoke about the Jews. The Führer was now driving out the vermin, making them crawl away all over the world.”

Technically an employee, his status as a Nazi gives him licence to act as if superior and he moves his family into the part of the castle where Pabst’s mother once stayed. (Kehlmann has this patriotic German ironically unable to speak German clearly such is his dialect). Jerzabek is put in his place by Krämer, but he, too, is someone whose power exceeds his previous status worrying that “once again he had said something that wouldn’t pass muster among educated people, once again the wrong word, the wrong nuance, the wrong allusion.” Here Kehlmann identifies one of the most comedic and terrifying aspects of fascism, and also what makes it attractive for so many.

The novel is more than its setting, however, as it also outlines Pabst’s obsession with filming, particularly when he is working in Prague on his final film during the war which was lost. Anyone interested in the mechanics of filmmaking will find this novel fascinating, but it also touches more generally on artistic obsession where Pabst places the film before all else. The Director is another wonderful novel from Kehlmann who lays bare all Pabst faults but still retains our sympathy, and highlights the horrors of fascism without losing sight of its absurdity.