Erich Pommer

Highly influential figure of the German silent cinema. Pommer began his career working for Gaumont in Paris at the age of 18 and had set up his own Berlin-based production company, Decla, by 1915. Pommer merged the company with Bioscop four years later and went on to produce such expressionist classics as Robert Wiene's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1919) and Fritz Lang's "Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler" (1922).In 1923, the company was absorbed within UFA, with Pommer taking over as chief of production for the giant studio. His keen eye for new talent and ability to detect commercial appeal led him to back the early works of F W Murnau, Carl Theodor Dreyer and Josef von Sternberg, as well as other Lang films, particularly the classic "Metropolis" (1927)--a big-budget extravaganza which, in fact, contributed to UFA's demise.Pommer left Germany in 1933 and subsequently worked in both the USA and England, where he formed Mayflower Productions with actor-director Charles Laughton. Among the company's more notable productions were Hitchcock's "Jamaica Inn" (1939), Dorothy Arzner's "Dance, Girl, Dance" (1940) and Pommer's only film as a director, "Vessel of Wrath" (1938). He spent the war years in the USA,...

Highly influential figure of the German silent cinema. Pommer began his career working for Gaumont in Paris at the age of 18 and had set up his own Berlin-based production company, Decla, by 1915. Pommer merged the company with Bioscop four years later and went on to produce such expressionist classics as Robert Wiene's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1919) and Fritz Lang's "Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler" (1922).

In 1923, the company was absorbed within UFA, with Pommer taking over as chief of production for the giant studio. His keen eye for new talent and ability to detect commercial appeal led him to back the early works of F W Murnau, Carl Theodor Dreyer and Josef von Sternberg, as well as other Lang films, particularly the classic "Metropolis" (1927)--a big-budget extravaganza which, in fact, contributed to UFA's demise.

Pommer left Germany in 1933 and subsequently worked in both the USA and England, where he formed Mayflower Productions with actor-director Charles Laughton. Among the company's more notable productions were Hitchcock's "Jamaica Inn" (1939), Dorothy Arzner's "Dance, Girl, Dance" (1940) and Pommer's only film as a director, "Vessel of Wrath" (1938). He spent the war years in the USA, becoming an American citizen in 1944. After WWII he again worked in Germany, firstly as a film production supervisor for the Allied authorities; he finally returned to the USA in 1956.

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