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the Complete Review
the complete review - fiction



The Director

by
Daniel Kehlmann


general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

To purchase The Director


Title: The Director
Author: Daniel Kehlmann
Genre: Novel
Written: 2023 (Eng. 2025)
Length: 471 pages
Original in: German
Availability: The Director - UK
. Lichtspiel - Deutschland
  • German title: Lichtspiel
  • Translated by Ross Benjamin

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Our Assessment:

B : a fully gripping and engaging read, but stumbles some in the presentation of its real-life protagonist

See our review for fuller assessment.



Review Summaries
Source Rating Date Reviewer
FAZ . 6/10/2023 Andreas Kilb
NZZ . 19/10/2023 Paul Jandl
Die Welt . 18/10/2023 Richard Kämmerlings
Die Zeit . 11/10/2023 Adam Soboczynski


  From the Reviews:
  • "Das Spiel besteht darin, verschiedene Perspektiven auf ein Ereignis so zu verbinden, dass daraus ein romanhaftes Ganzes entsteht – kein epischer Strom, eher ein Puzzle aus vielen verschiedenfarbigen und ganz un­ter­schied­lich geformten Teilen, die sich dennoch am Ende zu einem Bild zusammenfügen. (...) In der magischen Dingwelt von Lichtspiel bleibt Pabst die große Leerstelle. (...) Bis man sein Fehlen bemerkt, liest man atemlos Seite um Seite. Erst ganz zum Schluss merkt man, dass diesem Roman der Atem fehlt, der ihn zu einem großen gemacht hätte." - Andreas Kilb, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

  • "Spricht es für oder gegen einen Roman, wenn seine besten Stellen so gut sind, dass man sich den Rest fast schon schenken könnte ? (...) Der Roman Lichtspiel ist die Erzählung eines einzigen Canossagangs. (...) Natürlich ist Lichtspiel nicht einfach so dahingeschrieben. Der Roman ist verdoppeltes Kino und imitiert in seiner eigenen Form alles, was irgendwie mit Film zu tun hat. Lichtspiel ist ein Flirren kinematografischer Kunstgriffe. Es gibt absichtsvoll in die Länge gezogene Kamerafahrten und verknappte Slapstickdialoge. (...) Bei Kehlmann seufzen die Leser immer mit, denn es gibt etwas Sentimentalisches in seinen Büchern. Einen gemeinsamen Nenner der Gefühle. Genau das ist auch das Problem des Romans: Die fatale Lage ist klar." - Paul Jandl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

  • "Daniel Kehlmann macht daraus eine tiefgründige Parabel über Kunst und Moral. (...) Lichtspiel ist eine sehr kurzweilige, unterhaltsame Lektüre, was beim Gewicht seines Stoffes allein schon eine Leistung ist. Der nicht gerade niedrige Star-Faktor seiner Figuren erlaubt Kehlmann immer wieder, Glanzlichter seiner Porträtkunst einzustreuen (.....) Kehlmanns meisterhafter Roman zeigt, wie ein verabsolutiertes Künstlertum nicht in reiner Kunst, sondern in reiner Unmenschlichkeit endet." - Richard Kämmerlings, Die Welt

  • "Lichtspiel erzählt von der Verführungskraft des Kompromisses, von der Bereitschaft, die Moral durch künstlerischen Karriere-Ehrgeiz großzügig beiseitezuräumen. Und es hinterlässt beim Leser die verstörende Unsicherheit, ob man nicht selbst so gehandelt hätte wie der Regisseur. (...) Die besten Filme Pabsts funktionieren wie Kehlmanns Prosa. Der Schriftsteller hat sich die Regiekunst stilistisch anverwandelt, Lichtspiel ist damit auf unterhaltende Weise avantgardistisch -- für gewöhnlich ein Widerspruch. (...) Die Kunst ist aus der Sicht Kehlmanns eben nicht das Wichtigste, nicht das Heiligste, eben nicht das, was bleibt. Das Einzige, was bleibt, sind im Angesicht des Grauens die seltenen Fälle von Menschenfreundlichkeit. Wer im Roman der Barbarei nur einen Schritt entgegentritt, fährt in die Hölle. Wer nur einen Bissen von der Frucht des Bösen probiert, ist vergiftet für immer. Man kann nicht ein wenig mit dem Radikalen flirten, man wird von ihm vollständig aufgesogen -- und es bleibt von einem nichts übrig als eine leere Hülle." - Adam Soboczynski, Die Zeit

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

[Note: Lichtspiel has not yet been translated into English, and this review is based on the German original; all translations are mine.]

       Lichtspiel -- coming out in English in 2025 as The Director -- is an historical-biographical novel based closely on the life of film director G.W.Pabst (1885-1967), best-known for his films with Greta Garbo ('Die freudlose Gasse' ('The Joyless Street'); 1925) and Louise Brooks ('Die Büchse der Pandora' ('Pandora's Box'); 1929). Most remarkably, Pabst made it to Hollywood in the 1930s -- but, forced into making the flop A Modern Hero, saw no future for himself there and returned to Europe in 1936; by 1938 he hoped to return to the US again, but found himself stuck in German-annexed Austria when war broke out, making it impossible for him to leave, and he went on to direct films under the Nazi regime.
       A very talented director, Pabst nevertheless only rarely lived up to his potential -- his falling short in so many ways, professionally and personally, well-captured by Kehlmann. Typically, too, and amusingly, when he is praised it's often not even for his own work, as a running gag has him repeatedly praised for directing Metropolis (suggesting also how many people don't really pay close attention to who actually directs a movie ...). Except occasionally on a film set, there's a kind of haplessness to Pabst; he is acquiescent and passive, unable to bring himself to do more than to make do rather than get what he really wants -- a rare exception being when he insists on going to visit his apparently ill mother in Austria despite his wife's misgivings, a trip with the catastrophic consequence of leaving him and his family stuck under the Nazis. His inability to master English properly reflects a general inability (or unwillingness) to really do what is necessary to get and make his way.
       The German title of the novel is an old form of what movies used to be called; 'photoplay' might be the closest English equivalent, but Lichtspiel also literally means 'light-game', suggesting the illuminating game that Kehlmann is playing here with Pabst's story, the light that it sheds, etc.
       The novel opens in 1978, with a first-person narration -- not Pabst (already deceased at this point) but, as we learn, Franz Wilzek, who is presented as having worked as an assistant on some of Pabst's movies in the 1940s. The opening chapter has him being brought from his old-age home to a television studio, where he is to appear on Heinz Conrad's popular talk show (here (still) called: Was gibt es Neues am Sonntag). Already suffering from some memory loss and dementia, Wilzek struggles some in understanding (and going along with) what is going on here. He is emphatic, however, about one film that comes up for discussion: the last project Pabst undertook under the Nazis, Der Fall Molander, starring Paul Wegener. He insists it never got beyond the planning stages -- and while that's all we hear about the film for the time being, it comes to play a significant role in the novel, which then turns back some forty years, to Pabst's first experiences in Hollywood and proceeds chronologically from there.
       The novel then switches from first to third person narration, and the second chapter has Pabst meeting with Hollywood studio executives who insist he direct A Modern Hero, even though Pabst knows it can't turn out well. Pabst's poor English leaves him somewhat like Wilzek in the opening chapter, neither able to communicate or understand clearly -- making for a somewhat annoying foggy start to the novel, but at least Kehlmann doesn't rely on that throughout the whole book (though Pabst's mother is also no longer clear in the head, and various characters -- far too many -- have difficulties understanding what is being said, in other languages or in dialect, throughout).
       Pabst knows his strengths as a director, and his greatest is repeatedly pointed to:

     Griffith und Lang konnten Bilder besser aufbauen als er, und ohne Zweifel war Reinhardt ihm in der Arbeit mit Schauspielern überlegen, aber niemand konnte besser schneiden.

[Griffith and Lang could build up images better than he could, and there was no doubt that Reinhardt was superior in his handling of actors, but no one could cut better than him.]
       It's his cuts, from one scene and image to the next, and the way he deployed them where he showed his mastery. Kehlmann, too, does this effectively in his narrative, especially in moving from one chapter to the next. Each is a discrete episode, focused closely on specific events, as Kehlmann doesn't unspool Pabst's life in one smooth account but rather skips from one point to another. So, for example, we see Pabst being pressured into making A Modern Hero in one chapter and then we see the fallout of the movie's failure in another, but the actually making-of is bypassed. There's long continuity in the chapters themselves, but the cuts then, from one to the next, are sharp. Kehlmann chooses his moments carefully, and this highlight-presentation, as it were, works very well.
       Beside the vivid episodes themselves, the build-up also has a cinematic quality, especially how Pabst finds himself ensnared in the Nazi machinery -- though still in a privileged position. (Like another character says, one has to watch what one says, but: "wenn man sich daran gewöhnt habe und die Regeln kenne, fühle man sich beinahe frei" ('if one has gotten used to it and knows the rules one almost feels as if one were free').)
       Pabst's Nazi-handler, a Kuno Krämer, pops up first in Hollywood -- and is shown the door -- before showing up at Pabst's Austrian doorstep, their relative positions now drastically changed. For all his power, Krämer, like everyone else, must watch his back, and what he says -- and apparently does not do so carefully enough; ironically, eventually Pabst wishes Krämer were still around to help him sort things out (while unable to grasp the reasons for him being out of reach).
       Kehlmann's careful structuring of the novel can also be seen with writer Alfred Karrasch (1893-1973), whose (hack-)works are first introduced in a book club round that Pabst's wife is part of, where all the women enthuse over them even as she is baffled that this is what people are reading. Among the works by Nazi-era favorite Karrasch is also Die Sternengeige -- the novel that is then to be made into the film Der Fall Molander. When his wife hears what novel Pabst is supposed to adapt for this next movie she: 'began to laugh, wildly and loudly, until the tears ran across her face'. (Karrasch also shows up in person, late in the story, upset about not having been consulted about the filming of his novel; he's presented as a truly nasty piece of work.)
       The novel is divided into three parts: 'Inside', 'Outside', and 'Afterwards'. The first presents Pabst's time outside Austria, in Hollywood and then France; the second -- by far the longest -- his time in Austria under the Nazi regime; while the shorter final section is set in the postwar years -- and returns the story, in its final chapter, to doddering Franz Wilzek, a decade or so after Pabst's death.
       Along the way, we do see Pabst at work several times -- including collaborating with Leni Riefenstahl, whose loathing for Pabst becomes ever more pronounced. There's quite a bit on Paracelsus, too -- with Kehlmann inserting another first-person chapter here, where a 'Rupert Wooster', a well-treated English prisoner of war, is compelled to attend the premiere and presents an account of that experience. (Wooster is obviously P.G.Wodehouse; it's unclear why Kehlmann, who otherwise presents historical personalities with their actual names, choses a (rather transparent) pseudonym for Wodehouse.)
       Eventually, we come to the filming of Der Fall Molander, near the end of the war, the filming taking place in Prague (where there was relatively little Allied bombing going on). Pabst is in full obsessive-mode here, finally determined to see his vision fully realized -- which also leads to the awful compromise he makes in order to make one of the scenes a success, circumstances that shake Wilzek, who assists on the film, to the core and play a role in the ultimate fate of the film. Here, as in the other film-making scenes, Kehlmann -- the son of a noted film director -- excels, and these parts of the novel, when Pabst is at work, are particularly gripping.
       If the portrayal of Pabst as film-maker -- director, editor, actor-handler -- impresses, Pabst otherwise is an almost empty vessel. Kehlmann ultimately overreaches -- in the final section, Pabst is little more than a hollow shell, able to only think of his lost final masterpiece, even as he continues to go through the motions of directing (helped along by his wife, who is finally able to come into her own). Even before, however, Pabst is a rather sad figure.
       Aspects of his family life are curiously underplayed, notably the story of his son -- here called Jakob, and enthusiastically joining the Nazi cause as soon as he is able to, and excited when he gets sent to the eastern front. (Pabst's first son, Peter, was born in 1924, making him roughly Jakob's age; Pabst had a second son, Michael, who was born in 1941, but Kehlmann chooses not to include that as part of Pabst's story.) Long-suffering wife Trude (Gertrude) had ambitions and talents as an actress and screenwriter, but deferred to her husband for those many years, and for much of the novel is presented only as long-suffering, offering her words of warning but little beyond that. Kehlmann does, however, nicely present the episode after the war when the film she conceived and long had hoped to make, Geheimnisvolle Tiefe, can finally be filmed, with her in almost complete control of the production. (Kehlmann unfortunately does veer into the sappy here with a cringeworthy exchange when Pabst follows her unsteadily into what winds up being the dark, she leading him confidently, telling him: "Folg mir einfach. Ich bin dir ja auch immer gefolgt" ('Just follow me. After all, I always followed you').)
       Some of the episodes -- including Pabst's audience with Goebbels, where the minister makes clear exactly what is expected from Pabst -- are very strong, and the entire novel is gripping, easily pulling the reader along. But especially with Der Fall Molander Kehlmann tries too hard, and it all begins to feel a bit too neat and easy -- so also with how things come full circle in the novel, including with Pabst's son Jakob visiting Louise Brooks after his father's death, and then the final Wilzek chapter. It doesn't help that there's a bit of implausibility about the film's fate, at least early on, not least in Pabst's passivity, given the immediate situation. (As to its later fate, that seems a freedom one can grant the author.)
       The final parts of the novel feel rather too much like summing-ups. Kehlmann is good on the action in the final days in Prague, for example, but then can't resist giving Pabst grand pronouncements to make, as when actor Paul Wegener asks him whether he doesn't think it strange that they are making such a film -- "So ein ... Kunstwerk ?" ('Such a ... work of art ?') -- under these apocalyptic circumstances:
     «Sie sagen das, als wäre es etwas Schlechtes.»
     «Eher etwas Seltsames.»
     «Die Zeiten sind immer seltsam. Kunst ist immer unpassend. Immer unnötig, wenn sie entsteht. Und später, wenn man zurückblickt, ist sie das Einzige, was wichtig war.»

     ["You say that like it's a bad thing."
     "More like: something strange."
     "Times are always strange. Art is always inappropriate. Always unnecessary when it's created. And later, when you look back, it's the only thing that mattered."]
       It's a nice and rather fitting sentiment -- but doesn't entirely ring true coming from the Pabst we've been shown here, despite his film-making-obsession.
       As so often with fiction based on real people and events, there's some tension between the familiar historic reality and what Kehlmann presents. Significant parts of Pabst's career are more or less left out, giving a somewhat odd shape to the life as presented here: the 1955 film, Der letzte Akt ('The Last Ten Days'), for example is mentioned, but there's very little about this depiction of the final days of the Nazi regime -- and if nothing else, what Pabst makes of Goebbels in the film surely would be of interest. The selective changes in a novel otherwise so densely populated with recognizable names -- P.G.Wodehouse and Pabst's son (and the leaving-out of his second son), in particular -- is also disorienting.
       Lichtspiel is frustrating in parts -- quite a few, in fact -- but it is also a very good read, with much of it completely engrossing and only in how everything is tied up getting a bit mushy. It reminds of the big novels by Johannes Mario Simmel, and has similar popular appeal -- very popular, very great appeal. It might ultimately have worked better if its protagonist were only based on Pabst, rather than so closely tied (or chained) to the real-life figure as Kehlmann has made him here, and it falls a bit short as Pabst-novel -- but otherwise it's quite the rip-roaring and fully engaging read.

- M.A.Orthofer, 13 November 2023

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Links:

The Director: Reviews: Daniel Kehlmann: Other books by Daniel Kehlmann under Review: Other books of interest under review:

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About the Author:

       Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975. He lives in Vienna, where he studied philosophy and literature. He has published several works of fiction.

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© 2023-2024 the complete review

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