There’s a very real price to pay if you make accommodations with political evil.

The Director
DANIEL KEHLMANN
(RIVERRUN, 352 PP, £22)
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How would you have behaved had you lived in Nazi Germany in 1933? Many might piously contest they‘d have got out of there fast, like G.W. Pabst, the Berlin-based, Austro-Hungarian Empire-born film director, subject of Daniel Kehlmann‘s utterly enthralling new novel. Pabst was famed for his silent movies, like The Joyless Street (1925) with Greta Garbo, and Pandora‘s Box (1929) featuring the sultry magnificence of Louise Brooks. Success and glory were Pabst‘s during the Weimar Republic.

His liberal visions as with The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927) and his treatment of Brecht and Welli‘s The Threepenny Opera (1931) underlined his leftist sympathies. He had to escape, then tries and failed to compromise with Hollywood‘s commercialism. He returned to France and face the Anschluss and war.

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