The only Hollywood director ever to pursue a career in B movies by choice (or so he said), Edgar G. Ulmer somehow managed to transform the absurd limitations of the scripts, budgets, and actors he was given to work with into a mad aesthetic principle—his work, full of zomboid despair, remains unique, to say the least. This 1944 feature is actually one of his more respectable projects, which should give you some idea: it has a professional actor in it (John Carradine), and some money appears to have been spent on period detail. The story is about a French puppeteer doomed to kill the women he loves. The flashback sequence, filmed with a tilted camera and distended sets, must represent the last full flowering of hard-core expressionism. 73 min.
