E.A. Dupont

Director · Actor · Writer

Ewald André Dupont (25 December 1891, Zeitz, Saxony, Germany – 12 December 1956, Hollywood) was a German film director, one of the founders of the German film industry. He was frequently credited as E. A. Dupont. A newspaper columnist in 1916, Dupont became a screenwriter and began directing his own crime-story scripts in 1918. After several successes in his native Germany in silent films, he worked in London and in Hollywood, California. One of his greatest successes was the silent film Varieté (1925). This film, about an ex-trapeze artist, was noted for its innovative camerawork with highly expressive movement through space, accomplished by the prolific expressionist cinematographer Karl Freund. Varieté even did well in the United States, screening for 12 weeks at New York's Rialto Theatre. Dupont's success was noticed by Carl Laemmle at Universal, who offered Dupont a lucrative contract. His first project was Love Me and the World Is Mine in the early summer of 1926, which ran well over budget ($350,000) and was not a success. His film Piccadilly (1929), a late silent, is noted for the central performance of the Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong. Atlantic (also 1929) is seen as one of the most innovative uses of sound film technology available at the time. After his successes in the UK, Dupont returned to Hollywood in 1933, though he directed only a handful of films after 1939.

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