Background
Ewald Andre Dupont was born on 25December 1891 in Leitz, Germany.
Ewald Andre Dupont was born on 25December 1891 in Leitz, Germany.
A film critic, Dupont began writing scripts: Renn Fieber (16, Richard Oswald); Es Werde Licht (18, Oswald). As a director, Variété is his best work, a story of sexual exchange among a troupe of trapeze artists. It is the film in which Emil Jan- nings resolutely turned his back on the camera, the sort of schematic device favored by Dupont. He excelled, in Lotte Eisners words, at “capturing and fixing fluctuating forms which vary incessantly under the effect of light and movement. His objective is always and everywhere the ebb and flow of light.’’ This is especially so in the shots of illuminated white trapeze performers above the crowd.
Dupont went to America to make Love Me and the World Is Mine for Universal and then to Britain for five films. In Moulin-Rouge and Piccadilly, especially, his use of lighting is very successful. But Atlantic, the first complete sound film to be made in Europe, was very slow and too preoccupied with the novelty of sound. In 1933, Dupont opted for America, but was rarely more than a director of second features. In 1939, he went back to journalism and started an agency for actors.
He returned, twelve years later, with The Sea if an oddity starring John Ireland, but slipped back to B pictures. Before his death he wrote the script for Magic Fire (56, William Dieterle).