Michael Roemer (born January 1, 1928) is a film director, producer and writer. He has won several awards for his films. He is the recipient of a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
. A professor at
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
, he is the author of ''Telling Stories''.
Early years
Roemer was born to a well-to-do Jewish family
[Vicki Vasilopoulos]
"New Life for a 1964 Film"
''The New York Times'' (November 14, 2004). Retrieved October 20, 2011 in Berlin, Germany. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 and began restricting the rights of Jews to work, his father and his grandfather found themselves unable to work and provide for the family, and eventually lost everything. At the age of 11, Roemer was sent out of Germany
on one of the
Kindertransport
The ''Kindertransport'' (German for "children's transport") was an organised rescue effort of children (but not their parents) from Nazi-controlled territory that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World ...
s.
[Janet Maslin]
"Children Were Saved, but So Much Was Lost"
''The New York Times'' (December 2, 1998). Retrieved October 20, 2011 In England, he attended
Bunce Court School
The Bunce Court School was an independent, private boarding school in the village of Otterden, in Kent, England. It was founded in 1933 by Anna Essinger, who had previously founded a boarding school, Landschulheim Herrlingen in the south of Germa ...
, a German Jewish school for refugees, both pupils and staff. There, he met
Wilhelm Marckwald, an actor and former director of the
Deutsches Theater Berlin
The Deutsches Theater is a theater in Berlin, Germany. It was built in 1850 as Friedrich-Wilhelm-Städtisches Theater, after Frederick William IV of Prussia. Located on Schumann Street (Schumannstraße), the Deutsches Theater consists of two ad ...
and also a refugee. The playwright
Frank Marcus
Frank Ulrich Marcus (30 June 1928 – 5 August 1996) was a British playwright, best known for ''The Killing of Sister George''.
Life and career
Marcus was born 30 June 1928 into a Jewish family in Breslau (then in Germany). They came to Eng ...
and the painter
Frank Auerbach
Frank Helmut Auerbach (born 29 April 1931) is a German-British painter. Born in Germany, he has been a naturalised British subject since 1947. He is considered one of the leading names in the School of London, with fellow artists Francis Bacon ...
were two of his friends at Bunce Court. Roemer emigrated to the United States in 1945.
Roemer received his
A.B.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
degree from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
in 1949.
[William H. Smock]
"Michael Roemer: Silhouette"
''The Harvard Crimson'' (March 4, 1965). Retrieved October 28, 2011 While at Harvard, Roemer directed his first film, ''A Touch of the Times'', possibly the first feature film produced at an American college.
[Michael Roemer bio](_blank)
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Retrieved October 28, 2011 After graduating, he worked for
Louis de Rochemont
Louis Clark de Rochemont (January 13, 1899 – December 23, 1978) was an American film maker known for creating, along with Roy E. Larsen, the monthly theatrically shown newsreels ''The March of Time''. His brother, Richard, was also a prod ...
for eight years as a production manager, film editor, and as an assistant director. He later wrote, produced and directed a series of educational films for the
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...
.
Independent filmmaker
His feature-length film, ''
Nothing But a Man'' won two awards at the
Venice Film Festival
The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival he ...
,
as well as critical acclaim in France. It did not, however, do well in the United States until it was re-released in 1993.
Writing the screenplay, Roemer drew on his own background as a Jew in Nazi Germany, where his family had everything taken away from them and his father and grandfather were unable to provide for the family
because of the Nazis' increasingly restrictive laws concerning the rights of Jews. The movie's
Motown
Motown Records is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. It was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on June 7, 1958, and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. Its name, a portmanteau of ''moto ...
soundtrack came about by chance. George Schiffer, a classmate of Roemer's at Harvard, had his law office around the corner from where Roemer was editing the film. Over lunch one day, Roemer told him about the movie and Schiffer suggested he listen to some music he had from a new client, a small record label just starting out in
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
, Michigan. Roemer loved the music and acquired the rights from Motown owner
Berry Gordy
Berry Gordy III (born November 28, 1929), known professionally as Berry Gordy Jr., is a retired American record executive, record producer, songwriter, film producer and television producer. He is best known as the founder of the Motown record la ...
for $5,000.
After the film was re-released, ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' called it "one of the most sensitive films about black life ever made in this country", and in 1994 it was added to the
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception i ...
of the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
.
Roemer's film, ''
The Plot Against Harry
''The Plot Against Harry'' is an American comedy film directed by Michael Roemer. The plot involves Harry Plotnick, a small-time Jewish gangster living in a now largely Hispanic and African American New York neighborhood, playing the numbers game ...
'', a comedy, was made in 1969, but found no one to distribute it because no one found it funny.
Twenty years later, he decided to put all of his movies on videotape as a gift to his children.
[Susan King]
"MICHAEL ROEMER: Unraveling 'The Plot Against Harry'"
''Los Angeles Times'' (May 26, 1991). Retrieved October 19, 2011 Discovering that the technician who was making the transfer was laughing hard at the film, Roemer decided to make two
35 mm prints and submitted them to film festivals in New York and
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
. Both festivals accepted the film and commercial distribution and acclaim followed.
The film was nominated for six
Independent Spirit Awards
The Independent Spirit Awards (abbreviated Spirit Awards and originally known as the FINDIE or Friends of Independents Awards), founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with Poly(methyl m ...
, and won the Rosa Camuna prize at the Bergamo Film Meeting in 1990.
Roemer was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1971 and began teaching at Yale University in 1966. Roemer was interviewed for the 1996 documentary about the Kindertransports, ''My Knees Were Jumping''.
Roemer made the 1976 documentary ''Dying'', which was shown on
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
. He then made two films for that network's ''
American Playhouse
''American Playhouse'' is an American anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
Overview
It premiered on January 12, 1982, with ''The Shady Hill Kidnapping'', written and narrated by John Cheever an ...
'' series: ''Pilgrim, Farewell'' (1980) and ''Haunted'' (1984). In 2022, ''Haunted'' was re-released theatrically under the title ''Vengeance is Mine'', and received a similar reappraisal to the one received years earlier by ''The Plot Against Harry.'' Writing in the ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
,'' critic
Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris (born 1975) is an American film critic and podcast host. He is currently critic-at-large for ''The New York Times'', as well as co-host, with Jenna Wortham, of the ''New York Times'' podcast '' Still Processing.'' Previously, Morr ...
called it "an American movie executed with a French film’s interpersonal insouciance. It still feels original, in other words — one of those movies that somebody wrote and directed (Roemer, in this case) but that feels controlled entirely, engrossingly by human impulse, lawless in its way." In ''Screen Slate'', A.S. Hamrah wrote that discovering a Roemer film as good as ''Nothing But a Man'' and ''The Plot Against Harry'' "is a cause for celebration, and something of a miracle."
Books
* ''Telling Stories: Postmodernism and the Invalidation of Traditional Narrative'' (1997) University Press of America, Inc.
* ''Film Stories'', Vol. 1, Scarecrow Press (2001)
* ''Film Stories'', Vol. 2, Scarecrow Press (2001)
* ''Shocked But Connected: Notes on Laughter'', Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (2012)
Filmography (selected list)
* ''A Touch of the Times'' (1949)
* ''Cortile Cascino'' (1962) documentary
* ''
Nothing But a Man'' (1964), co-produced with
Robert M. Young and Robert Rubin, starring
Ivan Dixon
Ivan Nathaniel Dixon III (April 6, 1931 – March 16, 2008) was an American actor, director, and producer best known for his series role in the 1960s sitcom ''Hogan's Heroes'', and for his starring roles in the 1964 independent drama '' Not ...
and
Abbey Lincoln
Anna Marie Wooldridge (August 6, 1930 – August 14, 2010), known professionally as Abbey Lincoln, was an American jazz vocalist, songwriter, and actress. She was a civil rights activist beginning in the 1960s. Lincoln made a career out of deli ...
* ''
Faces of Israel
The face is the front of an animal's head that features the eyes, nose and mouth, and through which animals express many of their emotions. The face is crucial for human identity, and damage such as scarring or developmental deformities may affe ...
'' (1967)
* ''
The Plot Against Harry
''The Plot Against Harry'' is an American comedy film directed by Michael Roemer. The plot involves Harry Plotnick, a small-time Jewish gangster living in a now largely Hispanic and African American New York neighborhood, playing the numbers game ...
'' (1969), co-produced with Robert M. Young
* ''Dying'' (1976), documentary
* ''Vengeance is Mine'', originally titled ''Haunted'' (1984), starring
Brooke Adams
Television
* ''Pilgrim, Farewell'' (1980), with
Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Allen Lloyd (born October 22, 1938) is an American actor. He has appeared in many theater productions, films, and on television since the 1960s. He is known for portraying Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown in the ''Back to the Future'' tril ...
* ''Haunted'' (1984), with
Brooke Adams; later known as ''Vengeance is Mine'', an American Playhouse production
References
External links
Faculty profileYale University. Retrieved October 19, 2011
Review of ''Nothing But a Man''One Film Beyond (blog). Retrieved October 20, 2011
film reference. Retrieved October 19, 2011
Michael Roemer biographyNew Video. Retrieved October 19, 2011
*
Michael Roemer Papers (MS 1837).Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roemer, Michael
Kindertransport refugees
Harvard University alumni
People educated at Bunce Court School
Living people
1928 births
American film directors
American film producers
Yale University faculty
German emigrants to the United States