Lotte Eisner

Lotte H. Eisner (6 March 1896, Berlin – 26 November 1983, Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris) was a German-French film critic, historian, writer and poet. Eisner worked extensively with French film historian and archivist Henri Langlois. She was a mentor to the director Werner Herzog.

She was born Lotte Henriette Regina Eisner in Berlin, the daughter of textile manufacturer Hugo Eisner and his wife Margarethe Feodora Aron. Eisner grew up in a prosperous Jewish middle-class milieu and obtained a Ph.D. from the . Her dissertation was on the development of Greek vases. Hans Feld, editor of the film newspaper Filmkurier, invited Eisner to contribute and she became one of the first women film critics in 1927.

Eisner's Jewish background and enthusiasm for German Expressionist cinema made her a target for the Nazis. After Hitler became German Chancellor in 1933, Eisner fled to France. During World War II, Eisner hid for a time but was caught and interned in the French concentration camp at Gurs in Aquitaine. Eisner managed to escape with forged identity papers and spent the rest of the war in hiding under the assumed name of Louise Escoffier.

Eisner had met Henri Langlois before the war. She now worked closely with him as archivist and chief curator at the Cinémathèque Française from 1945 until her retirement in 1975. Eisner not only saved films from destruction but also helped to conserve costumes, set designs and scripts for the Cinémathèque. Eisner continued to publish essays and reviews in Revue du cinéma, which later became Cahiers du cinéma. In 1952, Eisner published her most highly acclaimed book, L'Écran démoniaque, translated into English as The Haunted Screen in 1969: her study of the influence of the spirit of German Expressionism on cinema. Eisner subsequently published studies of F. W. Murnau (1964) and of Fritz Lang (1977), which Lang collaborated with.

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