Cinema Germany 1920s
Germany in the 1920s
TERMS/PEOPLE
Ernst Lubitsch
made Madame DuBarry in 1919, for
example,
the film reportedly cost the equivalent of about $40,000.
It would’ve cost - $500, 000 in Hollywood Madame DuBarry (Ernst
Lubitsch, 1919) Lubitsch,
Who became the most prominent director of German historical epics,
Schuhpalast
Pinkus 1916 – his first big hit (shoe palace pinkus
His first big hit came in 1916 with Schuhpalast Pinkus (“Shoe Palace
Pinkus”), in which he played a brash young Jewish entrepreneur.
UFA, in full Universum Film-Aktien
Gesellschaft, German motion-picture production company that
made artistically outstanding and technically competent films during the silent
era. Located in Berlin, its studios were the best equipped and most modern in
the world.It was his second film for the Union company, one of the smaller firms that
merged to form Ufa, where he directed a series of more prestigious
projects.
F. W. Murnau
For the most part, Expressionist films used simple lighting from
the front and sides, illuminating the scene flatly and evenly to stress the
links between the figures and the decor. In some notable cases, however,
shadows were used to create additional distortion. In Nosferatu,
the vampire creeps up the stairway toward the heroine, but we see only his
shadow, huge and grotesque. Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, 1922)
Murnau was one of the major figures of German Expressionism, yet
his films contain relatively few of the obviously artificial, exaggerated sets
that we find in other films of this movement. In Murnau’s Tartuffe,
the title character’s pompous walk is set off against the legs of a huge
cast-iron lamp. Tartuffe (F. W. Murnau, 1925)
Fritz Lang
One of the best-known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute. (wikipedia) Lang's most celebrated films include the groundbreaking futuristic Metropolis (1927) She and Lang co-wrote all of his movies from 1921 through 1933, including Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler ("Dr. Mabuse the Gambler"; 1922), which ran for over four hours in two parts in the original version and was the first in the Dr. Mabuse trilogy, the five-hour Die Nibelungen (1924), the dystopian film Metropolis (1927), and the science fiction film Woman in the Moon (1929). Metropolis went far over budget and nearly destroyed UFA, which was bought by right-wing businessman and politician Alfred Hugenberg. It was a financial flop, as were his last silent films Spies (1928) and Woman in the Moon, produced by Lang's own company
In Siegfried, many shots are filled with a riot of decorative patterns. Symmetry offers a way to combine actors, costumes, and sets so as to emphasize overall compositions. The Burgundian court in Siegfried uses symmetry, as do scenes in most of Fritz Lang’s films of this period. Siegfried (Fritz Lang, 1924)
German Expressionism
In late February 1920,
1)a film premiered in Berlin that was instantly recognized as something new in
cinema: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
2)Its novelty captured the public imagination, and it was a considerable success.
3)The film used stylized sets, with strange, distorted
buildings painted on canvas backdrops
and flats in a theatrical manner.
4)The actors made little attempt at realistic performance; instead, they exhibited
jerky
or dancelike movements.
5)Critics announced that the Expressionist style, by then well established
in most other arts, had made its way into the cinema,
6)and they debated the benefits of this new development for film art. the heroine of The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari wanders through the Expressionist carnival set. It almost seems that she is made
of the same material as the fairground setting.
Expressionism – rejected realism
Its practitioners favored extreme
distortion to express an emotional reality rather than surface appearances.
3)Expressionist artists avoided the subtle shadings and colors that gave
realistic paintings their sense of volume and depth.
4)Instead, the Expressionists often used large shapes of bright, unrealistic
colors with dark, cartoonlike outlines.
5)Figures might be elongated; faces wore grotesque, mask-like expressions and
might be livid green.
6)Buildings might sag or lean, with the ground tilted up steeply in defiance of
traditional perspective.
7)Such distortions were difficult for films shot on location,
8)but Caligari showed how studio-built sets could approximate the stylization
of Expressionist painting.
Formal Traits of
Expressionism
Expressionist films had many tactics for blending the elements of shots.
They used stylized surfaces, symmetry, distortion, and juxtaposition of similar
shapes. Stylized surfaces might make disparate elements within the
mise-en-scène seem similar.
For example, Jane’s costumes in Caligari are
painted with the same jagged lines as are the sets. In Siegfried, many shots
are filled with a riot of decorative patterns. Symmetry offers a way to combine
actors, costumes, and sets so as to emphasize overall compositions.
G.W. Pabst – New Objectivity
Pabst's
best known films concern the plight of women, including The Joyless Street
(1925) with Greta Garbo and Asta Nielsen, Secrets of a Soul (1926) with Lili
Damita, The Loves of Jeanne Ney (1927) with Brigitte Helm, Pandora's Box
(1929), and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) with American actress Louise Brooks. He
also co-directed with Arnold Fanck a mountain film entitled The White Hell of
Pitz Palu (1929) starring Leni Riefenstahl.
1)The most celebrated German director of the mid-1920s, G. W. Pabst,
2)rose to fame when he made the second major street film, The
Joyless Street.
3)Another major example was
Bruno Rahn’s Dirnentragödie (“Whore’s Tragedy,” aka Tragedy of the
Street, 1928).
Pabst's Der
Schatz – the treasure – expressionist
Joyless Street – prostitute looking for food
Secrets
of a Soul (1926)
was the first serious attempt to apply
the tenets of the new Freudian school of psychoanalysis in a film
narrative.
Pabst also made another major New Objectivity film,
1)The Love of Jeanne Ney, in 1928. - panning the sequence begins with a tightly
framed panning shot that builds a quick sense of his character through
details.
New Objectivity
1)Many artists moved away from the contorted emotionalism of Expressionism
toward realism and cool-headed social criticism.
2)The trend was called “New Objectivity” (Neue Sachlichkeit).
3)The savage political caricatures of George Grosz and Otto Dix
are considered central to New Objectivity.
New
Objectivity in Cinema
1)In the cinema, New Objectivity took various forms.
2)One trend usually linked to New Objectivity was the street film.
3)In such films, characters from sheltered middle-class backgrounds
are suddenly exposed to the environment of city streets,
where they encounter representatives of various social ills,
such as
a)prostitutes,
b)gamblers,
c)black marketeers, and
d)con men.
Decline of New Objectivity
)Number of factors led to the decline of New
Objectivity in the cinema.
2)For one thing, the increasing domination of German politics by extreme
right-wing forces
in the late 1920s and early 1930s resulted in a wider split
between conservative and
liberal factions.
3)Socialist and Communist groups made films that provided an outlet for strong
social
criticism.
4)Moreover, the coming of sound combined with greater control over the film
industry by
conservative forces to create an emphasis on light entertainment.
5)The operetta genre became one of the most prominent types of sound
filmmaking,
6)and social realism became rare.
Karl Grune
Street films came to prominence in 1923 with the success of Karl Grune’s The Street. It tells the simple story of a middle-aged man’s psychological crisis. From the safety of his apartment, he sees visions of the excitement and romance that may be awaiting him in the street. Slipping away from his wife, he explores the city, only to be lured by a prostitute into a den of cardsharps. Eventually he returns home, but the ending leaves the sense that the denizens of the street lurk threateningly nearby.
Kammerspiel – Boring
These films contrasted sharply with Expressionist drama. A Kammerspiel film concentrated on a few characters, exploring a crisis in their lives in depth. The emphasis was on slow, evocative acting and telling details, rather than extreme expressions of emotion. The chamber-drama atmosphere came from the use of a small number of settings and a concentration on character psychology rather than spectacle. Some Expressionist-style distortion might appear in the set, but it typically suggested dreary surroundings rather than the fantasy or subjectivity of Expressionist films. The Kammerspiel avoided the fantasy and legendary elements so common in Expressionism; these were films set in everyday, contemporary surroundings, and they often covered a short span of time.
1)A third German trend of the early 1920s had less international influence
than the historical spectacles and the Expressionist works but produced a
number of important films.
2)This was the Kammerspiel, or “chamber-drama” film.
3)The name derives from a theater, the Kammerspiele, opened in 1906 by the
major stage
director Max Reinhardt to put on intimate dramas for small
audiences.
4)Few Kammerspiel films were made, but nearly all are classics:
a)Lupu Pick’s Shattered (1921) and
b)Sylvester (aka New Year’s Eve or St. Sylvester’s
Eve, 1923),
Sylvester takes
place during a single evening in the life of a café owner. His mother
Lupu Pick
Few Kammerspiel films were made, but nearly all are classics: Lupu Pick’s Shattered (1921)
Robert Weine
was a film director of
the silent era of German cinema. He is particularly known for directing the
German silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and a succession of other
expressionist films. Wiene Weine also directed a variety of other films of
varying styles and genres. Following the Nazi rise to power in Germany, Wiene,
Weine who was of Jewish descent,[1] fled into exile.
His most memorable feature films are the horror film The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari (1920) and Raskolnikow (1923), an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Crime
and Punishment, both of which had a deep influence on the German cinema of that
time
Universum-Film AG (UFA) was founded as a consolidation of private film companies on December 18, 1917 in Berlin.
UFA - Major Changes in the Mid-to-Late 1920s
Ufa, for example, enlarged its two main complexes at Tempelhof and
Neubabelsberg and soon owned the best-equipped studios in Europe, with an
extensive backlot at Neubabelsberg that could accommodate several enormous
sets.
As a result, in 1925 Ufa was deep in debt, with no prospects of
its two blockbuster films appearing anytime soon. A crisis developed when a
substantial portion of Ufa’s debts were abruptly called in. Then, in late
December, Paramount and MGM agreed to loan Ufa $4 million. Among other terms of
the deal, Ufa was to reserve one-third of the play dates in its large theater
chain for films from the two Hollywood firms.
The arrangement also set up a new German distribution company, Parufamet. Ufa owned half of it, while Paramount and MGM each held one-quarter. Parufamet would distribute at least twenty films a year for each participating firm. Paramount and MGM benefited, since a substantial number of their films would get through the German quota and be guaranteed wide distribution. After the deal was made, Pommer was pressured into resigning, and more cautious budgeting policies were initiated at Ufa.
Here were made such epic productions as Lang’s The Nibelungen and Murnau’s Faust. Foreign producers, primarily from England and France, rented Ufa’s facilities for shooting large-scale scenes. In 1922, an investment group converted a zeppelin hangar into the world’s largest indoor production facility, the Staaken studio. The studio was rented to producing firms for sequences requiring large indoor sets. Scenes from such films as Lang’s monumental Metropolis were shot at Staaken.
FILMS
Backstairs
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Der Schatz
The Golem
The Joyless Street
Kriemhild's Revenge
The Last Laugh
The Love of Jeanne Ney
Madame DuBarry
Metropolis
Nosferatu
Siegfried
The Street
Sylvester
Tartuffe
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