Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Film
Berlin's cinema history goes back to some of the very first experiments in
the medium. It rapidly became the cornerstone of Germany's film industry,
a position consolidated in the 1920s and then throughout the Nazi era,
despite the mass exodus of many of the country's key stars and directors.
After World War II East Germany quickly made the most of all the equipment
that had fallen into their hands in the Soviet-controlled suburbs of Berlin
to produce a programme of tightly controlled filmmaking. Meanwhile,
generous subsidies lured many of Germany's most cutting-edge filmmakers
to West Berlin. But it's since the Wende that the city's film industry has really
begun to blossom again.
The beginnings: showmen and inventors
Berlin first whirred into cinema history on November 1, 1895 when former fairground
showman Max Skladanowsky and his brother Emil put on a show with their home-
made film projector - which they called a
Bioskop
- at the city's Wintergarten music
hall. It was quickly replaced by better methods and techniques in Paris later that year,
but Berlin continued to play a crucial role, with locals like Oskar Messter pioneering
and setting standards for many production techniques.
Once established, Germany's early twentieth-century film industry grew steadily. he
outbreak of World War I and subsequent boycott of French films stimulated growth,
and Berlin consolidated its role in 1917 with the founding of the giant and partially
nationalized
Universum Film AG
(UFA) studio - which was established largely to
imitate the very effective Allied propaganda films.
Boom in Weimar Germany
After the war, movies became a popular form of escapism in the hard times of
Weimar
Germany
, with new genres emerging to portray forbidden love, myths, and other
populist themes. he film industry boomed, churning out vast quantities of celluloid -
six hundred feature films a year in the 1920s - thanks partly to hyperinflation, which
allowed filmmakers to borrow money that would vastly devalue before repayment.
Even so, studio bankruptcies were common and film budgets relatively tight, forcing
directors to work with less and so helping to prompt the rise of
German Expressionist
cinema
. he genre relied on symbolism and artistic imagery, as evidenced in the era's
most famous film,
Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari
(
he Cabinet of Dr Caligari
; 1920),
shot in Berlin. Here, the wild, non-naturalistic and exaggeratedly geometric sets, with
images painted on floors and walls evoking objects, light and shadow, complemented
the highly stylized performances to create affecting psychological yarns. he era's other
great filmmaking landmark was Fritz Lang's futuristic
Metropolis
(1927), a gigantic
project for which UFA was massively expanded and which included 750 extras,
becoming Weimar Germany's most expensive film and a commercial flop. he film's
exploration and critique of social power structures and hierarchies was common to
many of the overwhelmingly left-wing films made at the time, which the Nazis would
quickly quash. he arrival of sound at the end of the 1920s produced a final artistic
flourish for German film before the collapse of the Weimar Republic.
Der Blaue Engel
(
he Blue Angel
; 1930), directed by Josef von Sternberg, was Germany's first talking
