Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
film and, shot simultaneously in German and English, made an international star of
Marlene Dietrich, a local girl discovered at a Berlin variety show.
Film in Nazi Germany
Marlene Dietrich was one of many performers to leave the country after the Nazi
seizure of power in 1933. he uncertain economics and politics of Weimar Germany
had already prompted many to leave the country, primarily for the USA, but after
1933 this turned into a flood. Around 1500 directors, producers, actors and other
film professionals fled the hird Reich, among them Fritz Lang. All those in exile
were either excluded from or rejected the
Reichskulturkammer
, the Nazi cultural
organization that excluded Jews and anyone politically questionable and defined who
could work in the media, effectively bringing to an end the glory days of German
cinema. Nevertheless, even the Nazi period produced a few cinematic masterpieces,
particularly by
Leni Riefenstahl
:
Triumph des Willens
(
he Triumph of the Will
; 1935),
which documented the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, and
Olympia
(1938), an awe-inspiring
tribute to Berlin's 1936 Summer Olympics, both of which obviously remain
controversial for propagandizing Nazi ideals.
Evolution in a divided Germany
After the war
East Germany
was quick to capitalize on the fact that much of Germany's
film infrastructure, notably the former UFA studios, lay in the Soviet occupation zone.
Film production quickly got off the ground with Soviet encouragement and Berlin's
cinemas were reopened in May 1945, within three weeks of German capitulation.
However, strict controls limited topics to those directly contributing to the communist
state project. A particular strength turned out to be
children's films
, notably fairytale
adaptations such as
Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel
(
hree Nuts for Cinderella
; 1973),
but also genre works, such as
Der schweigende Stern
(
he Silent Star
; 1960), an
adaptation of a Stanislaw Lem sci-fi novel, and “red westerns” such as
he Sons of
the Great Mother Bear
(1966) in which the heroes tended to be Native American.
Meanwhile the
West German
film industry of the 1950s could no longer measure up
to those of France, Italy or Japan. German films were perceived as provincial and only
rarely distributed internationally. Cinema attendance began to stagnate and drop in the
1950s, and plummeted in the 1960s. One reaction to this, and a perceived artistic
stagnation, was the 1962
Oberhausen Manifesto
in which a group of young filmmakers
proclaimed “Der alte Film ist tot. Wir glauben an den neuen” (“he old cinema is dead.
We believe in the new”), rejecting the commercial dictates of the German film industry
and resolving to build a new industry based on artistic excellence and experimentation.
Many up-and-coming filmmakers allied themselves with this group, among them Volker
Schlöndorff, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg and Rainer Werner
Fassbinder. he lure of new subsidies quickly brought many to Berlin, where the
New
German Cinema
movement returned the country's film industry to international
acclaim:
he Tin Drum
(1979), by Schlöndorff, became the first German film to win the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and
Das Boot
(1981) still holds the
record for most Academy Award nominations for a German film (six).
A post-Wende renaissance
During the 1980s the vitality of the New German Cinema movement ebbed and the
country's film industry struggled against a glut of private TV channels, videos and
DVDs. Not until almost ten years after the
Wende
did it really begin to find its feet
again. Unlike the more sober and artistic films of the 1970s, this time success has been
based on an ability to marry arthouse sensibilities with a more commercial outlook, yet
