The German Situation After World War I
Germany lost World War I
1)and suffered severe economic and political problems.
2)Yet it emerged from the war with a strong film industry.
3)From 1918 to the Nazi rise to power in 1933,
4)its cinema ranked second only to Hollywood in technical sophistication and world
influence.
5)Within a few years of the armistice, German films were seen widely abroad, and
a major stylistic movement,
6)Expressionism, arose in 1920 and continued until 1926.
7)Victorious France could not rejuvenate its film industry,
8)so how did defeated Germany’s become so powerful?
Germany - Film during WWI 1914-1918
1)The German industry’s expansion during World War I
was due largely to the isolation created by the government’s 1916 ban on most foreign
films.
2)The demand by theaters led the number of producing companies to rise from 25 (1914)
to 130 (1918).
3)By the end of the war, however, the formation of the Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft
(Ufa) started a trend toward mergers and larger companies.
Import Ban Not Lifted
1)Even with this growth, if the government had lifted the 1916 import ban at the end of the
war, foreign—especially American—films might have poured in again.
2)Unlike the situation in France, however, the German government supported filmmaking
throughout this period.
Spectacles
Spectacles = Epics?
1)Before the war, the Italians had won worldwide audiences with
historical epics such as Quo Vadis? and Cabiria.
2)After the war, the Germans tried a similar tactic.
3)German historical spectacles found some success and, incidentally,
4)revealed the first major German director of the postwar era, Ernst Lubitsch.
Spectacular costume films
1)appeared in a number of countries, but only companies able to afford large budgets
could use them to compete internationally.
2)Hollywood, with its high budgets and skilled art directors, could make Intolerance
or The Last of the Mohicans,
3)but productions on this scale were rare in Great Britain and France.
4)During the inflationary period, however, the larger German companies could finance
historical epics.
5)Some firms could afford extensive backlots, and they expanded studio facilities.
6)The costs of labor to construct sets and costumes were reasonable,
and crowds of extras could be hired at low wages.
7)The resulting films were impressive enough to compete abroad and earn stable foreign
currency.
8)When Ernst Lubitsch made Madame DuBarry in 1919, for example,
the film reportedly cost the equivalent of about $40,000.
9)Yet when it was released in the United States in 1921, experts there estimated that such a film
would cost perhaps $500,000 to make in Hollywood—at that time, a high price tag for a
feature film.
In Madame DuBarry, large sets and hundreds of extras recreate revolutionary Paris.
Madame DuBarry (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919)
Her father is languishing in the Bastille.
Lubitsch,
1)who became the most prominent director of German historical epics,
2)had begun his film career in the early 1910s as a comedian and director.
3)His first big hit came in 1916 with Schuhpalast Pinkus (“Shoe Palace Pinkus”),
in which he played a brash young Jewish entrepreneur.
4)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.
5)Ossi Oswalda, an accomplished comedienne, starred in several comedies
directed by Lubitsch in the late teens,
6)including Die Austernprinzessin (“The Oyster Princess,” 1919) and
7)Die Puppe (“The Doll,” 1919).
8)But it was with Polish star Pola Negri that Lubitsch achieved international recognition.
Negri and Lubitsch
1)first worked together in 1918 on Die Augen der Mumie Ma (“The Eyes of the Mummy Ma”).
2)This melodramatic fantasy took place in an exotic Egyptian locale and was typical of German
productions of the late 1910s.
3)Negri’s costar was the rising German actor Emil Jannings, and with these two
Lubitsch made Madame DuBarry.
The Eyes of the Mummy Ma (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918)
Intertitle:
In front of the burial chamber of the Queen Ma
"Who are you, madame?"
"It has been almost two years since..."
She was bathing in the river and the guy grabbed her.
Intertitle:
"When I came to, I found myself laying on this pallet."
She woke up and found the barbarian looking over her.
Intertitle:
"You have no obligation to love me, however from now on you will
do whatever I tell you."
"Since that day, I have been under his power."
"Follow me, madame, I will free you."
"I promise never to leave you."
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