On November 1, 1895 Max and Emil Skladanowsky demonstrated
their self-invented film projector the Bioskop at the Wintergarten music hall
in Berlin. This performance is considered the first presentation before a 'paying'
audience in Europe, pre-dated the first paying public display of the Lumiere
brothers' Cinematographe in Paris on 28 December of the same year. We will not
delve into the early developments of Messter, Gliewe, and Seeber, etc. but pick
up with the realization of the Skladanowsky Brothers the followng year, that
the Lumiere equipment was far superior, ending their exhibitions with their
own equipment.
Before the 1910s were the normal factuals, with scenes
throughout German, military parades, vaudeville acts and comic sketches. Approaching
1910, like other countries, films started changing to reflect dramas and family
situations such as: Detected by Her Dog (1910), The Two Suitors
(1910), Madeleine (1912), etc. Most of the German film producers
of this time, like Messter, Duskes, Continental-Kunstfilm, Deutsche Mutoskop
und Biograph, and Greenbaum were family businesses manufacturing optical and
photographic equipment. They entered into film production primarily as a way
of selling their equipment.
The two most important German producers of this time period
were Oskar Messter and Paul Davidson. Oskar Messter was a manufacturer that
was mostly interested in selling his equipment. Messter produced equipment for
the scientific fields, for military uses and lastly for entertainment. Even
though he was responsible for some of the major releases of that time, his interest
was too divided.
On the other hand, Paul Davidson, who originally was a
successful fashion manufacturer in Frankfurt, became obsessed with the entertainment
industry. He built the Allgemeine Kinematographen Gesellschaft Union Theater
(later called PAGU) and began with imported films from Pathe and Nordisk. In
1909, Davidson opened a 1200 seat theater at the Berlin Alexanderplatz and moved
into film production. In 1911, Davidson took Asta Nielsen and her husband-director
Urban Gad under contract, which were Nordisks top star and director.
Other German firms of Union, Biograph, and Bioscop are
primarily listed as distributors of French, Italian and Danish films, with the
dominant source of films for Germany coming from Nordisk Films in Denmark. Nordisk
was considered like a German producer with German and Danish film industries
intertwined as one.
The outbreak of World War I, it is estimated that only
about 14% of the films shown in German were German produced. At the beginning
of the war there were only 25 German production companies. The immediate boycott
of films from the Allied countries left a noticeable gap in the German market.
There were major losses in the German industry, BUT this also created and forced
new directions and opportunites. Some producers such and Davidson's PAGU initially
had tremendous losses, but restructured his production operation and it soon
turned into a major success.
Two other notable successes because of the war were: Erich
Pommer, who was a sales representative for the French studios of Gaumont and
Eclair. Pommer formed Decla (Deutsche Eclair) which went on to become a major
production company during the 20s, and at the begining of the sound era consolidated
his company with Ufa to become THE dominant production company in Germany. and
Joe May who created the Mia May Films, which became a huge success with his
detective series and melodramas featuring his wife as the star.
Several other new film producers started creating patrotic
films for the industry, but Nordisk also used the situation to expand. Nordisk
was already well equipped and turned all their attention to patriotic and sentimental
films, basically dominating the films shown at this time. By the end of 1916,
Nordisk had eliminated most of the major German competition except for Decla-Bioscop
and left a multitude of smaller independent production companies. Some records
indicate that over 100 small production companies were in existance at this
time.
In 1917, with some 2000 fixed theaters in Germany, the
government suddenly realized the potential of this new medium for the purpose
of propaganda and made some drastic changes. B.U.F.A. (Bild und Film Amt) was
created which began producing instructional films for the army, establishing
500 cinemas on the Western Front and 300 on the Eastern Front. Krupp and the
German banking industry also realized the potential and backed the formation
of Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft (Ufa) in December 1917. Ufa was created
by the merger of Messter, PAGU and the German Nordisk with Paul Davidson as
the head of production. With an initial funding of 25 million marks, Ufa quickly
dominated the German film industry absorbing B.U.F.A. and almost all of the
German production companies except for Decla-Bioscop. In their isolation, Ufa
used the American serials and detective films as patterns and created their
own self sufficient film industry, with Nordisk as the only outside supplier.
Initially films were still released using the individual production company
names, such as: BB-Film, Gloria, Joe May Film, Messter and PAGU with most of
them utilizing a new production studio in Babelsberg, which was to become the
head of Ufa.
Theater palaces sprang up all over Germany. The German
film industry had enjoyed a tremendous success during the war and seemed almost
insulated. Ufa pouring huge amounts of capital into their films and their actors.
By the end of the war, the German film industry was extremely stable and Ufa
dominated the industry.
Looking for relief from the war and inflation, the German
public turned to the film industry for entertainment. The German film industry,
being fairly well funded, responded with with a wide variety of films from directors
that were coming into their own, like Lubitsch, Lang, Wiene, and Frolich, Wilhelm,
Boese, Murnau, Pabst and Wegener. European allied countries had placed a moritorium
on German films. Soon distributors from other countries, primarily Scandinavian,
started offering allied countries films from unknown countries of origin. Scandinavian
film distributors, suddenly had a wider selection of quality films. This tactic
worked and soon the ban on German films became ridiculous. Erich Pommer became
deputy director of the Exportverband der Deutschen Filmindustrie, founded in
May 1920 to create and implement more German film exports.
German played a very important part of the creative years
but some of the contribution to the film industry is hard to establish because
of the distribution and tactics used to infiltrate and weaken the Allied moritorium.
But such films as Caligari and Madame Dubarry made huge impacts on the international
market.
With the Mark extremely unstable, Ufa was privatised in
1921 by a sale of the state's holdings to the Deutsche Bank and became the mainstay
of an industry that produced up to 600 feature films a year in the 1920s.
The privatization of Ufa had a devastating effect on the
German industry. Division into smaller production companies, poor management
and overspending soon led financial disaster. In 1923, Erich Pommer took control
of Ufa and consolidated it with his Decla-Bioscop. Pommer as head of German
film exports, tried to establish a common European film market dominated by
Germany films. In an attempt to take more of the European market share away
from the US, Pommer entered into a number of distribution and co-production
agreements under the banner 'Film Europe' to try to form a European film union.
These agreements over the next few years began to make a major impact and started
a decline in the domination of American films, would probably would have continued
the strengthen the entire European market share if it hadn't have been for the
advent of sound, which immediately eliminated 'Film Europe'.
Trying to strengthen the quality and exportability of
the German films had a backlash of high production costs and over-runs. By 1925,
the Ufa was in financial difficulties. German directors slowly moved to a more
international commercial appeal, and as financial problems escalated, many,
such as Ernst Lubitsch and Michael Curtiz, immigrated to America to continue
their career. The cost over-runs for Metropolis is the final financial blow
and Erich Pommer is relieved as head of Ufa.
In 1926, Deutsche Bank was prepared to move Ufa into
receivership so Ufa was forced to seek financial help outside of Germany and
the American studios (Paramount and MGM) came to the rescue. This financial
backing by American studios damaged the 'Film Europe' momentum that had been
gaining but didn't stop it. A co-operative company, Parufamet, was created to
insure importing and exporting of films between Germany and the US, which put
a crack the European union and in the long run was not beneficial to the German
film industry. Pommer left Germany and went to the US and was production manager
at Paramount for 2 Pola Negri .
In 1927, Pommer returned to Germany to help create a
stable and creative production environment again just in time to prepare for
the advent of sound. Although Ufa was still the center of the German film industry,
films from Ufa only occupied about 18% of the German screens. The smaller independent
studios such as Emelka, Deulig, Nero, Sudfilm and Terra took up the slack and
maintained stability, benefiting from the Film Europe connections.
While most European countries panicked and fought the
advent of sound, the German audiences welcomed it. Der Blaue Engel
(Blue Angel, 1930) by the Austrian director Josef von Sternberg was Germany's
first talkie (shot simultaneously in German and English) and made an international
star of Marlene Dietrich. Other early sound films of note include Pabst's Berlin
Alexanderplatz, and Lang's M (both in 1931). Sound production
and distribution were quickly taken up by the German film industry and by 1932
Germany had 3,800 cinemas equipped to play sound films.
In 1933, when the Nazis seized control of Germany, they
immediately realized the importance of the film industry, however, the German
film industry was largely Jewish. Within weeks, a ban on Jewish employment started
a mass exodus of German talent. Some 1,500 directors, producers, actors and
other film professionals emigrated, including such fey figures and Fritz Lang,
Marlene Dietrich, Peter Lorre, Billy Wilder and Erich Pommer, who basically
headed the German film industry.
However, even with this mass exodus, the German film industry
remained stable. The financial stabalization that Pommer had developed with
magnates such as Hugo Stinnes and industrial films such as I. G. Farben, quickly
moved to the National-Conservative Hugenberg. Hugenberg not only controlled
most of the major German newspapers but also the lion's share of radio and cinemas.
By June 1933, when the Reichsfilmkammer (Reich Chamber of Film) was founded,
the Nazis were in full control of the film industry and Ufa. Dr. Paul Joseph
Goebbels was placed in charge of the propaganda and over the German film industry.
Goebbels, who had received his PhD from the Heidelberg University majoring in
drama, LOVED the film industry. It is reported that Goebbels was so in love
with films, the he watched a movie every day, even at the height of the war.
He especially loved American films and had Ufa create of wide variety of films
including westerns using American films as a template. Leni Riefenstahl and
Luis Trenker were the most popular directors during the war.
In addition, as journalists were also organized as a division
of the Propaganda Ministry, Goebbels, who had been a journalist in his younger
days, was able to abolish film criticism in 1936, and replace it with Filmbeobachtung
(film observation); journalists could only report on the content of a film,
not offer judgement on its artistic or other worth..
With the German film industry now effectively an arm of
the totalitarian state, no films could be made that were not in accord with
the views of the Nazi regime. The import of foreign films was legally restricted
after 1936 and the German industry was nationalised in 1937 and had to make
up for the imported films.
Entertainment became increasingly important in the later
years of World War II, both for its propaganda value and its ability to keep
the populace entertained, when the cinema provided a distraction from Allied
bombing and a string of German defeats. The German box office soared as the
war continued with 1942-45 being record breaking attendance. To show the importance
that the Nazi regime placed on the cinema; in 1943, the film Kolberg
was started which was about Napoleon's seige at Kolberg. Whole army divisions
were diverted from the German military to play Napoleon's army. With drafts
of fresh extras continuously replacing those who had to return to the front
line. This production lasted until it's completion at the end of 1944 and has
the distinction of being the film with the largest number of soldiers ever used
as extras. 187,000 soldiers were used to create the last German epic. When it
was released in 1945, so many of the German theaters had been damaged by the
bombing that there were more German people IN the film than SAW the film that
year.
West Germany
When the war ended, both German film production and German
cinemas were in horrible condition. It would be several years before the German
film industry was able to produce anything of value. With the division of Germany,
the MPEA controlled the exported films into West Germany. The cinemas however
rebounded rapidly and by the end of the 40s, the pre-war attendance was exceeded.
As German film production started to increase in the early
50s, the industry was dominated by remakes of German classics from the 30s and
sentimental 'homeland' films, called Trummerfilm (literally "rubble film").
Despite the advent of a regular television service in the Federal Republic in
1952, and poorly made German films, cinema attendances continued to grow. In
1957, about 70% of all West German feature films employed with a director or
scripwriter who had been active under Goebbels. The creativity of the German
film industry was completely stagnated. As an incentive, the government would
award a state prize for the best film of the year. It became so bad that the
government awarded NO prize for the best film of 1961. Due to the dedication
of the German people however, during this time, German films accounted for 40%
of the total films shown.
In the 60s, as television applied more pressure to cinema
attendance worldwide. In 1953 there were only 10,000 television sets in West
Germany; by 1962 there were 7 million. Cinema attendance plummeted! By 1969
West German cinema attendance was less than a 25% of its 1956 attendance. As
a consequence of this, numerous German production and distribution companies
went out of business and cinemas across Germany closed their doors; the number
of screens in West Germany almost halved between the beginning and the end of
the 60s.
In 1965, the Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film (Young German
Film Committee) was set up by the Federal Ministry of the Interior to help support
new German films financially. Young directors were often dependent on money
from television and broadcasters sought TV premieres for their films which they
had supported financially, with theatrical showings occurring later. As a consequence,
such the films were unsuccessful at the cinema box-office and the program failed.
In 1974, another attempt was made to support film production
when the Film-Fernseh-Abkommen (Film and Television Accord) was agreed between
the Federal Republic's main broadcasters, ARD and ZDF, and the German Federal
Film Board (a government body created in 1968 to support film-making in Germany).
This agreement, which is still in existance today, provides for the television
companies to make available an annual sum to support the production of films
which are suitable for both theatrical distribution and television presentation.
Under the terms of the accord, films produced using these funds can only be
screened on television 24 months after their theatrical release. They may appear
on video or DVD no sooner than six months after cinema release. As a result
of the funds provided by the Film-Fernseh-Abkommen, German films, particularly
those of the New German Cinema, gained a much greater opportunity to enjoy box-office
success before they played on television.
This new movement saw German cinema return to international
critical significance for the first time since the end of the Weimar Republic.
Films such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Fear Eats the Soul
(1974), The NeverEnding Story (1984), and Paris, Texas (1984)
found international acclaim and critical approval. The internationally successful
Das Boot (1981), which still holds the record for most Academy Award
nominations for a German film (6).
In the mid-1980s the spread of videocassette recorders
and the arrival of private TV channels such as RTL Television provided new competition
for theatrical film distribution. Cinema attendance again dropped sharply. However,
video and private TV channels also wanted back catalogue of films on video which
brought new money into film finance and provided a new financial for film production.
East Germany
East German cinema profited from the fact that much of
the country's film infrastructure, notably the former UFA studios, lay in the
Soviet occupation zone. This enabled film production to restart more quickly
than in the Western sectors. The authorities in the Soviet Zone immediately
moved to re-establish the film industry in their sector and an order was issued
to re-open cinemas in Berlin in May 1945, within three weeks of German capitulation.
The film production company Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft
(DEFA) was founded on 17 May 1946 and took control of many of the production
facilities in the Soviet Zone which had been confiscated by order of the Soviet
Military Administration in Germany in October 1945. Theoretically a joint-stock
company, the majority interest in DEFA was held by the Socialist Unity Party
of Germany (SED) which became the ruling party of the German Democratic Republic
(GDR) after 1949.
Film-making in the GDR was always constrained and influenced
by the political conditions in the country and film-makers were the subject
to the changing whims and political positions of the SED leadership. Excluding
newsreels and educational films, only 50 films were produced between 1948 and
1953. This made it extremely difficult, for example, DEFA's full slate of contemporary
films from 1966 were denied distribution. The huge box-office hit The Legend
of Paul and Paula was initially threatened with a distribution ban because
of its satirical elements and supposedly only allowed a release on the say-so
of Party General Secretary Erich Honecker.
In the late 1970s numerous film-makers left the GDR for
the West as a result of restrictions on their work, among them director Egon
Günther and actors Angelica Domröse, Eva-Maria Hagen, Katharina Thalbach,
Hilmar Thate, Manfred Krug and Armin Mueller-Stahl. Many had been signatories
of a 1976 petition opposing the expatriation of socially critical singer-songwriter
Wolf Biermann and had had their ability to work restricted as a result.
In the final years of the GDR, distribution of foreign
films became more widespread and as a consequence, DEFA's importance was reduced.
In 1990, when the Berlin wall came down, everything changed. Following the consolidation
of Germany, DEFA was sold off by the Treuhand in 1992. From 1946 to 1992, in
total DEFA produced some 900 feature films during its existence as well as around
800 animated films and over 3000 documentaries and short films.
Current Status
In 1990, the consolidation of Germany also brought a consolidation
of 2 completely different forms of cinema. This consolidation brought new talent,
new freedoms, new production and new audiences. After a brief adjustment period,
a noticable surge in the German film industry continues to improve.
Germany has recently experienced an influx of independent
and underground films (mostly pertaining to the horror genre). The new decade
has also seen a resurgence of the German film industry, with bigger-budget films
and good returns at the German box office.
