The German exhibitors depended for a livelihood on a flow of films made in Denmark prior to the outbreak of the first World War and even beyond. Few local directors would make any significant mark, although Richard Oswald, Max Mack and Max Reinhardt all came to the cinema around the year 1910. When the Germans at last made their first important film, revealing the themes that would become somewhat of a fixation for the years to follow, it was indeed directed by the Danish born Stellan Rye. It would be the first version of Der Student von Prag (The Student of Prague,1913) which would be seen by Victor Sjostorm upon its release and would leave an indelible impression on him. The Student of Prague was a reflection of the surreal, intense vision of the actor and co-writer Paul Wegener (1874-1948), who had himself acted under the esteemed Reinhardt and drew upon classic works of such writers as E.T.A. Hoffman and Edgar Allen Poe and on the Faustian legend, as well as Robert Louis Stevenson's popular work Dr Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, to illustrate the story of a man whose soul is fatally divided between the poles of two antithetical personalities.
Wegener would act and help direct Der Golem in 1913, which also demonstrated the penchant for the fantastic that was to distinguish German cinema in the 1920's. Seven years later he remade the movie, with abundant resources and power.
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| Don't turn around wo-oh-oh, Der Golem is in town wo-oh-oh |
At the height of World War I, General Ludendorff devised a new office under the High Command to co-ordinate photography and film, as contribution to the war effort. This initiative led to the merging of most of the main film companies under one organization. Ufa (Universum Film AG). In the wake of military defeat, the Reich abandoned all shares and control passed on to the hands of the Deutsche Bank.
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| Siegfried would Kracauer that celluloid case. |
Noted film theorist and sociologist Siegfried Kracauer, in his seminal study of the German cinema from Caligari to Hitler, has emphasized the mood of intellectual excitement that swept through Germany after the Armistice, a mood described only as aufbruch (start,departure). The avant-garde Expressionist painting and enthusiasm for the film as a medium were all as much to the fore in Germany as they were in the Soviet Union.
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| Puttin' On The Fritz |
The omens were favorable, Ufa with its seemingly boundless financial resources, could offer the filmmakers every facility they could dream of and during the last years of the war several directors had emerged, often working with one another, stimulating each other and responding to the atmosphere of revolutionary optimism. Lupu Pick and Emil Jannings were prominent among players Joe May who was a specialist in the field of thrillers, worked from the screenplays that were penned by a young Viennese - Fritz Lang. Both E.A. Dupont and Arthur Robison had proved their mettle as true auteurs and then there was the one and the only Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947).
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| I know that Lubitsch touch anywhere! A Scene from Madame Dubarry (1919) |
And Lubitsch like any other young figure of the German film world at the time, began his career by working with Max Reinhardt in the theatre. He had become an adroit and popular comedian, and by the end of the war would be established as his own director. But his real catapult to fame coincided with the expansion of Ufa. Madame Dubarry (Passion,1919) was the inaugural Ufa spectacular that screened in the showcase cinemas of Berlin, Ufa Palast and Zoo. One of Lubitsch's proteges was the tantalizing thespian Pola Negri, who had already smoldered in his 1918 version of Bizet's Carmen, but who reached her apotheosis as a vamp in 1920's One Arabian Night. Lubitsch's devastating send-up of the Italian epic genre, with Negri as the vixen du jour, who dances her way to dusty death at the hands of a debauched sheik. Lubitsch's gifts encompassed also the traditional German operetta, and he brought an elegant touch to the comedies Die Austernprinzessin (My Lady Margarine,1919). In a few years, Lubitsch would expatriate to America, transplanting his singular satirical talent to American soil and establishing himself with enviable ease.