Why German Film?

Every New Year's Eve, millions of Germans sit down to watch a short black-and-white British comedy sketch, Dinner for One, that most people in Britain have never heard of. That one oddity says a lot about German television: it has its own habits, its own favourites and its own way of borrowing from elsewhere. German film is better known abroad, but in a patchier way: a few silent classics, some famous war films, a handful of recent prize-winners. This opening chapter explains why the whole subject deserves a course, sets out what the course covers, and shows how to read the sources. It also says how the course handles the Nazi years, which cannot be avoided. Dates and titles are given from general knowledge and checked as each chapter is written.

Why German Film & Television?

Germany was one of the first countries to show films to a paying public, built one of the largest studios in the world, produced some of the most influential films of the 1920s, and then saw its film industry used by a dictatorship, wrecked by war and split in two. After 1945 it rebuilt, in different ways in West and East, and it later produced a new generation of directors who became famous abroad. Television followed its own path, shaped by a decision after the war that broadcasting should be organised by regions and kept away from central government. Few national screen cultures contain so much history in one place, which is why this course treats film and television together.

A One-Paragraph Version

Public film shows in Berlin in 1895 are often cited among the earliest in the world (check the claim), and the studio UFA, formed in 1917 and based at Babelsberg near Berlin, became a centre of the film industry in the 1920s. The Nazi government took control of the industry in the 1930s. After 1945 West Germany and East Germany developed separate film and television systems, with the East German state studio DEFA on one side and a regional public broadcaster on the other. New German Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s brought international attention, and since reunification in 1990 German films and series have been successful abroad again. These are the basic facts, and each is developed in later chapters.

What the Course Covers

Scope: Germany at the Centre

The course is built around Germany. German-language film is bigger than Germany, since Austria and Switzerland have their own film industries and many film-makers moved between the three countries. Where a figure or film is inseparable from the German story, the course names it and says where it comes from. It does not give Austrian or Swiss film a strand of its own.

Two States on One Screen

From 1949 to 1990 there were two German states, West Germany (the Federal Republic) and East Germany (the German Democratic Republic), and each made films and television for its own audience and its own purposes. West German cinema was commercial and later state-supported; East German cinema was run by the state studio DEFA. Television in the West was organised by regional broadcasters and a national second channel, and in the East it was a state service. Many viewers in the East could receive Western television, which makes the story more complicated still. Chapters 4, 5 and 7 take these parallel histories in turn.

Handling the Nazi Years

Record, Reputation and Memory

Film history is full of claims that sound firmer than they are. Three kinds of claim need different handling.

Where to Watch and Read

• Film archives and festivals. The German film archives and the major festivals, above all the Berlin International Film Festival (the Berlinale, founded in West Berlin in the early 1950s; check the year), publish programmes and histories.
• Broadcaster libraries. The public broadcasters keep online libraries of older programmes and have documentaries on their own history.
• Restored classics. Many silent and early sound films have been restored and released on disc and online, often with commentary.
• Books and documentaries. Look for histories of German cinema and of German broadcasting, which put individual films in context.
• Subtitles. Most of what is discussed is available with English subtitles. Dubbing, which is very common in Germany for foreign films, is a topic of its own.

Exercises

Next chapter: Expressionism & the UFA Years, which looks at the silent classics and the studio that made them.