Sound and the Nazi Screen

This chapter covers two very different stretches of time: the last years of the Weimar Republic, when sound arrived and German film was still among the best in the world, and the years of National Socialist rule, from 1933 to 1945, when the film industry was brought under state control. The second part cannot be avoided in any history of German film. The chapter describes how the industry was controlled, what was made, what happened to the people who worked in it, and how the period ended. It does so in order to understand it, and not to admire it. Dates and titles are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.

The Arrival of Sound

Sound came to German cinema at the end of the 1920s, and by the early 1930s it had largely replaced silent films. For a time German studios were well placed, because they had strong technical expertise, a tradition of music and theatre and an audience across Europe. The change was disruptive, since it raised costs and the need for language-specific versions, and some silent-era stars did not make the transition.

The Blue Angel and M

The Blue Angel (1930) was directed by the Austrian-American Josef von Sternberg and starred Emil Jannings and the then little-known Marlene Dietrich, in an adaptation of a Heinrich Mann novel. Its success took Dietrich to Hollywood almost at once, and she became one of the great stars of the century. M (1931), Fritz Lang's first sound film, used sound as a story device: the murderer's whistled tune identifies him to a blind balloon seller. Both films are regularly cited as proof that German cinema, by 1931, had adapted to sound with confidence (check the dates).

1933: The Takeover

Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, and within months the new government set about controlling culture. Joseph Goebbels was made Minister of Propaganda and took charge of film. The film industry was reorganised under a state body, the Reich Film Chamber, and people had to be members in order to work (check the details). Several things followed.

• Exclusion. Jewish and political opponents of the regime were removed from the industry, which took away many of its leading writers, directors, producers and actors.
• Control of content. Scripts and finished films were subject to censorship, and the state could ban or order changes.
• Control of the industry. The government used funding and ownership to bring the studios under its influence, and UFA came under state control in the late 1930s (check), with the industry later combined into a single state-owned group.

What Was Made

The popular picture of Nazi film is of propaganda, and some propaganda was made. Two well-known documentaries by Leni Riefenstahl, one on the 1934 Nuremberg party rally and one on the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, were praised for their technical skill, and they remain controversial because that skill served the regime. Openly antisemitic films, such as Jud Süß (1940), were made and shown, and are among the clearest examples of film used as an instrument of persecution. Chapter 10 discusses how these films are treated today, including restrictions on showing some of them.

It would be a mistake, though, to think that all films were like this. Most of the industry's output was entertainment: comedies, romances, musicals, costume dramas and adventure films, many of them with popular stars. Some were designed to keep morale up during the war; one lavish colour fantasy, Münchhausen (1943), was made for UFA's anniversary (check). The regime saw entertainment as useful, a way of keeping the public content, and audiences were large. Historians still debate how far these films carried political messages. The honest answer is that some did openly, some did indirectly, and some had little.

The Exiles

Many of the best-known figures left Germany. Some were Jewish, some were political opponents, and some left because they did not want to work under the regime. The group includes directors such as Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder, the actor Peter Lorre, the producer Erich Pommer and, in her own way, Marlene Dietrich, who refused to return to Germany and later took American citizenship (check). Lang's departure is the subject of a well-known story about a meeting with Goebbels, which is often repeated and which Lang later described in a way that other accounts dispute, so it should be treated as an anecdote. Many exiles worked in Hollywood, in Britain and in other countries, and the effect was a transfer of skill that shaped other national cinemas. Others were killed in the persecution.

The End and the Aftermath

As the war turned against Germany, cinemas were closed, bombed or cut off. One of the last major productions was Kolberg (1945), a costly historical epic intended to encourage resistance, made in the last years of the war (check). After the surrender in 1945 the Allied powers took over the industry. They shut down the state structures, examined the careers of film-makers, and restricted the showing of films judged to be propaganda, a category that remains in use (check). Some figures, such as Riefenstahl and the director of Jud Süß, faced investigations and legal proceedings, with results that were argued about for decades.

Exercises

Next chapter: Rubble, Heimat & Krimi: West Germany 1945–1960s, which follows West German cinema after the war.