Rubble to Krimi

After 1945 German cities were in ruins, the film industry was under Allied control and the audience wanted, understandably, to forget. This chapter follows West German cinema through its first two decades: the short wave of "rubble films" that looked at the damage directly, the comforting village films and costume dramas of the 1950s, the war films that asked awkward questions, the cheerful thrillers and westerns of the early 1960s, and the young film-makers who declared in 1962 that the old cinema was dead. East Germany has its own chapter (Chapter 5). Titles and dates are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.

Starting Again, 1945–1948

The Allied powers licensed new film companies and decided who could work. Cinemas reopened quickly, and the audience queued for any film that was available, including a large number of imported ones. The first German films after the war were made in the ruins, sometimes literally.

The Rubble Films

The Trümmerfilm ("rubble film") is the name given to the first postwar German films, set among the ruins and dealing with returning soldiers, homelessness, guilt and the question of what to do with former Nazis. They were few and not widely popular.

The 1950s: Escape and Recovery

By the early 1950s the economy was recovering, and so was the cinema. Cinema attendance rose during the decade and then fell as television spread, a pattern seen in many countries (check the peak). The films that dominated were mostly cheerful.

The Heimatfilm

The Heimatfilm ("homeland film") was the characteristic genre of the decade. Set in the Alps, the Black Forest or the heath, with folk costumes, village festivals, simple romances and beautiful landscapes, it offered a view of a Germany untouched by war. Examples often named include The Black Forest Girl (1950) and Green Is the Heath (1951) (check the dates). Critics later saw these films as escapism that avoided the recent past, while their defenders point out that audiences simply liked them, and that the genre offered an idea of belonging at a time when many people had lost their homes. Both views have some truth.

Other Popular Films

• The Sissi films. A trilogy about the young Empress Elisabeth of Austria, from 1955 to 1957, starring Romy Schneider. It was an Austrian production, but it was hugely popular in West Germany and is a perennial on German television (check). It shows how the German-language market crossed borders.
• Scandal and stars. The Sinner (1951), with Hildegard Knef, caused a public row over a brief nude scene and attracted protests from churches. Stars of the decade included Heinz Rühmann and Maria Schell.
• Dubbing. West Germany dubbed foreign films on a very large scale, and a distinctive dubbing industry grew up, which is a feature of German film culture to this day.

War Films and Difficult Questions

The 1950s also produced war films, many of which presented ordinary soldiers as victims and left out the regime's crimes. A few were more critical. The Bridge (1959), directed by Bernhard Wicki, about teenage boys sent to defend a bridge in the last days of the war, is often named as a serious anti-war film. The question of responsibility was not absent, but it was usually side-stepped, a point taken up in Chapter 10.

The Early 1960s: Krimi and Winnetou

At the beginning of the 1960s two series became very popular and were later remembered with great affection.

• The Edgar Wallace films. From 1959, German producers made a long series of thrillers based loosely on stories by the British crime writer Edgar Wallace. They were set in a foggy, theatrical London but filmed mostly in Germany, with a regular cast of actors and a mixture of menace and comedy. They are known by the German word Krimi (crime story). In Germany the Wallace films are better remembered than the author, a curiosity in the same spirit as Dinner for One (Chapter 1).
• The Karl May films. From 1962, adaptations of adventure novels about the American West, written by a German author who never visited it, featured the Apache chief Winnetou and his friend Old Shatterhand. They were filmed in the landscapes of what was then Yugoslavia, and starred the French actor Pierre Brice as Winnetou. These films were enormously popular (check).

The Oberhausen Manifesto (1962)

In February 1962, at the short-film festival in Oberhausen, a group of young film-makers published a statement declaring that the old German cinema was finished. Its best-known phrase is usually translated as "Daddy's cinema is dead". Twenty-six people are generally reported to have signed, including Alexander Kluge and Edgar Reitz, both of whom appear again in later chapters (check the number). They called for a new kind of film, independent of the old commercial system and with new financial and training support.

The statement did not change cinema overnight, but it started a series of changes: public funding for young directors, film schools and a shift to a more personal style. The result, within a decade, was the movement covered in Chapter 6.

Exercises

Next chapter: DEFA & the East German Screen, which turns to the other German state.