For the hundredth anniversary of the Weimar Republic starts in the German Historical Museum in Berlin, a retrospective of the cinema of the time. Curator Philipp Stiasny in the DW-talking about the modernity of the former film.
Rare shown can be found in the Weimar cinema and Drama and Comedy at the same time: “His wife, the Unknown.”
Deutsche Welle: The Weimar Republic is currently all the rage, because they try to draw political Parallels to Today. This was also the reason to launch the major retrospective of Weimar cinema now?
Philipp Stiasny: no, it is not our Intention, an explicitly political comment. To the question: why Now? Because the Weimar Republic in November, 100 years old. On the other, because it connects with the Weimar cinema, not only in professional circles, the big time of German cinema. Shortly after the 1. World war exploded the creative Potential, and from many countries and industries, all sorts of people came to Germany. There are millions of people flocked to the palaces nightly in the Cinema.
Nevertheless, we think the Weimar cinema is not normally of the very popular pleasure – but rather to the nightmare characters like Nosferatu and Dystopias, such as the Film “Metropolis”. These classics are known, from the television or from individual film screenings – “Metropolis” is part of world cultural heritage.
In addition, the Weimar cinema, however, was the “bread and butter”-the cinema, so very much more to the life of the facing films, genre films, thrillers, adventure films, many, many comedies. So, as it is today: The audience goes to the cinema, to have fun and laugh also. These films we want to in our series on equal footing with the classics.
Murnau’s “Nosferatu”Film is one of the classics of the Weimar cinema
Even the big, famous Directors were involved in?
In the case of the well-known Directors such as Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, we sometimes forget that these names should be perceived not only as a precursor to the famous auteur of the 1960s and 1970s. So, auteur, who had complete creative control over your product, had a good time there also.
Lang, Lubitsch and the others have also worked in an industry – the film industry. Fritz Lang, for example, was not set to the genre of cinema to ever critical. We will show in the retrospective of his earliest films, the two-parter “The spider” of 1919/20.
We have announced the Film in the program book as “Indiana Jones avant la lettre”. Between a Fritz Lang at the end of the 1910s, and a Steven Spielberg of the 70s, a lot of water is down the Rhine flowed, but certain forms have not changed all that much. Of course, it has changed the effort in film-making, the technical possibilities, but the grammar of the film remained the same
The work of Fritz Lang has been restored to large Parts and to have on DVD
And so, like a Fritz Lang genre cinema in a very entertaining and fun Patterns is arrested, the same is true for many other filmmakers, are today forgotten, who were at that time but very well known. The Star of the movies, especially with female Stars, comedies, thrillers, Thriller, i.e. Genres that are still very common.
Why has developed, the Weimar cinema at the time, such a beam power?
A final explanation of why that was, especially in Germany, is difficult to answer. A reason, however, is: Germany was one of the entertainment industry and the Technical very open-minded country. You can not generalize, this is not for the German province, but it is valid for Berlin and Brandenburg. The Studios in Babelsberg were the centre of the German film. The people came from abroad to Babelsberg and Berlin.
How is this explained?
We have provided the series with a subtitle: “silent films without borders in Berlin and Babelsberg”. Of course, there were the national boundaries at this time. But there was the language barrier. In the silent film, you had to keep, no long dialogues. Who wanted to be in this industry, and something from the film-making mind that is not failed because he has spoken, for example English with a Hungarian accent, or Polish. It was a very international business here in Berlin. The film industry was open that something could and ideas have brought.
You can compare this with today’s situation in the movie scene?
This was something completely different than it is today. Of course, there are today in Germany and Europe, a lot of filmmakers who travel around and are multilingual. A German movie that will be shown, for example, at the Berlinale, is not necessarily a German-born film-maker.
The Weimar cinema also put on great entertainment: the pirate movie, “Pietro’s the Corsair”
At the time, but that was in a whole other magnitude of the case. A significant proportion of the film-makers, made in Babelsberg film, came from Berlin. The first came to Berlin, might have found a new home, but have become in the movie industry. So The Added, of the outsider who has used his Chance.
Can you name some examples?
Ernst Lubitsch is one example. Lubitsch was born in Germany, but his father came from Belarus, he has always spoken with an accent. He managed to be in Germany, a Top film Director. This was also the case for many others. Alexander Korda, who ruled in the 1930s the British film industry virtually single-handedly, made in the Weimar cinema, and before that he was in Hungary and in Vienna, and there, because of his socialist sympathies thrown out. In Germany, Korda has made great movies before he went to England.
Germany is not only a tankless water heater for many international careers. Many have remained here because they found that there was a lot of curiosity, that there were people here that could do something. And there was the legal and economic framework conditions.
In Germany, as in Hollywood, is equally successful: Ernst Lubitsch
The Weimar cinema had then a great international reputation, especially after Hollywood. And this process has, of course, long before 1933….
Ernst Lubitsch has been poached at the beginning of the 1920s, from Hollywood. None of that has gone to this time to Hollywood, has perceived at the time as a step that is irreversible. Lubitsch has received a contract from Twentieth Century Fox and most probably, in three to four years, he is back in Germany.
That was not so, of course, had something to do with the political developments in 1933, the national socialists came to Power. It had to do with the fact that Hollywood took over at the time, with speed and with distance from the market domination in terms of cinema in the world. Germany was the only strong competitor in the field of cinema.
What brought the filmmakers of the Weimar cinema in Hollywood?
The have brought their creativity to Hollywood. Example, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau: He stood with films like “Nosferatu” and “The last man” is absolutely at the top of the Creative and tech-savvy filmmakers.
Murnau knew all the refinements of the technology and applied it, as it is here in “The last man”
Murnau has employed at the time, so what you can do with Film. He has asked yourself how you can lead the Medium to its limits. To make it up to the point, films that get by without language. So even without the title, where everything is about light, Gesture, movement, even the movement of the camera, is developed. This incredibly creative man has shaped Hollywood, a whole-school when Fox took over the “Murnau-style”.
There were, however, but also a kind of counter-movement, a few film-makers have been, from Hollywood to Babelsberg.
There was also the other side. Louise Brooks, for example, came to Germany and made by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in two films, “Pandora’s box” was one of them. This was a great film, a work of art, what has been understood at the time, none really. It was much too political, and this mixture of Sex and submission fantasies, murder and passion. In addition, a very clever analysis of the then-gender relations: men, make an image of the woman and how the woman who does not fit this image, is pathetic.
There are other examples, Anna May Wong came to Germany, an Asian-born American, two, three other Stars. But of course, the movement from European countries to Germany, from the East, from Warsaw or Vienna. And if these filmmakers then have the possibility to result in, the went then on to Hollywood.
The interview was conducted by Jochen Kürten.
The film series “Weimar International silent film without borders in Berlin and Babelsberg, 1918 – 1929” will be held from 1.11.2018 to 2.2.2019 in the zeughauskino of the German Historical Museum. The films are accompanied by music from a number of internationally well-known film musicians. The series, by Philipp Stiasny and Frederik Long-curated, was funded by the capital cultural Fund.
The pictured Box with six digitally restored films by Fritz Lang is released in the DVD-a provider of “the universe of the Film” in cooperation with “Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau-Stiftung”.