biographycinema

Mute and loud

The myth of the silent

In 1975 François Truffaut titled Le grand secret the section of Les films de ma vie "dedicated to directors who started their career with silent cinema and continued it with sound" (trad. It. 1978, p. 33) . Although the author does not bother to reveal to the reader the exact nature of this secret, simply stating that the filmmakers in question "have something more", his assumption recalls a widespread idea in the early years of sound among detractors of the new invention and made its own by a substantial part of subsequent criticism and historiography: that according to which, for cinema, the acquisition of sound technology on an aesthetic level would have represented a loss, an impoverishment. The nostalgic myth of silent cinema, lived as a sort of state of Edenic perfection of the seventh art abruptly erased from the original sin of sound, it also explicitly resurfaces in recent studies. This is the case, for example, of the essay by N. Burch dedicated to the "origins of the cinematographic language", in which the author writes: "With the advent of synchronized sound, cinema, in its cultural dimension, gained new means of expression; in its social dimension, new means of control or mobilization. But there was also something that was lost. The economic interests that led to the sudden irruption of the sound brutally interrupted, in fact, a 'silent language' in the propulsive phase [ ...]. Cinema also lost something because the logocentrism of the early 1930s confused and deeply demoralized a based on a Manichean contrast between art and industry - or between style and technique - which is completely inadequate for the study of a phenomenon such as the transition from silent to sound. While it is necessary to strongly reject the anachronistic and false prejudice of an alleged superiority of the silent over the sound, justified in the past by a lack of knowledge of cinema before the thirties. If, until the 1960s, professionals had access to an extremely restricted and selected corpus of undisputed masterpieces (the classics of German Expressionism, the Soviet school, the Hollywood slapstick comedy or the French avant-garde), the

Mute / sound / speech

A strong terminological uncertainty emerges from the comparison between the different languages ​​in the naming of the two objects that in Italian it is customary to designate through the adjectives mute and sonorous. If the Anglo-Saxons, by adopting the opposition silent / sound (silent / sound), discriminate the presence or absence of sound in general, the French-speakers instead favor the word among the other components of the soundtrack, contrasting the silent film with the spoken film (muet / parlant). Less consistently, the other main European languages ​​opt for an undue synthesis between the two dichotomies, combining two terms - silent and sonorous - in the same oppositional pair which, from the semantic point of view, are not strictly speaking opposites (unless you want to to interpret the adjective mute in a broad sense as void of sound, and therefore silent): this is the case of Italian, but also of Spanish (mudo / sonoro), German (Stummfilm / Tonfilm) and Russian (nemoj fil′m / zvukovoj fil′m). Opposing silence to the sound, the couple proposed by the Anglo-Saxon lexicon immediately raises its side to a sensible objection: from the earliest times the cinema screenings were almost always accompanied by acoustic events produced live (music, words, noises), so that the notion of a silent show seems to be reduced to a pure abstraction, which finds almost no confirmation in the concrete experience of the public. By contrasting the synchronous dialogue with its absence, the couple used by the French instead emphasizes an irrefutable historical datum, namely the absolute primacy in the hierarchy of acoustic elements conquered since the early years by the verbal element. However, it too does not satisfy for its excessive verbocentrism, which reduces the whole novelty of the sound revolution to the introduction of dialogue, neglecting the decisive contribution in many cases of non-verbal sound. Moreover, director René Clair was fully aware of this, and in a 1929 article he wrote: "The sounding hopes of the partisans of speechless cinema concentrate on the sound film. They hope to ward off through it the danger represented by the advent of talkies. They want to believe that these noises and sounds that accompany the animated image will sufficiently distract the crowd from demanding dialogue, offering them a

Thus, if the silent / sound opposition establishes a watershed between two epochs in the history of the seventh art, at the same time marking the advent of a new type of cinema, the sound / spoken pair, although today fallen into disuse, underlines to its the existence within it of two different theoretical-practical orientations - or, if you wish, of two different aesthetics - present since the time of its appearance: on the one hand a majority 'current', best represented by the classic cinema of the thirties-forties, which chooses to subordinate any other sound to the needs of the verb, making it the structural center of gravity of the visual and sound staging, on the other a minority trend, but not for this negligible (think of a film like 2001: a space odyssey, 1968, 2001: a space odyssey,by Stanley Kubrick), which tends to resize the word and to accord equal dignity to the non-verbal components of the soundtrack, inspired by a more authentically audiovisual cinema model.

A problematic discriminant

The silent / sonorous opposition introduces a completely specific fracture in the short history of the seventh art, tracing a distinction between two epochs that has no equivalent in the evolutionary path of the previous arts and that sometimes interferes in an embarrassing way with the traditional periodization criteria commonly adopted by historians. It emphasizes, above all, the peculiar and decisive role played in the evolution of cinema by technological innovation: in modern architecture itself, the art that is closest to it in this respect, the advent of new technologies and new materials has not split two distinct classes of objects in our perception, as silent films and sound films are also for the more uneducated spectator.

The same can be said in the cinematographic field about any other technological innovation before or after the advent of sound, including the affirmation of color: although in the public perception the notion of black and white film, in a similar way to that of silent film, defines a specific object formally different from the film tout court (sound and color) and proper to an earlier stage, which has become obsolete, of the evolution of cinema, the slow and gradual character of the transition between the two systems does not allow a periodization of the history of the seventh art on chromatic bases. However, what distinguishes the advent of sound from any other technological transformation introduced in cinema is not only the rapid and definitive character of its affirmation, with the limited and datable historical caesura that this change entails, but also (and above all) the peculiar nature of this innovation. In fact, the specific feature of the opposition between mute and sound is that of operating on both the synchronic and the diachronic levels, dividing the history of cinema into two epochs while isolating two different 'semiotic objects'. Where the invention of panchromatic film, Technicolor, 3D cinema or Cinemascope (like Dolby for sound) is limited to enhancing the expressive and mimetic abilities of the cinematographic image, the advent of sound introduces into the cinema a new component, modifying the perceptual definition of the medium - which has become an audiovisual visual - and consequently its semiotic status,

It is therefore not surprising that such an unprecedented phenomenon was bizarre and scandalous for the pioneers of cinema theory, who tried to adapt the principles of traditional aesthetics to the needs of the new medium of expression. For example. already in 1916 Hugo Münsterberg, criticizing the first attempts to synchronize the projector with the phonograph, maintains that the presence of speech "annoys as much as the color in the drapery of a marble statue", while he says about the use of noisers during the projections of silent films: "We could, in the same way, to improve the painting of a rose garden, sprinkle it with rose perfume, so that whoever looks at it can also smell it" (trad. it. 1980, pp. 110-12) . Concept also confirmed by Rudolf Arnheim, who still in 1933, introduction of sound as an improvement or a completion of the silent film. This is just as absurd as arguing that the invention of three-dimensional oil painting would represent progress on the principles of painting known so far "(in Arnheim 1957; trad. It. 1960, 1983², p. 96). introduction of sound as an improvement or a completion of the silent film. This is just as absurd as arguing that the invention of three-dimensional oil painting would represent progress on the principles of painting known so far "(in Arnheim 1957; trad. It. 1960, 1983², p. 96).

The sound in the historiographic reflection

What has been the approach of reflection on cinema towards the transition from silent to sound? By schematising a lot, it can be said that the debate of the time was inclined to emphasize the differences existing between the two means of expression, whereas the most recent studies instead tend to underline their elements of continuity, with the effect of reducing at least in part the 'revolutionary' scope of the introduction of sound. Thus, if at the end of the 1920s the French critic Alexandre Arnoux wondered if the 'wild invention' would have provoked a second birth of cinema or the definitive death of the seventh art, even the less numerous apologists of sound described his advent as a rupture clear and radical with the previous tradition. Over time, however, the protagonists of the debate gradually tended to attenuate the idea of ​​a radical estrangement between the two periods, reading the introduction of the acoustic element in the context of a general evolutionary process of the cinematographic language. Thus, if still in 1949 Béla Balázs stated that the sound film does not constitute "an organic evolution of the silent film", but rather a new art form "that has different laws and obtains different effects" (trad. It. 1952, p. 259), about ten years earlier Sergej M. Ejzenštejn, in Montaž '37, had developed an ambitious diachronic model that accounted for the development of the seventh art from its initial stage (the cinema 'of shooting from a single point') to the final one, represented by the sound film, passing through the editing cinema of the 1920s (or 'successive shooting points'). As part of this process, the acquisition of the acoustic component is a necessary step in the evolution of cinema, described through the three-stage model (thesis / antithesis / synthesis) of the Hegelian dialectic. Here then that, according to the Soviet director, while the discovery of the montage had led to the fragmentation of the single plane of the Lumière views in a succession of shots, the introduction of sound - interpreted at the time by many as a regression to primitive static - realized in reality, at the same time, the overcoming and synthesis of the two previous phases in a new dynamic unit, based on the 'vertical' relationship between the soundtrack and the visual column. of the points of recovery that follow '). As part of this process, the acquisition of the acoustic component is a necessary step in the evolution of cinema, described through the three-stage model (thesis / antithesis / synthesis) of the Hegelian dialectic. Here then that, according to the Soviet director, while the discovery of the montage had led to the fragmentation of the single plane of the Lumière views in a succession of shots, the introduction of sound - interpreted at the time by many as a regression to primitive static - realized in reality, at the same time, the overcoming and synthesis of the two previous phases in a new dynamic unit, based on the 'vertical' relationship between the soundtrack and the visual column. of the points of recovery that follow '). As part of this process, the acquisition of the acoustic component is a necessary step in the evolution of cinema, described through the three-stage model (thesis / antithesis / synthesis) of the Hegelian dialectic. Here then that, according to the Soviet director, while the discovery of the montage had led to the fragmentation of the single plane of the Lumière views in a succession of shots, the introduction of sound - interpreted at the time by many as a regression to primitive static - realized in reality, at the same time, the overcoming and synthesis of the two previous phases in a new dynamic unit, based on the 'vertical' relationship between the soundtrack and the visual column. acquisition of the acoustic component is a necessary step in the evolution of cinema, described through the three-stage model (thesis / antithesis / synthesis) of the Hegelian dialectic. Here then that, according to the Soviet director, while the discovery of the montage had led to the fragmentation of the single plane of the Lumière views in a succession of shots, the introduction of sound - interpreted at the time by many as a regression to primitive static - realized in reality, at the same time, the overcoming and synthesis of the two previous phases in a new dynamic unit, based on the 'vertical' relationship between the soundtrack and the visual column. acquisition of the acoustic component is a necessary step in the evolution of cinema, described through the three-stage model (thesis / antithesis / synthesis) of the Hegelian dialectic. Here then that, according to the Soviet director, while the discovery of the montage had led to the fragmentation of the single plane of the Lumière views in a succession of shots, the introduction of sound - interpreted at the time by many as a regression to primitive static - realized in reality, at the same time, the overcoming and synthesis of the two previous phases in a new dynamic unit, based on the 'vertical' relationship between the soundtrack and the visual column. described through the three-stage model (thesis / antithesis / synthesis) of the Hegelian dialectic. Here then that, according to the Soviet director, while the discovery of the montage had led to the fragmentation of the single plane of the Lumière views in a succession of shots, the introduction of sound - interpreted at the time by many as a regression to primitive static - realized in reality, at the same time, the overcoming and synthesis of the two previous phases in a new dynamic unit, based on the 'vertical' relationship between the soundtrack and the visual column. described through the three-stage model (thesis / antithesis / synthesis) of the Hegelian dialectic. Here then that, according to the Soviet director, while the discovery of the montage had led to the fragmentation of the single plane of the Lumière views in a succession of shots, the introduction of sound - interpreted at the time by many as a regression to primitive static - realized in reality, at the same time, the overcoming and synthesis of the two previous phases in a new dynamic unit, based on the 'vertical' relationship between the soundtrack and the visual column.

But it was above all the French critic André Bazinche after the Second World War, identifying the inspiring principle of the invention of cinema with the myth of integral realism, he described the advent of sound not as an involutionary process, but as an enrichment in accordance with the nature of the medium . Bazin's reflection certainly had the merit of clearing the field of the theoretical debate from any residual prejudice about an alleged superiority of the silent film. His gesture, fully redeeming the sound film, however, paradoxically ended up denying every specific trait and every radical novelty. Thus, in one of his most famous writings, the French critic wonders "if the technical revolution introduced by the sound track corresponds exactly to an aesthetic revolution", to conclude that "

From the fifties onwards, in the studies on cinema, the idea of ​​substantial continuity took the place of that of a radical discontinuity. Thus, for example, instead of the mute / sound discriminant, historiography now prefers to appeal to the primitive / classical opposition. Sometimes quite explicitly, as in D. Bordwell's work on the Hollywood style, sometimes in a more implicit way, as in N. Burch's work on early cinema, classicism is presented as a homogeneous continuum that includes the last fifteen years of the silent and the first thirty years of sound, building a solid bridge - to quote Bazin again - "above the fissure of the thirties". Continuity or change then? Evidently the question does not allow a clear answer in one sense or the other. L' the advent of sound cinema did not involve, as some feared, a total reset of the technical-stylistic codes developed during the silent era. In most cases the films continued to be made by directors, operators and editors who were 'literate' in the 1920s, who adapted their skills to meet new sound needs. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that sound technology has transformed the language of cinema more profoundly than Bordwell says: the contribution of the word, in addition to revolutionizing the acting style of the actor, has increased the narrative resources of cinema; the synchronous sound has imposed its own times and rhythms, modifying the visual staging; music, no longer subject to the precariousness of live performance, has become a stable component of the film; the noises further strengthened the illusion of reality created by the moving images. The entire creative process, from the script to the editing, has undergone profound changes.

Recording of sound on a medium

The historiographic cliché that cinema would always have been sound is likely to be misleading insofar as it does not take into account the capital innovation introduced by the Hollywood industry in the late 1920s: the fixation of cinematographic sound on a recording medium synchronized with the visual column , a technological transformation destined to modify the same mediological definition of cinema. Although in the silent period the film show normally provided for the presence of a sound integration performed in the room, provided primarily by the music, but sometimes also by noises or by a verbal comment, it is difficult to maintain that these elements were permanently part of the film intended as a work or as a text. First in silent cinema the image and sound participated in two profoundly different forms of textuality. Contrary to the visual column, a closed form fixed once and for all, the sound accompaniment was instead subject to the variable conditions of the live performance and dragged part of the show on the terrain of the performing arts. Secondly, this accompaniment maintained an extremely precarious relationship with the images that it commented: the music itself, an almost mandatory presence since the time of the Lumière brothers, could in principle change every time depending on the musician's decisions or the economic availability of the operator (and this even when the film had an 'official' score). Although so important in promoting the enjoyment of silent films, underlining the rhythm of editing, by intensifying the emotional content of the images and keeping the audience's attention alive, live accompaniment was not a full part of the cinematographic work. Simplifying a lot, it is possible to define the silent film as a visual text that provided, at the moment of its presentation to the public, a sound integration.Only the use by the cinema of recording technologies put an end to the gap existing in the period of the silent between text film and film show. The sound - first recorded on phonograph discs (as foreseen by the Vitaphone system, adopted in 1926 by Warner Bros.), then impressed directly on the film according to the 'optical' method, which would have imposed itself universally in the 1930s - was subtracted from the variable conditions of the live performance to share the same reproductive status as the visual column. Permanently and permanently synchronized with the images, the soundtrack finally became a full component of the work. When it is said that the cinematographic show was from the beginning audiovisual, it must therefore be specified that the filmic text became so only in the late 1920s. Historiography has so far not insisted sufficiently on the importance of this double gesture of inclusion and exclusion - of appropriation of the sound component and definitive expulsion from the hall of any residual presence of performative activities - through which the new cinema of the thirties definitively repudiated the spectacular, mainly popular, practices with which he had had intense trade in his previous phase. Moreover, the fixation of the sound on a recording medium completes a broader process that began much earlier and tended towards a progressive standardization of the cinema show.

The advent of the sound must therefore be interpreted first of all as the arrival point of a more general process tending to smooth the gap between text and spectacle provided by the silent system in favor of textual closure, stripping the body of the film of all elements that are not technically reproduced or attached to it: the artisan coloring of the film, the verbal comment by the barker, the musical accompaniment performed in the auditorium, the use of noisers borrowed from the theater, the presentations and live monologues that still in the 1920s preceded the screenings in first-run theaters and which would have been replaced by equally filmed material: trailers, news, shorts, cartoons.

Music, noise, word

The recording and synchronization of the live musical accompaniment of the 'silent' projections certainly did not in itself constitute a radical innovation. Indeed, it is fair to say that the massive use of the orchestra by sound cinema was a legacy of the silent period: if it had not had thirty years of intense union with scores, cue sheets and room musicians, perhaps the new cinematographic means would have reserved to music the marginal role it occupied in other forms of contemporary entertainment, such as the word theater focused on acting and text. Subjected by the introduction of dialogue to the tyranny of real time, the sound film, as M. Chion observes, "

With the advent of sound, the presence and role of music seemed to undergo a reduction and strengthening at the same time. A reduction because the continuous accompaniment of the silent screenings - re-proposed in recorded form in Alan Crosland's Don Juan (1926; Don Giovanni and Lucrezia Borgia) and in the other post-synchronized films distributed in the following years - aimed at disappearing almost entirely in the first talkies , to then be reintroduced in the 1930s with the discontinuous presence of the classic sound, where music normally intervenes only on some sequences, while in others it is forced to remain silent to give space to speech or noises. A reinforcement because the sound reproduced, in addition to ensuring a more exact synchronism between images and music and therefore a greater adherence of the score to the action, it bound its fate inextricably to that of the film. It should therefore come as no surprise that sound cinema has encouraged much more than silent films profitable collaborations between talented filmmakers and composers (think of the union Ejzenštejn-Prokof′ev, Hitchcock-Herrmann, Antonioni-Fusco, Fellini-Rota, Leone-Morricone or Burton-Elfman), contributing to an overall improvement in the quality and effectiveness of the scores. In fact, despite its continuous presence, which totally suppressed the silence, the accompanying music for silent films - as Chion explains - was actually organized in an episodic or 'sequential' way. In other words, it consisted in a compilation of autonomous pieces (no matter if original or pre-existing) intended to comment on the sequences of the film, one after the other. On the contrary, in sound cinema the scores, although discontinuous, began to obey more complex compositional rules, which contemplate repetitions and variations of recurring themes: think of the Wagnerian technique of the leitmotiv, introduced in film music in the 1930s by Max Steiner and by other Hollywood musicians (seesoundtrack , composer , music ).

If in sound cinema extradiegetic music (external to action) inherits some functions of the live musical accompaniment of silent cinema, on the contrary the possibility of making full use of diegetic musical events (i.e. belonging to the space in which move the characters of the film) is certainly the main innovation introduced in this field since the advent of sound. Already in The jazz singer (1927; The jazz singer) the director Alan Crosland exhibits the perfect lip synchronicity between the voice of the protagonist Al Jolson and the images that resume his singing performances, leaving immediately to understand the unprecedented possibilities of development of the musical genre in its many variations (operetta, musical, concert film, opera film etc. ) and opening the doors of the studios to a new group of actors-singers divided between Hollywood, show business and the record industry. Moreover, it is known that the producers of Warner Bros., unaware of the potential of speech, initially thought of the Vitaphone system as a sort of visual extension of the phonograph, that is, a technology to record and disseminate musical performance. If the narrative model of fiction, enhanced by the introduction of the dialogue, would have had - as is well known - the first shorts made in 1926 by the studio, filming performances by concert performers and singers, revealed a possibility precluded to silent cinema, that is that of reproducing the musical event (it doesn't matter if 'authentic' or simulated) in its full audiovisual dimension.

In 1930 the Hungarian theorist B. Balázs argued that sound cinema would be able to introduce us to the acoustic environment better, in the same way that silent film had deepened and refined our knowledge of the visible. "The sound film - he wrote - will discover the acoustic world that surrounds us. [...] From the roar of the waves to the noise of the factories, to the monotonous melody of the autumn rain on the windows, up to the creaking of the floor of an abandoned room" (trad. it. 1975, p. 141). Apparently some products of those years bode well: if the silent films synchronized afterwards were enriched with sound effects to make up for the absence of the word, the most inventive directors attempted to mitigate the verbiage of the first talkies by enhancing the size of the noise in some passages; and there were even those who, like the director Raoul Walsh for the western In old Arizona (1929; Night of treason), co-directed with Irving Cummings, challenged the difficulties determined at the time by taking in the outdoors in order to obtain a realistic rendering of the ambient sounds. However, Balázs' prophecy would have been unfulfilled for more than two decades. In fact, in classical cinema the sovereignty attributed to the word, together with the tendency of music to cover almost all the non-dialogue passages and the presence of some objective technological limitations, would have ended up relegating the non-verbal and non-musical element to a completely subordinate position and neglected, where stylization and routine would have reigned supreme, discouraging the original research for a long time. If some important but marginal strands are excluded (such as that of animated cinema, characterized by an inexhaustible inventiveness in the use of sound effects), for witnessing an adequate enhancement of the noise it would have been necessary to wait for the two most important innovations in the history of sound cinema after the introduction of the mixing in the early thirties, or the 'revolution' of direct cinema and the adoption of stereophonic sound . If in fact the documentaries of the sixties used the tape recorder for the first time in order to record authentic sound directly,

In many silent classics there is a certain disparity between the high degree of formal elaboration of the visual staging and the ideological, psychological and narrative schematism of the plot, often indebted to the archetypes of popular literature. This is a residue of the popular origins of the cinematographic show which the advent of sound, through the imposition of theater models and the bourgeois novel, would have contributed indirectly to canceling, but also a direct consequence of the nature of the medium; unable to take full advantage of the resources of the word, the silent filmmakers were forced to fall back on narrative forms more congenial to them: from the symbolic-existential parables preferred by German Expressionism to the apologists of political propaganda dear to the Soviet school, from the story based on the pure accumulation of slapstick comedy gags to the rejection of the narrative form theorized and practiced by many avant-garde filmmakers. After all, the ubiquitousdidascalie, splinters of writing embedded in the body of a text that the proponents of pure cinema claimed non-verbal, demonstrated by their very existence the congenital incompleteness of the visual codes of silent cinema, forced - willingly or unwillingly - to lean on a verbal prop. Of all this, moreover, some silent filmmakers were fully aware. The famous poster Buduščee zvukovoj fil′my. Zajavka (The future of sound. Declaration), signed in 1928 by Ejzenštejn, Vsevolod I. Pudovkin and Grigorij V. Aleksandrov, who in other respects prove very critical of the new invention, on this point it could not be more explicit: " From day to day the subjects' themes become more and more complex; and the attempts made to resolve them by purely figurative means either remained unsolved or led to too imaginative symbolism. Sound […] will instead introduce an extremely effective means of solving the complex problems against which realization was hitting due to the impossibility of finding them a solution by means of visual means only "(trad. It. In Ejzenštejn 1986, p. 270) Two years later another veteran of the silent film, the Frenchman Jacques Feyder, went even further, stating that the 'silent' film was an unsuitable medium to fulfill the narrative task that had been assigned to him and capable of staging only elementary events, ennobled by a great deployment of visual devices which in his opinion constituted the only authentic attraction of this form of expression (cf.

Effettivamente l'impiego del dialogo sincrono costituisce la conseguenza dell'introduzione del suono di gran lunga più rilevante: lo capivano bene coloro che contrapponevano il film sonoro al film parlato, tollerando la presenza di musica o rumori registrati e condannando invece senza appello il ricorso all'elemento verbale. Esso infatti potenziava enormemente le risorse del linguaggio cinematografico, ma a un prezzo ritenuto troppo alto per l'arte dell'immagine in movimento: quello di rendere la parola l'asse portante della significazione filmica, rinunciando all'ideale di purezza visiva coltivato da alcuni in precedenza. Tuttavia non vi è dubbio che l'avvento del sonoro abbia trasformato il cinema in un'arte narrativa più completa e matura, dando inizio a un processo che si può suddividere schematicamente in due fasi distinte. A uno stadio iniziale, corrispondente al primo decennio del sonoro e caratterizzato da una concezione della messa in scena ancora fortemente dipendente dal modello teatrale, sarebbe infatti seguita una seconda fase inaugurata ufficialmente nel 1941 da Citizen Kane (Quarto potere) di Orson Welles e contraddistinta da un impiego più libero della componente verbale. Dagli anni Quaranta in avanti si sarebbe assistito infatti alla progressiva immissione nel cinema sonoro di modelli romanzeschi, riscontrabile da una parte in una marcata tendenza alla soggettivazione del racconto, che avrebbe impiegato in modo frequente l'espediente della prima persona letteraria, dall'altra nella predilezione per intrecci cronologicamente non lineari, ottenute utilizzando il procedimento del flashback. Opzioni rese entrambe possibili dalla scoperta importantissima dell'artificio della voice over, attraverso cui la parola si sarebbe liberata dai vincoli dello spazio in cui si muovono i personaggi del film per divenire agente autonomo di narrazione.

Time, space, story

An important consequence of the advent of sound consists in stabilizing the speed of recording and reading of moving images. In fact, as has been said, the projectionists could speed up or slow down the scrolling of silent films at will, while sound imposed the fixed speed of 24 frames per second, indispensable for maintaining synchronism with the soundtrack without distorting it grotesquely. This phenomenon has certainly contributed to imposing a new perception of duration, the contribution of the verbal component is much more important. In fact, the discovery of the editing had allowed the silent filmmakers to use a very elliptical style, based on an extremely casual treatment of time, which could be dilated or contracted at will. On the contrary, the presence of dialogue forced the sound filmmakers to respect the duration and natural continuity of the words and phrases pronounced by the characters, using longer shots and depriving the assembly of many of the privileges acquired during the 1920s. Increased in duration and synchronized with the dialogue, the shot effectively threatened to return to being a fully accomplished unity of meaning, as in the 'autarchic' paintings of the early cinema, and the assembly of the material shot risked losing any autonomous power of meaning, reducing itself to the mere succession of these 'blocks' of meaning. During the thirties even the same theorists of sovereign editing, taking note of the new situation, would have ended up adopting an enlarged definition of the procedure, which would no longer be strictly understood as a combination of separate planes, but would have extended its boundaries to include all the visual and sound elements capable of achieving an 'internal' segmentation without the need for resort to changes in framing. Situation very well described by Ejzenštejn when he affirms in his last writings that the 'center of gravity' of the visual montage, constituted in silent cinema by the 'joint' between the individual planes, that is to say by an element external to the image, with the advent of the sonorous has moved inside, in the 'accents' scattered inside the frame, meaning with this expression either a machine movement or a gesture of the actor is - acoustically - a cry, a beat, a noise or the sudden interruption of music (cf. Ejzenštejn 1964; trad. it. 1981, 1992³, p. 362). This is equivalent to saying that the editing cut, deprived of its central role in the construction of meaning, has become one of the possible 'accents' that mark the audiovisual continuum of sound cinema. Following the introduction of sound, however, we witnessed the decline of those editing styles characterized by an excessive fragmentation of space and time or by concatenation criteria other than the narrative one (e.g. the visual similarities used by Ejzenštejn and other filmmakers in the last decade of the silent film). Relieved of the burden of meaning independently to compensate for the absence of the word, editing in classical cinema was brought back to its primary function of articulating space and time, which it was also called upon to carry out trying to make itself noticed as little as possible, according to the aesthetics of transparency prevailing in Hollywood. The relationship between the so-called affirmation has not yet been sufficiently investigatedclassical decoupage and the new conception of space and time introduced in cinema since the advent of sound.

The relationship between the discovery of machine movements and the introduction of sound has also been little studied. And yet, apart from a few exceptions, all from the 1920s - the entfesselte Kamera by Friedrich W. Murnau and other German directors, the stunts by Abel Gance in Napoléon (1927; Napoleon) - it cannot be said that silent cinema has showed a particular interest in the mobility of the camera. Moreover, the preference for a fragmented découpage, composed of short and almost always fixed shots, typical of the peak currents of the last decade of the silent era, inevitably led to neglect the experiments in this field. On the contrary, the filmmakers of the sound, unable to cut freely as they once did the material shot, they found a substitute for editing in camera movements, which made it possible to modify the spatial coordinates of the shot, passing from the long field to the first floor or moving from one detail to another of the scene, without interrupting the continuity of shooting and therefore in an absolute respect for real time. Here then some 'primitive' sound films - such as the very important Applause (1929) by Rouben Mamoulian - surprise for the unexpected presence of sequence plans with long and elaborate machine movements that seem to anticipate the Wellesian and Hitchcockian experiments, announcing a new conception of the staging in which the director's virtuosity no longer manifests itself through the paroxysm of editing, but in the ability - to use Truffaut's words - of " who used to indicate it frequently through the looks of the characters and their entrances or exits beyond the limits of the picture. However with sound, the possibility of using voices or noises emitted from sources not displayed on the screen but given as present in the place of action has contributed to giving a more concrete existence to the off-pitch, significantly dilating the boundaries of the cinema space. The implications of the phenomenon were clear to René Clair, who in a review of Harry Beaumont's musical The Broadway melody (1929) praised in particular a sequence in which the noise off of a car was combined with a close-up of the protagonist at the window that anxiously witnessed the departure of the beloved, noting that at least two shots would have been required to represent the same event in a silent film. And there were even overzealous theorists - director Pudovkin at the head - who believed that sound should be used in cinema according to the dictates of 'asynchronicity' (i.e. programmatically dissociated from the image: seesynchronism and asynchronism). It did not take long to understand, however, that a combination of recognizable ambient sounds superimposed on a close-up allowed the viewer to locate the character even in the absence of a long shot that revealed the space in which it was included. Nor did it take long to exploit the potentially disturbing nature of off-screen voices and noises to intensify suspense in thrillers and horror films. Much before the affirmation of Dolby Stereo, with its numerous speakers located along the walls of the hall, assigned real positions outside the image to the events, the rudimentary and monophonic sound of the early 1930s had already produced in the public the illusion of the concrete presence of a much larger and deeper space than the visual one,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Münsterberg, The photoplay. A psychological study , New York 1916 (trad. It. Parma 1980).

GV Aleksandrov, SM Ejzenštejn, VI Pudovkin, Buduščee zvukovoj fil′my. Zajavka , in "Zizn ′ iskusstva", 1928, 32 (trad. It. The future of sound. Declaration , in SM Ejzenštejn, The cinematographic form , Turin 1986).

B. Balázs, Der Geist des Films , Halle 1930 (trad. It. Rome 1975).

J. Feyder, Je crois au film parlant , in "Pour vous", 1930, 31, p. 3.

SM Ejzenštejn, Izbrannye proizvedenija v šesti tomach , 2nd vol., Montaž (1937) , Moskva 1963-1970 (trad. It. General assembly theory , Venice 1985, 1992³).

SM Ejzenštejn, Izbrannye proizvedenija v šesti tomach , 3rd vol., Neravnodušnaja priroda (1945-1949) , Moskva 1964 (trad. It. The not indifferent nature , Venice 1981, 1992³).

B. Balázs, Der Film. Werden und Wesen einer neuen Kunst , Wien 1949 (trad. It. Turin 1952).

R. Arnheim, Film as art , Berkeley 1957 (trad. It. Milan 1960, 1983²).

A. Bazin, Qu'est-ce que le cinéma? , 1-4, Paris 1958-1962 (trad. It. Milan 1979).

F. Truffaut, Le cinéma selon Hitchcock , Paris 1966 (trad. It. Parma 1985).

R. Clair, Cinéma d'hier, cinéma d'aujourd'hui , Paris 1970.

F. Truffaut, Les films de ma vie , Paris 1975 (trad. It. Venice 1978).

A. Walker, The shattered silents , London 1978.

M. Chion, La voix au cinéma , Paris 1982 (trad. It. Parma 1991).

D. Bordwell, J. Steiger, K. Thompson, The classical Hollywood cinema , New York 1985.

M. Chion, Le son au cinéma , Paris 1985.

Film sound. Theory and practice , ed. E. Weiss, J. Belton, New York 1985.

M. Chion, La toile trouée , Paris 1988.

S. Kozloff, Invisible storytellers , Berkeley 1988.

N. Burch, La lucarne deinfini , Paris 1990 (trad. It. Parma 1994).

M. Chion, L'audio-vision , Paris 1990 (trad. It. Torino 1997).

Sound theory, sound practice , ed. R. Altman, New York 1992.

A. Boschi, The advent of sound in Europe , Bologna 1994.

M. Chion, La musique au cinéma , Paris 1995.

S. Kozloff, Overhearing film dialogue , Berkeley 2000.

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Pommer, Erich

German-born American film producer, born in Hildesheim on 20 July 1889 and died in Los Angeles on 8 May 1966. He was the top producer of classic German cinema, the architect of the majority of UFA's commercial and artistic successes before advent of A. Hitler, a personality who was able to interpret his profession not as that of an arid accountant or a repressive tycoon but of a creative partner who supervises all aspects of the making of the film in a team.

Son of merchants, after studying in Göttingen he moved with his family to Berlin, where since 1907 he started working in the cinema as a young seller in the local branch of Gaumont; three years later he went to manage the Viennese office of the company, with responsibility for distribution in the Habsburg area. After a year of military service, in 1912 he became the representative for the whole of Central and Eastern Europe of another French company, the Eclair, which from the following year, under the direction of P., also began producing German films . At the outbreak of the war he fought first on the western front then on the eastern front where he was wounded; recalled to Berlin, from 1917 he passed to the army film office, the Bild- und Film- Amt (BUFA), with the assignment to deal with documentaries and newsreels, and finally in Bucharest he was head of the military censorship office until the end of the war. Meanwhile, in February 1915 with the capital of Deutsche Eclair he had founded Decla which, under the guidance of his brother Albert and partner Erich Morawsky, produced crime and adventure serials. With the company he made some films of historical importance, such as Die Spinnen (I spiders), by Fritz Lang divided into two parts (Der goldene See, 1919, and Das Brillantenschiff, 1920), or the legendary Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920 ; Dr. Calligari, also known as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) by Robert Wiene. In 1921 Decla joined the UFA and from February 1923 P. became a member of the board of directors of the German Major Company, where he put into practice his strategy of a spectacular quality cinema, open to export and to the world. Until the economic disaster of Metropolis (1927) in Lang, whose budget exceeded the dizzying figure of 6 million marks, he produced some of the most beautiful classics of German cinema, from Der letzte Mann (1924; The last laugh) and Faust - Eine deutsche Volks-sage (1926; Faust) by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau at Die Nibelungen (1924; The song of the Nibelungs) by Lang, a Varieté (1925) by Ewald André Dupont. Called, in early 1926, in Hollywood, he produced two films for Paramount-Famous Lasky with Pola Negri, Hotel Imperial (1927; The Last Goodbye) by Mauritz Stiller and the pacifist melodrama Barbed wire (1927; Reticolati) directed by Rowland V. Lee. In November 1927 he returned to UFA in Germany, who had changed ownership and direction, and was contracted as general manager of production as well as head of his own unit, Erich Pommer-Produktion der UFA. Building on the experience in the United States and his legendary ability to create creative teams, P. reorganized the German firm according to the principles of studio-style starting from the melodrama of Joe May Asphalt (1929; Asphalt), which marked a cut net in the production projects of P. and UFA. With the advent of sound, the producer celebrated his greatest commercial triumphs in the field of Tonfilm-Operette, starting from Hanns Schwarz's Melodie des Herzens (1929), the first UFA film all talked about, in Der Kongress tanzt (1931; diverte) by Eric Charell or Die Drei von der Tankstelle (1930; The Little Mermaid highway) by Wilhelm Thiele. However, alongside these blockbusters or expensive science fiction films such as Karl Hartl's FP1 antwortet nicht (1932; FP1 does not respond), he trusted a young and promising director like Robert Siodmak, and he combined art and cassette in an unconventional and scandalous film, Der blaue Engel (1930; The blue angel) by Josef von Sternberg. Despite his ultra-conservative ideas, in April 1933 the UFA did not renew his contract because he was Jewish. The following month P. moved to the Fox Film Corporation in Paris to produce, without success, some films of emigrants such as On O volé un homme (They stole a man!) By Max Ophuls, Liliom (The legend of Liliam) by Lang or, in Hollywood, J. May's Music in the air, all from 1934. Rather than staying in the United States, he moved to England where he first worked for Alexander Korda, then setting up The Mayflower Pictures with Charles Laughton in February 1937. With this production company, he went on to direct for the first time with Vessel of wrath or The beachcomber (1938; The Island Tramp), by WS Maugham, and produced Jamaica Inn (1939; The Jamaican Tavern) by Alfred Hitchcock. During the Second World War he settled in New York where in 1944 he took American citizenship; Dorothy Arzner's production for Dance, girl, dance (1940) for RKO was followed by a difficult period of illness and unemployment. In 1946 he returned to Germany occupied with the uniform of the United States army and the difficult task of reorganizing production, caught between the needs and interests of his employers and those of his compatriots.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

W. Jacobsen, Erich Pommer. Ein Produzent macht Filmgeschichte , Berlin 1989; W. Jacobsen, Art films and "entertainment value" , in Germanic screens , edited by G. Spagnoletti, Venice 1993, pp. 99-109.

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Veidt, Conrad (propriet. Hans Walter Conrad, called Conny)

German actor, producer and director, naturalized British, born in Berlin on January 22, 1893 and died in Los Angeles on April 3, 1943. A great protagonist of German silent cinema with superb facial and body mimicry, he impersonated demonic and nervous figures on the screen. His somnambulist Cesare is famous in Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920; Dr. Calligari, or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari): thanks to this film V. was identified with the expressionist-style film acting. In 1913 he was hired by the Deutsches Theater in Berlin directed by Max Reinhardt, where he completed his training as an actor. Active in the cinema since 1916, V. was one of the first to develop an acting aimed at the screen and soon opted for cinema only, collaborating, among other things, with the Aufklärungsfilme, Richard Oswald's 1920s sex education films. With his exotic, fascinating and ambiguous aspect, he was one of the protagonists of the Weimar cinema, with a short parenthesis, which saw him busy directing Wahnsinn (1919) and Die Nacht auf Goldenhall (1920).

V. was distinguished by Luciferian or double characters: the Devil in Satanas (1920; Lucifer) by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau; Scapinelli and his reflection in Henrik Galeen's Der Student von Prag (1926; The Prague Student); the twins in Die Brüder Schellenberg (1926; The torture of Tantalus) by Karl Grune and Nazi Agent (1942) by Jules Dassin. He played ambiguous seducer parts, as in Der Reigen. Ein Werdegang (1919) by Oswald, from the comedy by A. Schnitzler, or Nju (1924; Nju - The wild flower) by Paul Czinner. An actor of refined technique, he prepared a peculiar, fragmented and visually striking acting, relying on a particular physiognomy, the eyes and a body in constant tension. He often changed his masked face, as in Paul Leni's The man who laughs (1928; whose protagonist is disfigured by a scar that makes his expression fixed. The ability to physically express the intensity and ambiguity of his roles, so much so that the various parts of the body almost live their own lives, is particularly evident in Wiene's Orlacs Hände (1925); while precisely the control and body tension allowed him to integrate well into the complex visual structures of the shots, e.g. in the sets by Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, or in the fantastic scenarios by Leni for Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (1924; Three fantastic loves). it is particularly evident in Wiene's Orlacs Hände (1925); while precisely the control and body tension allowed him to integrate well into the complex visual structures of the shots, e.g. in the sets by Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, or in the fantastic scenarios by Leni for Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (1924; Three fantastic loves). it is particularly evident in Wiene's Orlacs Hände (1925); while precisely the control and body tension allowed him to integrate well into the complex visual structures of the shots, e.g. in the sets of Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, or in the fantastic scenarios of Leni for Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (1924; Three fantastic loves).

His versatility allowed him to fit into multiple production contexts: in Great Britain, where he emigrated in the early thirties, interpreting, among other things, the part of the vizier in Ludwig Berger's The thief of Bagdad (1940; The thief of Bagdad) , Michael Powell, Tim Whelan and the uncredited Alexander and Zoltan Korda, and in Hollywood, where he worked in the late 1920s and 1940s, gradually relegated to character roles. Michael Curtiz's major character Strasser in Casablanca (1942) remains famous.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Holba, D. Robinson, Conrad Veidt. From Caligari to Hollywood , in "Focus on film", 1975, 21, pp. 27-46; R. Blume, W. Fritsch, Conrad Veidt. Die Nachtgestalt , in Grenzgänger zwischen Theater und Film , hrsg. K. Hickethier, Berlin 1986, pp. 111-26; JC Allen, Conrad Veidt. From Caligari to Casablanca , Pacific Grove (CA) 1997.

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Freund, Karl

German cinematographer and film director, born in Königinhof (Bohemia, or Czech Republic) on January 16, 1890 and died in Santa Monica (California) on May 3, 1969. In his long career, lasting about fifty years, he was one of the protagonists in the field of lighting and shooting; first in the European silent film season, during which he collaborated with great directors, from Fritz Lang to Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, from Paul Wegener to Oskar Eduard Messter, from Ewald André Dupont to Paul Czinner, and then in that of American sound, when he worked with John Huston, Frank Borzage, Rouben Mamoulian, Fred Zinnemann. In 1938 he won the Oscar for best photography with the film The good earth (1937; La buona terra) by Sidney A. Franklin.

He moved to Berlin as a child and began his apprenticeship by working as a worker in a stamp factory and then as a projectionist assistant. Thanks to his passion and a marked sensitivity and inventiveness for the technical aspects of cinema, in 1907 he made his debut as an operator and the following year he was called to Pathé Frérès. He was an innovative filmmaker who, through the development of ever new solutions both in the field of lighting and in the field of shooting mobility, allowed directors to fully express their creativity. In the twenties F. worked at UFA as director of photography and operator, contributing, together with the directors with whom he collaborated, to the revival of German cinema and the affirmation of expressionist cinema: with contrasting chiaroscuro effects in Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920; Golem - How it came into the world) by Wegener, with a new, suggestive and highly mobile use of the camera in Der letzte Mann (1924; The last laugh or The last man) by Murnau, as well as with the movements of the camera used as a exploratory and interpretative tool of reality in Dupont's Varieté (1925) and Lang's Metropolis (1927). It would be wrong, however, to link F.'s name only to the expressionist current; in fact in 1927 he took part in a work by Walter Ruttmann, the urban documentary Berlin, Die Sinfonie der Grossstadt for which, in line with the director's project, which included a portrait of the metropolis on an ordinary day, from dawn to night deep, he developed an ultra-sensitive film, thus managing to turn at night without the

The second part of F.'s career took place in the United States, where he moved in 1929. After a short period spent in New York he settled in Hollywood, and here he deepened his technical preparation and began as director, working first for Universal Pictures (1930-1935), then for Metro Goldwyn Mayer (1935-1947) and finally for Warner Bros. (1947-1950). Among the films he directed, the atypical horror The mummy (1932; The mummy), which was followed by Mad love (1935; Amore folle), both written by John L. Balderston, in which F. managed to create suggestive chiaroscuro for dark and mysterious atmospheres. Thanks to his reputation as an innovator, he was often attributed the ideation and realization of scenes of some classics of cinema: from the epilogue of All quiet on the western front (1930; All ' West nothing new) by Lewis Milestone to that of Tod Browning's Dracula (1931). Perfectly adapting his multifaceted professionalism to the needs of Hollywood cinema, limiting himself to exercising the more limited skills that were required of the director of photography, he collaborated on the films Murders in the rue Morgue (1932; The Doctor Miracle) by Robert Florey, Camille (1937; Margherita Gautier) by George Cukor, Golden boy (1939; Passion) by Mamoulian, The seventh cross (1944; The seventh cross) by Zinnemann and Key largo (1948; The coral island) by Huston. His experience and technical knowledge flowed into the activity carried out at the Photo Research Corporation, which he founded in 1944. In 1951, at the request of the actress Lucille Ball,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BO. Blakeston, Interview with Carl Freund , in "Close up", 1929, January, pp. 58-61.

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Wiene, Robert

German film director and screenwriter, of Jewish family, born in Wroclaw in 1873 and died in Paris on July 16, 1938. His name remains tied to Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920; Dr. Calligari, also known as Doctor's Cabinet Caligari), a classic of Expressionism , which made him famous but at the same time obscured the rest of his work.

Son of the actor Carl, he studied law at the University of Berlin, then philosophy in Vienna, where in 1908 he began to devote himself to theater. From 1912 he was active in Germany and Austria as a screenwriter and film director; from 1914 he collaborated with Messter-Film and other production companies, writing and directing comedies and melodramas. His career took a turn in 1919, when he directed Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari; produced by Decla-Film, on the subject of Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, the film was a great success, nationally and internationally, to which the scenographers Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig contributed; in the history of the mad hypnotist (Werner Krauss) responsible for the crimes committed by a sort of zombie (Conradt Veidt), the scenography anticipates the role played later by the machine movements: in front of the still motionless camera, the broken and twisted lines suggest at the same time the instability of the external world and the disorder of the internal one. The term 'cabinet', which also alludes to the eighteenth-century 'cabinets of curiosities', thus takes on its clinical meaning: Caligari invades the interiority of the minds by directing a hospice for the alienated, structured in turn as an imaginary scene. Interiority and exteriority become inextricably linked and reversible; the soul is a theater and man is a puppet. In the critical literature on the film, the interpretation of S. Kracauer remains famous, according to which the film contains a double allegory, which makes visible the power of the cinema itself and prefigures the terrifying force of A. Hitler, hypnotist of the masses.

W. maintained a style close to Expressionism, marked by the taste for the 'dark forces', in the immediately following productions, Genuine (1920), Raskolnikow (1923; Crime and punishment), from the novel by FM Dostoevskij, INRI (1923), shot with huge means and the use of great stars, and Der Puppenmacher von Kiang-Ning (1923). Returning to Vienna, from 1924 he assumed the artistic direction of Pan-Film and regained criticism with Orlacs Hände (1924), a psychological thriller (based on M. Renard's novel Les mains d'Orlac) in which a pianist is dominated by will of the hands that have been transplanted (in 1935 Karl Freund would have made a remake in the United States, entitled Mad love). Also in Vienna he shot Der Rosenkavalier (1926), an adaptation of the work of R.

Back in Berlin since 1926, W. continued in this more commercial direction, even if he did not completely abandon themes and motifs proper to Expressionism, as his first sound film, Der Andere (1930), remake of the homonymous, shows in particular Max Mack's 1913 film disturbing story based on the 'double' motif. In 1934, when the Nazis had already gained power, W., of Jewish origins, had to leave Germany; after staying in Budapest and London, he settled in Paris, where he struggled to find work and was unable to complete his last direction, Ultimatum (1938), which was then entrusted to Robert Siodmak.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S. Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: a psychological history of the German film , Princeton (NJ) 1947 (trad. It. From Caligari to Hitler , new ed. Edited by L. Quaresima, Turin 2001, pp- 109-25 .

KP Hess, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari , Stuttgart 1985.

The cabinet of Dr. Caligari: texts, contexts, histories , ed. M. Budd, New Brunswick (NJ) 1990.

U. Jung, W. Schatzberg, Robert Wiene: der Caligari Regisseur , Berlin 1995.

D. Robinson, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari , London 1997.

P. Bertetto, C. Monti, Doctor Caligari's cabinet , Turin 1999.

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Riefensthal, Leni (owner Helene Bertha Amalie)

German director, actress and producer, born in Berlin on August 22, 1902 and died and Pöcking (Bavaria) on September 8, 2003. Former dancer and performer of dark Nordic tales and Bergfilme (mountain film) of great popular success, she became the most famous German director of the thirties, visionary prophetess of the chilling and funeral rationality of Nazism and the Olympic beauty of man. In 1938 his Olympia, a long documentary on the Berlin Olympics, won the Mussolini Cup at the Venice Film Festival. Overwhelmed by the post-war controversy over the role played in the Third Reich years, she was no longer able to direct a film, dedicating herself to photography and finding that sculptural beauty she had always sought from the most distant and mysterious African peoples. Discussed and idolized,

Alfred's daughter, owner of a heating system company, studied painting at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin and dance, following the courses of E. Eduardova, J. Klamt and M. Wigman. Since she was a girl, she had the ambition to become a dancer, and her father, initially strongly opposed to her vocation, finally gave her consent. It began in 1923, immediately establishing itself as a promise of the new dance; supported by Max Reinhardt, who allowed her to perform in her theater, aroused great enthusiasm during the subsequent European tour. Arnold Fanck then offered her the role of the protagonist Diotima in the film Der heilige Berg (1926; The mountain of love), alongside Luis Trenker: in the long prologue she performed in the Dance on the shore of the sea, which she choreographed herself. Thanks also to her enthusiasm as a reckless skier and mountaineer, always directed by Fanck, she played several mountain films: between frozen backgrounds, avalanches and the blinding whiteness of the snows, she showed some grace as an actress, and an intense face, illuminated by a strong-willed gaze ( Der grosse Sprung, 1927; Die weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü, 1929, The tragedy of Pizzo Palù, to whose direction Georg W. Pabst collaborated; Stürme über dem Montblanc, 1930, Storms on Mont Blanc; Der weisse Rausch, 1931, White drunkenness ; SOS Eisberg, 1933, SOS iceberg, shot in Greenland amid a thousand difficulties). In the meantime, however, he had directed, interpreted and produced his first film, Das blaue Licht (1932; La bella maledetta), whose screenplay, based on an idea by R. herself, was written by Béla Balász. It is a fairy tale of the Dolomite environment, between folklore and romanticism, influenced by expressionist cinema. As a director, R. revealed a surprising figurative maturity, a rare luministic ability and a taste, sometimes heavy, for symbolism and allegory faded in a mythical-patriotic key. Struck by a speech by A. Hitler at Sportpalast in 1932, she insisted on getting to know him: Hitler proved to be his most staunch admirer and would become his producer. In August 1933 he entrusted her with the task of resuming the first congress of the National Socialist Party in Nuremberg after the conquest of power. The documentary Der Sieg des Glaubens (1933), born after a thousand controversies with the minister for culture and propaganda PJ Goebbels, was the general rehearsal for the propaganda film Triumph des Willens (1935; The triumph of the will), on the 1934 congress in Nuremberg. This time the director obtained great deployment of means and total control over the project, with the ambition to create not a newsreel nor the chronicle of an event, but an art and avant-garde film. He thus created the only true product of Nazi aesthetics: with a very refined photographic technique (he used twenty operators and as many cameras) and a rhythmic, almost musical montage, with a color palette of blacks and browns, he showed the chilling creation of consensus, the spectacular scenography by Albert Speer, the geometric marches of the delegates, the speeches of the political leaders, the exalted faces, the flags, the sinister choreography of the masses. Enthusiastic about her work, Hitler commissioned her to make a film about the army (Tag der Freiheit! - Unsere Wehrmacht, 1935) and then one on the Olympics that would be held in Berlin in 1936. Also in this case, R. gained total control of the shooting and was able to experiment with every type of technique, from filters to intensify contrasts to slow , from new lenses to unusual camera angles (even placed underwater or in the air, hooked to a balloon). Some sequences were again shot and artistically recreated in the empty stage. The endless material collected by R. and its 45 operators during sports events (400,000 meters of film for a total of 200 hours) was subjected to an endless work of assembly, stylization and abstraction. The result was Olympia, a two-part film, Fest der Völker (Olympia) and Fest der Schönheit (Apotheosis of Olympia), and lasting 4 hours, who wanted to be a celebration of the myth of the Aryan race as well as a documentary about a sporting event. Instead, it is essentially a visual poem on the beauty of man, aestheticizing, neoclassical, lyrical and hypnotic, with many emphatic falls of taste (such as the heavy prologue) but also sequences that have become classics in the history of cinema (just think of the competition of diving, horse racing or marathon). In 1940, after the project of a film about Eleonora Duse and another on V. Van Gogh, stopped and in 1939 due to the war the project on Penthesilea, from the tragedy of H. von Kleist, began shooting a film in Tiefland, a subject that has been longing for years, from the work of E. d'Albert, and hinges on the idyll between the Spanish Don Sebastian (Bernhard Minetti) and a gypsy. But the outbreak of war stopped filming. The film, completed later, was only released in 1954, at a time when its symbolism appeared now grotesque and dated.

In 1945 she was arrested by the Americans, then by the French, and charged with pro-Nazi activity; she spent nearly four years between prisons and detention camps, but the Allied tribunal ended up releasing her because, according to that ruling, her filmmaking activity had not led her to commit any crime. The past continued to pursue it: it went from trial to trial and from controversy to controversy; she was accused of having witnessed a massacre of civilians during the invasion of Poland, of having used Gypsies interned in a concentration camp for the shooting of her film Tiefland and even, in the diary of E. Braun published in 1948, of being was Hitler's mistress. He filed a lawsuit to prove that the diary was a fake written by Luis Trenker, and he won it. In the 1950s she devoted herself mainly to the reissue of her old films (with new sound and new editing), to the recovery of the films she shot in the 1930s and to a series of projects that did not materialize (including Die roten Teufel, to be shot in Italy with Vittorio De Sica, and Friedrich und Voltaire, written with and for Jean Cocteau). When she realized that she would never be able to make a film in Europe again, in 1956 Schwarze Fracht left to shoot Africa in the slave trade: the film was interrupted for lack of funds, but R. had discovered a continent. By now sixty, he left for a series of adventurous trips to Sudan, during which he photographed the rituals and dances of the remote Nuba tribe. The result was a series of highly suggestive photographic books (Die Nuba - Menschen wie von einem anderen Stern, 1973; Die Nuba von Kau, 1976). At the age of almost eighty he became underwater, and created a series of underwater images of pictorial and abstract beauty (Korallengärten, 1978). At eighty-five he wrote his memoirs (Memoiren, 1987; trad. It. Stretta nel tempo, 1999), at ninety he retraced his life for the documentary by Ray Muller Die Macht der Bilder: Leni Riefenstahl, also known as The wonderful, horrible life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993), telling each other with anger and bitter pride.

The autobiography reveals what it probably was: algid and passionate at the same time, object of the desire of the two most important men of the Nazi regime, Hitler and Goebbels, adamantine, passionate about politics and at the same time distant from the current world, called to cinema as to the only religion, of which, for better or for worse, she was the most fanatic priestess. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Olympia , in "Black and White", 1938, 9.

Puck, Leni Riefenstahl , in "Black and White", 1941, 109.

G. Sadoul, Hitler's cinema , in "Rivista del cinema italiano", 1954, 5-6.

GB Infield, Leni Riefenstahl: the fallen film goddess , New York 1976.

DB Hinton, The films of Leni Riefenstahl , Metuchen (NJ) 1978.

R. Berg-Pan, Leni Riefenstahl , Boston 1980.

S. Sontag, Leni Riefenstahl , in S. Sontag, Under the sign of Saturn , New York 1982.

L. Lent, Leni Riefenstahl , Florence 1985.

A. Salkeld, A portrait of Leni Riefenstahl , London 1997.

R. Rother, Leni Riefenstahl: die Verführung des Talents , Berlin 2000.

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Murnau, Friedrich Wilhelm

Stage name of Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe, German film director, born in Bielefeld on December 28, 1888 and died in Santa Barbara (California) on March 11, 1931. Actor like many left the group of Max Reinhardt, after some tests of excellent craftsmanship he established himself, starting from Nosferatu - Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922), as one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema. Experimental poet of the camera and admirable explorer of the human soul, he was an author strongly attracted by the drama of the Single who often places himself in a romantic controversy against the dehumanization induced by the capitalist system. In a non-extensive filmography, while touching all genres, he achieved maximum results in the Kammerspielfilm with Der letzte Mann (1924; The last laugh), in the transcriptions of literary works, or in melodrama, e.g. in Sunrise. A song of two humans (1927; Aurora), made overseas and for which he obtained three Oscar awards.

Born in a rich family of textile industrialists where the mother supported the artistic interests of his son, in 1907 he achieved his maturity in Kassel, then starting, without concluding them, philosophy studies in Berlin. Probably as early as 1909 it assumed the stage name of Murnau, from the homonymous town in Lower Bavaria where he had traveled with his friend H. Ehrenbaum-Degele. Thus, in 1928, the same author summarized the stages of his biography: "I am the son of the red earth and I was born in Westphalia. I studied art history in Heidelberg and Berlin and, subsequently, I devoted myself to theater. Finally I found myself at Max Reinhardt. Here I had some actors of secondary roles as colleagues, their name is Conrad Veidt and Ernst Lubitsch. Many theatrical tours followed and I soon also started I am my director of theater at Reinhardt. The war saw me at the front as an aviation officer. […] Here [in Switzerland where he was interned] I arrived at the cinema in a singular way. When I staged some pièces in Zurich and Bern, the German embassy contacted me and entrusted me with the task of making propaganda films. I was very interested in this activity, so much so that I immediately decided to devote myself entirely to cinema "(FW Murnau über sich selbst, 1928). After returning to Berlin, in the first post-war period he quickly consumed his apprenticeship in cinema: shot a first film, Der Knabe in Blau, also known as Der Todesmaragd (1919, lost), inspired by the painting by Th. Gainsborough Blue boy and The picture of Dorian Gray by O. Wilde, in the following Satanas (1920; Lucifer, also lost), film in three episodes with artistic supervision and screenplay by Robert Wiene, he had the opportunity to work with the actor Conrad Veidt and the director of photography Karl Freund, with whom he would have collaborated for a long time. Another decisive encounter was that, in Der Bucklige und die Tänzerin (1920, lost), with Carl Mayer to whom we owe the script of his first important work preserved: Der Gang in die Nacht (1921). Preceded by Schloss Vogelöd (1921), another film written by Mayer which confirms the director's already full artistic maturity, Nosferatu, written by Henrik Galeen, established himself as a fantasy masterpiece, enhanced by the legendary halo from which his construction, in which elements attributable to the actor Conrad Veidt and director of photography Karl Freund, with whom he would have collaborated for a long time. Another decisive encounter was that, in Der Bucklige und die Tänzerin (1920, lost), with Carl Mayer to whom we owe the script of his first important work preserved: Der Gang in die Nacht (1921). Preceded by Schloss Vogelöd (1921), another film written by Mayer which confirms the director's already full artistic maturity, Nosferatu, written by Henrik Galeen, established himself as a fantasy masterpiece, enhanced by the legendary halo from which his realization, in which elements attributable to the actor Conrad Veidt and director of photography Karl Freund, with whom he would have collaborated for a long time. Another decisive encounter was that, in Der Bucklige und die Tänzerin (1920, lost), with Carl Mayer to whom we owe the script of his first important work preserved: Der Gang in die Nacht (1921). Preceded by Schloss Vogelöd (1921), another film written by Mayer which confirms the director's already full artistic maturity, Nosferatu, written by Henrik Galeen, established himself as a fantasy masterpiece, enhanced by the legendary halo from which his realization, in which elements attributable to the with Carl Mayer who is responsible for the script of his first important work preserved: Der Gang in die Nacht (1921). Preceded by Schloss Vogelöd (1921), another film written by Mayer which confirms the director's already full artistic maturity, Nosferatu, written by Henrik Galeen, established himself as a fantasy masterpiece, enhanced by the legendary halo from which his realization, in which elements attributable to the with Carl Mayer who is responsible for the script of his first important work preserved: Der Gang in die Nacht (1921). Preceded by Schloss Vogelöd (1921), another film written by Mayer which confirms the director's already full artistic maturity, Nosferatu, written by Henrik Galeen, established himself as a fantasy masterpiece, enhanced by the legendary halo from which his realization, in which elements attributable to theExpressionism. For Nosferatu M. was prosecuted and convicted of plagiarism of the story of B. Stoker and the negatives of the film were destroyed. These two works began, together with some great Heimatfilme ante litteram written by Thea von Harbou - Der brennende Acker (1922; The Devil's Field), Phantom (1922; The ghost, from the novel by G. Hauptmann) or the lost Die Austreibung ( 1923, from the novel by C. Hauptmann) -, an acute reflection on the dissolution of the bourgeois and peasant world operated through endogenous agents, of a psychoanalytic or supernatural nature (the vampire, the ghost). After the playful parenthesis of the comedy Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs (1924; Le finanze del granduca), M. also explored the Kammerspielfilm, in what many consider his masterpiece, namely Der letzte Mann, written by C. Mayer. Before separating from Erich Pommer and UFA and moving to Hol-lywood, at the height of his career, he made two other works of exquisite literary work: Tartüff (1925; Tartufo) by Molière and Faust - Eine deutsche Volkssage (1926; Faust ) by W. Goethe. Under a four-year contract with Fox Film Corporation, he shot Sunrise, from H. Sudermann's Die Reise nach Tilsit, written by C. Mayer (then remade in 1939 by Veit Harlan in Die Reise nach Tilsit, Towards Love), which continues the author's pessimistic Weltanschauung narrating in a sublime and abstract melodrama the symbolic events of a man split between two women, between city and countryside, between Zivilisation and Kultur. The subsequent works, on the other hand, are tarnished by the heavy interference of the production that marked, irreversibly, the distance between the filmmaker and the Hollywood mode of production: a four happy end was added to Four devils (1929; The Four Devils, lost), while he was prevented from completing the soundtrack version of Our daily bread, initially conceived silent and released with the title of City girl (1930; Our daily bread). Uncomfortable in the Hollywood industrial machine and following a maxim ("I try, through each of my films, to discover a new artistic territory and find new forms of poetic expression"), M. then designed an independent production with the great documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty, Tabu (1931; Tabù): in Tahiti, however, the film was made, due to stylistic differences, by the only German director, and it was his last masterpiece. One week before

Trying to situate the multifaceted, labyrinthine personality of the director of Bielefeld is not easy, and in addition his filmography, from the point of view of philological completeness, is largely incomplete (9 films lost out of 21 made overall). Multi-faceted and experimenting personality that German cinema never had, M. is the eclectic genius, the director who, touching or ranging in different genres (from Heimatfilm to comedy, from horror and Kammerspiel to reductions from literary works), was able to reinvent cinema every time on the basis of an authorial red thread, a couple of recurring obsessions such as the city-countryside relationship (Der brennende Acker, Sunrise, City girl) or the theme of transgressive desire (Schloss Vogelöd, Nosferatu or Phantom). It is amazing to note, among other things, the linguistic refinement that runs from the rough and 'primitive' style of Der Gang in die Nacht, made of fixed planes and fades to irises, to the 'unleashing' of the camera by K. Freund in Der letzte Mann, or to the triumph of special effects, total dynamization of the image and depth of field in Faust, all in a span of just five years. To do this M. probed different narrative areas, using the best screenwriters of the time from time to time: from H. Galeen (Nosferatu) and Hans Janowitz (Der Januskopf, 1920 and Marizza, genannt die Schmuggler-Madonna, 1922) for fantasy films, from von Harbou for the literary-peasant mélo (but also for the comedy, Die Finanzen des Grosserzogs) to Mayer, the most 'faithful' of his scenarists, the author of five of his films shot in Germany and two in Hollywood. Based on the studies of L. Eisner (1964) and L. Berriatúa (1990-1992) it is now customary to remember the author's figurativeness in relation to the iconographic aspect and to pictorial quotations (in particular CD Friedrich, but more generally all romantic painting). What is striking in M. - placing it in the same and opposite groove of that productive group of film-painters of the twenties such as Hans Richter, Walther Ruttmann or Viking Eggeling - is the cleanliness and pictorial care of the image, but equally relevant are the scenography and the architectural space of his films. And not only because in a book of fundamental importance another filmmaker, Eric Rohmer (1977), paid attention to the problem by pointing out the systematic use of décadrage, that is of decentralized figures within the frame; but also because many works by the Bielefeld filmmaker must be analyzed from the point of view of the complex topography of the interiors (e.g. the labyrinth in Schloss Vogelöd, the staircase in Tartüff) and the exteriors reconstructed in the studio: from Phantom's Wroclaw to the futuristic Faust models . However, even the dialectic between pictorial inspiration and daring architectural constructions only partially exhausts the conceptual richness of M.'s work, who has chosen the contamination and variety of genres as his characteristic feature. There is, in fact, a M. author inclined to comedy - to tell the truth perhaps not excellent - which runs parallel to the 'spiritual' and melancholic author. Not only because he filmed a comedy and a half (Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs and Tartüff), but for the fact that he often mixes the ingredients: happy tones determine for example. the narrative atmosphere of the first part of Nosferatu, or again, in Faust, Gretchen's perdition is prepared by a playful and histrionic Mephisto-Emil Jannings. However, in a poetics that takes multiplicity as an inspiring principle, a 'polar star' remains fixed, the natural absolute observes and accompanies the sad destinies of the protagonists. Never as a pure, simple scenographic background, nature with its forces (wind, storm, rain) has a polysemic and cathartic dramaturgical function, whether it is reconstructed in the studio, as in Sunrise, or that it entails a strong and harsh physicality obtained by shooting en plein air. All this is framed against the background of a strong German matrix, starting from that characteristic romanticism that intimately crosses the characters of M., both the many losers (even if saved in extremis by a consoling and necessary happy end) and the few winners . We find ourselves then in the bed of the Schwärmer, of the eternal enthusiastic dreamers, as represented by Goethe and the Sturm und Drang. But not only: German is the obsession of the uniform (ie the problem of identity) that moves and upsets Jannings in Der letzte Mann; German is still the latent conservative matrix of its melodramas, from the ascetic and rough Der brennende Acker to Sunrise, already designed for a supranational audience. We are therefore at the source of the Heimatfilm, but also at the attempt of a supernatural challenge destined for failure, to the attempt of a 'demonic' overcoming of the natural order. Finally, the theme of the tragic fulfillment of love at the stake of death is of strong German origin, as happens in the Faust finale, which unwittingly foreshadows the future funeral melodramas of V. Harlan. In any case, whatever the anthropological root of his art was - romantic enthusiasm or psychological obsession or other - in M. there was an unstoppable spring that always pushed him forward, with restlessness, towards ever new acquisitions. Until a premature death, at a fundamental crossroads in his career, one of his less monochordic artists was taken from the history of cinema. love at the stake of death, as happens in the Faust finale, which unknowingly foreshadows the future funeral melodramas of V. Harlan. In any case, whatever the anthropological root of his art was - romantic enthusiasm or psychological obsession or other - in M. there was an unstoppable spring that always pushed him forward, with restlessness, towards ever new acquisitions. Until a premature death, at a fundamental crossroads in his career, one of his less monochordic artists was taken from the history of cinema. love at the stake of death, as happens in the Faust finale, which unknowingly foreshadows the future funeral melodramas of V. Harlan. In any case, whatever the anthropological root of his art was - romantic enthusiasm or psychological obsession or other - in M. there was an unstoppable spring that always pushed him forward, with restlessness, towards ever new acquisitions. Until a premature death, at a fundamental crossroads in his career, one of his less monochordic artists was taken from the history of cinema. he lived an unstoppable spring that always pushed him forward, with restlessness, towards ever new acquisitions. Until a premature death, at a fundamental crossroads in his career, one of his less monochordic artists was taken from the history of cinema. he lived an unstoppable spring that always pushed him forward, with restlessness, towards ever new acquisitions. Until a premature death, at a fundamental crossroads in his career, one of his less monochordic artists was taken from the history of cinema.BIBLIOGRAPHY

FW Murnau über sich selbst , in Filmkünstler. Wir über uns selbst , hrsg. H. Treuner, Berlin 1928.

LH Eisner, FW Murnau , Paris 1964.

PG Tone, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau , Florence 1976.

E. Rohmer, The organization of the space in the "Faust" de Murnau , Paris 1977 (trad. It. Venice 1985).

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau , hrsg. PW Jansen, W. Schütte, München 1990.

L. Berriatúa, Los proverbios chinos de FW Murnau , 2 vols., Madrid 1990-1992.

HH Prinzler, Murnau. Ein Melancholiker des Films , Berlin 2003.

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Wiene, Robert

German film director and screenwriter, of Jewish family, born in Wroclaw in 1873 and died in Paris on July 16, 1938. His name remains tied to Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920; Dr. Calligari, also known as Doctor's Cabinet Caligari), a classic of Expressionism , which made him famous but at the same time obscured the rest of his work.

Son of the actor Carl, he studied law at the University of Berlin, then philosophy in Vienna, where in 1908 he began to devote himself to theater. From 1912 he was active in Germany and Austria as a screenwriter and film director; from 1914 he collaborated with Messter-Film and other production companies, writing and directing comedies and melodramas. His career took a turn in 1919, when he directed Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari; produced by Decla-Film, on the subject of Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, the film was a great success, nationally and internationally, to which the scenographers Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig contributed; in the history of the mad hypnotist (Werner Krauss) responsible for the crimes committed by a sort of zombie (Conradt Veidt), the scenography anticipates the role played later by the machine movements: in front of the still motionless camera, the broken and twisted lines suggest at the same time the instability of the external world and the disorder of the internal one. The term 'cabinet', which also alludes to the eighteenth-century 'cabinets of curiosities', thus takes on its clinical meaning: Caligari invades the interiority of the minds by directing a hospice for the alienated, structured in turn as an imaginary scene. Interiority and exteriority become inextricably linked and reversible; the soul is a theater and man is a puppet. In the critical literature on the film, the interpretation of S. Kracauer remains famous, according to which the film contains a double allegory, which makes visible the power of the cinema itself and prefigures the terrifying force of A. Hitler, hypnotist of the masses.

W. maintained a style close to Expressionism, marked by the taste for the 'dark forces', in the immediately following productions, Genuine (1920), Raskolnikow (1923; Crime and punishment), from the novel by FM Dostoevskij, INRI (1923), shot with huge means and the use of great stars, and Der Puppenmacher von Kiang-Ning (1923). Returning to Vienna, from 1924 he assumed the artistic direction of Pan-Film and regained criticism with Orlacs Hände (1924), a psychological thriller (based on M. Renard's novel Les mains d'Orlac) in which a pianist is dominated by will of the hands that have been transplanted (in 1935 Karl Freund would have made a remake in the United States, entitled Mad love). Also in Vienna he shot Der Rosenkavalier (1926), an adaptation of the work of R.

Back in Berlin since 1926, W. continued in this more commercial direction, even if he did not completely abandon themes and motifs proper to Expressionism, as his first sound film, Der Andere (1930), remake of the homonymous, shows in particular Max Mack's 1913 film disturbing story based on the 'double' motif. In 1934, when the Nazis had already gained power, W., of Jewish origins, had to leave Germany; after staying in Budapest and London, he settled in Paris, where he struggled to find work and was unable to complete his last direction, Ultimatum (1938), which was then entrusted to Robert Siodmak.BIBLIOGRAPHY

S. Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: a psychological history of the German film , Princeton (NJ) 1947 (trad. It. From Caligari to Hitler , new ed. Edited by L. Quaresima, Turin 2001, pp- 109-25 .

KP Hess, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari , Stuttgart 1985.

The cabinet of Dr. Caligari: texts, contexts, histories , ed. M. Budd, New Brunswick (NJ) 1990.

U. Jung, W. Schatzberg, Robert Wiene: der Caligari Regisseur , Berlin 1995.

D. Robinson, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari , London 1997.

P. Bertetto, C. Monti, Doctor Caligari's cabinet , Turin 1999.

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Germany

CINEMATOGRAPHY

The origins of cinema: 1895-1918

Rediscovered by the great retrospective Prima di Caligari, presented in the 11th edition of the "Giornate del cinema muto" in Pordenone (1990), the original German film production appears today of considerable interest. In traditional treatments, however, there was a tendency to start the golden age of German cinema only in the first post-war period, and to deal with the initial period only to trace, in a problematic continuity, the signs of the great season of Expressionism: those aspects related to the fantastic, the morbid, the terror, the nightmare, the double that still characterize the second part of the Ten years.

A month before the Lumière brothers, on 1st November 1895 at the Wintergarten in Berlin, the lesser known brothers Emil and Max Skladanowsky projected the first moving images in public, thanks to their still technically imperfect bioscope, establishing a record that in of exasperated nationalisms he was all too exalted; the program of nine films started with a wild Italienischer Bauerntanz.

During the first diffusion of the cinematographic phenomenon, G. witnessed above all the development of solid manufacturing and engineering bases aimed at appropriating technological innovations and transforming them into industrial growth, and therefore at the flourishing of optical and photographic companies. A strong technical progress was accompanied, however, by a rather scarce production and until about 1910 - as far as it is judged by the little survivor at the time - German cinema remained a poor appendix of the fairs or of the variety, with short rough films and without qualities', interesting more than anything else from the depth psychology aspect: in exhibiting the fear of matriarchy, military strength (and a continuous presence of the Kaiser), these seem to reflect that mixture of authoritarianism and insecurity typical of Wilhelminian age. In a market dominated by France with Pathé Frères and Gaumont, and above all by Denmark with Nordisk Film Kompagni, this primeval phase was therefore characterized by anonymous products that focused above all on current affairs, musical comedies, circus numbers, fashion and erotic scenes Among the leading pioneering figures, we must first mention that of Oskar Messter, active across the board in the various branches of the newborn cinema, as inventor of the Maltese cross, director, producer and distributor: in addition to having created since 1903 ante-litteram videoclips, the Ton-Bilder (or Biophon), short videos synchronized (as far as possible) with musical pieces played by a gramophone, would also have been among the inventors of the newsreel (the Messter-Woche,

In a more strictly technical context, we must instead remember the experiments of Guido Seeber: a great innovator especially as regards shooting, lighting and set-up and special effects (but also director of short animated films), he was in charge, among other things , of the construction of the first cinematographic theaters in Babelsberg in 1911 and became the first German cameraman of international fame.

Nel 1907 si verificò un mutamento strutturale nell'economia cinematografica: l'introduzione del Monopolfilm, vale a dire un contratto per concedere l'esclusiva di un film a un esercente di una determinata zona, una ristrutturazione che ebbe tra le sue conseguenze il consolidamento industriale, il processo di razionalizzazione della distribuzione, ma anche l'allungamento della durata del film, l'estensione del racconto con la conseguente nascita di generi e stili precisi. Di pari passo avveniva, come nel resto dell'Europa, la trasformazione dell'ambiente fisico del cinema: dalla rappresentazione ambulante delle fiere si passava a delle strutture fisse. I malfamati ex negozi del periodo del libero mercato lasciavano il posto a teatri eleganti, pensati per rassicurare un pubblico borghese: nacque il Kinopalast, capace di ospitare anche mille spettatori. Lo spettacolo, inizialmente composto di una decina di spezzoni diversi, alternati a numeri di varietà, si trasformava gradualmente in un'unica pellicola, lunga circa 45 minuti, e caratterizzata da una maggiore attenzione alla storia, anche per cercare di superare le obiezioni moralistiche del movimento dei Kinoreformer sui pericoli del nuovo medium e garantirne la rispettabilità, senza tuttavia perdere la sua presa sul pubblico. Sulla scia di questo processo di moralizzazione, legato anche a una crisi del settore tra il 1907 e il 1911, nacque di lì a poco l'Autorenfilm, dove il termine 'autore', diversamente da oggi, si riferiva non tanto al regista quanto allo sceneggiatore, in genere un letterato (nel 1914 Kurt Pinthus pubblicò il suo celebre Kinobuch con 15 soggetti cinematografici scritti da alcuni fra i più significativi esponenti dell'avanguardia letteraria tedesca). Si trattava di un prodotto dunque che coniugava le più ardite e spettacolari innovazioni tecniche a un plot avvincente ma ricco di riferimenti letterari. I primi esempi di tale genere, il sorprendente Zweimal gelebt (1912) o il celebre Der Andere (1913), entrambi per la regia di Max Mack, segnarono un primo punto fermo nell'affermazione del linguaggio filmico in G. mentre di lì a poco un genio teatrale come Max Reinhardt, la personalità che influenzò più profondamente il cinema tedesco dell'epoca, sperimentava il nuovo medium, realizzando in Italia due film tra il serio e il faceto, tra pantomima e fantasy, Die Insel der Seligen (1913) e Eine venetianische Nacht (1914).Contemporaneamente iniziava ad affermarsi il fenomeno del divismo, rappresentato per es. dalla danese Asta Nielsen, strappata alla Nordisk da Paul Davidson, il principale produttore ed esercente degli anni Dieci. Spesso diretta dal marito Urban Gad, la Nielsen, fin da Afgrunden (1910, L'abisso) e poi in film come Der fremde Vogel (1911), Engelein (1914), Vordertreppe und Hintertreppe (1915), fu la prima attrice a creare uno stile di recitazione naturale che si differenziava notevolmente da quello istrionico-teatrale allora in voga, nonché a dare vita a un nuovo modello erotico femminile. Il suo contraltare era Henny Porten, di fattezze decisamente più teutoniche, la blonde Blinde, così definita in virtù del suo primo grande successo Das Liebesglück der Blinden (1911, produzione Messter) che, giovanissima, a partire dal 1906 aveva cominciato la sua carriera comparendo nei Ton-Bilder del padre Franz e che contendeva alla 'divina' danese la palma della migliore attrice.Il più noto esponente dell'Autorenfilm fu l'attore (e regista) Paul Wegener, che si può considerare un pioniere del cinema fantastico nonché uno dei primi teorici della specificità del mezzo: nei film da lui interpretati, Der Student von Prag (1913) di Stellan Rye e Der Golem (1915) di Henrik Galeen, il secondo dei quali lo vide partecipare anche alla sceneggiatura, si coniugano effetti speciali alla Méliès con storie che presentano aspetti letterari tipici della cultura tedesca ma non rinunciano agli elementi più amati dal grande pubblico, come appunto la fantascienza e l'orrore, aspetti che sarebbero stati ripresi e approfonditi dal cinema del periodo della Repubblica di Weimar (v. oltre). Lo stesso Wegener pochi anni dopo realizzò con Carl Boese a remake of Der Golem entitled Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920; Golem - How it came into the world).

Upon entering the war, the German film industry thrived; the embargo on foreign films led to a significant increase in national production which saw the rise of some great personalities. Together with the proliferation of production houses, often managed by the most successful directors, Richard Oswald , Joe May, Franz Hofer, Joseph Delmont and the young Ernst Lubitsch , still known above all as an actor, established themselves.

As for the economic structure, there was the gradual phenomenon of the absorption of many small production houses, but a real turning point occurred in December 1917, when the UFA (Universum Film-Aktiengesellschaft) was born, the largest European art workshop and for a long time the only true competitor of the Hollywood majors, who would dominate the market until the end of the Second World War. Its main feature was that it was born not so much to face capitalist competition as had happened in other countries, but rather as an economic-military operation wanted 'from above'. UFA was created by the merger of DLG (Deutsche Lichtbild-Gesellschaft), founded in 1916 by the chairman of Krupp's board of directors, Alfred Hugenberg, and BUFA (Bild- und Film -Amt) wanted by General Ludendorff, in 1917: on both sides the need for a large German film production was seen above all as a tool for both civil and military propaganda, indeed Ludendorff considered it a decisive weapon in view of a happy war outcome. Thanks to the Ministry of War, the Treasury and especially the Deutsche Bank, despite the period of serious crisis, companies such as Nordisk and those of Messter and Davidson were acquired, which were hired as technical and artistic advisors. In total countertendency with respect to the military defeat and the end of the empire, the UFA began its victorious path at the end of the First World War, inseparable from the history of German cinema. It was in fact also thanks to it that G. became the protagonist of an imposing change, such as to make it absolutely original in the panorama of European cinema, where it would remain for a long time

La nascita dell'UFA e la sconfitta militare segnarono una profonda cesura nel cinema degli anni Dieci, che comunque non può essere ridotto a semplice preparazione dell'epoca d'oro weimariana. Se la serie di Homunculus (1916), per la regia di Otto Rippert, appare un compendio del satanismo neoromantico del periodo, anticipando molti temi successivamente trattati dall'Espressionismo, nello stesso tempo vi era anche chi si prendeva gioco del tutto, buttando il demonismo in parodia come Edmund Edel in Doktor Satansohn (1916), film interpretato da uno scatenato e digrignante E. Lubitsch. E il grande regista berlinese, pur nell'ambito di trame 'popolari' e di una grassa comicità proletaria, diede già prova della propria classe, per es. in Schuhpalast Pinkus (1916) o in Meyer aus Berlin (1919), dove apparve anche come protagonista. Lo stesso discorso può estendersi a due registi in seguito riscoperti: F. Hofer, decadente e fine regista di interieurs borghesi e di storie familiari (ma anche di un Sensationsfilm di alta qualità spettacolare come Die schwarze Kugel o Die geheimnisvollen Schwestern, 1913), oppure J. Delmont, in prevalenza autore, invece, di polizieschi all'americana. Senza poi dimenticare, solo per citare pochi titoli, film come Die Landstrasse (1913) di Paul von Woringen, dove la caccia a un assassino si trasforma in un'indagine fenomenologica su atmosfere e personaggi rurali; oppure la Lulu (1917) di Alexander von Antaffly, che non sfigura a paragone con la più tarda versione di Georg Wilhelm Pabst; o infine Die Teufelskirche (1919) di Hans Mierendorff, con cui, in un intreccio di sensualità, religione, sogno e delirio collettivo si raggiunge la piena maturità stilistica. Già negli anni della guerra la G. esprimeva un cinema di notevole livello.

The classical era

The silent period (1919-1929) . Political events profoundly influenced the development of German cinema. The first, fragile non-monarchical experiment on German soil, the Weimar Republic, born from the uprising of the sailors and the workers 'and soldiers' Councils, can be considered a unique case: the few years that elapsed between the two empires, the Wilhelminian Reich and the Nazi one, although marred by destructive political battles between the right and the left and by profound economic crises (or perhaps precisely for these reasons), constituted a moment of absolute creativity, in all sectors and especially in the cinematographic one, dominated, at the the day after the end of the conflict, with an extraordinary expressionist experience (see expressionism) that from painting and narrative also influenced the seventh art.In the cinematographic field the term Expressionismus was often used as a sort of formal label to group a series of films with common stylistic characteristics - strictly speaking it would therefore be more correct to speak of 'expressionist-oriented' films. Its revolutionary character lay not so much in the dramaturgical or content aspect but rather in the visual one: in fact, the concept of anguish understood as existential failure dominated thematically, only apparently similar to the concept of romantic horror (possibly the romantic influences of Expressionism , more than in Goethe, they can be found in Schiller's inclination to cruelty),

True expressionist innovation can be found above all in the relationship with the profilmic, which was transformed from analogical to dialectical: the objective and naturalistic seeing was replaced by the inner vision, or by a subjective representation in which ideas (or more often nightmares) became images and they moved further and further away from verbal language. The theatrical staging, the anti-naturalistic acting, the graphics and above all the scenography dominated, which for the first time assumed an autonomous role as if it were a character ("Le décor c'est acteur", he would have observed several years after André Bazin). The film that symbolized this trend was Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920; Dr. Calligari, also known as Doctor Caligari's Cabinet): thanks to the participation of eminent artists of the Der Sturm group, to the scenographies, painted as if they were scenes, to the script by Carl Mayer , to the interpretation of Werner Krauss and Conrad Veidt , to the talent of the same director, the film is a perfect Gesamtkunstwerk, so that part of the critics has put forward the hypothesis that it is the only true purely expressionist work.

The extraordinary success of the film, at home, throughout Europe and in the United States, also due to an effective UFA advertising campaign, led to a widespread diffusion of these elements in German cinematography, so much so that there was talk of a real and precisely 'caligarismo', understood as a fashion made of imitations not always successful, but which also had the merit of continuing a theoretical debate on cinema, in the wake of the 'expressionist trend', understood above all in its deeper and innovative meaning of recreation subjective of reality, some directors affirmed themselves, who were already active during the war period, who elaborated this new Zeitgeist in an original way with a moderate audience success, proving that the phenomenon was not only cultural but also partially commercial.It was the case of the scenographer and directorPaul Leni to whom precious impulses are owed in the pictorial elaboration of the image, by Lupu Pick , the initiator with C. Mayer of the Kammerspielfilm , Karl Grune or Wiene himself. At the same time we witnessed the affirmation of those who were, alongside Lubitsch, the two major authors of the time, namely Fritz Lang and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau : these are complex artistic personalities, in which the expressionist drive is elaborated in a completely autonomous way and original, within a cinematographic path already begun in the war years.

The Viennese Lang, first set designer and later screenwriter for J. May, then director in a long partnership with his wife, writer and set designer Thea von Harbou, appears strongly influenced by his studies of painting and architecture: from the earliest works - e.g. the spy serial Die Spinnen (The spiders), in two parts (Der goldene See, 1919, and Das Brillantenschiff, 1920) - the strong interest in the stylistic element combined with the rhythmic-narrative element dropped in genre cinema was manifested. It was however only with his larger works, such as the national saga Die Nibelungen (1924; The song of the Nibelungs) in two parts (Siegfried, Kriemhilds Rache) and above all the science fiction Metropolis (1927), that his conception of space he joined a spectacular architectural monumentality, which is counterbalanced by the plastic element of the mass.Actor who came out, like many others, from the inexhaustible forge of M. Reinhardt, FW Murnau established himself in 1922 with Nosferatu - Eine Symphonie des Grauens, a film in which the exploration of the theme of horror refuses deformation as a scenographic element to enter a hallucinated reality similar to a nightmare, which is above all the vision of man and of his anxieties in an inhuman world. A theme that would have been taken up by the Kammerspiel Der letzte Mann (1924; The last laugh), interpreted byEmil Jannings is considered by many to be his masterpiece, a social drama about the existence of the individual, with romantically polemical implications against the nascent capitalist society and characterized by an extraordinary and dynamic use of Karl Freund 's entfesselte Kamera , a performance that would have been repeated in a another famous example of omnivorous mobility of the camera, Varieté (1925) by Ewald André Dupont .

Expressionism was only a trend of German cinema, certainly the most famous, but mostly the production, which was taking on dizzying rhythms also due to inflation (510 films in 1920; still 242 in 1927), was dominated by genre films, entertainment. In the wake of the (temporary) abolition of the censorship immediately after the fall of the empire and a certain lack of interest of the social democratic government for the control of the film industry (in 1921 the government gave up its participation in the UFA group, leaving all power to Deutsche Bank), the so-called Aufklärungsfilme were born who attempted adventurous excursions in the world, until then forbidden, of prostitution, syphilis, single mothers, homosexuality, alcoholism, drugs etc. In fact, as early as 1917 Es werde Licht had started to come out! by R. Oswald on the serious dangers of syphilis (and under the aegis of the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten) which, given its success, had three sequels, opening the door to gender. In the phenomenon, which curiously anticipates the Helga series as well as the soft-porn of the sixties, libertarian anxieties are mixed together (e.g. the right to homosexuality claimed by Anders als die Andern, 1919, by R. Oswald, with Conrad Veidt), true or presumed didactic-medical aspects and above all greed and mercantile speculations. The wave of the Aufklärungsfilme, however, was soon exhausted, when censorship by the National Assembly was reintroduced in May 1920. Oswald on the serious dangers of syphilis (and under the aegis of the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten) which, given its success, had three sequels, opening the door to gender. In the phenomenon, which curiously anticipates the Helga series as well as the soft-porn of the sixties, libertarian anxieties are mixed together (e.g. the right to homosexuality claimed by Anders als die Andern, 1919, by R. Oswald, with Conrad Veidt), true or presumed didactic-medical aspects and above all greed and mercantile speculations. The wave of the Aufklärungsfilme, however, was soon exhausted, when censorship by the National Assembly was reintroduced in May 1920. Oswald on the serious dangers of syphilis (and under the aegis of the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten) which, given its success, had three sequels, opening the door to gender. In the phenomenon, which curiously anticipates the Helga series as well as the soft-porn of the sixties, libertarian anxieties are mixed together (e.g. the right to homosexuality claimed by Anders als die Andern, 1919, by R. Oswald, with Conrad Veidt), true or presumed didactic-medical aspects and above all greed and mercantile speculations. The wave of the Aufklärungsfilme, however, was soon exhausted, when censorship by the National Assembly was reintroduced in May 1920. opening the door to gender. In the phenomenon, which curiously anticipates the Helga series as well as the soft-porn of the sixties, libertarian anxieties are mixed together (e.g. the right to homosexuality claimed by Anders als die Andern, 1919, by R. Oswald, with Conrad Veidt), true or presumed didactic-medical aspects and above all greed and mercantile speculations. The wave of the Aufklärungsfilme, however, was soon exhausted, when censorship by the National Assembly was reintroduced in May 1920. opening the door to gender. In the phenomenon, which curiously anticipates the Helga series as well as the soft-porn of the sixties, libertarian anxieties are mixed together (e.g. the right to homosexuality claimed by Anders als die Andern, 1919, by R. Oswald, with Conrad Veidt), true or presumed didactic-medical aspects and above all greed and mercantile speculations. The wave of the Aufklärungsfilme, however, was soon exhausted, when censorship by the National Assembly was reintroduced in May 1920. real or presumed didactic-medical aspects and above all greed and mercantile speculations. The wave of the Aufklärungsfilme, however, was soon exhausted, when censorship by the National Assembly was reintroduced in May 1920. real or presumed didactic-medical aspects and above all greed and mercantile speculations. The wave of the Aufklärungsfilme, however, was soon exhausted, when censorship by the National Assembly was reintroduced in May 1920.

Among the most popular genres of the time are the Serienfilme, episodic detective films in the wake of the French Fantômas and Les vampires, already in vogue before the war, which repeat the pattern of the episodic feuilletons, as well as exotic productions, with which were fulfilled by now lost dreams of colonial expansionism and fantasies of distant lands, or historical dramas inspired by Italian blockbusters such as Cabiria (1914). Undisputed master was E. Lubitsch who, after the war, before his transfer to Hollywood in the mid-1920s, experimented with the potential of genre cinema and specialized in Kostümfilme, where he developed his famous touch, exhibiting a new spectacular scenography thanks to the staging and the wise use of the masses, the result of theatrical influence of the master M. Reinhardt or Ernst Toller. On the same level, director J. May moved, who had the merit not only of exploring the feuilleton in all its potential but also of keeping in his production house, personalities such as F. Lang and P. Leni. With his most successful works, like Die Herrin der Welt (1919; The Lady of the World) in eight parts, the historian Veritas vincit (1919), the adventurous Das indische Grabmal (1921; The Indian sepulcher) written by Lang, or the mélo Tragödie der Liebe (1923), May reinterpreted pre-existing film models with originality and great stylistic and scenographic accuracy, confirming himself above all as a great craftsman. A further contribution to the innovative reformulation of genres is due to Ludwig Berger,

After the street riots and putschs attempted by the extreme wings of the Weimarian political alignment (from the 1919 Spartacist revolt to Hitler's Munich Putsch in 1923), a crucial year, which marked an important turning point in the history of the Republic, was 1924, in which the so-called Stabilisierungszeit started: the mark became a stable currency thanks to the monetary reform of November 1923 and the intervention of the American Dawes plan. Through foreign lending, industrial development was powerfully increased and there was a dizzying phenomenon of modernization that did not fail to have consequences also in the cinema, where the most reckless and experimental phase of the Inflationary ended. With the ghosts of the war gone, the sentiment of the reconstruction and revival of G. as an international power prevailed: entertainment became a social purpose, a way to maximize work in mass society. The big city, in this case Berlin, represented the scenario of an ambiguous and contradictory reality that on the one hand saw with horror the hypothesis of the slave man of the machine-moloch and of alienating work (as in Metropolis by F. Lang), and on the other it rose to symbol of the Roaring Twenties, of unbridled fun. In the hearts of many German voters, however, there was always a general dissatisfaction with the political situation that would soon lead to the success of the National Socialist Party. it represented the scenario of an ambiguous and contradictory reality that on the one hand saw with horror the hypothesis of the slave man of the machine-moloch and of alienating work (as in Metropolis by F. Lang), and on the other it rose as a symbol of the Roarings Twenties, unbridled fun. In the hearts of many German voters, however, there was always a general dissatisfaction with the political situation that would soon lead to the success of the National Socialist Party. it represented the scenario of an ambiguous and contradictory reality that on the one hand saw with horror the hypothesis of the slave man of the machine-moloch and of alienating work (as in Metropolis by F. Lang), and on the other it rose as a symbol of the Roarings Twenties, unbridled fun. In the hearts of many German voters, however, there was always a general dissatisfaction with the political situation that would soon lead to the success of the National Socialist Party.

In this modernist climate the second half of the 1920s was essentially dominated by the current of the Neue Sachlichkeit, the New Objectivity (and by the birth of the 'proletarian cinema' related to it in some way: see Neue Sachlichkeit ) which had the merit of deepening, in the name of a social commitment (even if sometimes presumed), the economic and cultural transformations of the Stabilisierungszeit. Abandoned the nightmares and exasperated tones of Expressionism, the New Objectivity showed the painful side of existence, but without political attacks, rather in the name of disillusionment and resignation, raising the drama of the individual to a more universal human condition, in a generalized 'leftist melancholy' attitude,Walter Benjamin . The main representative (but also the least typical) of this trend was GW Pabst who went far beyond the apathetic resignation to combine social themes with a remarkable cinematographic experimentation, acquiring an unmistakable style that would quickly lead him to be one of the most admired (and overrated) directors of the time. The atmosphere of the Neue Sachlichkeit was not unrelated to the search for avant-garde cinema which took its first steps starting from the early 1920s with the experiments of the absoluter film by Viking Eggeling , László Moholy-Nagy , Hans Richter and Walter Ruttmannespecially with his famous feature film Berlin. Die Sinfonie der Grossstadt (1927).

At the same time, the Unterhaltungsproduktion continued, an entertainment production that exhibited a new, almost (all) German trend, that of the Bergfilme, melodramas or comedies set in the mountains, in which Arnold Fanck's directing work and the interpretations of Leni Riefenstahl and Luis Trenkerboth destined to become successful directors under the Nazi regime. Der Berg des Schicksals (1924), Der heilige Berg (1926; The mountain of love) and above all Die weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü (1929; The tragedy of Pizzo Palù) co-directed by GW Pabst, propose without great variations an intertwining between the romance and the adventurous but contain extraordinary naturalistic images (absolute novelty for a cinema in which almost everything was shot in the studio and which had a marked tendency for the setting in interiors), inserted in a wider reflection on man and the nature.

A nod then to the documentary, which in G. mainly took the form of the Kulturfilm, a name that tended to 'ennoble it' and which was introduced at the end of the Great War, when its importance for scientific purposes was recognized in the cinema. Pioneers of this didactic-scientific documentary were Ulrich KT Schulz and Hans Cürlis with whose help, among other things, Lotte Reinigerhe began his silhouette animated cinema, culminating in the feature film Die Geschichte des Prinzen Achmed (1926; Achmed, the fantastic prince). After the success of Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit (1925; Strength and beauty) by Wilhelm Prager and Nicholas Kaufmann, with his 'daring' nude scenes, the UFA specialized in Kulturfilme which "thanks to scientific precision and excellent photography […] became a German specialty in great demand on the international market "(S. Kracauer, trad. it. 2001, p. 197). However, except in very rare cases, the genre suffered from an excessive specialization of the topics dealt with, the other side of the medal of that "incredible indifference to human problems" stigmatized by Kracauer. Only in the early sixties did German documentary filmmaking,

Already in bad economic waters - a situation that the treaty with the Americans of Paramount and Metro Goldwyn Mayer (the Parufamet-Vertrag, of December 1925) failed to heal - the UFA fired its most ingenious producer, Erich Pommerguilty of Metropolis' economic disaster. Increasingly indebted, in March 1927 it was acquired by the ultra-conservative industrialist Alfred Hugenberg, who saved the production house from bankruptcy but also made a decisive change at an organizational level: the rise of the figure of the production manager, with the task of calculating in exactly the costs while minimizing the risks, took away the power of the director, who until then had had considerable control of his work. To pay for it was for example. F. Lang, who after Frau im Mond (1929; A woman in the Moon) would have passed, until his forced emigration in 1933, to 'independent' production.

From sound to Hitler: 1929-1933.- After the great battle for sound licenses which, with the Paris Conference of June 1930, had ensured a leading role on the world market through the Tobis-Klangfilm consortium, it was going to happen in a few years the historic passage. The epochal restructuring, which had seen the Germans among the pioneers of the optical sound with the Tri-Ergon system (the first public attempt dates back to 1922), was both productive and aesthetic: if the hypothesis of creating works that were at the same survived commercial and prestige time, however, the idea of ​​cinema as an elitist art definitively set (the production costs having become too high and the film tending even more to level itself industrially). Genre films then proliferated, including the musical or rather the Tonfilm-Operette, which, thanks to the advent of sound, represented the great novelty of the period. After Hanns Schwarz's first Melodie des Herzens (1929), the first film produced by UFA all talked about, the genre took shape, which instead of linking up with the modern musical, turned rather towards the Viennese operetta: a title for everyone, Der Kongress tanzt (1931; Congress has fun) by Eric Charell. Wilhelm Thiele's Liebeswalzer (1930; Waltz of love) appeared for the first time the most famous couple of Tonfilm-Operette, Lilian Harvey and instead of linking up with the modern musical, he turned rather towards the Viennese operetta: a title for everyone, Eric Charell's Der Kongress tanzt (1931; Congress has fun). Wilhelm Thiele's Liebeswalzer (1930; Waltz of love) appeared for the first time the most famous couple of Tonfilm-Operette, Lilian Harvey and instead of linking up with the modern musical, he turned rather towards the Viennese operetta: a title for everyone, Eric Charell's Der Kongress tanzt (1931; Congress has fun). Wilhelm Thiele's Liebeswalzer (1930; Waltz of love) appeared for the first time the most famous couple of Tonfilm-Operette, Lilian Harvey andWilly Fritsch , while with Die drei von der Tankstelle (1930; The little mermaid of the highway), always directed by Thiele, went into parody, in a process of modernization of the genre: the scenario no longer includes fairytale realms, buildings and uniforms but the daily reality, including, as will be seen in other cases, the serious economic crisis and unemployment due to the world recession of 1929.

Another discovery of the sound was the patriotic film, of which Die letzte Kompagnie (1930; The Last Company), a film by Curtis Bernhardt of Prussian setting, Der Rebell (1932), by Bernhardt and L. Trenker on the Tyrolean independence struggle against Napoleon, or Gustav Ucicky's underwater drama Morgenrot (1933; Hell of the Seas) : still far from being pure propaganda films for rearmament, they send ambivalent messages, as the war comes seen as an indisputable destiny while nationalist sentiment coexists with melancholy tones and a veiled death drive.

UFA, however, thanks also to the return of E. Pommer from a profitable exile in the United States, was not confined to the commercial security of formulas already tested: one of the examples of his political elasticity was in fact Der blaue Engel (The blue angel ) by Josef von Sternberg , the greatest hit of 1930, boldly based on the novel of a leftist writer like H. Mann, who launched the then almost unknown Marlene Dietrich into the sky of the star system .

The more nonconformist but at the same time more interesting and original production survived with the support of independent film companies such as the bourgeois-inspired Black-Film , the communist Prometheus or other Munich companies. Within these niches a nouvelle vague of young artists was emerging, whose first extraordinary example was Menschen am Sonntag (1930), directed by Robert Siodmak , the result of the collective Filmstudio 1929, which included a group of unknown debutants who later established themselves in Hollywood, including Billy Wilder , Fred Zinnemann and Edgar G. Ulmer. Siodmak later confirmed his great talent and ability to use sound in an original way with Abschied (1930) or Voruntersuchung (1931; Preliminary investigation). In the meantime, the young Max Ophuls , who before his great success Liebelei (1933; Mad lovers), a film permeated by a magical atmosphere of Schnitzlerian lightness, with Die verkaufte Braut (1932; The bride sold) had renewed with great originality the Tonfilm-Operette formula.

In terms of strong political attention, both in form and content, the works of Piel Jutzi or Carl Junghans were placed (see Neue Sachlichkeit) that deal with issues related to the injustices of capitalist society such as unemployment, suicide, prostitution. And in a last great artistic explosion, there were some masterpieces of the great directors of the time: this is the case of Lang, who with M (1931) and Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933) develops a path where the ideological aspect is stronger, even if it is excessive to trace signs or premonitions of the horror of later historical events. Pabst also studied more specifically social issues, with Westfront 1918, Vier von der Infanterie (1930; Westfront) or Kameradschaft (1931; The tragedy of the mine), which, however, earned him the accusation of too generalized humanitarianism by the most politicized critics. . The delightful Emil und die Detektive (1931; The terrible army, written by B.Leontine Sagan Mädchen in Uniform, (1931; Girls in uniform, supervised by Carl Froelich ) were the last great examples of a free and creative German cinema.

The National Socialist period: 1933-1945

Fritz Lang, Max Ophuls, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Edgar G. Ulmer, Wilhelm Thiele, Ludwig Berger, Paul Czinner, Ewald André Dupont, Joe May, Douglas Sirk (registi); Elisabeth Bergner, Brigitte Helm, Marlene Dietrich, Peter Lorre, Asta Nielsen, Conrad Veidt, Fritz Kortner, Curt Bois (attori); Karl Freund, Eugen Schüfftan, Rudolph Maté, Franz Planner (direttori della fotografia); Erich Pommer (produttore); Werner Richard Heymann, Frederick Hollander, Bronislav Kaper, Erich Korngold, Miklos Rozsa, Max Steiner (musicisti). Sono questi i principali nomi dei circa 1532 Filmemigranten obbligati a lasciare nel corso degli anni Trenta la G. (o l'Austria) per motivi politici e/o razziali; con questa emigrazione il cinema tedesco venne privato delle sue migliori forze creative. Con la presa del potere nel gennaio del 1933, si assistette, infatti, a un rapido processo di conquista di tutti i settori dello Stato da parte del regime nazista. Tra questi il primo fu il cinema, destinato a svolgere un ruolo nevralgico: già nel Mein Kampf, il Führer ne aveva sottolineato l'insostituibile funzione educativa del popolo, ma ciò si rivelò fondamentale soprattutto per la seconda fase della politica nazionalsocialista, quella della cosiddetta Gleichschaltung, ovvero il processo di livellamento delle istituzioni della G. allo spirito e ai fini del nazismo. Con la creazione del Ministero per la cultura e la propaganda, sotto la direzione di Joseph Goebbels, si assistette (oltre all'esodo volontario dal Paese) all'epurazione dell'ambiente cinematografico, quindi alla fondazione di una Reichsfilmkammer, corporazione pubblico-giuridica, l'iscrizione alla quale garantiva la possibilità di esercitare la professione in ambito culturale e quindi richiedeva l'implicita adesione all'ideologia nazionalsocialista. Fu esercitata una fortissima e capillare azione di censura, soprattutto a livello preventivo, e accanto a questa venne introdotta la Prädikatisierung, sorta di classificazione statuale che premiava, anche mediante agevolazioni fiscali, le opere il cui contenuto fosse più esplicitamente legato ai dettami ufficiali del regime. Anche la funzione di una libera critica cinematografica venne accantonata a favore dell'idea del semplice "racconto del fenomeno artistico" o della "critica costruttiva" (cioè addomesticata).

Sull'utilizzo del cinema come strumento di propaganda esistono contemporanee dichiarazioni di Hitler e di Goebbels piuttosto contraddittorie: mentre il dittatore affermava la necessità di separare i concetti di arte e politica nel film, il ministro si schierava (come Luigi Freddi nell'Italia fascista) a favore di un'idea di propaganda che operasse in maniera impercettibile, penetrando nella vita quotidiana. Prevalse quest'ultima tesi, tanto che le opere in cui contenuto, trama e personaggi erano contrassegnati come nazionalsocialisti, contavano una percentuale davvero esigua (meno del 15% sui 1110 film prodotti durante il 'dodicennio nero').

In general, the idea of ​​art in the Third Reich remained tied to a naturalism between the stylized and the illustrative, which expresses a consolidated or better simplified reality (the Führer loved to repeat: "Germans means being clear"), where the presence of the state is inherent in social and cultural relationships. In the cinematographic field this trend was manifested through the Tendenzfilm, that is the application, in the most popular and tested genre films, of an extreme simplification of the narrative fabric. It is the so-called Schwarzweissdramaturgie, an exasperated Manichaeism which pits the German hero, military or civilian, against the enemy of the people, with the inevitable victory of the former over the latter. Characters are common individuals, absolutely stereotyped in their roles and devoid of any psychological deepening, whose adventures end with the inevitable happy end, which can also contemplate the death of the protagonist, provided that doctrinaire values ​​triumph. The background of these events is often an idyllic, rural and community G., a sort of golden age that removes the first thirty years of the 20th century. and its 'modernist' degenerations, to return to the glories of the Wilhelminian era. The first cinematographic experience of the newborn regime was a trilogy of films dedicated to the SA (Sturmabteilungen, the paramilitary organization of the National Socialist party, whose members would have been almost of the all exterminated in the Night of long knives, in June 1934) and represented almost the only attempt at direct propaganda, from which Goebbels himself quickly distanced himself, also due to the commercial failure that followed. It is Hitlerjunge Quex - Ein Film vom Opfergeist der deutschen Jugend directed by Hans Steinhoff, SA-Mann Brandt by Franz Seitz and Hans Westmar by Franz Wenzler, all of 1933. Despite the common theme of exaltation of martyrdom in the name of party ideals and the schematic Manichaeism, the first film of the trilogy stands out if only for its stylistic quality, as Steinhoff still appears to owe 'proletarian cinema', starting from the figure ofHeinrich Georgein the part of the Communist father. The present National Socialist disappeared, but only in appearance, from the Spielfilm; instead, in the Wochenschau, the newsreel, also subject to careful manipulative attention, or in the form of a documentary, the apex of which is constituted by Triumph des Willens (1935; The triumph of the will) by L. Riefenstahl on the Nuremberg congress of 1934. Behind the documentary aspect the Riefenstahl managed to catch the most genuine spirit in the spectacular mass movements and in the grandiose choreography of Albert Speer National Socialist and at the same time to elaborate on a higher level the liturgy of the Nazi gathering and the feeling of participation of the spectator. The director's works (including Olympia, 1938, on the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936), however, represent an exception, due to his talent and his ability to find new cinematographic solutions: the rest of the documentary production, such as Feldzug in Polen (1940; Advances to the East) by Fritz Hippler , did not pass the simple film for propaganda purposes.After the disappointing 'political' experiment of the trilogy on the SA, the cinema of the Third Reich returned on already tested roads, a guarantee of sure commercial success. This did not prevent him, however, especially at the beginning, from maintaining a good quality standard, although deprived as he was of his best forces, who had fled abroad. This is demonstrated by the irreverent comedies of Reinhold Schünzel (who emigrated in 1937), such as Viktor und Viktoria (1933; Vittorio and Vittoria, hence the modern remake of Blake Edwards Victor / Victoria, 1982) or Amphitryon - Aus den Wolken kommt das Glück (1935; Anfitrione), still rich in Weimarian spirit, or the fascinating melodramas of D. Sirk (also emigrated in 1937 ), or even the sparse episodes in the cinema of 'Mefisto' Gustaf Gründgens, author of fine literary adaptations (Der Schritt vom Wege, 1939, The novel of a woman, from Effie Briest by Th. Fontane) or of light comedies (Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs, 1934, remake of Murnau's film; Capriolen, 1937). Between Austria and Germany the former 'proletarian' director Werner Hochbaum tried to escape, sometimes successfully (Vorstadtvarieté, 1935; Die ewige Maske, 1935, The eternal mask etc.), to the leaden Nazi control, until in 1939 was excluded from the Reichfilmkammer. But apart from these 'authorial' exceptions, we mostly saw the development of genre films, especially historical ones, or literary transcriptions. The former, who had the advantage of legitimizing the Nazi war effort, preferred the Prussian cycle and the figure of Frederick the Great, understood as Hitler's ideal forerunner (Der alte und der junge König, 1935, I due re, directed by H Steinhoff or Fridericus, 1936, by Johannes Mayer), and fully responded to the regime's naturalistic dictates for their nineteenth-century academism, as well as the biographies of the great men of the past: Bismarck (1940; Bismarck, the iron chancellor) by Wolfgang Liebeneiner. , Friedrich Schiller - Triumph eines Genies (1940; The masnadieri) by Herbert Maisch or the much more successful Paracelsus (1943) by GW Pabst, who had unexpectedly returned to G. after spending years of exile in France. At the same time, war films were developing which tended to glorify the exploits of German soldiers during the Great War, whose heroism was opposed to the degenerate image of the Weimar Republic: such a specialist was confirmed as the mediocre Karl Ritter (e.g., in Pour le Mérite, 1938), which together with Steinhoff and especially aVeit Harlan , can be considered among the most representative filmmakers of the time, both for his technical talent and for his strong bond with the regime.

While Steinhoff seems at ease especially with historical-literary costume production, V. Harlan, with his fascinating family melodramas, represents the finest interpreter of the artistic dictates of the Blut und Boden culture. Films such as Der Herrscher (1937; Ingratitude), Das unsterbliche Herz (1939; The accused of Nuremberg), Die Reise nach Tilsit (1939; Towards love), Die goldene Stadt (1942; The Golden City), Immensee (1943; The lost love), Opfergang (1944; The prisoner of fate), often played by the Swedish actress (and Harlan's wife) Kristina Söderbaum, chase, in a synthesis (almost) perfect but undermined by an underground death drive , the utopia of conciliation, where, at inside the historical contrast between Kultur and Zivilisation dear to the conservative culture of the beginning of the century, man manages to recover his mythical relationship with nature. On the same line, but within the Bergfilm, you can place the best works of the South Tyrolean director L. Trenker, always in the balance between G. of Goebbels and Mussolini's Italy: former collaborator of A. Fanck, of whom he brings ahead of the great technical and spectacular lesson, with Der verlorene Sohn (1934; The prodigal son) and Der Kaiser von Kalifornien (The Emperor of California, Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1936) stigmatized corruption and decay of capitalist civilization, indicating nature (and in particular its mountains of origin) as a place of recovery of the roots and values ​​of tradition. man manages to recover his mythical relationship with nature. On the same line, but within the Bergfilm, you can place the best works of the South Tyrolean director L. Trenker, always in the balance between G. of Goebbels and Mussolini's Italy: former collaborator of A. Fanck, of whom he brings ahead of the great technical and spectacular lesson, with Der verlorene Sohn (1934; The prodigal son) and Der Kaiser von Kalifornien (The Emperor of California, Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1936) stigmatized corruption and decay of capitalist civilization, indicating nature (and in particular its mountains of origin) as a place of recovery of the roots and values ​​of tradition. man manages to recover his mythical relationship with nature. On the same line, but within the Bergfilm, you can place the best works of the South Tyrolean director L. Trenker, always in the balance between G. of Goebbels and Mussolini's Italy: former collaborator of A. Fanck, of whom he brings ahead of the great technical and spectacular lesson, with Der verlorene Sohn (1934; The prodigal son) and Der Kaiser von Kalifornien (The Emperor of California, Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1936) stigmatized corruption and decay of capitalist civilization, indicating nature (and in particular its mountains of origin) as a place of recovery of the roots and values ​​of tradition.

La maggior parte dei film prodotti nei dodici anni di regime risulta però di più difficile classificazione, legata com'è alla Unterhaltungsproduktion, un settore soggetto ancora a molti interrogativi da parte della critica e influenzato dai modelli di Hollywood, che il ministro Goebbels considerava il suo massimo ideale. Qui l'intento politico non è facilmente rintracciabile, se non a livello occulto o nei mezzi, piuttosto che nel contesto o nei fini ("Anche mantenere il nostro popolo di buon umore può essere decisivo per le sorti della guerra", avrebbe affermato Goebbels nel 1942). Del resto, molti dei registi rimasti a lavorare in G. dopo il 1933 hanno spesso usato come giustificazione il fatto di aver collaborato a film 'innocui'. Si tratta comunque di prodotti che avevano un vasto impatto sulla vita quotidiana e che, grazie al fenomeno del divismo (con nuove star come, per es., Zarah Leander, Kristina Söderbaum, Brigitte Horney o come Willy Birgel, Hans Albers, Mathias Wieman ecc.) sviluppavano un grande potenziale mitico. Va registrata, tuttavia, in questo panorama, l'eccezione rappresentata da Helmut Käutner che, senza assumere il carattere di aperta protesta, realizzò, in una guerriglia estetica contro il regime, Romanze in Moll (1943; La collana di perle), Grosse Freiheit Nr. 7 (1944) o Unter den Brücken (1946, ma girato nell'estate del 1944), dove, calandosi nel quotidiano con uno stile intimista, disegna, con estrema accuratezza formale, straordinari ritratti di personaggi antieroici.

Allo scoppio della guerra nel 1939 si assistette a un'accelerazione delle tendenze già evidenziate, mentre la produzione, ridimensionatasi a 50-70 film e ormai quasi completamente accentrata nell'UFA, seguiva l'imperativo categorico di diffondere l'ottimismo e il divertimento come ben sarebbe riuscita a fare, in Agfacolor e in occasione del venticinquesimo anniversario della Major tedesca, con Münchhausen (1943; Il barone di Münchhausen) di Josef von Baky, interpretato da Hans Albers e scritto sotto pseudonimo dallo scrittore dissidente E. Kästner. Si moltiplicavano comunque i film d'argomento bellico con lo scopo di infiammare l'animo della popolazione, talvolta espressamente pensati per il pubblico femminile che rappresentava la maggioranza degli spettatori, come nel caso dei mélo Wunschkonzert (1940; Concerto a richiesta) di Eduard von Borsody o Die grosse Liebe (1942; Un grande amore) di Rolf Hansen, con la diva del Reich Zarah Leander. Accanto a questi prodotti prosperava il genere dei cosiddetti Anti-filme, che non erano esclusivo appannaggio della sola G. ma che in questo caso portavano un preciso e gerarchico messaggio razzista contro i suoi nemici: se infatti i film antibritannici o antifrancesi erano legati sostanzialmente a fattori politici, i film antisovietici (a partire dall'invasione dell'Urss nel giugno del 1941) comportavano un misto di avversione ideologica e razziale. Ma l'avversario infimo e ritenuto tuttavia il più pericoloso era comunque il giudaismo, rappresentato alla stregua di una peste che si diffonde in maniera subdola per il mondo, contro il quale il regime si scaglia con film, tutti del 1940, come Die Rothschilds, Aktien auf Waterloo (I Rothschild) di Erich Waschneck, il perfido Jud Süss (Süss l'ebreo) di V. Harlan, per non parlare dello pseudo-documentario di F. Hippler Der ewige Jude, la più infame opera antisemita della storia del cinema.

The delusion of omnipotence of Nazism ended with an emblematic film, Harberg's Kolberg (1945), which exalts the resistance of a Pomeranian town against the Napoleonic armies. The last, megalomaniac regime colossal saw a stellar cast and thousands of extras made up of soldiers specially recalled from the front. The 'first' was held on January 30, 1945 in La Rochelle, surrounded by the Allies, where a copy was parachuted. But the twilight of the (false) gods was upon us. On the day of the capitulation, May 7, 1945, he saw the G. in pieces: 40% of the houses were destroyed or damaged, the industrial capacity even more than halved compared to the levels of 1936, the whole territory of the 'millennial Reich' and Berlin were occupied by allied troops and divided into four 'areas of influence'

The 'zero hour': 1945-1949

Although characterized by growing political tensions that culminated in the birth of two opposing republics, the period 1945-1949 must be considered in a uniform way because there are no real differences between the films produced in the four occupation zones, and because a certain circulation continued to exist of works and directors between East and West. In particular, in the Sowjetische Besazungszone (SBZ) already on November 17, 1945, a 'cinematographic active' was called, in which forty experts took part, including the directors Kurt Maetzig, Peter Pewas and Wolfgang Staudte, with the task of restarting the cinematographic activity. In the SBZ where about 80% of the film studios and major development and printing plants remained,DEFA), in the form of a Soviet-owned joint stock company. Having inherited most of the UFA installations in Babelsberg, DEFA became for a time the largest German film company also because until the fateful 1949 it followed a 'liberal' and market policy, also offering work to numerous non-resident directors in the SBZ.Vice more difficult was the recovery in the three western areas where infrastructure was almost lacking, except in Hamburg and Munich. Unlike in the East, where a central production system was perpetuated in structural continuity with the Nazi one, in the West the principle of productive fragmentation and competition was introduced. This system, with a plurality of small firms poor in capital, would have led, instead, an almost automatic dictatorship of the market and an invasive dependence on distributions. In a situation characterized by an exercise destroyed by the war and by a complete invasion of foreign products, in 1946 the first two works of the new G were born: Die Mörder sind unter uns (The murderers are among us) by W. Staudte and Sag᾽ die Wahrheit by Helmut Weiss. While the latter is an insignificant comedy, Staudte's film is instead worthy of the greatest interest since it constitutes both from the content point of view (the shock and the drama of a return to a spooky Berlin), and from a stylistic point of view (the wise use of strongly contrasted lighting and live environments), the model of the short season of Trümmerfilme. Compared to this promising start, on the other hand, crowned by a notable public success (six million spectators), the subsequent development only partially maintained the 'realistic' renewal request. In addition to Staudte's work, DEFA was characterized by some of the best productions of the time: from Ehe im Schatten (1947) by K. Maetzig to Affaire Blum (1948) by Erich Engel, from Strassenbekanntschaft (1948) by P Pewas a Rotation (1949), also by Staudte. Also in western areas, in the same wavelength, In jenen Tagen (1947) by H. Käutner, Film ohne Titel (1948) by Rudolf Jugert, Berliner Ballade (1948; Berlin ballad) by Robert A. Stemmle or Morituri were made (1948) by Eugen York. In general, the Trümmerfilme focus on private cases and have the figures of 'little men' at the center, guilty of having passively observed the unfolding of events; often the narrative perspective is 'objectified', as for example. in the case of the car that spans ten years of tragic German history and seven masters, in the film In jenen Tagen, while the 'voice-off' that comments on events is frequently used. But it should also be added that, more often than not, the setting between the rubble of war seems to be pure decoration, the work of skilled scenographers. Stylistically, numerous Trümmerfilme refer to what we call the 'expressionist' tradition for convenience: strong contrasts of light and shadow, tendency towards symbolization, reproposing of a suffering but undifferentiated humanity. Or it is given, as for example. in Berliner Ballade or in Der Apfel ist ab (1948) by Käutner, a markedly cabaret form to express ironic-satirical moods, a device that was subsequently widely used. W. Liebeneiner in Liebe 47 (1949, freely adapted from the strong neo-expressionist drama of W. Borchert Draussen vor der Tür, 1946) finally makes use of 'surrealist' sequences, but bends the desperate protest of the play to the conciliatory morality of the happy end.

If the Trümmerfilm constituted the prevalent genre of the two-year period 1946-1948 (among the forty films made, only five are works of entertainment), it suffered from the comparison with Italian Neorealism, to which it wanted to be related in the desire for moral redemption and in research. of new stylistic ways (but if ever there is a perfect Trümmerfilm, it was made by Roberto Rossellini with the splendid Germany zero year, 1948, an Italian-German-French co-production). It was therefore a period characterized by a chaotic mix of old and new, not without interest. With the subsequent split of G., however, this pale beginning of renewal and the German cinematography was dragged into a fatal gap: "while the propaganda monotony was spreading in the east,

Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD)

The cinema of a long post-war period: 1949-1962. - It is almost surprising to see how quickly, starting from the monetary reform of 1948, the economic miracle took place, the destroyed cities were rebuilt and the eight million refugees from the eastern territories were integrated. But just as quickly the BRD cinema would have erased what little new expressed in the Trümmerfilm, whose problems emigrate, watered down, in the genre of the Problemfilm, often resorting to cabaret, the only form devoted to criticism or experimentation. An example for all: Rolf Thiele's Das Mädchen Rosemarie (1958; The Rosemarie Girl), an effective but reticent X-ray of the crime of the call girl Rosemarie Nitribitt, one of the greatest political scandals of the BRD. We are in the 'sad' years of the Adenauer era, aRainer Werner Fassbinderhe would have photographed with great effectiveness twenty years later. In the context of the economic boom, production, which stopped at 59 titles in 1949, would have doubled in a short time, reaching the record number of 128 films in 1955, and then slowly dropped to 94 units at the end of the decade. Although they were years of abundance for the German industry, whose market share would never drop below 47%, production still suffered from segmentation, despite the reprivatizations of the UFA plants that remained in western G., the Cassette hits and supporting government interventions. It was therefore a profound insecurity that pushed her, not only from an ideological point of view, to marry a conservative attitude, to rely on 'safe' products and ultracollaudati (hence the iron codification in popular genres and the continuous use of remakes of past hits). In addition, it was a 'too neat' cinema, made, almost without generational change, by the filmmakers of the 1930s, many of whom compromised with the Nazi regime. The result was the tired codification, in contents and forms, of a film of at least twenty years old. It preferred popular genres such as melodramas, doctors' films, war films, comedies, and above all the Heimatfilme, the most typical and provincial phenomenon of the time, which varied infinitely strapaesane stories of family agnitions, poachers or shepherdesses, set in alpine or rural areas. too orderly ', made, almost without generational change, by the filmmakers of the 1930s, many of whom compromised with the Nazi regime. The result was the tired codification, in contents and forms, of a film of at least twenty years old. It preferred popular genres such as melodramas, doctors' films, war films, comedies, and above all the Heimatfilme, the most typical and provincial phenomenon of the time, which varied infinitely strapaesane stories of family agnitions, poachers or shepherdesses, set in alpine or rural areas. too orderly ', made, almost without generational change, by the filmmakers of the 1930s, many of whom compromised with the Nazi regime. The result was the tired codification, in contents and forms, of a film of at least twenty years old. It preferred popular genres such as melodramas, doctors' films, war films, comedies, and above all the Heimatfilme, the most typical and provincial phenomenon of the time, which varied infinitely strapaesane stories of family agnitions, poachers or shepherdesses, set in alpine or rural areas. years. It preferred popular genres such as melodramas, doctors' films, war films, comedies, and above all the Heimatfilme, the most typical and provincial phenomenon of the time, which varied infinitely strapaesane stories of family agnitions, poachers or shepherdesses, set in alpine or rural areas. years. It preferred popular genres such as melodramas, doctors' films, war films, comedies, and above all the Heimatfilme, the most typical and provincial phenomenon of the time, which varied infinitely strapaesane stories of family agnitions, poachers or shepherdesses, set in alpine or rural areas.

Adenauer era also stand out in the individual careers of the most representative directors of the time: H. Käutner, W. Staudte and Kurt Hoffmann. The undoubted talent of the former developed in the post-war period in a multifaceted but discontinuous career, towards an abstract and somewhat affected humanitarianism, particularly evident when the director confronts political issues. In Staudte, after a series of remarkable works created in the GDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik), the passage in the West did not help in 1956. Forced to struggle between commercial needs and civil commitment, the 'director of the two Germanies', once again taking up the theme of the opportunism of his fellow countrymen, would still have managed to make two noteworthy films: Rosen für den Staatsanwalt (1959) and Kirmes (1960; story of a deserter). K. Hoffmann, however, starting from the film Fanfaren der Liebe (1951, then remade by B. Wilder in 1959 in the immortal Some like it hot), went on to refine a comedy characterized by musical elements and critical ideas, in works such as Ich denke oft an Piroschka (1955) which launched the actress Lilo Pulver (together in ten films), Das Wirtshaus im Spessart (1958) and the comedy satire of the economic miracle Wir Wunderkinder (1958; Finally dawn). finally, part of it is the return from emigration of a number of important actors and directors already active in German cinema before Hitler's advent. The most beautiful and violent showdown with the widespread sense of unease of those who returned to their homeland after the 'black twelfth' realized it, taking up the expressionistic forms, the actor Peter Lorre with his only proof behind the camera, Der Verlorene (1951), an effective parable of a psychopathic assassin whom he interpreted, who will eventually find the strength to do justice. Among the works created after his return, R. Siodmak was proud only of Die Ratten (1955; I mice, from the drama of G. Hauptmann) and Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam (1957; Secret Order of the III Reich), perhaps the stronger than the Problemfilms of the time, a political background yellow, where you can enjoy the magical touch of the master of noir again. F. Lang, on the other hand, shot three interesting but little appreciated genre films for Arthur Brauner's CCC-Film with which he returned to the sources of his cinema: the diptych formed by Der Tiger von Eschnapur (1959; La tigre di Eschnapur) and by Das indische Grabmal (1959; The Indian sepulcher, remake of the work by J. May, which he wrote in 1921 together with Thea von Harbou) and the third part of the saga of Doctor Mabuse, Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse (1960; The diabolical Doctor Mabuse), prophetic and ciphered swan song addressed to the looming of the television era. But apart from these cases, or that of the last Pabst or M. Ophuls of the splendid Lola Montès (1955, made in co-production with France), little is remembered of the other numerous directors who returned from emigration.

One of the major faults of commercial cinema of the Adenuaer era was that of not having produced a generational change within it. The few exceptions confirm the rule. From 1959 it is a war film characterized by a dry pathos in the staging, Die Brücke (The bridge) by Bernhard Wicki , which would have helped to revive internationally the poor prestige of the BRD, and at home that of a young and independent cinema. Together with him, only one other debutant, Georg Tressler, would have managed to establish himself, with the first work Die Halbstarken (1956; Black sheep), starring a Horst Buchholzvery young. Perhaps Tressler's or others' later career would have been different and would have offered more convincing results if BRD cinema had not embarked on a slow but suicidal 'self-sinking' policy. The vigorous shoulder of a new generation of outsiders would therefore have been healthy, while emigration on television was the most honorable solution for those who had trained in the bosom of the old industry: so for Tressler since 1962 or for Staudte and Käutner since 1970.

The rise and fall of auteur cinema: 1962-1989. - At the beginning of the sixties, the signs of a profound crisis in the film industry multiplied in the BRD due to the effect of television competition and at the same time the gradual disaffection of the public with fashion genres. This was accompanied by an increasingly pronounced decline in the average quality of commercial cinema that sought new strands to be exploited: the 'krauti-western' - a short cycle of films based on the volumes of the 'German Salgari', K. May, who was direct antecedent of the far more significant 'spaghetti-western' - and then yellow. However, despite some successful tapes, the economic meltdown was upon us and by the mid-sixties the German film industry would have gone into a coma if to lengthen its agony had not intervened the birth of soft-porn, on the one hand, due to the expansion of the frontiers of morality, and on the other the framework law of 1967, which returned to reward cassette films. Thus, the production, which dropped to the record negative figure of 56 films in 1965, quickly went back up to 110 units in 1969, of which the exact half was now made up of 'sexy films', first 'disguised' as semi-documentaries of type sex education Helga (1967) by Erich F. Bender, to move soon to more and more explicit products.

Preceded a month by the UFA's bankruptcy, which the newcomers welcomed as if it were the divine sign of the closure of an era, the Oberhausen Manifesto of February 1962 marked the official date of birth of the Junger Deutscher Filmthat after a whole series of short films would have blossomed in the period 1965-1967. However, the young cinema would have found itself somewhat unprepared to face the radicalism of the 1968 movement, which accompanied the formation of militant cinema collectives and the birth of feminist-feminist cinema, a phenomenon that in BRD would have taken on dimensions considerable. Antesignano was Neun Leben hat die Katze (1968) by novice Ula Stöckl from the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, while shortly before another woman, May Spils, had shot a fun generational comedy, Zur Sache, Schätzchen (1968), d ' Munich environment and slang, which seems to anticipate Doris Dörrie's subsequent existential comedies. The student revolt, in addition to finding itself as an 'aura' of the times in numerous productions, had serious repercussions in the world of entertainment: the Oberhausen Festival risked jumping in 1968 after the successful provocation of the experimental director Hellmuth Costart that to protest against the newly launched law-framework on cinema, in the short film Besonders wertvoll , gives a penis the quality classification with which state economic contributions were requested; theFestival di Berlino1970 stopped following the withdrawal of the Americans from the competition, in protest against the film directed by Michael Verhoeven OK, highly critical of the war in Vietnam. But beyond these facts, 1968 marked a decisive break in the Junger Deutscher Film, leading to an overall rethinking which experienced - in its need to anchor itself to the public - one of the few genre operations in its history. The idea of ​​the so-called critical Heimatfilm started from that of Brechtian 'refunctionalization' of the main genre of the Adenauer era, to overturn its contents and ideologies, using the same provincial-peasant setting. The operation was part of the work of some Bavarian popular playwrights, M. Sperr, FX Kroetz or the same theatrical author Fassbinder, who, in turn, resumed the social-critical tradition of the Twenties of the Volksteather by M. Fleisser or Ö. von Horvath. Among the best results of this subgenre, we could remember the famous (but also a bit overrated) Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern (1969; Hunting scenes in Lower Bavaria, by M. Sperr) by Peter Fleischmann, or Der plötzliche Reichtum der armen Leute von Kombach (1971) byVolker Schlöndorff , in addition to the Fassbinderians Katzelmacher (1969, from his play of the same name) and Wildwechsel (1972; Wild game, unfaithful adaptation by FX Kroetz). Niklaus Schilling too, but from a sympathetic point of view, would have addressed the atmosphere of the Heimatfilm in his beautiful debut work Nachtschatten (1972).

Un caso tutto a sé di Heimatkünstler è, invece, il pittore, scrittore e poeta dialettale Herbert Achternbusch, un autore di difficile comprensione linguistica al di fuori dalla G. meridionale. Emulo del grande comico monacense Karl Valentin, Achternbusch si muove in una narrazione fiabesca, surreale e clownesca, tra un grand-guignol di paradossi e il Moritat religioso; dall'angolo privilegiato della provincia e con radicalità anarchica, lancia una serie di provocazioni nei confronti dei suoi conterranei: humour nero, paradossi, giochi di parole contraddistinguono un opus pamphlettistico di cui è attore, produttore e regista. La sua opera cinematografica, quasi naif e amatoriale, è andata migliorando formalmente nel corso degli anni (ma anche perdendo di incisività): dal ruvido esordio di Das Andechser Gefühl (1975), passando per Bierkampf (1977), un film 'all'impronta' dove sotto le mentite spoglie di un poliziotto ubriaco provoca i frequentatori dell'Oktoberfest, e arrivando a Das letzte Loch (1981), un amarissimo apologo sullo sterminio degli ebrei, o a Blaue Blumen (1985; Fiori azzurri), poetico studio sui volti dei bambini cinesi, una delle rarissime escursioni di Achternbusch fuori dei temi e dei confini della Baviera.

At the end of the 1960s, Das andere Kino also matured, a term with which BRD defined itself as 'independent', underground cinema, which arose from the second half of the 1960s in almost all of Europe under the influence of New American Cinema. Already at the Knokke Experimental Film Festival (Belgium), between the end of 1967 and the beginning of 1968, the main representatives of this trend were active: Werner Nekes, Lutz Mommartz, Hellmuth Costard, Birgit and Wilhelm Hein, while from the same humus, in addition to Wim Wenders , came Werner Schroeterand Rosa von Praunheim, whose subsequent careers, while not forgetting the original avant-garde matrix, would soon have taken other paths, one in the direction of the opera melody, the other of a militant gay cinema, sometimes declined in the direction of a At the turn of the decade, the Junger Deutscher Film, also due to the emergence of new talents, became the Neuer Deutscher Film, inaugurating an extraordinary season of international success. From this moment until the middle of the following decade, German cinema would therefore have lived a double existence, which is characterized, in negative, by an accentuated decline of the industrial fabric, accelerated with the progressive extinction of the soft-porn wave and the consequent halving of the production base (112 films in 1971, only 68 in 1989) and the box office. The stagnation of trade was contrasted by the authorial exploit of Neuer Deutscher Film, made possible thanks to an increasingly complex and complex system of state subsidies, but penalized by a massive 'Americanization' of the year. This found a very partial and limited correction in the rise of an alternative circuit (municipal cinemas, arthouse halls, film clubs etc.) and in the activity of the Americanization of the year. This found a very partial and limited correction in the rise of an alternative circuit (municipal cinemas, arthouse halls, film clubs etc.) and in the activity of the Americanization of the year. This found a very partial and limited correction in the rise of an alternative circuit (municipal cinemas, arthouse halls, film clubs etc.) and in the activity of theFilmverlag der Autoren or similar small companies specializing in German quality products. Talking about the golden age of the seventies necessarily means following the poetics of directors such as RW Fassbinder, Werner Herzog , Alexander Kluge , Edgar Reitz , W. Schroeter, V Schlöndorff, Hans Jürgen Syberberg , Margarethe von Trotta, W. Wenders etc., each different and far from the other, given that any other type of analysis - by genres or themes - does not adapt to capturing the jagged galaxy of the Neuer Deutscher Film, where few common characters can be found: a constant social or anthropological interest often connected to the analysis of German identity, the widespread use of the low budget self-production formula (especially in the early 1970s). Still, if 'realistic' styles and content prevail, nevertheless the melodrama has been frequented with some continuity by the Autorenfilm: in addition to the names of Fassbinder or Schroeter, great innovators of the genre, among those who have practiced it, it will be necessary to mention Robert van Ackeren and N. Schilling. Finally, it will be appropriate to remember theHelma Sanders-Brahms or in the fireworks of the bizarre fantasy of Ulrike Ottinger, one of the most visionary talents of the Neuer Deutscher Film. Unlike Munich, which remained the industrial center of the BRD cinema until its unification, the films born in Berlin were characterized by a more marked ideological sign and by the use of low cost. Thus, in the early seventies, some Arbeiterfilme began to turn in the divided metropolis, which staged a social subject, the working class, which had been removed for decades. Strongly linked to the student movement and in an entirely ideological reference to 'proletarian cinema' (see Neue Sachlichkeit) of the Weimarian age, the so-called Berliner Schule, whose main representative was Christian Ziewer - from Liebe Mutter, mir geht es gut (1972) to Der aufrechte Gang (1976) -, translated the suggestions of European militant cinema into German. The experience was short-lived, unlike feminist or gay cinema, which began when R. von Praunheim, having completed the underground experience, shot the manifesto film Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt (1971). For von Praunheim, too, cinema is a weapon of struggle and his films represent a final attempt to make cinematographic reportage in that uncomfortable space between kitsch and sensationalism. Therefore he is always looking for taboo subjects (homosexuality, old age, death, AIDS etc. ) or eccentric and extravagant characters, in dealing with whom the militant commitment and the documentary structure are sometimes supported by a strong theatrical vocation, by a sour taste for parody and by a neo-expressionist style. To complete the picture, only a nod to the activity of Peter Lilienthal, a typical intellectual figure of a wandering Jew, who has long resided in the German metropolis. After training on television, Lilienthal exhibited the 'distracted' narrative, the poetic montage, the melancholy undertones characteristic of his style in Malatesta (1970), an interesting portrait of the Italian anarchist played by Eddie Constantine. The theme of the relationship between the individual and violence - that is, violence as a political weapon - would return as a leitmotiv in Lilienthal's cinema and in particular in the five films - from La victoria (1973) to Das Autogramm (1984) - dedicated to drama socio-political situation in Latin America (which the director knew well, having resided as a young exile in Montevideo). Although one of the most politicized filmmakers of the BRD, there is also a dreamy and lyrical vein in him, which emerges in David (Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival in 1979) or in Dear Mr. Wonderful (1982; played by a good Joe Pesci), perhaps the two best works of his filmography. One of the few moments of unity of the Neuer Deutscher Film was born once again from a political motive: the deterioration of the internal political climate of the BRD for the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion) terrorism emergency. Already denounced by V. Schlöndorff and M. von Trotta in Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (1975; The Katharina Blum case, from the text by H. Böll), the mounting anti-terrorist hysteria and the dangers for democracy would have found an effective answer in the episodic film Deutschland im Herbst (1978; Germany in autumn). It was the first of a series of collective products led by A. Kluge and at the same time one of the most effective on the phenomenon of terrorism, a theme also addressed by Messer im Kopf (1978; The knife in the head, played by a Bruno Ganz plus a gigion and likeable than ever) and Stammheim (Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1986) both by Reinhard Hauff, and by Die bleierne Zeit (Years of lead, Golden Lion at the 1981 Venice Film Festival) by M. von Trotta, to get to the beginning of the 21st century .: V. Schlöndorff returned to the topic of terrorism in Die Stille nach dem Schuss (2000; Silence after the shot) while, among others, a young filmmaker, Christian Petzold, with Die innere Sicherheit (2000), has revisited the theme from the perspective of those who have not experienced that era in person. Since the death of Fassbinder in 1982, we have returned to breathe air of crisis in the Neuer Deutscher Film - and not for one of the usual economic issues (yet another sharp drop in the number of spectators). The magical atmosphere and the innovative charge of the previous decade had suddenly disappeared, while the debuts of real interest were rare. At the same time, after many years of lethargy, a profound restructuring of the film industry, accompanied by the production turnaround of some Neuer Deutscher Film authors who have abandoned the low budget. Under this sign lies the whole last phase of Fassbinderian cinema or the birth of some blockbusters such as Die Blechtrommel (1979; The tin drum) by Schlöndorff, Fitzcarraldo (1982) by Herzog or Der Zauberberg (1981; The mountain enchanted, from the novel by Th. Mann) directed by Hans W. Geissendörfer. But it was also necessary to rebuild a commercial cinema worthy of the name. In Bavaria's Munich studios, the 'pilot' of this project was born, a work that is anything but despicable, Das Boot (1981; U-boot 96) directed by Wolfgang Petersen, a director who then emigrated to Hollywood, and produced American style by an intelligent Munich producer, Bernd Eichinger, the founder of a new way of understanding industry. At the same time, Neuer Deutscher Film has experienced an irreversible diaspora, favored by the liberal politics of the new government coalition. However, the narrowing of economic aid to quality cinema found a partial counterbalance in the development of grants on a regional basis, in particular those of the two Länder with a social democratic majority, Hamburg and Nordrhein-Westfalen. Thus for a short period the Hanseatic city allowed the creation of films, aesthetically and / or politically difficult, such as Stammheim by R. Hauff or Klassenverhältnisse (1984; Class relations), in co-production with France, by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, or significant debuts such as 40 qm Deutschland (1986; 40 m2 of Germany) by the Turkish-German Tevfik Başer, the forerunner of métissage cinema in Germany. The development of Autorenfilm suffered a halt mainly because the new players preferred to opt for genre films, in particular comedies and detective films. The most interesting of the directors who emerged from this turn was a woman, D. Dörrie who triumphed at the box office in the third feature, Männer (1985; Men), thanks also to the comic vein of an actor very close to her, Uwe Ochsenknecht. Far from the somewhat stale comedy of the rest of German neocomedy, Dörrie has carried out contamination, drawing from the so-called Bezieungsfilme or other genres to create a pleasant existential sophisticated comedy whose best results have been: Happy Birthday, Türke ( 1991; Happy birthday, detective!), Keiner liebt mich (1995), another great public success, or more recently Erleuchtung garantiert (1999), a fun excursion to contemporary Japan. In the field of light entertainment but full of intelligence,Percy Adlon , who achieved international success with the comedy 'mestizo' Out of Rosenheim (1987; Bagdad Café) thanks above all to the bursting physicality of Marianne Sägebrecht. After fifteen years spent in various experiments, not always lucky, Rudolf Thome has made a decisive turning point in his career with the delicious and remotely Rohmerian Der Philosoph (1989; Three women, sex and Plato). This was followed up to Paradiso (2000) by modern fairy tales of the same tenor, where starting from an autobiographical incipit, but with mixed results, a wise search for love and a stress-free life in the new Berlin and in the beautiful countryside is described of the surroundings.

Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR)

The golden age of DEFA: 1949-1966. - In the beginning, DEFA had followed, as mentioned, a 'liberal' policy, so much so that of the twenty-six films produced between 1946 and 1949, less than a fifth referred to socialist ideals. However, already in this first period the bases of the genres and themes that would later characterize the GDR cinema would have been laid: the anti-fascist film, the analysis of anti-Semitism (Ehe im Schatten, the debut of K. Maetzig, on the case of actor Joachim Gottschalk who committed suicide with his family for refusing to leave his Jewish wife), the search for the roots of National Socialism (Affaire Blum, directed by E. Engel), the historical commemorations (Und wieder 48 !, 1948, by Gustav von Wangenheim , on the bourgeois revolution of 1848) or literary adaptations such as Der Biberpelz (1949, film by E. Engel taken from G. Hauptmann) and Wozzeck (1947, by Georg C. Klaren, taken from G. Büchner). With the birth of the two republics, the flow of filmmakers between East and West slowed down considerably (and would have stopped completely with the construction of the Berlin wall in 1961), while the cinematography of the newly created GDR aligned itself with the Soviet model. Two communist filmmakers returned from exile to give her strength, G. von Wangenheim andSlatan Th. Dudowto which the first 'socialist' film by DEFA is due: Unser täglich Brot (1949). Then followed a series of films with a strong 'propagandistic-agitatory' character, such as Der Rat der Götter (1950, on the responsibility of the IG Farben industry in the rise of Nazism) by Maetzig, or Familie Benthin (1950), directed by a collective under the leadership of Dudow. In this pioneering period W. Staudte shot, after Rotation, what is perhaps his best film, Der Untertan (1951), a vigorous satire of the petty bourgeois German, from the novel of the same name by H. Mann, while Maetzig directed the prestigious superproduction Ernst Thälmann, in two parts (1954, Ernst Thälmann - Sohn seiner Klasse, and 1955, Ernst Thälmann - Führer seiner Klasse), hagiographic color biography of the great leader of the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands), not without, however, in the folds of the propaganda discourse, some happy moment. In 1953 DEFA returned completely into German hands, transformed into Volkseigener Betrieb (VEB), and in the same year, after Stalin's death and under the pressure of the workers' revolt in East Berlin, the 'new course' policy began, marked from an increased corporate responsibility and from a greater respect for the tastes of the public, with the consequence that production went up rapidly, reaching its peak in 1960 with twenty-six feature films. In addition to a number of entertainment films, a fair production of children's films emerged, with good examples, from Irgendwo in Berlin (1946) by G. Lamprecht a Die Geschichte vom kleinen Muck (1953) by Staudte a Sie nannten ihn Amigo (1959) directed by Heiner Carow. In the documentary field there is instead the couple Andrew and Annelise Thorndike, whose Archivfilme on recent German history, despite the explicit propaganda matrix, aroused interest at an international level. Next to the 'veterans' it began to become light, in the middle of the decade, a new lever of directors:Konrad Wolf, Frank Beyer, Gerhard Klein and H. Carow started a cinema that marks a certain difference from the past. This is demonstrated by the series of the three Berlin-Filme - topical works on the life of the divided metropolis - directed by Klein and written by Wolfgang Kohlhaase, the best writer of the GDR, who already in his debut test, Alarm im Zirkus (1954) , he took Italian Neorealism as a model. Thus, in the last film of the series, the most successful, Berlin - Ecke Schönhauser ... (1957), the propaganda controversy is accompanied by a realistic description of the environment of the rebellious youth, whose existence is also recognized in the East. a continuous alternation of timid openings and political restraints began to establish with Lissy (1957) the talent of the greatest director of the GDR, K. Wolf, while the marked commitment to renew the second generation of GDR directors would have resulted in a 'cinematographic spring' interrupted in December 1965 by the eleventh Plenum of the Central Committee of the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) which accused DEFA of "promoting harmful ideological phenomena of skepticism and alienation ". These are the so-called rabbit films, so called by Das Kaninchen bin ich (produced in 1965, but released in 1989) by K. Maetzig, of which the importance was understood only after the fall of the wall, when they left the cellari in which they had been buried for a quarter of a century. The ideological crackdown of the SED involved all the production of the two-year period 1965-66: they were for example. precipitously withdrawn from the market, or not included in the programming, in addition to Das Kaninchen bin ich, also Denk bloss nicht, ich heule (shot in 1965 and then released in 1990) by Frank Vogel and Spur der Steine ​​(1966) by F. Beyer, while several works, such as Jahrgang 45 (produced in 1966 and also released in 1990) by the future documentary maker Jurgen Böttcher, were interrupted during the production phase. The consequences of this drastic change would have brought a widespread climate of disengagement and insecurity among the directors of DEFA, blocking a possible rebirth that would never have happened again. Once the production block was over, instead politically more innocuous and hitherto unknown genres such as historical adventure films or oriental sauerkraut flourished, which moreover gained a lively success with the public. in addition to Das Kaninchen bin ich, also Denk bloss nicht, ich heule (shot in 1965 and then released in 1990) by Frank Vogel and Spur der Steine ​​(1966) by F. Beyer, while several works, such as Jahrgang 45 (produced in 1966 and also released in 1990) by the future documentary maker Jurgen Böttcher, were interrupted during the production phase. The consequences of this drastic turn would have brought a widespread climate of disengagement and insecurity among the directors of DEFA, blocking a possible rebirth that would never have happened again. Once the production block was over, instead, politically more innocuous and hitherto unknown genres such as historical adventure films or oriental sauerkraut flourished, which moreover gained a lively success with the public. in addition to Das Kaninchen bin ich, also Denk bloss nicht, ich heule (shot in 1965 and then released in 1990) by Frank Vogel and Spur der Steine ​​(1966) by F. Beyer, while several works, such as Jahrgang 45 (produced in 1966 and also released in 1990) by the future documentary maker Jurgen Böttcher, were interrupted during the production phase. The consequences of this drastic turn would have brought a widespread climate of disengagement and insecurity among the directors of DEFA, blocking a possible rebirth that would never have happened again. Once the production block was over, instead, politically more innocuous and hitherto unknown genres such as historical adventure films or oriental sauerkraut flourished, which moreover gained a lively success with the public. ich heule (shot in 1965 and then released in 1990) by Frank Vogel and Spur der Steine ​​(1966) by F. Beyer, while several works, such as Jahrgang 45 (produced in 1966 and also released in 1990) by the future documentary filmmaker Jurgen Böttcher, were interrupted during the manufacturing phase. The consequences of this drastic change would have brought a widespread climate of disengagement and insecurity among the directors of DEFA, blocking a possible rebirth that would never have happened again. Once the production block was over, instead politically more innocuous and hitherto unknown genres such as historical adventure films or oriental sauerkraut flourished, which moreover gained a lively success with the public. ich heule (shot in 1965 and then released in 1990) by Frank Vogel and Spur der Steine ​​(1966) by F. Beyer, while several works, such as Jahrgang 45 (produced in 1966 and also released in 1990) by the future documentary filmmaker Jurgen Böttcher, were interrupted during the manufacturing phase. The consequences of this drastic change would have brought a widespread climate of disengagement and insecurity among the directors of DEFA, blocking a possible rebirth that would never have happened again. Once the production block was over, instead politically more innocuous and hitherto unknown genres such as historical adventure films or oriental sauerkraut flourished, which moreover gained a lively success with the public. like Jahrgang 45 (produced in 1966 and also released in 1990) by the future documentary maker Jurgen Böttcher, they were interrupted during the production phase. The consequences of this drastic change would have brought a widespread climate of disengagement and insecurity among the directors of DEFA, blocking a possible rebirth that would never have happened again. Once the production block was over, instead politically more innocuous and hitherto unknown genres such as historical adventure films or oriental sauerkraut flourished, which moreover gained a lively success with the public. like Jahrgang 45 (produced in 1966 and also released in 1990) by the future documentary maker Jurgen Böttcher, they were interrupted during the production phase. The consequences of this drastic turn would have brought a widespread climate of disengagement and insecurity among the directors of DEFA, blocking a possible rebirth that would never have happened again. Once the production block was over, instead, politically more innocuous and hitherto unknown genres such as historical adventure films or oriental sauerkraut flourished, which moreover gained a lively success with the public. The consequences of this drastic turn would have brought a widespread climate of disengagement and insecurity among the directors of DEFA, blocking a possible rebirth that would never have happened again. Once the production block was over, instead, politically more innocuous and hitherto unknown genres such as historical adventure films or oriental sauerkraut flourished, which moreover gained a lively success with the public. The consequences of this drastic turn would have brought a widespread climate of disengagement and insecurity among the directors of DEFA, blocking a possible rebirth that would never have happened again. Once the production block was over, instead, politically more innocuous and hitherto unknown genres such as historical adventure films or oriental sauerkraut flourished, which moreover gained a lively success with the public.

Accanto a Wolf, la figura emergente della cinematografia della DDR fu, all'inizio degli anni Sessanta, F. Beyer, che realizzò una notevole trilogia antifascista: Fünf Patronenhülsen (1960), ambientato durante la guerra civile spagnola e interpretato dai suoi due attori preferiti, Erwin Geschonneck e Armin Mueller-Stahl; Königskinder (1962) e Nackt unter Wölfen (1963), il film più famoso dei tre, tratto dall'omonimo romanzo di B. Apitz sul campo di concentramento di Buchenwald. Quando Beyer passò ad affrontare temi di attualità del socialismo, con il già citato Spur der Steine, un'anticonvenzionale ballata sul mondo del lavoro interpretata dallo spavaldo attore-cabarettista Manfred Krug, il regista si trovò al centro di una violenta campagna diffamatoria che lo obbligò a lavorare prima in teatro poi in televisione; sarebbe passato quasi un decennio, prima che Beyer realizzasse, dal romanzo di J. Becker, uno dei suoi film migliori, Jakob der Lügner (1974), una bella tragicommedia di stampo brechtiano ambientata in un lager (nel 1999 ne è uscito il remake di Peter Kassovitz, con Robin Williams tra gli interpreti) che gli valse, oltre a un premio alla Berlinale, la nomination all'Oscar (unico caso di tutta la produzione DEFA).

Sempre nel campo del film antifascista si segnala ancora Der Fall Gleiwitz (1961) realizzato da G. Klein, sulla base della sceneggiatura scritta da W. Kohlhaase, in cui si ricostruisce con moduli semidocumentari il caso dell'assalto alla stazione radio di Gleiwitz messo in scena dalle SS per offrire un pretesto a Hitler per invadere la Polonia. Il successivo tentativo di Klein e Kohlhaase di continuare l'esperienza dei Berlin-Filme fece la fine di tutti i 'film dei conigli': Berlin um die Ecke (prodotto nel 1965, ma uscito nel 1990) venne bloccato a lavorazione quasi ultimata, restando così l'ultima opera di lungometraggio diretta da Klein.

Il realismo documentario e il documentarismo nella DDR: 1966-1989. - Having recovered very slowly from the shock of the two-year period 1965-66, DEFA began towards the end of the decade to deal with the problems of the so-called technical-scientific revolution in their repercussions within the life of the Republic. No longer characterized by the pathos of the 'heroic' years of the construction of socialism, this renewed interest in the world of work was characterized by the 'micrological' and substantially aideological perspective that led the filmmakers to turn out of Babelsberg's studios, in places and real environments, often with non-professional actors. It was the tendency towards 'documentary realism' to which most of the directors of the 'third generation' of the GDR would refer, albeit with different or even opposite styles: Horst Seemann, Siegfried Kühn, Ralf Kirsten, Lothar Warneke, Roland Gräf, Rainer Simon, Hermann Zschoche. The emergence of this trend was closely related to the evolution of the documentary in the GDR. From the compilation works of A. and A. Thorndike we moved with the couple Walter Heynowski-Gerhard Scheumann to an extremely 'aggressive' type of audiovisual journalism that mainly focuses on Congo, Vietnam and Chile while the first work he said international fame for the pair of filmmakers was Der lachende Mann (1966), an interview conducted in disguise to the head of the Congolese mercenaries, Siegfried Müller. The counterpart to the sensationalistic documentaryism of Heynowski and Scheumann, whose method has often been contested for its extreme and preconceived propaganda rigidity, is represented, however, from those expeditions into daily reality conducted, as well as from the pioneering work of Karl Gass, first of all by J. Böttcher and then by Winfried Junge, Gitta Nickel and Volker Koepp. Influenced by the Cinéma vérité and its techniques (direct sound, 16 mm etc.), the documentary school of the GDR managed to distill and document fragments of reality from the squalor of real socialism with all German diligence and patience (the cycles of films that follow individuals and / or social groups for decades and decades). The meticulous attention to the daily aspects of reality, combined with the adoption of 'light' shooting techniques (albeit with the classic difficulties of technological adjustment, characteristic of socialist systems), would have been an example that fiction cinema, however,

Erich Honecker's election as secretary general of the SED in 1971 marked a short five-year political-cultural opening. However, the 1976 crisis, with the deprivation of citizenship of the dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, again had serious consequences on the production of DEFA, marred by the continuous loss of artistic staff, gradually passed to work in the West: so the actors Angelica Domröse, Renate Krössner, Manfred Krug, Jutta Hoffmann, Armin Mueller-Stahl (who has become an international star) and Katharina Thalbach, as well as director Egon Günther. Furthermore, the death of K. Wolf, a bit like that of Fassbinder in the Neuer Deutscher Film, deprived the GDR of his 'heart': by a curious coincidence the two authors died in the same year, 1982.

In a political climate always oscillating between repression and liberalization, the GDR fiction cinema exhausted its best strength in the 1980s. Few were the works worthy of being remembered outside a local context, while the accusation of knowing only three b's acquired: "brav, bieder, bildarm" (good, respectable, visually poor). While trying to reflect on the grayness of everyday life, on the private outside the ritual manifestations of collective life, the new levers of DEFA lacked the objective of narrating more complex stories. Exceptions are the rule: R. Gräf's Märkische Forschungen (1982); Die Frau und der Fremde (Golden Bear ex aequo at the Berlin Film Festival in 1985, from a short story by the expressionist writer L. Frank) by R. Simon, director who had suffered yet another case of political censorship with Jadup und Boel, produced in 1980, but only released in 1988; perhaps Die Beunruhigung (1982) by L. Warneke, an 'exceptional' work for DEFA's production modules, built without script and in black and white, shot in just three weeks with the live sound that thematizes the fear of having thrown away its existence.

H. Carow replied to the minimalism of 'documentary realism', who, after the censure suffered by his Die Russen kommen (1966, it would only come out in 1987), was the author of two fortunate and controversial melodramas of daily life, among the greatest hits of the public DEFA: Die Legende von Paul und Paula (1973, from a screenplay by the writer and scenarist Ulrich Plenzdorf) and Bis dass der Tod euch scheidet (1979), from a screenplay by Günther Rucker, both characterized by a solid professionalism in the direction of the actors and by a direction careful to dose the effects and emotions. He would have had to wait until the fateful 1989, with the fall of the Berlin wall, to review his talent in Coming out, a film in which he was able to tell a homosexual story.

Already reported in 1965 with a good debut on the problems of divorce, Lots Weib, who continues the tradition of Dudow's Frauenfilme, Günther returned to shoot two films (both starring Jutta Hoffmann) on interpersonal problems: Der Dritte (1972) and Die Schlüssel (1974). The failure of the latter forced Günther to return to those literary adaptations of which in the GDR was undisputed master: Lotte in Weimar (1975, by Th. Mann, with Lilli Palmer as protagonist) and Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1976, by JW Goethe). He then left the GDR to continue his work on German-federal television where, with the exception of the remarkable drama Exil (1981), in seven episodes, from the novel of the same name by L. Feuchtwanger, he was unable to match the previous tests.

Back in vogue with Jakob der Lügner, but always in the balance to emigrate to the West, F. Beyer made a fun double comedy first, Das Versteck (1978) and then Der Aufenthalt (1983), from a screenplay by W. Kohlhaase, film who, in the resumption of the parabolic structure of Jakob der Lügner, explores the stay in an internment camp of a young soldier victim of an exchange of person with Kafkaesque accents. Finally, he shot another beautiful 'criminal' comedy set in the second post-war period, Der Bruch (1989), which gathers a large cast of Eastern and Western performers (Götz George, Otto Sander, Rolf Hoppe). Involuntarily the political and state unification that would shortly be accomplished was anticipated in the cinema.

From the fall of the wall to the beginning of the 21st century: to the reconquest of the public

The fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989 caught the cinemas of the two opposing states in difficult conditions, so that, in unification, the new G. found itself adding up two weaknesses. Apart from a few isolated cases, by authors who have finally tasted complete expressive freedom like R. Gräf in Der Tangospieler (1991), the great turning point (Wende) has not delivered, despite numerous attempts, truly significant fiction films. However, it must be added that the nonfiction cinema has instead experienced an exceptional moment of renaissance. This is demonstrated not only by the numerous 'hot' documentations that have 'stalked' the events but above all by two extraordinary works of reflection, both born in the East: Die Mauer (1990) by J. Böttcher and the monumental Drehbuch: die Zeiten (1993) by Barbara and W. Junge with which, together with November Days (1990) by the French Marcel Ophuls (the son of the great director Max), unforgettable pages on the end of the GDR have been written. In the nineties the Neuer Deutscher Film was reduced to a pale memory of the past: Wenders has become an international filmmaker, more at home in Paris or Los Angeles than in his home country; Kluge has devoted all his efforts to auteur television; Schlöndorff, returning from an emigration to the United States and after the experience of director of studies in Babelsberg, returned behind the camera with very unequal results; Achternbusch continued to repeat himself in a mannerist way; Lilienthal, von Trotta, Schroeter and Herzog have stopped or slowed down their work in fiction as Syberberg has lost track. E. Reitz, with the exploit of Die zweite Heimat, made in 1992, it constitutes the exception that confirms the rule, but now the generation of 'veterans' has ceased to play that decisive role of the past. The psychological disorientation of Wende has passed and after 'indispensable rearrangement of the market, something radically new began to happen in the new G. at the turn of the millennium. The cinematographic situation, at least from an economic point of view, has never been so favorable: the cinemas are full and strong investments (public and private) keep production going, which is constantly moving to feed the needs of a rich internal media market. Not to mention the investments (equal in size to those made at home) in the United States, where the Germans have always enjoyed a leading position and where directors such as Uli Edel, W. Petersen or Roland Emmerich are active, to which curiously Hollywood often entrusts 'archinationalist' films such as Independence day (1996) or Air Force One (1997 ). In this era of market-oriented cinema, new talents continue to exist, such as Romuald Karmakar or Fred Keleman, who continue with research, with stubbornness, a research far from fashion, while an interesting Turkish-German cinema is flourishing. Thanks to a small film and television firmament (which includes G. George, Heiner Lauterbach, Jürgen Vogel, Katja Riemann, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Till Schweiger etc.) and the distribution of the US majors, German genre cinema is experiencing a box office renaissance . As is known, the comedy has been the tread and in it we must point out the bitter personality of Helmut Dietl, who uses comic material for scratchy analysis of costume: so in Schtonk! (1992), where he satirizes the sensational 'case' of Hitler's false diaries, as in Rossini (1996), a merciless radiography of the cinematographic environment of the Bavarian capital. At a much lower level, for example, the monks from Munich Sönke Wortmann and Katja von Garnier, author of a nice experimental debut, Abgeschminkt! (1993; Women without make-up), or Berliner Detlev Buck with the blockbuster Männerpension (1996) or Francofortese Rolf Silber by Echte Kerle (1996; Too bad he is male). But comedy is not the only genre awarded commercially;

Finally, in Berlin, reborn, cinematically speaking, after unification, there is the collective X-Filme Creative Pool, aimed at an auteur cinema revised and corrected by the depressed techno air of the nineties and characterized by the desire not to imitate the path of the 'fathers'. This new Berliner Schule, composed of a combative, enterprising group of thirty-year-olds, moves between expressive research and market needs and has as its spearhead Tom Tykwer, author of Lola rennt (1998; Lola corre), a film he has represented the greatest international success of a young German author. Beside him Dani Levy and especially Wolfgang Becker, who in Das Leben ist eine Baustelle (1997), however, did not match the goal of the previous Kinderspiele (Silver Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 1992),

bibliography

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B. Eisenschitz , Le cinéma allemand , Paris 1999 (trad. It. Short history of German cinema , Turin 2001).

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Das Kinobuch , hrsg. K. Pinthus, Leipzig 1914 (trad. It. Kitsch and the soul , Bari 1983).

Before Caligari. German cinema 1985-1920 , edited by P. Chierchi Usai, L. Codelli, Pordenone 1990.

H. Schlüpmann, Unheimlichkeit des Blicks, Basel 1990.

Rot für Gefahr, Feuer und Liebe, Redaktion D. Sannwald, Berlin 1995.

A second life: German cinema's first decades, ed. Th. Elsaesser, M. Wedel, Amsterdam 1996.

Sul cinema degli anni Venti:

R. Kurtz, Expressionismus und Film, Berlin 1926 (trad. it. Milano 1981).

O. Kalbus, Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst, Altona-Bahrenfeld 1935.

S. Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler. A psychological history of the German film, Princeton (NJ) 1947 (trad. it. Cinema tedesco, Milano 1954; Da Caligari a Hitler, nuova ed. a cura di L. Quaresima, Torino 2001).

L.H. Eisner, L'écran démoniaque, Paris 1952, 1965² (trad. it. Roma 1955, 1983² e 1991).

R. Borde, F. Buache, F. Courtade, Le cinéma réaliste allemand, Lyon 1965.

M. Henry, Le cinéma expressioniste allemand: un langage métaphorique, Fribourg 1971 (trad. it. Milano 1973).

F. Savio , The German Way , in Private Vision , Rome 1972, pp. 209-90.

U. Barbaro , German cinema , Rome 1973.

Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland: 1918-1932 , hrsg. G. Kühn, K. Tümmler, W. Wimmer, Berlin (Ost) 1975.

PG Tone , Structures and forms of German cinema of the 1920s , Milan 1978.

Culture and cinema in the Weimar Republic , edited by G. Grignaffini, L. Quaresima, Venice 1978.

Cinema and revolution , edited by L. Quaresima, Milan 1979.U. ESKILDSEN, JC. HORAK,Film und Foto der zwanziger Jahre , Stuttgart 1979.

JD Barlow , German Expressionist Film , Boston 1982.

I. Brennicke, J. Hembus , Klassiker des deutschen Stummfilms 1910-1930 , München 1983.

J. Kasten , Der expressionistische Film , Münster 1990.

V. Sánchez-Biosca , Sombras de Weimar. Contribución a la historia del cine alemán 1918-1933 , Madrid 1990. Babelsberg , hrsg. W. Jacobsen, Berlin 1992.

Das UFA-Buch , hrsg. H.-M. Bock, M. Töteberg, Frankfurt a. M. 1992.

K. Kreimeier , Die UFA-Story , München-Wien 1992.

Filmkultur zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik , hrsg. U. Jung, W. Schatzberg, München-London-New York-Paris 1992.

Der Film der weimarer Republik , hrsg. G. Gandert, Berlin-New York 1993.

Germanic shields. Ufa 1917-1933 , edited by G. Spagnoletti, Venice 1993.

Gleissende Schatten. Kamerapioniere der zwanziger Jahre , Redaktion M. Esser, Berlin 1994.

H. Korte , Der Spielfim und das Ende der Weimarer Republik , Göttingen 1998.

S. Micheli , Bertolt Brecht and Weimar cinema , Florence 1998.

T. Elsaesser , Weimar cinema and after: Germany's historical imaginary , London-New York 2000.

V. Martinelli , From Dr. Calligari to Lola-Lola. German cinema of the 1920s and Italian criticism , Gemona 2001.

On the National Socialist period:

E. Leiser , "Deutschland, erwache!" Propaganda im Film des Dritten Reiches , Reinbek bei Hamburg 1968.

G. Albrecht , Nationalsozialistische Filmpolitik , Stuttgart 1969.

DS Hull , Film in the Third Reich , Berkeley-Los Angeles 1969 (trad. It. Rome 1972).

D. Hollstein , Antisemitische Filmpropaganda , München-Pullach-Berlin (Ost) 1971.

F. Courtade, P. Cadars , Histoire du cinéma nazi , Paris 1972.

W. Becker , Film und Herrschaft , Berlin (Ost) 1973.

J. Spiker , Film und Kapital , Berlin (Ost) 1975.

J. Baxter , The Hollywwod exiles , New York-London 1976.

Zensur - Verbotene deutsche Filme 1933-1945 , hrsg. K. Wetzel, PA Hagemann, Berlin (Ost) 1978.

Wir tanzen um die Welt. Deutsche Revuefilme 1933-1945 , hrsg. H. Balach, München-Wien-Berlin (Ost) 1979.

C. Bandmann , J. Hembus , Klassiker des deutschen Tonfilms 1930-1960 , München 1980.

C. Romani , The divas of the third Reich , Rome 1981.

Vienna-Berlin-Hollywood: the cinema of the great emigration , curated by E. Ghezzi, E. Magrelli, P. Pistagnesi, G. Spagnoletti, Venice 1981.

H. Barkhausen , Filmpropaganda für Deut-schland im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg , Hildesheim-Zürich-New York 1982.

RM Friedman , The image et son Juif , Paris 1983.

J.-C. Horak , Fluchtpunkt Hollywood: eine Dokumentation zur Filmemigration nach 1933 , Münster 1984.

B. Drewniak , Der deutsche Film 1938-1945 , Düsseldorf 1987.

C. Delage , La vision nazie de l'histoire: le cinéma documentaire du Troisième Reich , Lausanne 1989.

Märtyrerlegenden im NS-Film , hrsg. M. Loiperdinger, Opladen 1991.

K. Kanzog , "Staatspolitisch besonders wertvoll" , München 1994.

E. Rentschler , The ministry of illusion: nazi cinema and its afterlife , Cambridge (Mass.) - London 1996.

On post-war cinema:

J. Hembus , Der deutsche Film kann gar nicht besser sein , Bremen 1961.

P. Pleyer , Deutscher Nachkriegfilm 1946-1948 , Münster 1965.

W. Höfig , Der deutsche Heimatfilm 1947-1960 , Stuttgart 1973.

Nicht mehr fliehen. Das Kino der Ära Adenauer , hrsg. U. Kurowski, T. Brandlmeier, München 1979-1981.

G. Bliersbach , So grün war die Heide. Der deutsche Nachkriegsfilm in neuer Sicht , Weinheim 1985.

M. Barthel , So war es wirklich. Der deutsche Nachkriegsfilm , München-Berlin (Ost) 1986.

C. Seidl , Der deutsche Film der fünfziger Jahre , München 1987.

Zwischen Gestern und Morgen. Westdeutscher Nachkriegsfilm 1946-1962 , Redaktion J. Berger, H.-P. Reichmann, R. Worschech, Frankfurt a. M. 1989.

B. Westermann , Nationale Identität im Spielfilm der fünfziger Jahre , Frankfurt a. M.-Bern-New York-Paris 1990.

On BDR cinema:

H. Scheugl, E. Schmidt Jr , Eine Subgeschichte des Films. Lexicon des Avantgarde-Experimental- und Undergroundfilms , Frankfurt a. M. 1974.

M. Fontana , Film und Drang , Florence 1978.

J. Sandford , The new German cinema , London 1980.

R. Fischer, J. Hembus , Der neue deutsche Film 1960-1980 , München 1981.THE VENICE BIENNALE, Federal Republic of Germany , (Venetian manuscripts, 3), Venice 1982.

W. Roth , Der Dokumentarfilm seit 1960 , München-Luzern 1982.

D. Trastulli , pale mother Germany , Florence 1982.

T. Corrigan , New German film. The Displaced image , Austin 1983.

E. Rentschler , West German film in the course of time , Bedford Hills-New York 1984.

Junger Deutscher Film (1960-1970) , edited by G. Spagnoletti, Milan 1985.

R. Fischer, P. Taggi, J. Hembus , The new German cinema, 1960-1986 , Rome 1987.

Augenzeugen. 100 Texte neuer deutscher Filmemacher , hrsg. HH Prinzler, E. Rentschler, Frankfurt a. M. 1988.

The denied village: Bavaria and German cinema of the eighties , edited by A. Percavassi, L. Quaresima, E. Reiter, Florence 1988.

T h. Elsaesser , New German cinema: a history, Basingstoke-London 1989.

Abschied von Gestern. Bundesdeutscher Film der sechziger und siebziger Jahre , Redaktion H.-P. Reichmann, R. Worschech, Frankfurt a. M. 1991.

HG Pflaum, HH Prinzler , Film in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland , München-Wien 1992.

R. Fischetti , Das neue Kino: acht Portrats von deutschen Regisseurinnen , Dülmen-Hiddingsel-Frankfurt a. M. 1992.

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Film in der DDR , München-Wien 1977.

S. Micheli , Cinema in the German Democratic Republic , Rome 1978.

DEFA-Spielfilm-Regisseure und ihre Kritiker , hrsg. R. Richter, Berlin (Ost) 1981 and 1983.INTERNATIONAL NEW CINEMA SHOW OF PESARO, German Democratic Republic , in Eastern Europe '80 , Venice 1987, pp. 149-202.

Film und Gesellschaft in der DDR , hrsg. M. Behn, H.-M. Bock, Hamburg 1988-1989.

DEFA NOVA - nach wie vor? , Redaktion D. Hochmuth, Berlin 1993.

Das zweite Leben der Filmstadt Babelesberg. DEFA-Spielfilme 1946-1992 , Redaktion R. Schenk, Berlin 1994.

Filmstadt Babelsberg: zur Geschichte des Studios und seiner Filme , hrsg. B. Dalichow, C. Hilker-Siebenhaar, A. Geiss, Berlin 1994.

Schwarzweiss und Farbe. DEFA-Dokumentarfilme 1946-1992 , Redaktion G. Jordan, R. Schenk, Berlin 1996.

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Sunrise - A Song of Two Humans

(USA 1926, 1927, Aurora , black and white, 97m at 24 fps); direction : Friedrich W. Murnau; production : William Fox for Fox; subject : from Hermann Sudermann's novel Die Reise nach Tilsit ; screenplay : Carl Mayer; photography : Charles Rosher, Karl Struss; editor : Katherine Hilliker, HH Caldwell, Harold D. Schuster; scenography : Rochus Gliese.

Ansass, a young farmer from a small country village, is subjugated by the charm of a city woman who convinces him to get rid of his wife Indre, drowning her during a boat trip. But, on the verge of committing the crime, the man repents. The frightened wife runs away. Only then does he understand the love Indre has for him. Ansass chases her and climbs with her on a tram bound for the city. Once at their destination, the two attend a wedding and the man asks for forgiveness: reconciliation is marked by a joyful journey through the mirages of the metropolis. But the man again risks losing his wife on the way back, during a storm that the fragile boat that carries them is unable to resist. Indre, however, manages to save herself thanks to a reed lifesaver that Ansass had previously built to return to the shore after the planned murder, and is found passed out on a rock by some villagers who came to help. Meanwhile, the man, convinced that he has lost his beloved in the waves, rejects the city woman who came to look for him; when he is about to strangle her, he learns that his wife has been found safe and sound. At the dawn of a reconciling dawn, the couple is united again with their little son. when he is about to strangle her, he learns that his wife has been found safe and sound. At the dawn of a reconciling dawn, the couple is united again with their little son. when he is about to strangle her, he learns that his wife has been found safe and sound. At the dawn of a reconciling dawn, the couple is united again with their little son.

Sunrise - A Song of Two Humansis a metaphysical tale that is affected by German romanticism: the world of the countryside (the simplicity of a nature that symbolizes the root and source of life) is opposite to that of the city (the hyperactivity of the overpopulated and frenetic urban world, with its fictitious pleasures and its illusions); in the same way, the country woman (the legitimate bride who embodies the gifts of humility and simplicity) is faced by the city woman (the illegitimate lover who resorts to the artifices of a purely external charm). The characters are primarily archetypes (the city woman does not even have a name). After the attempted crime, after the sin, the reconciliation will take place passing from the countryside to the hyperactive heart of the metropolis, and subsequently taking the reverse path. It's on the way home, in a final confrontation with the unleashed elements of nature, the definitive reconciliation takes place. The appearance of the dawn marks the full affirmation of the quiet, the rediscovered harmony of the couple, which coincides with the return to the urban world by thevamp .

There are few films in the history of cinema that manage to translate the deep psychology of the characters so happily through the expressiveness of the images, the movements of the camera and the gestures of the performers. The captions, relatively numerous in the initial part, progressively become rarer as the narrative proceeds. And yet, Friedrich W. Murnau is capable of describing every minimum aspect through the use of all the linguistic possibilities of silent cinema, which at the time had reached its peak in the United States. The filmmaker had already shown in Germany that he can master these resources, but with Sunrise - A Song of Two Humansit reaches a level of perfection rarely equaled with equal intensity and coherence. Murnau shot the film entirely in the studio, masterfully exploiting the mattes, the perspective games (for example in the scenes of the city funfair or in those of the protagonists' homes, which from a scenographic point of view appear to be the most clearly inspired by expressionism) , the skilful lighting (the splendid shot in which Ansass, in silhouette, sees from the window the city woman on the village road in twilight), the symbolism of the costumes (the city woman constantly in black: the silk of her dress, the hat, stockings, crown), the parallel assembly that takes on moral significance (the image of the wife at home while the lovers kiss) or that unites metropolis and countryside in the storm, the pressing rhythm with which the universe of city pleasures is returned. And again, the careful topographical exploration of places, the use of flashbacks and flashforwards, the superimpositions of composite images that contain internal movements, the fades that take us from one universe to another without changing the axis of recovery and the breadth of the plan on the characters. The outcome was such that Murnau himself could finally say: " shooting axis and the amplitude of the plane on the characters. The outcome was such that Murnau himself could finally say: " shooting axis and the amplitude of the plane on the characters. The outcome was such that Murnau himself could finally say: "Sunrise shows exactly what I mean. "The tragedy (the symmetric temptations of murder) frames the comedy of urban discoveries (the hairdresser, the photographer, the restaurant, the amusements, the dancing , the piglet ride, the peasant dance, the fireworks), but also the melodrama of passions (the couple divided by adultery, the forgotten and found son) and the comparison with the elements of nature: everything merges into a unitary work supported by an absolute aesthetic movement precision.

Awarded in Hollywood with the Oscars for the best female interpretation (Janet Gaynor) and for photography, in the judgments of the scholars and filmmakers Sunrise - A Song of Two Humans still stands as one of the most beautiful films in the history of cinema. Thanks to his immense fame, in 1939 a remake was made directed by Veit Harlan, 'almost official' filmmaker of the Nazi regime, entitled Die Reise nach Tilsit ( Towards love ), with Kristina Söderbaum in the role of his wife, elected in this central pivot case of the story.

Performers and characters : George O'Brien (Ansass), Janet Gaynor (Indre), Margaret Livingston (the city woman), Bodil Rosing (waitress), J. Farrell MacDonald (photographer), Ralph Sipperly (hairdresser), Jane Winton ( manicure), Arthur Housman (bold man), Eddie Boland (courteous man), Friedrich W. Murnau (boat tourist), Gino Corrado, Barry Norton, Sally Eilers, Phillips Smalley, Gibson Gowland.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Blin, FW Murnau , in "La revue du cinéma", n. 25, août 1931.

E. Bruno, Note on 'Aurora' (Sunrise) by FW Murnau , in "Filmcritica", n. 246, July 1974.

T. Rayns, Sunrise - A Song of Two Humans , in "Monthly film bulletin", n. 495, April 1975.

R. Wood, Sunrise , in "Film comment", n. 3, May-June 1976.

MA Doane, Desire in 'Sunrise' , in "Film reader", n. 2, January 1977.

N. Almendros, Sunrise , in "American cinematographer", n. 4, April 1984.

BM Marchetti, D. Niccolini, Around 'Sunrise' , Urbino 1989.

B. Amengual, Murnau revisité. 'L'aurore' (1927) , in "Jeune cinéma", n. 13, février-mars 1989.

L. Fischer, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans , London 1998.

V. Amiel, Murnau. The chair des images , in "Positif", n. 457, mars 1999.

B. Prager, Taming impulses: Murnau's 'Sunrise' and the exorcism of Expressionism , in "Literature / Film quarterly", n. 4, October 2000.

M. Staloky, Sounding images in silent film: visual acoustics in Murnau's 'Sunrise' , in "Cinema journal", n. 2, Winter 2002.

Screenplay: in "L'avant-scène du cinéma", n. 148, juin 1974.

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