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90-538: Friedrich Christian Anton Lang ( Austrian German pronunciation: [ˈfriːdʁɪç ˈkrɪsti̯a(ː)n ˈantɔn ˈlaŋ] ; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), better known as Fritz Lang ( pronounced [frɪts ˈlaŋ] ), was an Austrian-American film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States. One of the best-known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism , he

180-531: A "lapsed Catholic." He was baptized on December 28, 1890, at the Schottenkirche in Vienna. He had an elder brother, Adolf (1884–1961). Lang's parents were of Moravian descent. At one point, he noted that he was “born [a] Catholic and very puritan". Ultimately describing himself as an atheist , Lang believed that religion was important for teaching ethics. After finishing school, Lang briefly attended

270-698: A direct influence on UFA's production planning; it also severely curtailed the work of production head Ernst Hugo Correll . In 1939, Correll was fired after refusing to join the Nazi Party . At the time of its nationalization, among the production facilities belonging to UFA were 27 film studios, nine of which were in Neubabelsberg (Potsdam-Babelsberg), and seven of which were in Berlin-Tempelhof, including three that belonged to Carl Froelich-Film GmbH in name only. UFA also had two dubbing studios,

360-658: A merger with Pearson TV and the creation of the RTL Group, in which Bertelsmann has held the majority (90.4%) since late 2001. All worldwide production activities of the RTL Group are consolidated in FremantleMedia, and UFA is the holding company of all FremantleMedia's production activities in Germany. UFAInteractive, a small subsidiary directly associated with the holding company, was created to fulfill UFA's need for constant innovation (e.g. program content for mobile devices and special-interest channels) as well as to assist

450-446: A mixing studio, two animation studios, two ateliers for advertising films, one for cartoons and a small training atelier. On January 10, 1942, UFA officially became the subsidiary of UFA-Film GmbH (UFI), into which all German film production was merged. Other companies were dissolved or integrated into UFA at the time, including Bavaria Film, Berlin-Film, Terra Film and Tobis AG, which became additional production units. Film production in

540-599: A movie theater chain, for almost eleven million Deutschmarks. In 1997, UFA and the Luxembourgish rival CLT established the joint venture CLT-UFA, which, following the takeover of British rival Pearson Television , was restructured as RTL Group in 2000. Now, UFA GmbH (UFA) works as a subsidiary of RTL Group's production division Fremantle , which had been formed out of Pearson TV , and is responsible for all production activities of Bertelsmann and Fremantle in Germany. Until August 2013, eight subsidiaries operated under

630-540: A new holding – the UFA Film und Fernseh GmbH in Hamburg – which also held investments in radio and TV stations such as RTL and Premiere. They also established and marketed new film and sports rights. The production companies belonging to UFA Berlin have been under the management of Wolf Bauer, Norbert Sauer and Axel Reick since autumn 1991. Using the rhombus logo again, this team developed UFA Film & TV Produktion into

720-435: A new visual style which embodied high contrast and simple editing. The films were shot in studios where they could employ deliberately exaggerated and dramatic lighting and camera angles to emphasize some particular affect – fear, horror, pain. Aspects of Expressionist techniques were later adapted by such directors as Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles and were incorporated into many American gangster and horror films. Some of

810-618: A peak in Berlin during the 1920s . These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central European culture in fields such as architecture , dance , painting , sculpture and cinema . German Expressionism was an artistic movement in the early 20th century that emphasized the artist's inner emotions rather than attempting to replicate reality. German Expressionist films rejected cinematic realism and used visual distortions and hyper-expressive performances to reflect inner conflicts. The German Expressionist movement

900-478: A quasi-governmental holding company that answered to Goebbels. This move meant that UFA was effectively nationalized. Emil Georg von Stauß was named Chairman of the Supervisory Committee, Ludwig Klitzsch remained general director, and Carl Opitz was named press officer. In May, an art committee headed by Carl Froelich – but in fact controlled by Goebbels – was founded. This committee proceeded to have

990-451: A repertoire of films that had a profound effect. Two genres that were especially influenced by Expressionism are horror film and film noir . Carl Laemmle and Universal Studios had produced horror films of the silent era, such as Lon Chaney 's The Phantom of the Opera . German film makers such as Karl Freund (the cinematographer for Dracula in 1931) set the style and mood of

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1080-745: A result of the Nazi policy of "forcible coordination" known as the Gleichschaltung , UFA and all of its competitors, including Tobis , Terra , Bavaria Film and Wien-Film , were bundled together with Nazi-controlled foreign film production companies to form the super-corporation UFA-Film GmbH (Ufi), with headquarters in Berlin. After the Red Army occupied the UFA complex in 1945 in Babelsberg , and after

1170-564: A series of new Mabuse films, which were produced by Brauner (including the remake of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse ), though Lang did not direct any of the sequels. Lang was approaching blindness during the production, and it was his final project as director. In 1963, he appeared as himself in Jean-Luc Godard 's film Contempt . On February 8, 1960, Lang received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to

1260-576: A version of Ferenc Molnár 's Liliom , starring Charles Boyer . That was Lang's only film in French (excluding the French version of Testament ). He then moved to the United States. Lang made twenty-two features in his 20-year American career, working in a variety of genres at every major studio in Hollywood , and occasionally producing his films as an independent. He became a naturalized citizen of

1350-482: Is considered a central film in the genre. One of Lang's most praised films noir is the police drama The Big Heat (1953), known for its uncompromising brutality, especially for a scene in which Lee Marvin throws scalding coffee on Gloria Grahame 's face. As Lang's visual style simplified, in part due to the constraints of the Hollywood studio system, his worldview became increasingly pessimistic, culminating in

1440-488: Is credited with launching or developing many different genres of film. Philip French of The Observer believed that Lang helped craft the "entertainment war flick" and that his interpretation of the story of Bonnie and Clyde "helped launch the Hollywood film noir". Geoff Andrew of the British Film Institute believed he set the "blueprint for the serial killer movie" through M . In December 2021, Lang

1530-421: Is hunted down and brought to rough justice by Berlin's criminal underworld. M remains a powerful work; it was remade in 1951 by Joseph Losey , but this version had little impact on audiences, and has become harder to see than the original film. During the climactic final scene in M , Lang allegedly threw Peter Lorre down a flight of stairs in order to give more authenticity to Lorre's battered look. Lang, who

1620-602: The Expressionist movement was building. In this first phase of his career, Lang alternated between films such as Der Müde Tod ("The Weary Death") and popular thrillers such as Die Spinnen ("The Spiders"), combining popular genres with Expressionist techniques to create an unprecedented synthesis of popular entertainment with art cinema . In 1920, Lang met his future second wife, the writer Thea von Harbou . She and Lang co-wrote all of his movies from 1921 through 1933, including Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler ("Dr. Mabuse

1710-531: The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . In banning the film, Goebbels stated that the film "showed that an extremely dedicated group of people are perfectly capable of overthrowing any state with violence", and that the film posed a threat to public health and safety. Lang was worried about the advent of the Nazi regime, partly because of his Jewish heritage, whereas his wife and co-screenwriter Thea von Harbou had started to sympathize with

1800-574: The Riech Group acquired UFA-Theater AG and continued operating the company with a license from Bertelsmann under the UFA's trademark rhombus logo. The right to the UFA name remains, however, with Bertelsmann. Under the management of Werner Mietzner, the company experienced a renaissance in productions at UFA Fernsehproduktion. With the launch of private television in 1984, the Bertelsmann Group brought together its film and TV activities in

1890-732: The Technical University of Vienna , where he studied civil engineering and eventually switched to art. He left Vienna in 1910 in order to see the world, traveling throughout Europe and Africa, and later Asia and the Pacific area. In 1913, he studied painting in Paris . At the outbreak of World War I , Lang returned to Vienna and volunteered for military service in the Austrian Army and fought in Russia and Romania , where he

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1980-730: The War Ministry and Deutsche Bank . The board chairman of the new company was Deutsche Bank director Emil Georg von Stauß. Prior to establishing the company, the General Staff had considered taking over the Deutsche Lichtbild-Gesellschaft  [ de ] e. V. (DLG), which had been founded in 1916. This agency was too much under the influence of heavy industry and, in particular, of Alfred Hugenberg , chairman of Krupp . Hugenberg would later take over UFA in 1927. Three main film companies formed

2070-597: The Weimar Republic immediately following the First World War not only encapsulate the sociopolitical contexts in which they were created, but also rework the intrinsically modern problems of self-reflexivity, spectacle and identity. According to Siegfried Kracauer and Lotte Eisner , German Expressionist cinema operates as a kind of collective consciousness and a symptomatic manifestation of what they polemically claim to be inherent cultural tendencies of

2160-569: The 1920s embraced an ethic of change and a willingness to look to the future by experimenting with bold new ideas and artistic styles. The first Expressionist films, which lacked a generous budget, used set designs with wildly non-realistic, geometrically absurd angles, along with designs painted on walls and floors to represent lights, shadows, and objects. The plots and stories of the Expressionist films often dealt with madness, insanity , betrayal and other " intellectual " topics triggered by

2250-443: The 1920s which had ultimately been directed by Joe May ), so Lang returned to Germany to make his "Indian Epic" (consisting of The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb ). Following the production, Brauner was preparing for a remake of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse when Lang approached him with the idea of adding a new original film to the series. The result was The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960), whose success led to

2340-717: The Berlin theater brought the Expressionist visual style to the design of stage sets. This, in turn, had an eventual influence on films dealing with fantasy and horror. The prime example is Robert Wiene 's dream-like film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) which is universally recognized as an early classic of Expressionist cinema. Hermann Warm , the film's art director, worked with painters and stage designers Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig to create fantastic, nightmarish sets with twisted structures and landscapes with sharp-pointed forms and oblique, curving lines. Some of these designs were constructions, others were painted directly onto canvases. German Expressionist films produced in

2430-796: The British public against the wishes of his studio. His visual experimentation included the use of an image of a man walking across a glass floor shot from below, a concept representing someone pacing upstairs. Werner Herzog 's 1979 film Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht was a tribute to F. W. Murnau 's 1922 film . The film uses expressionist techniques of highly symbolic acting and symbolic events to tell its story. The 1998 film Dark City used stark contrast, rigid movements, and fantastic elements. Stylistic elements taken from German Expressionism are common today in films that need not reference contemporary realism, such as science fiction films (for example, Ridley Scott 's 1982 film Blade Runner , which

2520-573: The Gambler," 1922 – which ran for over four hours, in two parts in the original version, and was the first in the Dr. Mabuse trilogy), the five-hour Die Nibelungen (1924), the dystopian film Metropolis (1927), and the science fiction film Woman in the Moon (1929). Metropolis went far over budget and nearly destroyed UFA, which was bought by right-wing businessman and politician Alfred Hugenberg . It

2610-724: The General Trustee for UFI assets in the British zone. The first film made by Universum-Film AG, a short documentary film called Am Seidenen Faden , came out in 1955. In 1958, the first UFA feature film Stefanie came out: it starred Sabine Sinjen and was directed by Josef von Baky , who had directed the UFA's large-scale 25th anniversary film Münchhausen in 1942. In 1969, after ten further feature films directed by leading artists such as Curtis Bernhardt , William Dieterle , Helmut Käutner and Wolfgang Liebeneiner – as well as such newcomers as Peter Beauvais , Rolf von Sydow and Georg Tressler – feature film production at UFA

2700-540: The German film industry in general entered a period of crisis: foreign sales stalled due to low profit margins, and the German market became profitable once again for American film giants. The resulting concentration on a few large German film companies, which came together to unite production, distribution and presentation under one UFA's managers made severe miscalculations with regard to two large-scale productions, Nibelungen and Metropolis in 1924-1926. This situation

2790-520: The German nation. Expressionism has also been described as focusing on the "power of spectacles" and offering audiences "a kind of metonymic image of their own situation". This film movement paralleled Expressionist painting and theater in rejecting realism. The creators in the Weimar Period sought to convey inner, subjective experience through external, objective means. Their films were characterized by highly stylized sets and acting; they used

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2880-729: The Heart or the musical film The Three from the Filling Station are produced by the UFA. In 1930, the company enjoyed worldwide success with the film The Blue Angel , starring Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings , directed by Joseph von Sternberg . UFA experienced a new commercial boom in the Nazi era, not least due to the government's protectionist measures, which freed the company from bothersome domestic and foreign competition, sometimes even incorporating their production facilities and staff (see also: National Socialist Film Policy). On top of that, by occupying almost all of Europe,

2970-484: The Hollywood studios before Pearl Harbor" as it is "clean and concentrated, elegant and precise, pointed without being preachy." His American films were often compared unfavorably to his earlier works by contemporary critics, although the restrained Expressionism of these films is now seen as integral to the emergence and evolution of American genre cinema, film noir in particular. Scarlet Street (1945), one of his films featuring Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett ,

3060-699: The Jofa ateliers in Berlin-Johannisthal. Wolfgang Staudte directed the film and also wrote the screenplay. Additionally, the Soviets confiscated numerous UFA productions from the Babelsburg vaults and dubbed them into Russian for release in the USSR; and simultaneously began importing Soviet films to the same offices for dubbing into German and distribution to the surviving German theaters. In contrast,

3150-574: The Marriage Registry Office in Charlottenburg , Berlin, Lang married a theater actress, Elisabeth Rosenthal, who died on 25 September 1920, in their bathtub, under mysterious circumstances, of a single gunshot wound, deemed to have been fired by Lang's Browning revolver , from World War I. Lang's writing stint was brief, as he soon started to work as a director at the German film studio UFA , and later Nero-Film , just as

3240-473: The Nazi regime also provided UFA with new sales markets, as well as placing distribution outlets in such "neutral" countries as the United States. By 1938, after taking over foreign film production facilities in France, Belgium and other countries, one third of the company's sales came from abroad. UFA's economic boom made it possible to further expand the so-called "star system," which had already been developed in

3330-467: The Nazi takeover of January 30, 1933, and made UFA openly available for Joseph Goebbels ' propaganda machine, even though Hugenberg was removed from his post shortly thereafter (June 1933) under pressure from Hitler. In an act of anticipatory obedience to the Nazi regime, UFA management fired several Jewish employees on March 29, 1933. In the summer of 1933, the Nazi regime created the Film Chamber of

3420-520: The Nazis in the early 1930s, and later joined the Nazi party in 1940. After he discovered von Harbou in bed with Ayi Tendulkar , an Indian journalist and student 17 years younger than her, they soon divorced. Lang's fears would be realized following his departure from Austria, as under the racist Nuremberg Laws he would be identified as half-Jewish even though his mother was a converted Roman Catholic, and he

3510-629: The Red Army. After the German Wehrmacht issued its unconditional surrender on May 7 & 9, 1945, the Military Government Law No. 191 initially halted and prohibited all further film production. On July 14, 1945, as a result of Military Government Law No. 52, all Reich-owned film assets of UFI Holding were seized. All activities in the film industry were placed under strict licensing regulations and all films were subject to censorship. The Soviet military government, which

3600-781: The Reich, which adopted regulations officially excluding Jewish filmmakers from all German studios. In 1936, Germany's first film institute was founded in the form of the UFA-Lehrschau set up by Hans Traub at the Babelsberg Film Complex. Goebbels systematically brought UFA and all other media companies under the control of his Propaganda Ministry. On March 18, 1937, the Hugenberg Company was forced to sell all of its UFA shares for 21.25 million Reichsmark (equivalent to 95 million 2021 €) to Cautio Treuhand GmbH,

3690-707: The Soviet zone was very slow, in spite of the "Lex UFI" law issued in September 1949 by the American and British military regime and the Dissolution Law (June 1953) issued by the German Bundestag. The status of UFA was furthermore controversial, with doubts about whether it should be allowed to resume operations at all because of its identification with Nazi film production. Motion pictures produced after

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3780-451: The UFA umbrella: UFA Fernsehproduktion, UFA Entertainment, Grundy UFA, Grundy Light Entertainment, UFA Cinema, teamWorx, Phoenix Film and UFA Brand Communication. In August 2013, UFA underwent an organizational restructuring that simplified the company down to three production divisions. Today, UFA Fiction , UFA Serial Drama , UFA Show & Factual and UFA Documentary are the four units responsible for production. An early step towards

3870-545: The US. The UFA's last film was Der blaue Engel (1930), considered a masterpiece of German Expressionism. The two most comprehensive studies of German Expressionist film are Lotte Eisner 's The Haunted Screen and Siegfried Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler . Kracauer examines German cinema from the Silent/Golden Era to support the (controversial) conclusion that German films made prior to Hitler 's takeover and

3960-450: The United States in 1939. Signing first with MGM Studios, Lang's crime drama Fury (1936) saw Spencer Tracy cast as a man who is wrongly accused of a crime and nearly killed when a lynch mob sets fire to the jail where he is awaiting trial. However, in Fury , he was not allowed to represent black victims in a lynching scenario or to criticize racism, which was his original intention. By

4050-498: The Universal monster movies of the 1930s with their dark and artistically designed sets, providing a model for later generations of horror films. Directors such as Fritz Lang , Billy Wilder , Otto Preminger , Alfred Hitchcock , Orson Welles , Carol Reed and Michael Curtiz introduced the Expressionist style to crime dramas of the 1930s and 1940s, expanding Expressionism's influence on modern film making. German silent cinema

4140-520: The Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945) and The Big Heat (1953). He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939. Lang was born in Vienna , as the second son of Anton Lang (1860–1940), an architect and construction company manager, and his wife Pauline "Paula" Lang ( née Schlesinger; 1864–1920). His mother was born Jewish and converted to Catholicism. His father was described as

4230-496: The administrative director general and were responsible for the overall planning of annual programming and content design all the way up to the actual shooting of the film: these heads were also responsible for giving instructions to the film line producers and directors. It was subsequently fully nationalized in mid-1944. In late April 1945, the UFA ateliers in Potsdam-Babelsberg and Berlin-Tempelhof were occupied by

4320-540: The banks had closed by the time the meeting was over. Lang claimed that, after selling his wife's jewelry, he fled by train to Paris that evening, leaving most of his money and personal possessions behind. However, his passport of the time showed that he traveled to and from Germany a few times during 1933. Lang left Berlin for good on July 31, 1933, four months after his meeting with Goebbels and his initial departure. He moved to Paris, having divorced Thea von Harbou , who stayed behind, earlier in 1933. In Paris, Lang filmed

4410-601: The captured nations was also brought under its aegis. Profits reached 155 million Reichsmarks in 1942 (equivalent to € 649,828,997 in 2021) and 175 million ℛℳ in 1943 (equivalent to €715,085,619 in 2021). At this point, the UFA staff hierarchy was reorganized according to the Nazi Führer principle . The coordination of individual sub-groups of the UFI Corporation was the job of the newly appointed Reich Film Director-General. The production heads worked for

4500-515: The cold, geometric style of his last American films, While the City Sleeps (1956) and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956). Finding it difficult to find congenial production conditions and backers in Hollywood, particularly as his health declined with age, Lang contemplated retirement. The German producer Artur Brauner had expressed interest in remaking The Indian Tomb (from an original story by Thea von Harbou, that Lang had developed in

4590-409: The concept of a rocket launch pad (a rocket standing upright against a tall building before launch having been slowly rolled into place) and the rocket-launch countdown clock. His other major films include Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen (1924), and after moving to Hollywood in 1934, Fury (1936), You Only Live Once (1937), Hangmen Also Die! (1943), The Woman in

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4680-401: The creation of Bufa. Ludendorff foresaw a large-scale, state-controlled film corporation that would serve national interests. In this spirit, Universum-Film AG (UFA) was founded as a consolidation of private film companies on December 18, 1917 in Berlin. The company's starting capital was 25 million Reichsmark (equivalent to 62 million 2021 €): among the contributors were the German government,

4770-469: The end of 1932, Lang started filming The Testament of Dr. Mabuse . Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933, and by March 30, the new regime banned it as an incitement to public disorder. Testament is sometimes deemed an anti-Nazi film, as Lang had put phrases used by the Nazis into the mouth of the title character. A screening of the film was cancelled by Joseph Goebbels , and it was later banned by

4860-567: The end of World War I. By the time its 1916 ban on imports on foreign film was lifted, Germany had become a part of the international film industry. Among the first Expressionist films, The Student of Prague (1913), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), From Morn to Midnight (1920), The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920), Genuine (1920), Destiny (1921), Nosferatu (1922), Phantom (1922), and Schatten (1923) were highly symbolic and stylized. European societies of

4950-408: The experiences of World War I (as opposed to standard action-adventure and romantic films). Later films often categorized as part of the brief history of German Expressionism include Metropolis (1927) and M (1931), both directed by Fritz Lang . This trend was a reaction against realism. Its practitioners used extreme distortions in expression to show an inner emotional reality rather than what

5040-524: The founding of UFA was taken on January 13, 1917, with the creation of the Bild- und Filmamt (Bufa) by Germany's Supreme Army Command. Formed as a reaction to the perceived advantage of Germany's enemies in the realm of film propaganda, Bufa's task was to use film for psychological warfare. The plans envisaged by the German General Staff – especially those of Erich Ludendorff – went far beyond

5130-514: The larger companies independently in an advisory function. On August 9, 2013, the company underwent a major restructuring based on the new strategic goal and concept of "One UFA". UFA's organizational structure was simplified down to three production units. UFA experienced a golden age in cinema from the 1920s to the 1940s. In this period, the company contributed significantly to the history of German film. The following are among UFA's most famous productions from those years: The following are among

5220-522: The largest production company in Germany, now written in capital letters UFA . UFA's many prize-winning TV films, light entertainment formats, popular soap operas, long-running TV series, sitcoms and non-fiction programs have made it the leader on the German television market. The company broadcasts over 2,800 hours of content each year. In early 1997, the holding society UFA Hamburg (today Cologne) merged with CLT in Luxemburg to form CLT-UFA. April 2000 saw

5310-487: The main UFA shareholder and which had determined the company's business policy as head of the shareholders' consortium. Köhnlechner bought UFA, which was heavily in debt, on behalf of Reinhard Mohn for roughly five million Deutschmarks. (Köhnlechner: "The question came up as to why not take the entire thing, it still had many gems.") Only a few months later, Köhnlechner also acquired the UFA-Filmtheaterkette,

5400-455: The main film-policy goal of the Allied occupying forces, under American insistence, consisted in preventing any future accumulation of power in the German film industry. The Western powers also had more interest in opening up the German film market for their own products rather than in letting the national film industry regain its foothold. Thus the reorganization of Germany's film industry outside

5490-432: The major filmmakers of this time were F. W. Murnau , Erich Pommer , and Fritz Lang . The movement ended after the currency stabilized, making it cheaper to buy movies abroad. The UFA financially collapsed and German studios began to deal with Italian studios which led to their influence in style of horror and films noirs. The American influence on the film industry would also lead some film makers to continue their career in

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5580-451: The massive yet pristine "upper" city. German Expressionist painters rejected the naturalistic depiction of objective reality, often portraying distorted figures, buildings, and landscapes in a disorienting manner that disregarded the conventions of perspective and proportion. This approach, combined with jagged, stylized shapes and harsh, unnatural colors, were used to convey subjective emotions. A number of artists and craftsmen working in

5670-679: The motion picture industry, located at 1600 Vine Street . Lang died from a stroke on August 2, 1976, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles . While his career had ended without fanfare, Lang's American and later German works were championed by the critics of the Cahiers du cinéma , such as François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette . Truffaut wrote that Lang, especially in his American career,

5760-401: The nucleus of UFA from the end of 1917: More companies joined UFA not long after: UFA continued to sign production agreements with various independent producers: Given that Germany had been – and continued to be – largely cut off from film imports due to World War I, the new company had ideal conditions for their conquest of the German market. The mission of UFA at the time of its founding

5850-475: The privatization of Bavaria and UFA in 1956 in West Germany, the company was restructured to form Universum Film AG and taken over by a consortium of banks. However, in film production and distribution, it failed to revive and went into receivership. In 1964, Bertelsmann 's Chief Representative, Manfred Köhnlechner, acquired the entire Universum Film AG holdings from Deutsche Bank, which had previously been

5940-510: The realm of talkie production as a result of a contract with Tobis-Klangfilm, which simplified the licensing situation for UFA. Nevertheless, UFA has recorded unsurpassed artistic successes with films such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis (inscribed on UNESCO 's Memory of the World Register , the first film thus distinguished) and Woman in the Moon to this day. Asphalt ( German Realism ) or entertainment movies such as Melody of

6030-555: The rise of the Third Reich all hint at the inevitability of Nazi Germany. For Eisner, similarly, German Expressionist cinema is a visual manifestation of Romantic ideals turned to dark and proto-totalitarian ends. More recent German Expressionist scholars examine historical elements influencing German Expressionism, such as the Weimar economy, UFA , Erich Pommer , Nordisk , and Hollywood . Universum Film AG In 1942, as

6120-408: The silent film era. The highest paid UFA stars in the Nazi era were Hans Albers and Zarah Leander . Veit Harlan was the highest-earning director. In addition, as a result of the nationalist German spirit that already dominated the company, UFA was perfectly suited to serve the goals of National Socialist propaganda in film. Hugenberg had been named Reich Minister of Economics immediately following

6210-515: The time Fury was released, Lang had been involved in the creation of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, working with Otto Katz , a Czech who was a Comintern spy. He made four films with an explicitly anti-Nazi theme, Man Hunt (1941), Hangmen Also Die! (1943), Ministry of Fear (1944) and Cloak and Dagger (1946). Man Hunt , wrote Dave Kehr in 2009, "may be the best" of the "many interventionist films produced by

6300-498: The time, stating that the sets and scene artwork of Expressionist films often reveal buildings of sharp angles, great heights, and crowded environments, such as the frequently shown Tower of Babel in Fritz Lang's Metropolis . Strong elements of monumentalism and Modernism appear throughout the canon of German Expressionism. An excellent example of this is Metropolis , as evidenced by the enormous power plant and glimpses of

6390-424: The war in the Allied zones were, for a decade, made by other, fledgling companies. It was 1956 by the time Bavaria was outsourced and the remaining UFA re-privatized. A bank consortium led by Deutsche Bank was behind the founding of the new Universum-Film AG, whose production facilities included the Afifa-Kopierwerk and the ateliers in Berlin-Tempelhof. Its first board chairman was Arno Hauke who, until then, had been

6480-404: Was Ludwig Klitzsch; Hugenberg himself took over the chairmanship of the supervisory board; his deputy was banker Emil Georg von Stauß . At first, nothing changed in UFA's production policy. In 1928, Erich Pommer was replaced as head of production by Ernst Hugo Correll , who led the company through the transition to talking pictures or "talkies". UFA gained an advantage over smaller companies in

6570-420: Was a financial flop, as were his last silent films Spies (1928) and Woman in the Moon , produced by Lang's own company. In 1931, independent producer Seymour Nebenzahl hired Lang to direct M for Nero-Film. His first "talking" picture , considered by many film scholars to be a masterpiece of the early sound era, M is a disturbing story of a child murderer ( Peter Lorre in his first starring role) who

6660-554: Was a leader in the time of the German Expressionism , experienced a further boom, and emerged as a direct competitor to Hollywood with films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen (1924), Variety (1925) and Faust (1926). In 1927, UFA found itself in serious financial trouble. After the stabilization of the German currency starting in November 1924,

6750-824: Was already in 1921 producing the lion's share of German feature films, and in that year it was privatized. Starting in 1922, large ateliers in Neubabelsberg (today's Babelsberg Studio ) and on Oberlandstraße in Berlin-Tempelhof were made available for film production. In 1926, the facilities were expanded by means of the construction of the largest studio hall in Europe at the time. In 1923, after Decla-Bioscop AG and others were taken over, Erich Pommer became head of all production operations and discovered and fostered many stars, including Emil Jannings , Pola Negri , Conrad Veidt and Lya de Putti . During this era UFA

6840-430: Was arguably far ahead of Hollywood during the same period. Cinema outside Germany benefited both from the emigration of German film makers and from German expressionist developments in style and technique that were apparent on the screen. The new look and techniques impressed other contemporary film makers, artists and cinematographers, and they began to incorporate the new style into their work. In 1924, Alfred Hitchcock

6930-412: Was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute . He has been cited as one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. Lang's most celebrated films include the groundbreaking futuristic science-fiction film Metropolis (1927) and the influential M (1931), a film noir precursor. His 1929 film Woman in the Moon showcased the use of a multi-stage rocket , and also pioneered

7020-708: Was ended. In 1964, Bertelsmann acquired Universum-Film AG and all other divisions of UFA-Theater AG. In order to prevent the sale of film rights belonging to the old UFA, the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation was set up in Wiesbaden on the initiative of the German Federal Government and representatives of the film industry. In 1966, the foundation acquired the rights to UFA and Bavaria Film – and they have been administering, storing and restoring ever since. In 1972,

7110-419: Was greatly underappreciated by "cinema historians and critics" who "deny him any genius when he 'signs' spy movies ... war movies ... or simple thrillers." Filmmakers that were influenced by his work include George Lucas , Jacques Rivette , William Friedkin , Steven Spielberg , Christopher Nolan , Luis Buñuel , Osamu Tezuka , Alfred Hitchcock , Satyajit Ray , Jean-Luc Godard and Stanley Kubrick . Lang

7200-610: Was in favour of a speedy reconstruction of the German film industry under Soviet supervision, incorporated the Babelsberg ateliers into DEFA , the state-run film studio, subsequently the GDR's state film studio, on May 17, 1946. Murderers Among Us was the first German feature film in the post-war era and the first so-called "Trümmerfilm" ("Rubble Film"). It was shot in 1945/46 by DEFA in the Althoff Studios in Babelsberg and

7290-510: Was initially confined to Germany due to the country's isolation during World War I. In 1916, the government banned foreign films, creating a sharp increase in the demand for domestic film production, from 24 films in 1914 to 130 films in 1918. With inflation also on the rise, Germans were attending films more freely because they knew that their money's value was constantly diminishing. International audiences and appreciation for German cinema began to grow as anti-German sentiment decreased following

7380-441: Was itself influenced by Metropolis ). Woody Allen 's 1991 film Shadows and Fog is an homage to German and Austrian Expressionist filmmakers Fritz Lang , Georg Wilhelm Pabst and F. W. Murnau . The extreme angles of set decor and associated lighting were parodied by Ken Hughes in his Berlin spy school segment for the 1967 spoof version of Casino Royale . Many critics see a direct tie between cinema and architecture of

7470-457: Was known for being hard to work with, epitomized the stereotype of the tyrannical Germanic film director, a type embodied also by Erich von Stroheim and Otto Preminger ; Lang wore a monocle , adding to the stereotype. In the films of his German period, Lang produced a coherent oeuvre that established the characteristics later attributed to film noir , with its recurring themes of psychological conflict, paranoia, fate and moral ambiguity. At

7560-607: Was made even worse as the result of a gag contract (the Parufamet agreement) they had entered into in 1925 with the American companies Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . In March 1927, with the company facing bankruptcy, Alfred Hugenberg – Chairman of the German National People's Party and owner of the Scherl-Gruppe, a powerful media corporation – bought the company. The new general director

7650-590: Was on the surface. The extreme anti-realism of Expressionism was short-lived, fading away after only a few years. The themes of Expressionism were integrated into later films of the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in an artistic control over the placement of scenery, light, etc., to enhance the mood of a film. This dark, moody school of filmmaking was brought to the United States when the Nazis gained power and many German film makers emigrated to Hollywood . Several German directors and cameramen flourished in Hollywood, producing

7740-440: Was raised as such. According to Lang, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels called Lang to his offices to inform him – apologetically – that The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was being banned but, nevertheless, he was so impressed by Lang's abilities as a filmmaker (especially Metropolis ), that he offered Lang the position of head of German film studio UFA. Lang said it was during that meeting he had decided to leave for Paris – but that

7830-712: Was sent by Gainsborough Pictures to work as an assistant director and art director at the UFA owned Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam near Berlin on the film The Blackguard . The immediate effect of the working environment in Germany can be seen in his expressionistic set designs for that film. Hitchcock later said he "acquired a strong German influence by working at the UFA studios". German Expressionism would continue to influence Hitchcock throughout his career. In his third film, The Lodger , Hitchcock introduced expressionist set designs, lighting techniques, and trick camera work to

7920-503: Was the production of films – feature films, documentaries, cultural films and weekly headline (newsreel) films – designed to function as propaganda for Germany abroad. However, after mounting tensions between the company's founding members, Deutsche Bank was able to prevail and implement their approach to film production as a business rather than for military objectives. Instead of propaganda films, UFA now produced elaborate entertainment films such as Sumurun ( Ernst Lubitsch , 1920). UFA

8010-428: Was the subject for BBC Radio 4's In Our Time . The Academy Film Archive has preserved a number of Lang's films, including Human Desire and Man Hunt . Works Papers Metadata Texts German expressionist cinema German expressionist cinema ( German : Deutsches expressionistisches kino ) was a part of several related creative movements in Germany in the early 20th century that reached

8100-542: Was wounded four times and lost sight in his right eye, the first of many vision issues he would face in his lifetime. While recovering from his injuries and shell shock in 1916, he wrote some scenarios and ideas for films. He was discharged from the army with the rank of lieutenant in 1918 and did some acting in the Viennese theater circuit for a short time before being hired as a writer at Decla Film , Erich Pommer 's Berlin-based production company. On 13 February 1919, in

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