Cinema : Germany

In the 1920s and early 1930s, the German cinema enjoyed world fame and acclaim. During these years Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch and Friedrich Wilhelm Mur-nau produced their great films, and Marlene Dietrich became an icon of the film world as a result of her role in “The Blue Angel”. But the National Socialist regime put an end to this spectacular development. Most of the great directors and many actors went into exile; the legendary Ufa film company lost its artistic vitality and was eventually reduced to making National Socialist propaganda films. After the war, German filmmakers had great difficulty catching up with the rest of the world.

The first German film after the Second World War, Wolfgang Staudte’s “The Murderers Are Among Us” (1946), did indeed address the trauma of the immediate past. But at least in the western part of Germany, the cinema in the years of reconstruction and the “economic miracle” by and large offered light entertainment. During the 1950s comedies, sentimental “homeland films” and melodramas enjoyed widespread popularity. Most of the successful films of this era could make no claim to either artistic quality or social criticism.