By: KEVIN JOLLY
Staff Writer
Nazi Germany is considered in many ways the pinnacle of what fascism is and what it means. Fascism itself is an ideology that’s hard to pin down on what it actually means explicitly, but Germany from 1933 to 1945 is a good base for characteristics that define fascism. The German film industry has a particularly interesting history before and during this era though. For the first part of this series of articles, the subject matter will be how a prospering and innovative new style of filmmaking, encapsulating multiple genres, was censored and destroyed by fascism and what the effects were global.
‘German expressionism’ is what defined inter-war German cinema. It prospered under the Weimar Republic, which was the German government created through a desperate revolution just before the defeat of the German Empire in WW1. The Weimar Republic was characterized by high levels of corruption, crime, inflation, political extremism, poverty, and overall a severely crippled economy. All of these problems are what contributed to extremism and the rise of the Nazis, but remarkably the film industry found huge success. In the inter-war period, Germany was one of few countries which possessed a film industry to rival Hollywood. It began when the German Empire realized the cultural utility of film back in 1917, the very early infancy stages of film as an art, and created UFA. UFA was a state-controlled film company that absorbed the majority of private German film companies and was created with the goal and intention being to create films that would shine a positive light on the war, German culture, and the German Empire.
UFA Graphic
The new Weimar Republic had a ban against censorship written into their constitution, but the film was still lightly regulated for overtly obscene content, meaning German cinema was now artistically free for the most part. After the war, UFA struggled financially as all of the Weimar Republic did, but through its new freedom, created several incredible films which have all had major impacts on film in general. “M”, “Metropolis”, “Nosferatu”, and “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” are some of the most influential and greatest films ever made, and they were all German expressionist films created in the Weimar Republic, mostly under UFA. The best way to describe German expressionism would be a disinterest in realism, and a full embrace of fantasy. These films often exaggerated mundane things to create a disturbing atmosphere, like the buildings in “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” which are lopsided and twisted to look creepier. German expressionism often was used in horror and science-fiction films. Tim Burton’s films are like a modern adaptation of this, as his films often deal with more artistic style and aesthetic over reality and their stories often involve horror. These films were often dark in nature and theme, with hyperbolic stories of what was happening in the Weimar Republic. “M” deals with a dysfunctional society trying to stop a serial killer in a testing of morals, and “Metropolis” shows a dystopian future where the wealthy live in huge mansions on the surface, and the workers are made to live and work in sprawling industrial factories underground. They usually incorporated aesthetics to not really ‘scare’ the audience, but just make them ‘uncomfortable’. Many of these films used Satanic and demonic or occultist imagery to disturb the audience, which served as a wonderful scapegoat for censorship.
Poster for Metropolis
It all came to an abrupt end towards the 1930s, when a future major figure in Nazisim, Alfred Hugenberg, bought UFA and mandated all their films to promote national socialism. This marked the end of German expressionism, but the final nail in the coffin was when the Nazis actually came to power and many of the expressionist directors being Jewish, were forced to flee Germany. Hitler’s faction of the Nazi party, the main faction, despised modern art, especially expressionism. They officially denounced it and even created a ‘Museum of Degenerate Art’ which featured some expressionist films as well as modern or abstract art, often created by artists of intellectual backgrounds or what were seen as inferior cultures and or races.
Exhibit From the Nazi Museum of Degenerate Art
The film industry under Nazi Germany came to be obsessively controlled by the ReichFilmKammer which was a subsection of government under the Propaganda Ministry. Most films were purely propagandistic in nature and messaging, and cultivated some of the vilest and anti-semitic films in history. Other films were deceptive documentaries about German culture, the fascist government, or the war. But that’s not to say Nazi Germany’s film industry was completely absent of technical innovation in film. For example, one Nazi propaganda documentary, which promoted the party through documenting the Nuremberg rally, and another which did the same through documenting the 1936 Olympics, both pioneered a wealth of filmmaking techniques that are still studied today.
Still from Nazi Documentary Featuring Nuremberg Rally
German expressionism had a massive impact on global cinema. It set the standard for gothic film style, created and or popularized the horror and science fiction genres, innovated immeasurably in special effects and artistic design, and even directly inspired Universal’s classic monster franchise. But this was all sacrificed in the hijacking of the industry by the Nazi party in exchange for promoting their cause. Films created under the fascist government were sometimes technically impressive, but also were mostly devoid of any kind of constructive themes or messaging and in fact spread despicable ideas which led to quite arguably the most horrific genocide in history.