From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film / Edition 2

by Siegfried Kracauer, Leonardo Quaresima

Overview

"An undisputed classic of modern film historiography, Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler had a major impact on the way we relate movies to history and society. Although Kracauer is not afraid of using such contested concepts as collective psychology and German 'soul,' his productive readings of Weimar films as harbingers of emerging fascism still resonate today. Leonardo Quaresima's engaging and erudite introduction is critical in situating Kracauer's project both in its historical moment and in our time."—Anton Kaes, University of California, Berkeley

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691115191
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/11/2004
Series:	Princeton Classic Editions Series
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966) was a film critic and independent film historian and theorist. He is the author of The Mass Ornament and A Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, edited by Miriam Bratu Hansen (Princeton). Leonardo Quaresima is Professor of Film History and Criticism and Director of Cinema Studies at the University of Udine, Italy.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

PEACE AND WAR

It was only after the first World War that the German cinema really came into being. Its history up to that time was prehistory, an archaic period insignificant in itself. However, it should not be overlooked. During that period — especially during the course of the war — certain conditions materialized which account for the extraordinary power of the German film after 1918.

Theoretically speaking, the German cinema commenced in 1895, when, almost two months before Lumière's first public performance, the Brothers Skladanovsky showed their "Bioscop" in the Berlin Wintergarten — bits of scenes shot and projected with apparatus they had built. But this beginning was of little consequence; for until 1910 Germany had virtually no film industry of its own. Films of French, Italian and American origin — among them those of Méliès — ingratiated themselves with the audiences of the early tent-shows (Wanderkinos), poured into the nickelodeons (Ladenkinos) after 1900, and then passed across the screen of the primitive movie theaters proper which slowly began to evolve. One French celluloid strip of 1902, The Beggar's Pride, features a noble Paris beggar who, after rescuing a lady, contemptuously refuses the money she offers him, because she has previously indicted him for being a thief. These films of high moral standards competed with pornographic ones which, of course, never lived up to their exciting promises. Between 1906 and 1908, the films increased in length, and spoken comments gave way to printed titles. Owing to such improvements, these years were marked by the opening of many new theaters and the advent of German film distributors.

The outstanding figure among the few native producers of the period was Oskar Messter, who makes no effort in his autobiography to belittle any of his merits. Messter began working in a modest apartment studio in the Berlin Friedrichstrasse, later the headquarters for numerous film-makers of low caliber and questionable business ethics. He possessed the eagerness of a pioneer to experiment, to try every innovation. At a time in which close-ups were still unusual, one of his early comedies intermingled with long shots of several female cyclists a close shot of their fidgeting legs — a procedure anticipating a favorite German camera usage. Messter also promoted the fashion of "sound films." Originating in France and America, this species flourished in Germany about 1908–1909. A costumed tenor standing before a painted canvas pretended to sing, endeavoring to synchronize the movements of his mouth with a hidden gramophone. In addition to grand-opera scenes, folk-songs and musical parodies, one could listen to Otto Reutter, the incomparable cabaret artist, whose songs cloaked bitter criticism of life with good-natured humor. Sound films of this kind had already been exhibited during the Paris World's Fair of 1900, but proved too expensive and intricate to be continued. The particular interest they met with in Germany doubtless resulted from the traditional German concern with all forms of musical expression.

During that whole era the film had the traits of a young street arab; it was an uneducated creature running wild among the lower strata of society. Many people enticed by the movies had never attended artistic spectacles before; others were lured from the stage to the screen. About 1910 the theater of the provincial town of Hildesheim reported having lost 50 per cent of those customers who previously frequented the three cheapest categories of seats. Variety and circus shows complained of similar setbacks. An attraction for young workers, salesgirls, the unemployed, loafers and social nondescripts, the movie theaters were in rather bad repute. They afforded a shelter to the poor, a refuge to sweethearts. Sometimes a crazy intellectual would stray into one.

In France, the freedom of the film from cultural ties and intellectual prejudices enabled artists like Georges Méliès or Émile Cohl to prosper, but in Germany it seems not to have stirred the cinematic sense. Then, after 1910, in response to a movement which started in France, that freedom vanished. On November 17, 1908, the newly founded French film company Film d'Art released THE ASSASSINATION OF THE DUC DEGUISE, an ambitious creation acted by members of the Comédie Française and accompanied by a musical score of Saint-Saëns. This was the first of innumerable films which were to be mistaken for works of art because, spurning cinematic potentialities, they imitated the stage and adapted celebrated literary productions. Italy followed the French example, and the American screen temporarily favored famous players in famous plays.

The same thing happened in Germany. The upper world of stage directors, actors and writers began to show interest in the cinema after having despised it as an inferior medium. Their change of mind must be traced, in part, to the missionary zeal of Paul Davidson, the great promoter of the early German film, who, under the spell of the new Danish film actress Asta Nielsen, firmly proclaimed the cinema's artistic future. He headed the Projektion-A. G. Union, which steadily extended its ownership of movie theaters and turned to producing films of its own even before the war. To boost the movies, Davidson made contact with Max Reinhardt, the leading Berlin stage producer, and, about 1911/1912, participated in the founding of a kind of guild which was to regulate the relations between film-makers and playwrights. Of course, the prospect of tangible advantages did much to soften the resistance of many formerly hostile to films. Young actors from the Berlin stages were not unwilling to make a little extra money in the studios. Stage directors for their part profited by reducing the wages of these actors; moreover, they realized, not without satisfaction, that the theaters could now appeal to moviegoers anxious to adore their screen favorites in the flesh.

Admission of films into the realm of the officially sanctioned arts went hand in hand with the evolution of a native film industry. During the last four prewar years, big film studios were constructed at Tempelhof and Neubabelsberg in the immediate neighborhood of Berlin, on grounds reserved to this day for the production of films — studios whose removable glass walls made possible the combination of indoor and outdoor work favored at the time. All looked bright and promising. Max Reinhardt himself was engaged in directing motion pictures. Hugo von Hofmannsthal was writing a "dreamplay," Das Fremde Mädchen (The Strange Girl, 1913), among the first of the fantastic films soon to become a German institution. From Arthur Schnitzler's comedy Liebelei to Richard Voss's obsolete middle-class novel Eva, few reputable works were being overlooked by the screen.

But this elevation of the film to literary high life proved, as might be expected, a blunder. Traditionally attached to the ways of the theater, the stage people were incapable of grasping the different laws of the new cinematic medium. Their behavior towards the movies was condescending. They welcomed them as a means of emphasizing the art of the actor, and moreover, as a wonderful opportunity to popularize theatrical productions. What the screen meant to them was simply the stage again. In the summer of 1910, Reinhardt's pantomime Sumurun was made into a film which bored its audience by wasting 2,000 meters on an exact duplication of the original stage performance.

The so-called film reformers (Kinoreformbewegung), including teacher associations, Catholic societies and all kinds of Vereine in pursuit of cultural aims, exerted an analogous influence. From 1912 on, these pressure groups set out to justify their existence by opposing the immorality of the films and denouncing them as a source of corruption of the youth. The resemblance to the American Puritan leagues is obvious. However, the German movement differed from all similar movements abroad in that it drew much delicious indignation from the carelessness with which most films treated literary masterpieces. It happened, in 1910, that a DON CARLOS film suppressed two main characters of Schiller's drama. In the eyes of the film reformers this was a crime. For any "literary" film had but one duty: to preserve the full integrity of its model. Was it for the sake of art that these spokesmen of the educated middle class shielded Schiller so ardently? Rather, classic literature enjoyed an awe-inspiring authority, and in defending it they yielded to the truly German desire to serve the established powers. Harassing the motion picture industry with their cultured demands, the film reformers survived the war and continued to stigmatize what they considered trash on the screen through numerous pamphlets, invariably couched in metaphysical terms.

Fortunately, all efforts to ennoble the film by dragging it into the sphere of stage and literature aroused the scepticism of film experts and encountered the salutary indifference of the masses. The film version of Sumurun was reproached by its audiences for a complete lack of details and close-ups offered by even the average film. Discouraged by such reactions, Ernst von Wolzogen, a German poet, desisted from contributing further film scenarios on the grounds that the crowd always favors the banal. People preferred to these elevated screen adaptations the current output of historical films and melodramas which dealt in a primitive way with popular themes. Of most films of the time only the titles and perhaps a few stills remain to us; but it can be presumed that they somewhat resembled the exercises of a student who has not yet learned to express himself with facility.

In 1913 the detective film emerged, a genre obviously inspired by the French ciné-romans, which were adopted in America during the war. The first German master-detective to be serialized was Ernst Reicher as eagle-eyed Stuart Webbs, who, with the peaked cap and the inevitable shag pipe, had all the trademarks of Sherlock Holmes. Since he enjoyed an immense popularity, he was soon followed by competitors vainly trying to outdo him. They called themselves "Joe Deebs" or "Harry Higgs," were on excellent terms with Scotland Yard, and lived up to their English names by looking exactly like tailor-made gentlemen.

It is noteworthy that, while the French and Americans succeeded in creating a national counterpart of Conan Doyle's archetype, the Germans always conceived of the great detective as an English character. This may be explained by the dependence of the classic detective upon liberal democracy. He, the single-handed sleuth who makes reason destroy the spider webs of irrational powers and decency triumph over dark instincts, is the predestined hero of a civilized world which believes in the blessings of enlightenment and individual freedom. It is not accidental that the sovereign detective is disappearing today in films and novels alike, giving way to the tough "private investigator": the potentialities of liberalism seem, temporarily, exhausted. Since the Germans had never developed a democratic regime, they were not in a position to engender a native version of Sherlock Holmes. Their deep-founded susceptibilities to life abroad enabled them, nevertheless, to enjoy the lovely myth of the English detective.

Despite the evolution of domestic production, foreign films continued to flood German movie theaters, which had considerably increased in number since 1912. A new Leipzig Lichtspiel palace was inaugurated with Quo VADIS, an Italian pageant that actually received press reviews as if it were a real stage play. Towards the end of the prewar period, the Danish films gained more and more influence. Greatly indebted to Asta Nielsen, they appealed to German audiences by focusing upon psychological conflicts unfolded in natural settings. The success of the American Westerns was particularly sweeping. Broncho Bill and Tom Mix conquered the hearts of the young German generation, which had devoured, volume after volume, the novels of Karl May — novels set in an imaginary Far West and full of fabulous events involving Indian tribes, covered wagons, traders, hunters, tramps and adventurers. To staid and settled adults the spell this shoddy stuff exerted on boys in the early teens was inexplicable; but youngsters would shed tears of delight when the noble Indian chief Winnetou, having become a Christian, died in the arms of his friend Old Shatterhand, a righter of wrongs, and a German, of course. By their simple manner and untroubled outlook, their ceaseless activity and heroic exploits, the American screen cowboys also attracted many German intellectuals suffering from lack of purpose. Because they were mentally tossed about, the intelligentsia welcomed the simplifications of the Westerns, the life in which the hero has but one course to follow. In the same fashion, at the outbreak of the war, numerous students enthusiastically rushed to volunteer in the army. They were drawn not so much by patriotism as by a passionate desire to escape from vain freedom into a life under compelling pressure. They wished to serve.

Besides the Westerns, short comedies featuring Max Linder, Fatty and Tontolini were the vogue of those years. All strata of German moviegoers participated in the gay laughter they aroused. The Germans liked that sort of visual fun. It is all the more surprising, therefore, that they themselves were incapable of producing a popular film comedian. As early as 1921, a German writer stated plainly that the Germans were short of comical film ideas — a domain which, he admitted, the French and after them the Americans had learned to explore with mastery.

This strange deficiency may be connected with the character of the old screen buffooneries. Whether or not they indulged in slapstick, they invariably exposed their hero to all kinds of pitfalls and dangers, so that he depended upon one lucky accident after another to escape. When he crossed a railroad, a train would approach, threatening to crush him, and only in the very last moment would his life be spared as the train switched over to a track hitherto invisible. The hero — a sweet, rather helpless individual who would never harm anyone — pulled through in a world governed by chance. The comedy adjusted itself in this way to the specific conditions of the screen; for more than any other medium the film is able to point up the contingencies of life. It was a truly cinematic type of comedy. Had it a moral to impart? It sided with the little pigs against the big bad wolf by making luck the natural ally of its heroes. This, incidentally, was comforting to the poor. That such comedy founded on chance and a naïve desire for happiness should prove inaccessible to the Germans arises from their traditional ideology, which tends to discredit the notion of luck in favor of that of fate. The Germans have developed a native humor that holds wit and irony in contempt and has no place for happy-go-lucky figures. Theirs is an emotional humor which tries to reconcile mankind to its tragic plight and to make one not only laugh at the oddities of life but also realize through that laughter how fateful it is. Such dispositions were of course incompatible with the attitudes underlying the performances of a Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd. There exists, moreover, a close interrelationship between intellectual habits and bodily movements. The German actors may have felt that, owing to their credos, they were hardly the type for gags and gestures similar to those of the American film comedians.

The war began. Not only part of the German youth, but also the clan of the film reformers firmly believed that it would imbue their drab life with a new and marvelous meaning. Hermann Häfker's preface to his book on the cinema and the cultured classes is illuminating in this respect. Dated September 1914, it extols the war as a sure means of realizing the noble designs of the film reformers, and finally turns into one of those bellicose dithyrambs not at all unusual then. "May it [i.e., the war] purify our public life as a thunderstorm does the atmosphere. May it allow us to live again, and make us eager to risk our lives in deeds such as this hour commands. Peace had become insupportable." Häfker and his like were in a frenzy.

Peace, to be sure, had seen the German film industry caught in a crisis. The domestic output was far too insignificant to compete with the foreign films crowding the movie theaters, which had seemed to increase for the sole purpose of absorbing the influx from abroad. Products of Pathé Frères and Gaumont inundated the German market. The Danish Nordisk went to the limit to ruin Davidson's Projektion-A.G. Union.

This embarrassing situation was reversed by the war, which abruptly freed the native industry from the burden of foreign competition. After the frontiers had been shut, Germany belonged to the German film producers, faced now with the task of satisfying on their own all internal demands. These were immense. In addition to the regular movie theaters numerous military ones spreading behind the front lines demanded a permanent supply of fresh films. It was lucky for the film-makers that just before the war large and modern studio plants had been completed. A boom set in, and new film companies cropped up with incredible speed. According to a seemingly reliable survey, the number of these companies rose from 28 in 1913 to 245 in 1919. Movie theaters also flourished and grew more and more luxurious. It was a period of abundant dividends. The middle class began to pay some attention to the cinema.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Editor's Note xiii

Introduction to the 2004 Edition xv

Preface li

Introduction 3

I: THE ARCHAIC PERIOD (1895-1918)

1. Peace and War 15

2. Forebodings 28

3. Genesis of Ufa 35

II: THE POSTWAR PERIOD (1918-1924)

4. The Shock of Freedom 43

5. Caligari 61

6. Procession of Tyrants 77

7. Destiny 88

8. Mute Chaos 96

9. Crucial Dilemma 107

10. From Rebellion to Submission 115

III: THE STABILIZED PERIOD (1924-1929)

11. Decline 131

12. Frozen Ground 138

13. The Prostitute and the Adolescent 153

14. The New Realism 165

15. Montage 181

16. Brief Reveille 190

IV: THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD (1930-1933)

17. Songs and Illusions 203

18. Murderer Among Us 215

19. Timid Heresies 223

20. For a Better World 232

21. National Epic 251

SUPPLEMENT: PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM

1. Nazi Views and Measures 275

2. Film Devices 277

3. The Swastika World 280

4. Screen Dramaturgy 288

5. Conflict with Reality 297

Note on the Inaccuracies 309

Bibliography 315

Updated Bibliography 327

Name Index 333

Film Index 339

What People are Saying About This

Anton Kaes

An undisputed classic of modern film historiography, Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler had a major impact on the way we relate movies to history and society. Although Kracauer is not afraid of using such contested concepts as collective psychology and German 'soul,' his productive readings of Weimar films as harbingers of emerging fascism still resonate today. Leonardo Quaresima's engaging and erudite introduction is critical in situating Kracauer's project both in its historical moment and in our time.
— Anton Kaes, University of California, Berkeley

From the Publisher

"An undisputed classic of modern film historiography, Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler had a major impact on the way we relate movies to history and society. Although Kracauer is not afraid of using such contested concepts as collective psychology and German 'soul,' his productive readings of Weimar films as harbingers of emerging fascism still resonate today. Leonardo Quaresima's engaging and erudite introduction is critical in situating Kracauer's project both in its historical moment and in our time."—Anton Kaes, University of California, Berkeley

Editorial Reviews

The book is an invaluable guide to a golden period of cinema.

The Times - Christopher Wood

One of the great works of film history, this look at early German cinema, first published in 1947, is still a must-have for cineastes and scholars alike.

Toronto Globe and Mail - H.J. Kirchhoff

The thesis of this unusually interesting book is that the German films of the twenties were filled with premonitions of the German totalitarianism of the thirties.

Nation

The book is an invaluable guide to a golden period of cinema.
— Christopher Wood

The Times

One of the great works of film history, this look at early German cinema, first published in 1947, is still a must-have for cineastes and scholars alike.
— H.J. Kirchhoff

Toronto Globe & Mail

One of the great works of film history, this look at early German cinema, first published in 1947, is still a must-have for cineastes and scholars alike.
— H.J. Kirchhoff

Toronto Globe and Mail

"One of the great works of film history, this look at early German cinema, first published in 1947, is still a must-have for cineastes and scholars alike."—-H.J. Kirchhoff, Toronto Globe and Mail

"The book is an invaluable guide to a golden period of cinema."—-Christopher Wood, The Times

From the Publisher

"The thesis of this unusually interesting book is that the German films of the twenties were filled with premonitions of the German totalitarianism of the thirties."

Nation Daryl