A brief history of German Cinema post 1945

Perhaps a brief history of German Cinema should have been my first blog post, however, it was only after researching a few German films that I realised the time they were made in is equally important as the time they are set in. Germany has had a turbulent history and I wondered if this was reflected consistently in German Cinema since 1945, in its subjects and themes.

Immediately after the Second World War it was very difficult to speak of a 'German' Cinema. The Allies took steps to control the media and entertainment for both ideological and economic reasons. There was no import quota on Hollywood films, which led to the domination of American films in Germany - Charlie Chaplin was extremely popular. The separation on Germany in to two states further disintegrated the notion of a German Cinema in the decade after World War Two.

In West Germany, the German films that were produced during the 'Stunde Null' offered escapism and optimism for the cinema-goers through their plots. Heimatfilm was a very popular genre - it depicted a simple, traditionally German, country life. They were nostalgic films that offered an escape from present troubles in to the past. Many films were also made that fell under the genre of Truemmerfilme (rubble films). These were films that focussed on the (then) present, on the day-to-day lives of ordinary Germans living amongst the ruins of post-war Germany and the reactions to National Socialism. Truemmerfilme were clearly influenced by Italian neo-realists - some examples include Wolfgang Staudte's Die Moerder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us) (1946) and Wolfgang Liebeneiner's Liebe 47 (1949).


Heimatfilme remained popular in West Germany during the 1950s. However, towards the middle of the 1950s, as West Germany began to rearm and the German army was created, a new wave of films emerged. They were war films that depicted ordinary German soldiers as apolitical heroes. They seem to take the blame of National Socialism away from the individual, which also ties in with the rise of films during this time that depicted German resistance towards Hitler.

During the 1960s the number of cinema-goers in West Germany fell dramatically, which led to many production companies, distribution companies and cinemas going out of business. A new generation of film makers was convinced that it could succeed where German Cinema was failing - it just required the funding to do so. They met annually in the Ruhr town of Oberhausen - hence the name The Oberhausen Manifesto, a manifesto which they issued in February 1962. Read the manifesto (in English) here: http://web.uvic.ca/geru/439/oberhausen.html
In short, these young directors wanted film to be acknowledged as an art form, through public policies and subsidies. The manifesto is assertive and self-assured and lays out their expectations for the future of German film. They demand freedom of expression and criticise the Cinema of the previous generation. The manifesto was successful - the West German government created infrastructures of federal offices and funding agencies, for example the Kuratorium junger deutscher Film. Training facilities were also created that were conducive to the proposed convergence of film and art, for example the Ulm Film Institute, which trained a new generation of film makers as 'Filmautoren' - an all-round film making education.

This led to the New German Cinema of the 1970s and the new genre of Autorenfilm. The directors of Autorenfilme were like the authors of books - they had sole control of the creation of their films, there were no script writers. Common motifs of this genre were: family crisis, gender role, generational problems and the impact of the sexual revolution. They were often set against the problems that National Socialism and its aftermath presented Germany. These films were praised by critics and were recognised abroad but achieved little commercial success.
There are seven key directors of the New German Cinema : Alexander Kluge, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Jean-Marie Straub, Volver Schloendorff and Hans Juergen Syberberg.



West German film during the 1980s became stagnant, with Das Boot the only film of any note.

In East Germany, The film production company Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA) was founded on May 17, 1946 and took control of the film production facilities in the Soviet Zone. It created films for children, documentaries, Gangster and Western films, anti-fascist films and films that dealt with issues of the then present. However, film-making in the GDR was always constrained by the political situation in the country at any given time. The main aims of DEFA were to re-educate the German audience, remove fascism and militarism and promote democracy and humanism. Jakob der Luegner was a film made under the influence of DEFA.

It took almost ten years before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the surrounding events were depicted in German film and literature. Sonnenallee and Helden Wie Wir deal with reunification and the need of Germans to come to terms with their past. Post-unification German Cinema became transnational through film companies such as X-Filme and Creative Pool, the films were less experimental and more commercially successful, for example Lola Rennt (Run Lola, Run) and Goodbye, Lenin! With the exception of Lola Rennt, I cannot think of an internationally successful German film that does not deal with an event or aspects from German history. Goodbye, Lenin! deals with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Der Untergang (Downfall) deals with the Second World War and Hitler's last days, Das Wunder von Bern deals with the 1954 World Cup, Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) deals with the East German Stasi, and Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (The Baader Meinhof Complex) retells the story of the West German militant group the RAF. What is the effect on the presentation of national stories for a transnational audience? What is the effect of creating 'Hollywood' style stories?

I believe the development of German Cinema clearly demonstrates that films can be an historical document of the time they focus on and of the time they were made.

References:

Allan, Sean and John Sandford (eds), DEFA: East German Cinema 1946-1992 (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999).

Hake, Sabine, German National Cinema (London: Routledge, 2002).

Hill, John and Pamela Church Gibson, World Cinema: Critical Approaches (New York: OUP, 2000).

O'Dochartaigh, Pol, Germany since 1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).