Weimar Republic cinema

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“When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror, and when chaos has become supreme law, then the time will have come for the empire of crime.”Read More »

Widely recognized as the source of the Frankenstein myth, the ancient Hebrew legend of the Golem provided actor/director Paul Wegener with the substance for one of the most adventurous films of the German silent cinema.Read More »

The film follows two mountain enthusiasts, battling through a glacier areain the Swiss mountains, the sublime beauty of the film is effectively staged.The attention will be paid equally to the contemplation of nature, such as theMountain sports on his then latest technical standard And it&’s also about a newform of natural experience thanks to the film and cinema technology that enablesa wide audience to look at then still little-known mountain tops for the first timeRead More »

Leni Riefenstahl made her film debut in this “mountain film” by writer/director Arnold Fanck, and went on to appear in five more under his direction. In Der Heilige Berg she plays the professional dancer Diotima who finds herself the apex of a love triangle when she is pursued by two mountain climbers, Vigo (Ernst Petersen) and his unnamed older friend (Luis Trenker). Diotima is drawn to the elder climber but can’t refrain from encouraging Vigo’s attentions as well in a spirited skiing session. She has a moment of intimacy with Vigo, and when the friend sees them together he angrily challenges Vigo to a dangerous climbing tour. During the trek he causes Vigo to fall but repents and rescues him. Both men, however, soon become lost in the mountains, and they perish before Diotima and the rescue team can reach them.Read More »

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If you’ve read the book, this film version comes as a surprise – how does it manage to make so little of so much? Or is it so much of so little? Döblin co-authored the screenplay, which compresses his sprawling novel into a breathless eighty-eight minutes. Of course, much is sacrificed, but the skeleton plot still compares favourably to that of many modern movies. Technically, too, this flick has aged magnificently – considering this is one of the first German films with sound, what we see and hear is a lot smoother than I’d expected. The cinematography is astonishing by the standards of the decades that followed…Read More »

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In Nerven, writer-director-producer Robert Reinert tried to capture the “nervous epidemic” caused by war and misery which “drives people mad”. This unique portrait of the life in 1919 Germany, filmed on location in Munich, describes the cases of different people from all levels of society: Factory owner Roloff who looses his mind in view of catastrophies and social disturbances, teacher John who is the hero of the masses and Marja who turns into a radical revolutionary. Using different fragments the Munich Film Museum could reconstruct this forgotten German classic which is a historic document and anticipates already elements of the Expressionist cinema of the 1920s.Read More »

Waterloo is a German made movie that depicts the soldiers of Belgium + The Netherlands; Brunswick; England, Ireland, Scotland + Wales; Hanover; Nassau; and Prussia’s victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.Read More »

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History of the legal scandal involving the French Captain Alfred Dreyfus who was convicted of treason and sent to the penal colony at Devil’s Island in 1894 because of an anti-Semitic conspiracy in the war ministry. Supported by the writer Emile Zola Dreyfus’s wife Lucie fights for his release. In 1899, the verdict against Dreyfus was repealed and shortly after, Dreyfus was pardoned. But it took another six years until Dreyfus was fully exonerated. (filmportal.de)Read More »

Immanuel Rath is a stuffy, disciplinarian professor who is shocked to discover his students passing around a postcard of Lola-Lola, a singer at The Blue Angel cabaret. Hoping to catch his students there, Professor Rath visits the nightclub and witnesses Lola-Lola’s performance. Entranced by her dissolute charms, he gets drunk on champagne and spends the night with her. The ensuing scandal causes him to lose control of his students and he is terminated from his position. Returning to Lola, he agrees to marry her and joins the troupe. His humiliation at having to play a clown onstage is compounded by Lola’s attraction to the strongman Mazeppa. To make matters worse, the troupe returns to the professor’s hometown, forcing him to acknowledge how far he has fallen.Read More »