Premiere of Metropolis at UFA-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz |
UFA, in full Universum Film-Aktien Gesellschaft, was a German motion-picture production company that made artistically outstanding and technically competent films during the silent era.
The
Cinematheque in Berlin holds currently, and until April 2018, an
exhibition celebrating the 100th anniversary of UFA.
Located
in Berlin, its studios were the best equipped and most modern in the
world. It encouraged experimentation and imaginative camera work and
employed such directors as Ernst Lubitsch, famous for directing
sophisticated comedies, and G.W. Pabst, a pioneer in the expressive
use of camera position and editing techniques.
UFA
was established in 1917 when the German government consolidated most
of the nation’s leading studios. Its purpose was to promote German
culture and, in the years following World War I, to enhance Germany’s
international image. At first, UFA produced mostly historical and
costume dramas, including Die Augen der Mumie Ma (1918; The Eyes of
the Mummy) and Carmen (1918), both directed by Ernst Lubitsch and
starring Pola Negri. The company soon acquired several theatres
throughout Germany and inaugurated Berlin’s lavish Film Palast am
Zoo with the premiere of Lubitsch’s Madame Dubarry (1919; also
released as Passion), an international hit that did much to open the
door for German films in countries where they had been banned since
the war.
In
1923 the studio acquired one of the world’s largest production
facilities, at Babelsberg, as a result of its merger with the film
company Decla Bioscop, which had produced The cabinet of Dr Caligari
in 1919. This move, however, coincided with the increasing popularity
in Germany of Hollywood films, and UFA’s resulting financial crises
compelled the studio to produce mostly inexpensive documentary films
for the next few years. Distribution deals with the American studios
Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ultimately proved disastrous, but
UFA rallied long enough to produce such classics as F.W. Murnau’s
Der letzte Mann (1924; The Last Laugh), Edwald André Dupont’s
Variété (1925; Variety), and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927).
Annonce pour Metropolis dans le Vossische Zeitung |
On
the brink of financial ruin, the company was purchased in 1927 by the
powerful financier Alfred Hugenberg, a future Hitler supporter who
mandated that the company devote itself to films that promoted German
nationalism. The company still produced such notable efforts as Der
blaue Engel (1930; The Blue Angel) and Der Kongress tanzt (1931;
Congress Dances) but was coerced to make National Socialist films
almost exclusively when the Nazis came to power in 1933.
No comments:
Post a Comment