Early German Cinema

The names of Ernst Lubitch, Robert Wiene, Paul Leni, Fritz Lang, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, and Georg Wilhelm Pabst perhaps stand for one of the 'golden ages' of world cinema, helping—between 1918 and 1928—to make motion pictures an artistic and avant-garde medium.

The films of the period, most notably Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1919), Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, 1921), and Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1925) have entered into popular movie mythology. For example, Nosferatu has provided the template for many vampire movies and was recently the subject of a film itself (Shadow of the Vampire). The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has influenced the work of such modern day directors as Tim Burton and David Cronenberg and did much to define the style of film noir. In their time, the films were associated with German Expressionism, mainly because of their self-conscious stylization of décor, gesture, and lighting. Some critics of the films have seen them as an expression of the moral and political confusion of Weimar Germany.

The films have now become cult viewing but what are the stories behind these classic flms?

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari

Werner Krauss plays the title character, a sinister hypnotist who travels the carnival circuit displaying a somnambulist named Cesare (Conrad Veidt). A series of murders coincides with the arrival of Caligari in a small German town but when the best friend of the hero, Francis (Friedrich Feher) is killed, it is seen as the result of romantic rivalry – the two friends falling out over the lovely Jane (Lil Dagover). Francis, however, suspects Caligari but he is forced to investigate on his own when the police ignore him. He discovers that Caligari has been ordering the somnabulist to murder but he soon descends into a world of madness where nothing is quite as it seems.

Metropolis

In Fritz Lang's vision of the future (the year 2000), adapted from a novel by his wife Thea von Harbou, humans are sharply divided between the rulers and the workers. The ruling class live in huge skyscrapers (inspired by the New York skyline and perhaps reflecting his early training as an architect) while slave labourers toil away far below ground level. Venturing below ground the hero, Freder (Gustav Frohlich) falls in love with Maria (Brigitte Helm) and, appalled by the squalid conditions, begins to campaign for reform. But his plans evoke the anger of the industrialist Rottwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) who creates a robot in the image of Maria to lead the workers in opposition to the reformers. Floods and an uprising ensue convincing the despotic Fredersen to agree to a future of equality and compassion.

Nosferatu

The story of Nosferatu should be familiar to anyone who has read Bram Stoker's Dracula as it copied the plot of the novel. The story behind the film though is one of litigation, conflagration and dogged rumour. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors opened at the Marble Gardens in the Berlin Zoological Gardens, March 1922. Murnau had changed the names of the characters to distance the film from Stoker's book but the author's widow, Florence, was not duped and she started to seek legal restitution from the producers, Prana Films who had not asked permission nor paid her any money for using the story. The company went into receivership and its assets fell into the hands of the Deutsch-Amerikansch Film Union who agreed to hand over all known prints of the film to Stoker for destruction. In July 1925 it seemed that cinema had lost Nosferatu. But it was not to be. Stoker was enraged in October of that year when the film headed the programme at a film festival in England. She demanded that the copy be handed over – the owners refused until they were forced to give the print to Universal Pictures who, by then, owned the copyright for Dracula. By 1930, it seemed again that all the prints had been destroyed. Yet, the film seemed to be as impossible to kill as its chief protagonist – copies continued to crop up after Stoker's death in 1937 and was finally released in an uncut version in 1972.