In this chapter we will refer to a range of key German films from the late Wei- mar period to the mid- to lates, including acknowledged classics such as Joe May’s Asphalt (), which we have already touched upon in chapter in our discussion of the differences in approach between the designers Herlth and Röhrig and Kettelhut. Other well-known films to feature include Die Büchse der Pandora(Pandora’s Box, ), Die -Groschenoper (The Threepenny Opera,), as well as the lesser-known Angst (Fear, ), Die wunder- bare Lüge der Nina Petrowna (The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna, ), and Die Herrin von Atlantis (The Mistress of Atlantis, ).
Our discussion throughout the book is organised around five general themes or tropes, and as subsequent chapters will demonstrate, French and British cin- ema articulated similar issues, albeit in a different vernacular, and with occa- sionally different priorities among these tropes. Thematic overlaps were aided, as we suggest, not only by the international circulation of motifs drawn from popular culture, but also by the transnational exchange and movements of pro- duction personnel– in this chapter we will analyse films designed by Andrei Andreiev and Ernö Metzner who subsequently worked in the French and Brit- ish industries.
The first and perhaps most obvious trope concerns the representation of ur- ban space and the promotion of modernity as both ideology and lifestyle (the latter particularly in relation to female consumption). While Asphalt, along- side other contemporary‘city-films’ such as Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin – Sym- phonie einer Großstadt(Berlin: Symphony of a Big City,) and Robert Siodmak’s Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, ) and – in a more allegorical vein– Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (), provides a perfect case study in this respect, Hans Steinhoff’s lesser-known Stefan Zweig adaptation Angst articulates (sub)urban modernity in a somewhat different way. Berlin unsur- prisingly emerges as the major iconic urban location in German cinema, occu- pying a similar position that Paris does in French films of the period (see chap- ter).
The second theme relates to the representation of foreign spaces, illustrated here through a discussion of how German cinema of the period pictured Britain. While representations of another culture always resort to some extent to cultur- al clichés and stereotypes, on simplifications and condensations drawn from a range of visual and literary templates, it is not the (failed) accuracy, nor the lack
of authenticity and realism, that shall concern us here, but rather the specific spatial iconography underpinning this imagination. Britain was a recurring location in German films of the late s and s, and although there are some examples that present a pastoral, upper class vision of England, the more common paradigm was to envisage Britain as a generically coded urban under- world, a maze-like space inhabited by classless outsiders and/or a tribally organized lumpenproletariat. Pabst’s Büchse der Pandora and Die - Groschenoperare analysed as typical examples of this kind of depiction.
The third trope concerns the way in which exoticist and nostalgic fantasies corresponded to the construction of specific star personae. Our case study will be Brigitte Helm, one of the most iconic stars of late Weimar cinema, and best known for her dual role in Metropolis. Instead of adding to an already exten- sive literature on her performance and function in the latter film, we will instead focus on Hanns Schwarz’ melodrama Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Pet- rowna, set in Tsarist Russia, and G.W. Pabst’s hallucinatory desert adventure Die Herrin von Atlantis(The Mistress of Atlantis,). More so than the exceptional case of Metropolis, these two films represent attempts by the Ger- man film industry to construct a specific as well as internationally marketable star image for Helm that makes full use of her strikingly classic beauty– and in both cases the relation of performance to the respective sets is crucial to these attempts.
Apart from these three strictly spatial tropes that address specific locales, or which relate to the representation of a star image, there are two further, more temporal tropes, namely the representation of the past and future. Both of these will be more extensively covered in the later chapters on France and Britain, although different strategies of representing the past will emerge in this chapter from our discussion of Die-Groschenoper and Nina Petrowna.
The relative underrepresentation of the historical film in this chapter is moti- vated by our contention in its German variant, that this genre had less to con- tribute overall to the transnational aesthetic we are trying to identify. The reason we are not providing a more extensive case study of the science fiction film (obviously a quite significant genre in term of production design), reflects our suggestion that, especially from the earlys onwards, this genre in Germany worked ideologically against a transnational ethos, despite or indeed precisely because of its globalist narratives and international production patterns.
In sum, this chapter argues that in their interaction, alternation, and combina- tion, certain thematic tropes and production practices helped to articulate a cos- mopolitan visual aesthetic in the films of the late Weimar period. The construc- tions of imagined and imaginary locations allowed spectators across national borders and cultural contexts to read different meanings into these spaces and of the characters that inhabit them, and to derive a specific perspective of urban-
ity, modernity, ‘otherness’, and nostalgia these environments embodied. The scenic depiction of the exotic and the foreign catered to fantasies of extraterri- toriality and loss of identity, and imbued these with a positive value. These re- presentations thus need to be understood as providing a valid and coherent counter-ideology to the nationalist agendas ins and s Germany, the latter of which ultimately, and regrettably, prevailed.
Past, Future, and Present– The Changing Settings of Weimar Cinema
As we argued previously, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari is one of the quintes- sential founding icons of cinematic set design. Certainly, Caligari’s design found unprecedented international acclaim, yet to some extent its stylistic con- ception exhausted itself with just one film, and where its stylistic ideas were taken up subsequently, they manifested themselves as an obvious copy. This is not to say that expressionism did not have a role to play in the German cinema of thes, but that it found its niche in a very specific genre of art film pro- duction, or alternatively was used as an atmospheric shorthand for tales of ter- ror (in the same way in which it would be used later on in Hollywood, for ex- ample in Universal’s horror films of the s).
Far more representative and influential for the development of German set design (in terms of aesthetics, as well as craftsmanship and studio logistics) were the epic historical films by directors such as Ernst Lubitsch and Joe May, including Madame Dubarry (Passion,) or Anna Boleyn (), or exoti- cist melodramas such as Das indische Grabmal (The Indian Tomb, ). While these were initially little more than imitations of the epics Italian and American cinema had created a few years earlier with films such as Cabiria () and Intolerance (), the German imitations soon developed their own qualities.First, at the level of narrative, they combined epic historical sub- ject matter (such as the French revolution, or the Egypt of the Pharaohs) convin- cingly with human interest and, in Lubitsch’s case, with a certain erotic raciness that distinguished them from their international competitors. Secondly, their sets achieved a remarkable degree of representational realism. Thirdly, and per- haps most importantly, the earlys historical films developed a way of let- ting the sets and actors interact in a way that complemented and commented on the narrative itself.
Architecture entered the narrative not simply as a decorative backdrop, but as an integral element of the plot– as in The Indian Tomb, where the construc- tion of the eponymous monument becomes a central driving force of the narra- tive. Here, as in later examples, most famously Fritz Lang’s Nibelungen saga or Metropolis, architecture often assumed a malevolent presence, an oppres- Imagining Space in Late Weimar Cinema 111
sive force that ultimately destroyed its human protagonists. This corresponded with a focus upon historical subjects during periods that were marked by social turmoil (e.g. the French revolution in Madame Dubarry, Tudor England in Anna Boleyn). The intensification of design as a narrative motor, its antropo- morphisation (consider in this respect the literal metamorphosis of the steam- spewing engine in Metropolis into a human-devouring ancient god), and the transformation of architecture into (e-)motion was in part a process of effec- tively coordinating human movement (from choreographing masses of extras to the placement of individual performers), lighting, and décor, and partly a way of choosing décor to reflect atmosphere, mood, and interior states.
By the mid-s, the historical subjects of previous years gave way to more modern narratives with contemporary settings. While historical settings did not disappear altogether, they became primarily associated with two distinctive subgenres, the film operetta, and the‘Preussenfilm’ (Prussian film). The operetta allowed filmmakers and designers to employ historical vernaculars, but at the same time it did not tie them to requirements of authenticity. Although some films drew of course on the iconography of Vienna and the Habsburg Empire, for example Ein Walzertraum (A Waltz Dream,), more often narratives explored imaginary Ruritanias, as in Arthur Robison’s Der letzte Walzer (The Last Waltz,), or were barely tied to any specific setting at all in nar- ratives of international travel and tourism, for example in Die singende Stadt (City of Song,).
In contrast, the Preussenfilm was very much centred on a specific location. The subgenre, exhorting national and especially Prussian traditions and values, found its particular focus in the reign of Friedrich II (‘The Great’), and had been triggered off by the phenomenal box-office success of Fridericus Rex (), although the formula had its roots in earlier representations from the turn of the century. Later films, invariably featuring the actor Otto Gebühr in the role of the strict, but benevolent monarch, and usually centred on his Potsdam resi- dence of Sanssouci Palace, included Die Mühle von Sanssouci (The Mill at Sanssouci,), the two-part Der Alte Fritz (Old Fritz, ), Das Flöten- konzert von Sanssouci(The Flute Concert of Sanssouci,, with sets by Herlth and Röhrig), and Die Tänzerin von Sanssouci (The Dancer of Sas- souci, ), and Der Choral von Leuthen (The Anthem of Leuthen, ). A separate strand of the Preussenfilm focussed on Prussia’s national de- fence during the Napoleonic Wars, and included films such as Königin Luise (Queen Luise,), Die letzte Kompagnie (The Last Battalion, ) and Luise, Königin von Preussen (Luise, Queen of Prussia, ). The genre, which during the Weimar period was vigorously attacked by left-wing critics, unsurprisingly continued without major changes to either style or narrative construction into the Nazi period.
Although marked by considerable ideological as well as aesthetic differences, one can nevertheless trace similarities in function and spatial organisation across a number of national historical genres in European cinema during the s and s. These link the Preussenfilm in Germany, films from Napoléon () to La Marsellaise () in France, as well as Korda’s historical films of thes. As with similar genres across Germany’s borders, the appeal of the Preussenfilmto its contemporary audiences was at least in part its claim to an accurate and authentic representation of historical reality in terms of design (the interiors at Sanssouci, uniforms, costumes, the porcelain, the furnishings etc.)– indeed even some contemporary left-wing critics had defended the genre by arguing that at its heart, the Preussenfilm was not so much politically moti- vated, but rather fulfilled the function of an animated picture book.
Sabine Hake argues that on the whole, many films with Prussian themes ‘celebrated the authoritarian, paternalistic relationship between leader and na- tion’.However, quite a few of the films of the lates and early s aimed
to feminise what in historical reality had been a strictly male, homosocial envir- onment at Friedrich’s court, by introducing – historically entirely fictional – in- teraction between the monarch and female characters. This not only opened up the genre to female audiences, it also allowed the design of the films to empha- sise a more‘consumer-friendly’ version of Prussia, in the same way as Vincent Korda would ‘rebrand’ Tudor England in The Private Life of Henry VIII () as a glossy soap opera. In this respect, the films allied themselves – de- spite their historical narratives – to modern concerns. At the same time the Preussenfilmcould sugar its ideological pill, which, as Hake has suggested,‘ex- plored other… problematic aspects of the Prussian myth, including the renun- ciation of personal happiness for the good of the state and the role of the mili- tary as a binding model for private and public life’.
On the surface, science fiction as a genre pursued a more modernist, mas- culinist, and technocratic agenda. Its narrative conventions and visual iconogra- phy enabled set designers to incorporate both the latest advances in design and technology, and extend these advances into either utopian or dystopian visions, the most obvious European examples in thes being Metropolis () or Abel Gance’s La Fin du monde (). The genre thus provided a perfect foil for designers such as Kettelhut, Hunte, or Karl Vollbrecht, whose predilection for grandiose, monumentalist sets fitted its requirements. As chapter will de- monstrate, a similarly monumental aesthetic defined British science fiction films of the lates and s. In Germany, however, with the exception of Lang’s Die Frau im Mond(The Woman in the Moon, ), Metropolis did not initiate a boom in futuristic film productions, despite the considerable popular- ity of science fiction as a literary genre.. Moreover, science fiction in Germany, especially in its pulp novel variety, had during thes become a forum where Imagining Space in Late Weimar Cinema 113
racist, misogynist, militarist and nationalist ideologies were aired.The use of science fiction in transporting specifically national messages, however, was not just confined to Germany, examples from elsewhere include the Soviet Aelita, Queen of Mars().
During the earlys, bridging the political caesura between Weimar Ger- many and the ‘Third Reich’, a handful of films nonetheless attempted to con- tinue the trend that Lang had started with Metropolis. These films included F. P. antwortet nicht (F.P., , designed by Kettelhut), Der Tunnel (The Tunnel,, designed by Vollbrecht), and Gold (, designed by Hunte). They were high-profile, big-budget productions, made in different language versions, while Der Tunnel (shot simultaneously in a French and German ver- sion) was remade three years later in Britain with a production team that in- cluded the émigrés Ernö Metzner as set designer, and screenwriter Curt Siod- mak.
Superficially, the earlys science fiction films in Germany seemed to cele- brate an internationalist and modernist agenda– the story of F.P. antwortet nicht concerns the building of an artificial island in mid-ocean to facilitate trans-Atlantic air traffic; and the creation of a subterranean trans-Atlantic tun- nel, connecting Europe and the United States is the theme of Der Tunnel. By the time of Gold, however, any faith in either technological progress or interna- tional cooperation had evaporated. The film’s national hero (Hans Albers) has to face a villainous Scottish industrialist who attempts to steal an apparatus that uses atom-splitting in the transformation of lead into gold. To prevent the in- vention being exploited by foreign powers, the hero in the end destroys the technology he has helped to develop.
Several scholars have suggested that already the earlier two films, F.P. and Der Tunnel, despite their supposed commitment to international collabora- tion, betray‘a new weariness of technological progress, especially in the context of globalization and its threats to the nation’. As in Gold, the films are per-
vaded by fear of anonymous, international (and by implication Jewish) capital- ist cartels, while they celebrate a ruthlessly autocratic individualism very much in line with the emerging ‘Führer’ ideology of the Nazis. Lutz Koepnick con- cludes with regard to the German version of Der Tunnel that‘the film and its rhetoric of sacrifice and mobilization extended the imperatives of crowd control to the realms of fantasy and distraction’.
The films’ problematic relationship with discourses of modernity and tech- nology extend to their spatial organisation and approaches to set design. In F. P., designer Kettelhut alludes to the principles of functionalist architecture in his design for the exteriors of the airport terminal on the film’s artificial island (images & ). Yet in the film’s interior sets, he relies completely on conven- tional references, with the notable exception, discussed by Sabine Hake, of the
Imagining Space in Late Weimar Cinema 115
Image – F.P. antwortet nicht (F.P.)
inclusion of a Marcel Breuer chair, which in the course of the narrative is thrown out of a window.Similarly in Der Tunnel, which unlike its British remake is set in the present, Karl Vollbrecht’s designs emphasise an almost documentary realism. With the exception of a few brief scenes, especially at the beginning of the film set in New York, the film’s spatial imagination is solidly rooted in a familiar world, which markedly contrasts with the far more creative, and far more explicitly modernist décor that Metzner designed for the British remake, which also displayed a far more optimistic attitude towards technological pro- gress. Gold’s design, meanwhile, has been identified by Hake as ‘largely dec- orative and without any narrative function’. Gold, in any case, marked not only an end to the spectacular conception of the future in Nazi cinema, it also precipitated a rejection of science fiction models as they were devised else- where. William Cameron Menzies’ British H.G. Wells adaptation Things to Come(), for example, was refused a release in Nazi Germany, owing to its ‘pacifist tendencies’.
Historical and futuristic representations apart, far more common in German cinema in the lates and early s were contemporary settings. Crucial in this respect is the emergence in the earlys of what has been referred to as the genre of the‘street film’. Regarded as a reaction against the perceived dom- inance of both ‘expressionism’ and epic monumentalism, the genre also has been perceived as providing a departure from so-called Kammerspielfilme (cham- ber films) such as Leopold Jessner’s Hintertreppe (Backstairs, ) and Arthur Robison’s Schatten (Shadows, ) with their emphasis on psycholo- gical drama and enclosed spaces. The street film, in contrast, was seen as repre- senting a new form of social realism and pragmatism in German cinema asso- ciated with the wider artistic and intellectual movement of‘New Sobriety’ (Neue Sachlichkeit). At closer inspection the supposed genre in fact encompasses an aesthetically as well as politically quite disparate group of productions, from the symbolist allegory of Karl Grune’s Die Strasse (The Street, ), via F. W. Murnau’s urban parable Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, ), to the social melodrama of Pabst’s Die freudlose Gasse (Joyless Street, ) and Bruno Rahn’s Dirnentragödie (Tragedy of the Street, ), to the proto- neorealism of films such as Gerhard Lamprecht’s Die Verrufenen (Slums of Berlin,) and Phil Jutzi’s Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück (Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness, ), and associative documentaries or semi-documentaries such as Berlin – Symphonie einer Grossstadt or Menschen am Sonntag. The latter two in particular, were part of a wider, pan-European trend of cinematic‘city poems’, that included films such as René Clair’s Paris qui dort (), Albert Cavalcanti’s Rien que les heures (), and Dziga Vertov’s The Man with the Movie Camera ().
The common denominator across all these films was a preoccupation with