Film (German),American Influence on

German film, its images, and its institutes cannot be understood without reference to the international framework, in which the United States has held a principal role. Al­ready before World War I, German film­makers and distributors had imitated American technology and cinematic con­ventions and had struggled to distinguish their products from those made in the United States.

The significant work of local inventors and filmmakers such as the Skladanowski brothers, Oskar Messter, and Herman Foesterling notwithstanding, the German film and its cinematic imagery were always notably influenced by international prac­tices and conventions. In its first decade (roughly, 1895—1906), German cinema was established, like its American equiva­lent, as an exhibition-led industry. Import, rather than production of films, was a common practice due to its comparatively low costs. American films and distinctive “American” genres—such as the Western— are reported to have been popular in Ger­many at the beginning of the 1900s (for example, Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery, 1903). From this early stage on, American companies had shown great in­terest in the German film market and were concerned with satisfying it. Edison Man­ufacturing Company, for instance, had a representative in Berlin as of 1906.

Concurrently with the international film industry, German film’s second decade witnessed two major institutional changes: the development of an efficient distribu­tion system and the emergence of a feature­length narrative film. Both changes con­tributed to the establishment of a local production industry, which needed to struggle for its share against foreign im­ports. Already in this early stage, the Amer­ican film industry was marked both as the most ferocious rival and as an ideal the Germans should follow.

In the years before World War I, 25—30 percent of the films shown in Ger­many were American, whereas only 10 per­cent were German productions. (Saunders 1994, 20-21). In order to improve their products’ popularity, local filmmakers started to imitate American cinematic con­ventions (for example, the technique of cross-cutting parallel lines of action). For­mulas from popular genres, as well as a “star” system, started to appear in the Ger­man film market. “Sauerkraut” Westerns, for instance, were being produced in Ger­many in accordance with Hollywood edit­ing and plot-line conventions before World War I (unfortunately, very few traces of these films have survived; we know of films such as Viggo Larsen’s Der Pferdedieb [ The Horse Thief, 1911] only from descriptions in the trade press). At the same time, film­makers also sought to develop a distinctive “German” style, in order to distinguish their product from its foreign competitors. This strategy was compatible with the ap­proach favored by contemporary intellec­tuals (mostly, though not exclusively, com­mon among conservatives), who identified film as expression of non-German charac­teristics (e.g., American capitalism). Prewar German intellectuals often called for a con­struction of a new film, one that would help to build a (better) German nation.

World War I had a decisive role in the way the German film industry developed; it also made a significant contribution to the nature of American influence.

The reality, however, was more com­plicated. Despite the severe crisis following World War I in the early 1920s, the Ger­man film industry was the strongest in Eu­rope and the only one that sought to chal­lenge Hollywood’s hegemony. One of the main reasons was the founding of Universal-Film-A.G. (UFA) in 1917. This production and distribution company was founded in collaboration with the military high command in order to help the war ef- fort—to supply the Germans with means to counter American propaganda endeav­ors. When the German fight came to an end with a dreadful defeat, UFA was al­ready a conglomerate of numerous film companies and filmmakers, including many of the greatest talents in Europe. These gifted men and women had another advantage: due to a ban on American movies declared by the German govern­ment, they could experiment with artistic styles and cinematic expressions—with a much lower risk of loss in the local market.

The ban on Hollywood’s films, how­ever, did not halt their influence on Ger­man cinema.

During the postwar years, the high rate of inflation in Germany made the export of German films immensely more profitable than leaning on the profits of the local film market. Censorship and local tax policies made the need to sell German movies abroad exceedingly urgent. The necessity to find a profitable “niche” in the interna­tional market caused German filmmakers to look for a way to distinguish their prod­ucts from Hollywood’s goods. The formula was found in films such as Caligari and Destiny (the slogan “this is the Germany we love” accompanied the latter’s screening in newspaper reviews all over the world). A “German” way of filmmaking was now identified with characteristics such as ex­pressionist stylization; powerful, irrational protagonists; and often a departure from “classical” cinematic conventions. Thus, freedom to experiment and the urgent need to export were responsible, to a large extent, for the peculiarities of German films of the early 1920s. It is important to note that the success of German films in the United States also had a destructive im­pact on the industry: many of the most tal­ented German filmmakers left to find glory in Hollywood (Ernst Lubitsch, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, and Paul Leni are a small sample for this “first wave” of Ger­man filmmakers in the United States).

In 1922, with the end of the ban, a flood of American films reached Ger- many—mostly cheap slapstick comedies and melodramas. The need to compete— again—with American products led local producers and artists to enhance their film­making and marketing strategies. Once again, classical conventions were adopted and imitated: by 1925, for instance, conti­nuity editing, a Hollywood norm, was practiced constantly in German films. Also the drive to make “films [that] America would never do”—as Lang described the motivation for his celebrated Metropolis (1927)—was growing stronger. The alleged contrast between “American technology” and “German artistic skills,” which was ob­served by German filmmakers and intellec­tuals alike, served as a marketing strategy, as well as a persuasive argument in the dis­course about the characteristics of German identity.

Economically, however, this strategy failed; the appeal of the German film could never surmount Hollywood’s international attractiveness. In 1924, when the stabiliza­tion of the German currency started to di­minish inflation, German exports were no longer lucrative; American exports to Eu­rope became much more gainful. Under these circumstances—intensive struggle over market share with Hollywood, inside and outside Germany, and lower profit on exports—the German film industry found itself on the edge of bankruptcy. In Austria, for instance, the German market share de­creased from 90 percent to one German film for every eight American ones (Thompson 1985, 104).

Between 1923 and 1927, the Ameri­can presence in the German film industry was immense. It reached its peak with the foundation of “Parufamet,” an agreement between UFA and the American studios Paramount and MGM. This collaborative contract relieved UFA from its enormous debts in exchange for American influence over the German distribution market. These occurrences contributed to the “Americanization” of the German movie­goers’ taste: Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fair­banks, and Mary Pickford were adored equally by the masses and intellectual elites; American movie stars and filmmak­ers published their contemplations regu­larly in German magazines; and local movie “stars” were rated according to American standards (Harry Piel, perhaps the most popular German movie star in the 1920s, was known as “the German Fair­banks”).

Hollywood’s efforts notwithstanding, state regulation and audience taste pro­tected the German film industry from col­lapse. It is noteworthy that by the end of the 1920s, the German film industry was regaining significant popularity and had registered remarkable artistic achieve­ments. The American market share in Ger­many was comparatively low, about 30 per­cent, and some notable filmmakers and actors—for instance Paul Martin, Josef von Sternberg, and Emil Jannings—even came back from Hollywood to work in Berlin (the illustrious Blue Angel, released in 1930, was directed by Sternberg and starred Jannings).

The rise of National Socialism caused a second wave of emigration from Germany. This group contained many filmmakers and actors, such as Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Marlene Dietrich, and Peter Lorre, who ar­rived in Los Angeles and eventually re­turned to Germany to make films after World War II. The Nazi rise to power was not, for many of them, the only reason for emigration to Hollywood, but they gained a reputation as “fugitives,” which helped them to develop their career in the United States, especially when Adolf Hitler was perceived as a global threat.

Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, who adored American movies and were reported to watch them repeatedly, acknowledged the important influence film might have on public opinion. Goebbels gave film a crucial role in the new regime and declared his ambition to create “pure” German cin­ema. Nevertheless, the first years of the Nazi reign did not mark a clear rupture in American influence over the German film industry. Despite famous assertions by Goebbels, who declared that German films should not look like those of any other na­tion, Nazi cinema had consciously adopted Hollywood’s conventions. Film magazines continuously reported about American films, often in an enthusiastic tone. Con­trary to official statements, the Nazi film industry continued Weimar’s tendency to emulate the stylistic and cultural conven­tions of the United States, as can be shown in films such as Gluckskinder (Children of Fortune), made by UFA in 1936. As a re­sult of the film industry crisis that year, calls to “learn from Hollywood” became ever louder. A close look at Nazi films re­veals that imitation was common but lim­ited to specific aspects of American films (such as escapist qualities and efficient marketing methods). Film scholars often indicate differences in emphasis between “classical” Hollywood films and popular genres in those of the Nazi era, which were expressed in esthetical choices (mise-en- scene, camera movement, etc.) rather than in dialogues and plots.

Until 1940—late into the National Socialist regime—American films could be seen in Berlin. During World War II, Ger­man films repeated the World War I pro­duction tendency on both sides of the At­lantic: films served as a way to distribute war propaganda and supply escapist enter­tainment. Two weeks after the war was over, regular screenings of movies started in the parts of Germany under American occupation. Both among the Western Al­lies and Germans themselves, the image of the Germans as “easily manipulated” by mass media was popular. This perception caused the United States to pay close at­tention to the German film industry and the imagery it distributed to the “weak- minded” Germans.

Once again, by the second half of the 1940s, a flood of Hollywood products found an enthusiastic audience. Interest­ingly, it was the United States that stopped Hollywood from completely taking over the German film market. The restrictions placed by American officials were meant to allow Germany a chance to develop a (con­siderably) independent film industry. This “new” industry was to a large extent a con­tinuation—in the personnel and the styl­ization—of the recent past. Certainly, es­sential changes were made in subject matters, and, in addition, American con­ventions and imagery were readopted. The spectators, now presented with American and German movies, crowded the cinema halls: by the mid-1950s theater owners sold 817 million movie tickets to Germans each year (Fehrenbach 1995, 118).

In the middle of the 1950s a new movement of “angry young men” raised its voice against the residues of the Nazi era in German cinema. This movement, coming out of the “Cine-Club” of the big cities, combined the struggle against old Nazis with one against American influence. It called for the “purification” of German film from formulas created by “Hollywood or UFA.” The German film should (re)construct itself, according to this move­ment, by returning to its “essentials”— those of the “art film,” as opposed to the “popular” American film.

The debate about the formation of a mass consumer society, symbolized by the United States, stood at the core of West German discourse on identity during the immediate postwar era. Within this con­text, the call for “genuine” German films came not only from the Left but also from conservatives. The German church, which had a significant role in the reconstruction of West German culture and politics, de­cried the American influence over German popular film.

Despite the feelings they stimulated among conservatives and anti-capitalists, popular genres of West German cinema in the 1950s were not mere duplications of American conventions. Heimatfilme, for instance, a genre that traditionally pre­sented the German countryside as the au­thentic opposition to the non-German modern city, continued to be remarkably fashionable. Moreover, American cine­matic conventions were not adopted wholeheartedly even in distinctive “Ameri­can” genres. The 1950s German melodra­mas, such as Erich Engel’s Liebe Ohne Illu­sion (Love without Illusions, 1955), for example, had some elemental differences— in visual stylization and the cultural values they promoted—from their American equivalents. Despite the unprecedented control of American studios over the West German film market, before the 1970s the popularity of local films, based on local cinematic traditions and cultural back­ground, was higher than that of American ones.

In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the American influence was obvi­ously weaker. Filmmakers were acquainted with American productions, at least until the 1960s, but the East German market was not controlled by Hollywood, and the Socialist administration encouraged mani­festations of “Socialist” principles in stylis­tic and plot-line developments. The Amer­ican way of moviemaking was a point of reference from which filmmakers were in­spired and from which they also sought to differentiate themselves. Along with their enhancements of “Socialist genres,” these filmmakers also borrowed and modified American ones. Like its American counter­part, the extremely popular GDR Western, the Indianerfilm, portrayed the struggle be­tween the American white man and the na­tive “savage” on the frontier. Instead of telling the white man’s conquest story, however, the Indianerfilme depicted Native Americans as a harmonious, precapitalist society that had to fight against (the white man’s) capitalism.

In West Germany, where the American presence was a lot more evident, local film­makers felt they should make a drastic break in order to distinguish themselves. In February 1962, during the West German festival of short films in Oberhausen, twenty-six young filmmakers declared the death of “the old film” and announced their belief in a new one. The New German Cin­ema, they proclaimed in the famous “Ober­hausen Manifest,” would be free from “the usual conventions... from commercial in­fluences... from the dominance of interest groups.” Though it was not their sole con­cern, the enemy that was indicated here was, mainly, American involvement in the West German film market. Once again, the inability to compete—economically—with Hollywood was combined in the New Ger­man Cinema with the conviction that American films were based on cultural con­ventions that were foreign to the essence of German identity.

By the 1970s, the defeat of West Ger­man cinema by Hollywood was evident. Throughout the post-World War II era, Hollywood had taken advantage of Ameri­can leverage in Germany to make it a most profitable export market, but until 1971 the German share of box office was higher than the American. Yet by the early 1970s, the German share had decreased dramati­cally. This shift is mainly due to the reor­ganization of Hollywood’s European distri­bution network in the late 1960s, the rise of television (which meant younger movie spectators), and the new dominance of “American” cultural values over tradition­ally “German” ones.

The New German Cinema grew out of these unfortunate circumstances. It did, however, “free” itself from the constraints of the market to a certain extent. Govern­mental funding and television screenings freed German filmmakers from box office evaluation. The New German Cinema de­veloped “art films” that sought to explore and undermine popular (Hollywood) cine­matic conventions and to establish an es­sentially “German” film (which meant un­American). Art films were not the only reaction of German filmmakers to the ris­ing appeal of American films. International cooperation, production of films that tar­geted teenagers, and sex-centered films par­ticipated in the endeavor to gain market share in the face of the latest changes in au­diences’ nature and taste.

Some West German films of the 1980s also adopted contemporary “American” conventions: Die Unendliche Geschichte (The Never Ending Story, 1984), for in­stance, presented a male protagonist with supernatural powers who pursues personal goals. These characteristics display the shift in cultural values from “German” self­sacrifice and the sense of duty and social re­sponsibility to “American” self-fulfillment. At that time, an American-style “star” sys­tem developed in German mainstream cin­ema. After the international success of Ger­man popular and art cinema in the early 1980s, many German talents again left to work in Hollywood in the 1990s—e.g., Wolfgang Petersen (director, Air Force One, 1997), Roland Emmerich (executive pro­ducer, Independence Day, 1996).

In the 1990s even Hollywood could not rely solely on its home market for profits. In addition to the efforts to sell in the interna­tional market, German producers realized they desperately needed to find an audience among television spectators and video store consumers. In order to compete in these

markets, German filmmakers often sought inspiration in new popular genres, such as the sitcom, which was influenced by Ameri­can television conventions and proved to be popular among television spectators. Other films were shot especially for international distribution companies by integrating Amer­ican themes, fitting (American) genre expec­tations, and occasionally using English titles and references to popular American films.

The tradition of the “author film,” which was one of the major ideals of the New German Cinema, has reached beyond the 1970s. It is noteworthy, however, that American companies controlled the distri­bution of the films made by Werner Her­zog, Volker Schlondorf, and Wim Wenders and thus made profit from these allegedly independent film productions. The unifi­cation of Germany brought a larger local market for German productions. Typical “German” genres have gained a substantial share in the market since 1996. Neverthe­less, American domination of the German film market was secure; during the 1990s, an American blockbuster could easily at­tract 4—5 million German spectators, whereas the most successful Autorenfi.l.m.e— which supposedly maintained distinctive “German” characteristics—could expect less than one-tenth of this number.

Ofer Ashkenazi

See also Americanization; Consumerism; Dietrich, Marlene Magdalene; Herzog, Werner; Hollywood; Indian Films of the Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft; Jannings, Emil; Lang, Fritz; Leni, Paul; Lorre, Peter; Lubitsch, Ernst; Murnau, Friedrich Wilhelm; Sternberg, Josef von; Wilder, Billy; World War I

References and Further Reading

Elsaesser, Thomas, and Michael Wedel, eds. A Second Life: German Cinema's First Decades. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996.

Fehrenbach, Heide. Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing National Identity after Hitler. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Garncarz, Joseph. “Hollywood in Germany: The Role of American Films in Germany.” In Hollywood in Europe: Experience of a Cultural Hegemony. Eds. David W. Ellwood, Rob Kroes, and Gian Piero Brunetta. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1994.

Kramer, Peter. “Hollywood in Germany/Germany in Hollywood.” In The German Cinema Book. Eds. Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, and Deniz Gokturk. London: British Film Institute, 2002.

Saunders, Thomas J. Hollywood in Berlin: American Cinema and Weimar Germany. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Thompson, Kristin. Exporting Entertainment: America in the World Film Market 1907-1934. London: BFI Pub. 1985