Germany (Lonely Planet, 6th Edition) - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [40]
Germany’s rich cinematic heritage began in the UFA (Universum Film AG) studio in Babelsberg (Potsdam; ), founded in 1911 and now a large studio and multimedia complex. One early classic produced by UFA is Fritz Lang’s silent classic Metropolis (1927), about a subterranean proletarian subclass – it’s the first film to use back projection (also Click here).
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The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993), directed by Ray Muller, is a stunning three-hour epic about the controversial film-maker who rose to prominence during the Third Reich.
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In the early 1930s film Der Blaue Engel (Blue Angel; 1930), directed by Josef von Sternberg, Marlene Dietrich wooed the audience with hypnotic sensuality and became a star overnight. The 1930s were productive but difficult years. The premier of Fritz Lang’s talkie, Das Testament des Dr Mabuse (Testament of Dr Mabuse; 1933), about a psychiatric patient with plans to take over the world, had to be shifted to Austria because of some out-of-joint Nazi noses. Hitler would also drive acting greats like Peter Lorre (1904–64; an ethnic German Hungarian) and Billy Wilder (1906–2002; an ethnic Austro-German who wrote scripts in Berlin) to Hollywood exile.
In the 1960s film again entered a new age that brought forth the New German Cinema movement (Junger deutscher Film) and directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–82), Wim Wenders (b 1945), Volker Schlöndorff (b 1939), Werner Herzog (b 1942) and director-actor Margarethe von Trotta (b 1942). All except Fassbinder, Germany’s enfant terrible of film who lived hard and left behind a cocaine-spiked wreck, are working today. The resonance of Fassbinder’s Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (Longing of Veronica Voss; 1981), Wenders’ narrative classics Paris Texas (1984) and Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire; 1987), Herzog’s Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, the Wrath of God; 1972) and Schlöndorff’s film rendition of the Günter Grass novel Die Blechtrommel (Tin Drum; 1979) can still be felt in local productions today.
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Die Ausgewanderten (Emigrants; 1997) by WG Sebald addresses the lost homeland of an exile in his vivid portrayal of four different journeys by Jewish emigrants – it’s a good introduction to this weighty but wonderful novelist.
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The 1990s saw the arrival on the scene of Tom Tykwer (b 1965), whose Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run; 1998) established his reputation as one of Germany’s best new directors. Since then his work has included a film version of the Patrick Süskind novel Das Parfum (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; 2006) and the US-German production The International (2009) on the highly contemporary theme of bad bankers and monetary empires.
A handful of exciting directors emerged in Germany from the late 1990s to join figures like director Doris Dörrie (b 1955) and producer, director and screenwriter Bernd Eichinger (b 1949) in shaping the contemporary scene. These include Christian Petzold (b 1960), Marc Rothemund (b 1968), Fatih Akın (b 1973), Oliver Hirschbiegel (b 1957) and Florian von Donnersmarck (b 1973).
Petzold directed one of Germany’s best films of recent years, Yella (2007), an evocative, amusing and intelligent work with excellent acting about a woman (played by Nina Hoss) who sort of leaves East Germany, teaming up by chance with a businessman (Devid Striesow). Marc Rothemund’s highly acclaimed Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days; 2005) portrays the interrogation, trial and judgement of Scholl’s brave act of resistance against Nazism through her own eyes (Click here).
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Frankfurt has hosted the world’s largest literary marketplace, the international book fair (www.frankfurt-book-fair.com), since 1949. Leipzig, earlier the traditional book capital, hosts its own fair (www.leipziger-buchmesse.de) in March each year.
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Fatih Akin’s (b 1973) German-Turkish-Italian produced Auf der anderen Seite (The Other Side of Heaven; 2007) won the