Berlinale: Retrospective

Retrospective 2013:
“The Weimar Touch”

This year’s Retrospective is entitled “The Weimar Touch. The International Influence of Weimar Cinema after 1933” and is devoted to how cinema from the Weimar Republic influenced international filmmaking after 1933. It will focus on continuities, mutual effects and transformations in the films of German-speaking emigrants up into the 1950s.

Film stills from the 2013 Retrospective programme

Weimar cinema flourished not least because of the democratization of society and art between 1918 and 1933. Works from this period are greatly diverse - and marked by both popular narrative forms and a desire to experiment stylistically. The films deal with social hardship in the cities and a subversive reversal of gender roles, and know slapstick and verbal wit, laughter and shuddering. From a tension of contradictions, Weimar cinema got its creative energies. At the same time, it benefitted early on from a lively international exchange and the activities of German filmmakers abroad.
But then with the Nazi takeover in 1933 the German film industry was forced to align with Party politics. Only at the beginning were some films released that still drew on Weimar traditions. More than 2000 individuals from the film industry, for the most part of Jewish descent, had to emigrate in the next years. Many of them sought a new start in Europe and the USA, or re-established existing relationships there.

“The Weimar Touch“: 31 films in five chapters

Thirty-one films are to be presented in five chapters: “Rhythm and Laughter”, “‘Unheimlich’ – The Dark Side”, “Light and Shadow”, “Variations”, and “Know Your Enemy”. Under the heading “Rhythm and Laughter” are works that draw on sound film operettas, music films and comedies – genres of Weimar cinema that were significantly influenced by Jewish filmmakers. Here audiences will find (Austria/Hungary 1934) by Hermann Kosterlitz. In this pointedly socially critical comedy with touches of a sound film operetta, Francisca Gaál gives an unconventional and stirring performance in the title role, a so-called “trouser role”. Another rediscovery is the recently restored Dutch film, Komedie om Geld (1936) by Max Ophüls. The cameraman was Eugen Schüfftan, who later went on to win an Oscar. The Retrospective would be hard to imagine without Billy Wilder, whose film Some Like It Hot (USA 1959) put the subversive humour and frivolous travesty of Weimar cinema into an American context.

“‘Unheimlich’ – The Dark Side”: In the 1930s, intensely scary crime films concentrated on the dark side of the human psyche and society. In post-war USA, these works contributed to shaping the genre of film noir, whose directors were for the most part German film emigrants. For instance, Robert Siodmak made the film Pièges (Traps, France 1939) while he was exiled in Paris.

Remakes of classics from the Weimar Republic and films modelled on films from this period will be screening under the heading “Variations”. This includes Joseph Losey’s 1951 adaptation of Fritz Lang’s work of the same name, M (1931); and Victor Saville’s First a Girl (GB 1935), which is based on Reinhold Schünzel’s Viktor und Viktoria (Viktor and Viktoria, Germany 1933).

“Know Your Enemy” will show films that took a stand against the Nazi regime. Ernst Lubitsch’s classic To Be or Not to Be (USA 1942) will be presented alongside Ludwig Berger’s almost unknown work, the Dutch film Ergens in Nederland (Somewhere in the Netherlands, 1940). This melodrama about a relationship focuses on the threat of a German invasion that actually came to pass in May 1940. With its brilliant cast of predominantly European actors, Casablanca (USA 1942) by Michael Curtiz is indisputably the most popular of all emigrant films.

“The Weimar Touch” is the first Retrospective to be curated by the Deutsche Kinemathek in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The members of the Curatorial Board are Rainer Rother (Section Director of the Retrospective and Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kinemathek), Rajendra Roy (Chief Curator of Film at MoMA), Lawrence Kardish (former Senior Curator of Film at MoMA), Connie Betz (Deutsche Kinemathek, Programme Coordinator Retrospective), and Hans-Michael Bock (CineGraph, Hamburg).
The films of the Retrospective will be screened in the CinemaxX at Potsdamer Platz and the Zeughauskino. The programme will be accompanied by a series of events organized by the Deutsche Kinemathek. A brochure will be published on the Retrospective. Beginning in April 2013, films from the Retrospective will also be shown at the MoMA in New York.

Since 1977, the Berlin International Film Festival has organised film history Retrospectives in cooperation with the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen. The Retrospective is always dedicated to an important director or a film history theme. The Retrospective brings German and international films back to the big screen, often with a restored version or new copy. Contemporary film is positioned within a historical context.

Berlinale Classics

Film stills from the Berlinale Classics 2013

Beginning in 2013, the Retrospective expanded to include presentations of Berlinale Classics. By integrating current restorations of film classics as well as rediscovered films in brilliant image and sound a forum is created to premiere the growing number of high-quality restorations and reconstructions that make use of new digital-processing technologies.

As a rule, films screened in Berlinale Classics are introduced by a prominent festival guest. Berlinale Classics carries on the Retrospective torch by presenting new restorations independently of the Retrospective’s current theme, and is supported through co-operations with international partners.

This year, the following five masterpieces will be shown:
Cabaret (Director: Bob Fosse, USA 1972)
Dial M for Murder (Director: Alfred Hitchcock, USA 1954)
On the Waterfront (Director: Elia Kazan, USA 1954)
Der Student von Prag (The Student of Prague, Director: Hanns Heinz Ewers, Germany 1913)
Tōkyō Monogatari (Tokyo Story, Director: Yasujirō Ozu, Japan 1953)

More information in the press release from January 31, 2013

Retrospectives since 1977

The Retrospective has been managed by the Deutsche Kinemathek since 1977 that has organised the following Retrospectives:

  • The Weimar Touch. The International Influence of Weimar Cinema after 1933 (2013)
  • The Red Dream Factory. Mezhrabpom-Film and Prometheus 1921–1936 (2012)
  • Ingmar Bergman. Film as life and life as film (2011)
  • PLAY IT AGAIN…! 60 Years Berlinale (2010)
  • 70 mm - Bigger than Life (2009)
  • Luis Buñuel (2008)
  • City Girls. Images of Women in Silent Film (2007)
  • Dream Girls. Film Stars in the 1950s (2006)
  • Production Design + Film. Locations, Settings, Spaces (2005)
  • New Hollywood 1967-1976. Trouble in Wonderland (2004)
  • F. W. Murnau (2003)
  • European 60’s (2002)
  • Fritz Lang (2001)
  • Artificial People (2000)
  • Otto Preminger (1999)
  • Siodmak Bros. Berlin – London – Paris – Hollywood (1998)
  • G. W. Pabst (1997)
  • William Wyler (1996)
  • Happy Birthday, Cinema! (1995)
    • Buster Keaton 100
    • Slapstick & Co.
    • Projecto Lumiere – A Tribute to Pordenone
  • Erich von Stroheim (1994)
  • CinemaScope (1993)
  • Babelsberg. A film studio (1992)
  • Cold War (1991)
  • The Year 1945 (1990)
    40 Years Berlinale (1990)
  • Europe 1939 (1989)
    Erich Pommer (1989)
  • Colour. The History of Colour Film (1988)
  • Rouben Mamoulian (1987)
  • Henny Porten (1986)
  • Special Effects (1985)
  • Ernst Lubitsch 1914-1933 (1984)
  • Exile. Six Actors from Germany (1983)
  • Insurrection of Emotions: Curtis Bernhardt (1982)
    East German Children’s Films (1982)
  • The Producer: The Films of Michael Balcon (1981)
  • Billy Wilder (1980)
    3D Films (1980)
  • Rudolph Valentino (1979)
  • We Danced Around the World. Revue Films (1979)
  • Marlene Dietrich, Part 2 (1978)
  • Censorship – Banned German Films 1933-1945 (1978)
  • Marlene Dietrich, Part 1 (1977)
    Love, Death and Technology. Cinema of the Fantastical 1933-1945 (1977)

Retrospectives before 1977

1976

  • Eleanor Powell
  • Conrad Veidt, Part 2
  • Great German Films 1929-1932
  • German Short Films of the 1930s, Part 2

1975

  • Greta Garbo
  • Conrad Veidt, Part 1
  • German Short Films of the 1930s, Part 1

1974

  • Lilian Harvey
  • Jacques Feyder
  • Norman McLaren

1973

  • Wilhelm/William Dieterle
  • American Musicals
  • Animations by Dave Fleischer

1972

  • Douglas Fairbanks
  • Ludwig Berger
  • American Animations 1940-1955

1971

  • Busby Berkeley
  • Eddie Cantor

1970

  • Winners of the “Golden Bears” and other Berlinale films
  • Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire

1969

  • Abel Gance
  • Musicals 1929-1950
  • Oskar Fischinger

1968

  • Ernst Lubitsch, Part 2
  • W. C. Fields

1967

  • Ernst Lubitsch, Part 1
  • Harry Langdon

1966

  • Cinema Novo
  • Max Ophüls
  • Mack Sennett

1965

  • Masterpieces of German Film1895-1932

1964

  • Louis Lumière
  • Pola Negri
  • Paul Leni

1963

  • Elisabeth Bergner
  • E. A. Dupont
  • Karl Grune
  • Yasujiro Ozu

1962

  • Asta Nielsen
  • G. W. Pabst
  • Ingmar Bergman

1961

  • Richard Oswald
  • Billy Wilder
  • Akira Kurosawa

1960

  • 10 Years Golden Berlin Bear
  • Musicals from 1930-1945
  • Musicals from 1930-1945 (Experimental film special programme)

1959

  • International Masterpieces from the Early Years of Talkies

1958

  • Masterpieces of International Film from 1915 to 1945

1957

  • German Artists in Foreign Film

1956

  • The Humour of Nations

1955

  • 60 Years Film

1954

  • Showcase of Famous Films

1951-1953

  • Silent Movies

Source: Deutsche Kinemathek

"The Weimar Touch"

Rainer Rother on the Retrospective 2013 [...]

Section Director
Rainer Rother

Contact

Retrospective & Homage
Potsdamer Straße 2
10785 Berlin
phone +49 30 300 903-26
fax +49 30 300 903-13
 

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