The Ufa Story: A History of Germany's Greatest Film Company 1918-1945 Hardcover – Import, 1 July 1996

This is an excellent book which details the always fascinating story of UFA , the greatest film company IN Germany and all of Europe which for qite some time gave Hollywood a run for its' money as the film capital of the world. It also shows how many of the great directors, writers , film technicians etc. fled Germany for the freedom of Hollywood and the tremendous contribution they made to American cinema.

If you’re looking for a detailed book about Germany’s Ufa film studio, this is the one you want. However, it might not be what you expected, at least for me as I have mixed reservations about it. My main complaint about ‘The Ufa Story’ is that it’s top heavy with historical, financial, and political info. It’s very thorough in those aspects, maybe too thorough because they make for slow reading. You can find shorter and less detailed accounts of the studio and that info elsewhere, but not to this extreme if that’s your choice.Klaus Kreimeier’s book begins with how the studio was founded in 1918 by the German Army Supreme Command that wanted morale-boosting films made to counteract Germany’s defeat, but they evolved to become "Germany's very German response to Hollywood” as theaters were dominated by American films and others from France and Scandinavian countries and preferred by audiences. Plots became based more on German folklore, culture, and literature to promote pride in the nation’s past. When certain films received international acclaim in the 1920’s, many artists, like Emil Jannings, Pola Negri, Ersnt Lubitsch, and F W Murnau left for Hollywood; Marlene Dietrich departed in the early 1930’s. After the Nazis took over, filmmaking became “an instrument of the state.” Audiences wanted entertainment instead of political speeches and parading stormtroopers although you can find some kind of propaganda in almost any feature film. Of the over 1,100 films produced between 1933 and 1945, a very small percentage can be labeled pure propaganda and most of them were not big box office hits. There's a difference between a harmless nationalist film promoting love of country and its basic virtues (Heimat and mountain films), and a propaganda film promoting a political agenda and hate (JUD SUSS, HEIMKEHR). Some films blurred the line between these two types such as a few by Luis Trenker. Ufa cultivated its own star system and many films were artistically and technically well made because not all the best talent left Nazi Germany.I wanted to read more about films and who worked in front of and behind the camera on them, but in fairness to Kreimeier, this wasn’t his intent. Most films are mentioned in passing so you’ll have to look elsewhere to learn about them if they are unfamiliar to you and too many are omitted. Occasionally you’ll find a few paragraphs or pages devoted to a famous film or person and learn something new about them. In the pages covering Murnau’s FAUST (1926), you’ll learn how the technical effects were executed, and how Ufa barely avoided creating a national scandal when the film’s intertitles written by Germany’s greatest living author at the time, Gerhart Hauptmann, were judged inferior and replaced. Although the film is now considered a classic of German cinema, most people don’t know it was an expensive failure like Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS debuting a year later. These costly flops and others almost bankrupted Ufa and led Alfred Hugenberg, an important German businessman and early Hitler supporter, to purchase the company in 1927 and later transfer ownership to the Nazi Party in in 1933.Another example of good research providing new info for me and maybe others is found in several pages devoted to the fantasy AMPHITRYON that became 1935’s biggest hit: “Jupiter’s wife, Juno (Adele Sandrock) has Mercury (Paul Kemp) refer to her as Highest Lady... an allusion to the actress Emmy Sonnemann, whom the Reich Air Marshall [Herman Goring] had recently married. [Director Reinhold] Schunzel and his team permitted themselves the national joke. Ufa’s managers bet they could get away with it; the censors raised timid objections or looked the other way; and [Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph] Goebbels was delighted to have his rival Goring exposed to public ridicule. Like all despotic agencies with power, the Nazi censorship offices functioned perfectly and irrationally at the same time, working feverishly yet also at crossed purposes.” That in-joke about Goring’s wife was a very risky move for Schunzel who was half-Jewish and only allowed to work under a special permit because of his previous successes like 1933’s VIKTOR UND VIKTORIA.As for actors, we learn that Hans Albers, who was Germany’s biggest male star during the 1930’s and 1940’s, was contractually obligated to make an occasional propaganda film during the Nazi years like 1941’s CARL PETERS, an anti-British and anti-Semitic story about Germany’s lost colonies in Africa. Kreimeier says of Albers who despised the Nazis and made them pay big money for his work: “Aloof, audacious, and not without a touch of cynicism, Albers lost no sleep over the question of who commissioned his films and he brought to his national Socialist roles the unmistakable Albers touch—with its mixture of devil-may-care and adventure, of rough-and-tumble elegance and magical invincibility… Albers and the roles he played kept this explosive combination intact, and it was his artful ambivalence that kept him, one of the few authentic folk stars of the NS cinema, from becoming a Fascist figurehead.” Other actors like Gustaf Grundgens and Trenker, who were also directors and whom Goebbels had plenty to say about in his diaries, are barely mentioned and deserve more attention.In summation - As much as I like Kreimeier’s book, I have to agree with Publisher Weekly’s review quoted above: “A plus for his account is that he sets it within the context of the larger German culture. While it is packed with detail and interesting historical references, it is too prolix and discursive for general readers.”

I have read somewhere that there is not a culture of popular written history in Germany, rather it is written as an academic subject. This book is a prime example. I have picked this book up several times to try and advance a few pages, but once I reached page 85 and read this:'What can be said with certainty is that this "gothic" film style does not offer the possibility of salvation but seems confining, claustrophobic, psychically undigested, anxiety-producing. It expresses a rebellion of provinces and small cities against industrial culture and its superficial rationality'I'm afraid I laughed and gave up. If you want to cloak your opinions in a florid academic pastiche of knowledge fine, but don't expect me to read it.Some of the book, turgid as the writing is has moments of lucidity, but it is soon awash again in knee deep lists of actors, film shareholders and the academic opinion of third parties it endlessly breaks up the flow of the text and any sense of linear history that the author might be trying to achieve.I was tempted first of all to blame the translation, which appears to be literal rather than interprative. But the further I read I realised that anything other than what was done would have required a complete re-write of the text. This book badly needs an english language editor.I do not normally write negative reviews. A bad book is just let go. However, this was such a disappointment given the subject matter and my interest in German history that I have vented my annoyance. I am currently reading Sebastian Haeffner's 'Defying Hitler'. The prose is beautiful and an object lesson in writing and translation.I was tempted for two stars simply because of the plates. Any book with picture of the lovely Lilian Harvey should be worth that at least. But I'm afraid not.A major disappointment.

fascinating history of German filmaking