8. The Coming of Sound and the Waning of America

For most of the 1920s the United States enjoyed a level of prosperity and stability which made it the envy of German observers. Hollywood shared this good fortune and enviable reputation. As a mirror of American culture in everything from its success and wealth to its ethical ideals, the American cinema projected the economic and ideological invincibility of “God’s own country.” Germans might carp about the facile moral lessons, the almost unshakable optimism and the will to happiness of American movies. They could not dispute America’s or Hollywood’s world power; not at least until the great depression shattered the image of American invincibility and the coincident introduction of sound films temporarily shook American domination of the international market.

Like the world economic crisis, the overthrow of silent film began in the United States. But Germans could no more escape the consequences of the sound revolution than they could hope for immunity from the effects of the American stock-market crash. Indeed, nothing illustrates the symbiosis of Hollywood and Berlin in the Weimar era more graphically than the upheaval accompanying the demise of silent film and advent of talking motion pictures. American primacy was initially incontestable. Although the technical know-how of sound reproduction originated in large measure with European inventors, Hollywood, and Warner Bros. in particular, perfected the invention and demonstrated its market potential. The American cinema had a jump on its German counterpart and presented it with a fait accompli. German producers had no option but to follow suit. Once sound film had proven its drawing power in the United States, the threatened loss of this market alone, quite apart from fears of being upstaged at home and in Europe, compelled German producers to adopt American practice. Essentially two years behind Hollywood—the first domestic sound pictures premiered only in the autumn of 1929—the German film industry worked feverishly from roughly mid-1929 to mid-1930 to establish competitive sound reproduction.^[1]

While the German cinema displayed tremendous dependence on Hollywood’s leadership, sound also provided it a new level of independence. The market protection enjoyed during the war, and by virtue of currency differences in the inflationary period, was partially restored in the form of the language barrier. In fact, the sound revolution allowed the German cinema to become master in its own house as it had not been since the American invasion of 1923–1924. Over the years 1926–1928 the average German share of the feature film market was 42.5 percent as against 39.5 percent for Hollywood and eighteen percent for all other countries combined. The corresponding figures averaged over the period 1929–1931, including silent and sound pictures, were Germany—48.4 percent, America—31.3 percent and all others—20.3 percent.^[2] These figures show an increase in the German share of the domestic market to almost half, and a drop of the American share from virtual parity with the native contribution to two-thirds of it. However, the inclusion of silent pictures camouflages the full extent of the restructuring of the market. In 1929, a transition year in which silent pictures still predominated, distortion is minimal. Thereafter, inclusion of silent movies in the totals yields overrepresentation for Hollywood. Silents did continue to circulate in 1930 and 1931 for the simple reason that smaller, provincial theaters were initially reluctant or unable to invest in sound projection equipment, but by mid-1930 the leading theaters had converted wholesale to sound. A breakdown of feature releases in Germany in the years 1928–1931 into silents and sound pictures makes glaringly apparent German dominance in the category which really counted, the talkie.^[3]

Several observations can be drawn from these figures. The dramatic drop in absolute numbers of feature releases, native or American, indicates the technical and financial strains imposed by the changeover to sound. Equally noteworthy is the rapidity of this conversion: in one season (1929–1930) sound became supreme; by 1931 silents were reduced to insignificance. Most important, however, is a comparison of entries in the sound columns. For both 1930 and 1931 Hollywood’s market share rested well below half of Germany’s and far from the two-thirds yielded when the silent pictures of 1929 are included in the computation. The sound revolution therefore precipitated a revolution of comparable dimensions in American-German competition on the German motion picture market, paralleling in uncanny fashion the trend to national autarky fostered by the depression.

Rapid and momentous as the changeover to talking pictures appears statistically, it did not occur instantaneously, nor were its ramifications immediately apparent to contemporaries. Like its political counterparts, this revolution also evinced considerable confusion in its intermediate stages. In the early months a bewildering array of “sound films” competed for audience approval. These ranged from silent films to which a sound track (music or sound effects or both) had subsequently been added, or pictures conceived with such sound tracks, to musicals like the epochal The Jazz Singer which combined synchronized music and song, bits of dialogue and conventional titles, to the so-called one hundred percent talkie. Import of this last variant presented an obvious complication. Since dialogue and, where applicable, song, were in English, titles or subtitles were required to translate at least the most critical phrases for German viewers. The only other options, both tried but not well received in the early sound era, were to produce multilingual versions with native actors or to dub pictures after completion into German.^[4]

In the initial stages of the sound revolution confusion was heightened by patent wars over the equipment for producing and reproducing dialogue and music. The electrical trusts in the United States and Germany which controlled the rights to this equipment refused to permit interchangeability: movies made with one company’s equipment could not be screened on any other reproduction systems. The German patent holder, Tobis-Klangfilm, prevented the screening in Germany of American movies with American sound systems and the Americans boycotted the German market to try to compel Tobis-Klangfilm to back down. Consequently, in the critical period when Hollywood enjoyed a head start, few American sound films reached German theaters.^[5]

Even before the boycott there was considerable delay in export of the novelty to Germany. The Jazz Singer, the Warner Bros. picture starring Al Jolson which took audiences by storm in New York in October 1927, did not appear in Berlin until September 1928, and was then shown as a silent. In January 1929 Wings, a film of air combat in World War I, offered a first taste of sound but of a highly hybrid sort: along with live orchestral accompaniment and the usual titles went a synchronized sound track which provided motor noise to heighten the effect of the aerial scenes.^[6] Not until June 1929 did Berlin experience the sensation of sound as New York had in 1927—a premiere boasting dialogue and song, Al Jolson’s second picture for the Warner studios, The Singing Fool. Yet even then it retained a characteristic trait of silent film in that it used titles (not subtitles) to translate the dialogue. Furthermore, after a very successful run of almost seven weeks its premiere was canceled by a legal injunction against the use of Western Electric equipment in German theaters. The same court order postponed release of Stroheim’s The Wedding March, a film with music and sound effects but without dialogue.^[7] Other upcoming sound releases were either canceled or shown with conventional orchestral accompaniment. Noah’s Ark, for example, a monumental epic from Warner reminiscent of D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance in its parallel of the Great War and the Old Testament deluge, first appeared as a silent film.

Although initial exposure to Hollywood’s sound pictures (1929–1930) coincided with Germany’s transition to sound production, America still enjoyed enough of an edge that for an interim period sound appeared unique to Hollywood. Discourse on the talkie revolution therefore was tantamount to commentary on the American cinema. Substantial initial scepticism about the coordination of sound with motion pictures existed apart from Hollywood’s role in the process. Nonetheless, America’s lead in this innovation appeared more than coincidental and fostered particular resistance.

The Berlin premiere of The Singing Fool in June 1929 marked the breakthrough of talking film on the German market. It was both a society event and the occasion for full-scale debate on the possibilities and significance of the new medium. As already noted, Berliners had waited an extremely long time for this moment. A previously scheduled premiere of the picture had been scuttled at the very last moment by court order. This one was confirmed only at noon on the premiere date, but could still have been canceled at the last minute. Consequently, there was a late scramble for tickets, some critics going empty-handed for the premiere and having to compete against heavy public demand to gain admission to subsequent performances.^[8]

Critical discussion of The Singing Fool yielded two general observations about the marriage of sound and the moving picture. To the immediate question whether that marriage was technically feasible the answer was a solid yes. Doubtful at the outset that the illusion of sound coming from the lips of screen characters could be established and maintained, critics were overwhelmed by the naturalness with which the optical and audio blended. This single test case demonstrated that the talkie was sufficiently developed to convince viewers and pay for itself.^[9] To the broader question of whether sound represented a filmic advance the answer was an almost equally resounding no. Admiration for the technical achievement and for Al Jolson’s voice could not erase dismay at the lachrymose subject matter and stage-bound presentation of the film. The Singing Fool confirmed pessimists in the fear that thematically and stylistically sound would set film culture back decades to its theatrical roots. Less motion picture than photographed theater, it resurrected the unpalatable falsifications of cheap melodrama and sentimental music. In the words of an indignant Wolfgang Petzet, it nullified thirty years of silent film culture and reverted as feared to the “barbarism of 1900.”^[10]

Although the early sound releases were not exclusively tearjerking musicals, the criticisms leveled against The Singing Fool were symptomatic.^[11] In addition to reflecting resentment about erosion of a highly refined filmic tradition, they signified rejection of tendencies seen as inherent in American culture. The particular character of early sound pictures fueled the perception that in the land of unlimited possibilities technological innovation outran and displaced artistic values. Even before the premiere of The Singing Fool Maxim Ziese deprecated the American approach to the problem of declining box office receipts.

In the search for a flaw in its production method for silent film, movie-America hit upon the brilliant way out not of seeking the shortcoming in its intellectual approach, but of finding it in the technical imperfection of the medium. At the moment America is trying to remedy the deficiencies in its worldview, which carried over into its films, by expanding filmic technology.^[12]

Other commentators confirmed that the innovation of sound not only typified Hollywood’s shallowness but corresponded to America’s cultural immaturity. The poverty of theatrical traditions and intellectual pursuits made talking film an ideal surrogate. So long as the talkie possessed sensational or curiosity value the American public would digest it.^[13]

Such rhetoric typified the conservative culture critique but in this particular case was not confined to conservatives. Commentators of all persuasions had strong reservations about the sound revolution. Rudolf Arnheim, for example, protested bitterly against the strangulation of silents for purely commercial reasons and denounced sound film as the triumph of bluff over quality.^[14] The democratic Deutsche Republik took the third major American sound release, Noah’s Ark, as demonstration that Hollywood employed technological distractions to protect itself against superior German and Russian imports and to lull American audiences “back into the slumber of mental inertia.”

Millions were invested in the play toy, sound film, and when the harmless mental babies enjoyed the noise, when this record player nation was captivated by musical hits, the movie moguls of Hollywood went back unscrupulously with regard to screenplays to the primitive beginnings of 1905.…For the present they calculate only in dollars. But one day they will have to reinsert the notion of film art into their calculation.^[15]

This resistance to American talking pictures betrays a surprising debt to older blanket condemnations of film as the antithesis of art because it relied on mechanical means of reproduction. Once the status quo was disturbed and the technological nature of the medium was highlighted by the addition of sound, critics became sensitive to a dimension of film they otherwise took for granted.^[16] Their reaction against the introduction of sound also drew on latent aversion to the cultural might of big business. That the leap into talkies was a desperate bid on the part of the American film industry to rekindle public interest in the movies and boost profits made sound an advertisement for the industrial character of film enterprise. The same profit motive had, of course, raised the silent cinema from a curiosity to a cultural force of the first rank, but this fact was conveniently overlooked. Sound pictures provided an unpleasant reminder that the movies were a mechanical and commercial proposition before they acquired artistic and cultural standing.^[17] They therefore became symbols of cultural primitiveness. In remarkable parallel with stereotyping popular a decade earlier, talking and musical pictures were perceived as mesmerizing for Americans but unsatisfactory for Germans. Sound film thus appeared a typically American solution to a chronic state of national cultural backwardness.^[18]

In the hands of nationalist and völkisch commentators such cultural stereotyping acquired the overtones of the postwar film war. Wolfgang Ertel-Breithaupt of Filmkünstler und Filmkunst classified the embryonic talkie as the latest stage in the surrender by Europe to America of its most prized artistic convictions: America tried something new and Europe adopted it shamelessly. In the course of the 1920s the German cinema had already degenerated from a highly dedicated, artistic force to a factory system borrowed from America. Hollywood’s way of escape from artistic stagnation was invention of sound, what Ertel-Breithaupt called the “triumph of the international surrogate of American civilization.” To the extent that German cinema followed suit, he believed catastrophe would follow. Preoccupation with commercial, technical and patent issues signaled abdication by German cinema of its mission. American emphases were crowding out “character” and “conviction,” the two qualities he dwelt on ad nauseam as the distinguishing marks of German culture.^[19]

As in the early 1920s, the discourse of national differences had unmistakable economic subtexts. In the critical months of 1929 and 1930 the specter of renewed American inroads loomed once again. At the beginning of 1929 UFA sent a team to the United States to study sound production. On the basis of its findings UFA decided to proceed at maximum speed to make the switch. The language barrier and patent war notwithstanding, the substantial lag of German development behind Hollywood posed a recognized threat.^[20] In addition, American companies began to hire German talent in an attempt to circumvent the language barrier. While the sound revolution brought the repatriation of Conrad Veidt and Emil Jannings, both of whom figured prominently in pioneering German talkies (Die letzte Kompagnie and Der blaue Engel), it also revived suspicions that Hollywood would launch another recruitment drive and plunder the German industry.^[21] Moreover, the backstage manipulation of the enormous American electrical trusts which controlled sound patents and had unrivaled buying power posed the threat of economic and cultural subservience.^[22]

In the event, none of these specters materialized. German producers made astonishingly rapid progress with the talkie. American-made German language films generally failed to impress, largely because they featured second-rate performers. Apart from Marlene Dietrich, Hollywood stole no prominent German film artist in this period. The patent war and the threat of American monopoly were quickly forgotten, a new modus operandi emerging between the patent holders for international interchange and royalties. Nonetheless, short-lived concerns triggered defensive responses familiar from the early 1920s. As at that time, the selection of up-to-date American motion pictures was minimal. Film pundits therefore speculated about the future as much or more as they analyzed the present, groping again to define Germany’s place in an unsettled but American-dominated film world. Once more they betrayed uncertainty in taking refuge behind the shield of cultural types. The discourse of national distinctiveness aimed again to erect barriers to Americanization.

Although this discourse served a primarily defensive function, it also fostered hopes of national cinematic renewal through the adoption of sound. Again the correspondence with attitudes in the immediate postwar years is striking. Two commentators who drew attention to the parallel between circumstances right after the war and in 1929 illustrate the dialectic of fear and hope. Franz Schulz used the analogy between the two eras to underscore the danger inherent in German isolation from international, particularly American, developments. In 1929 as in 1919, remoteness from world trends meant jeopardizing Germany’s competitive position. Schulz intimated that on the purely technical level German producers could only survive internationally by learning from America.^[23] By contrast, Willy Haas acknowledged the need for Germany to catch up with Hollywood but warned, as he had in the past, against indiscriminate borrowing. In the early and midtwenties German filmmakers had erred by taking their thematic cues from, and endeavoring to cater to, America. Now, as ten years previously, the German cinema should rather exploit its isolation, draw upon its own roots (its lengthy, sophisticated stage tradition evidenced the resources waiting to be tapped), and create uniquely German sound pictures which would shake the world and Hollywood’s reign over it. Haas therefore challenged native producers not to presume that America would be ultimate master or beneficiary of the revolution it had instigated.^[24]

Experts therefore drew hope for cinematic rejuvenation from the possibilities offered by a fresh start in the new medium and the belief that Germany was ideally situated to exploit it. Commercial preponderance and a technical headstart did not guarantee Hollywood would be most successful in synthesizing the audio and optical elements of the motion picture.^[25] In this context Haas’s plea for cultivation of a distinctly German talking film, a fresh salvo in the decade-old debate over the national or international film, found resonance not only in nationalistic circles. With it came resurrection of artistic expectations which had been disappointed in the course of the 1920s.^[26] Hans Spielhofer, columnist and critic for a conservative trade journal, but like Haas anything but narrowly chauvinistic, reasoned that European culture sought consummation precisely in the combination of speech and picture possible in the talkie. Unlike regions of lesser education and closer proximity to nature (America), Europe was never completely satisfied with reliance on the more primitive mimic dialogue. With the acquisition by speech of equality with mimicry, writers and poets could be expected to show renewed interest in the cinema. In short, what in the United States represented a technical toy and commercial gimmick was pregnant with cultural significance when transposed to a European setting.^[27]

Haas and Spielhofer wrote in 1929, when the German or European talkie was barely in embryo. By 1930 their prophecies had begun to see fulfillment and their confidence appeared vindicated. By the time of the patent truce in July 1930 the uncertainties of the talkie revolution were effectively removed. Sound had demonstrated its staying power; silents were all but dead. The release of Der blaue Engel and Westfront 1918 in April and May respectively demonstrated German technical equality and proved that sound was not the source of artistic inhibition indicated by the early musicals. Also by mid-1930 the market revolution documented above began to make itself felt. There were grounds for believing that Hollywood’s innovation eroded its international dominance and served German interests. The pattern of the previous decade appeared broken.

The resurgence of domestic hopes can be followed in the editorials of the trade papers. In February 1930 Lichtbildbühne published a lead article under the pretentious title, “Transvaluation of all Values,” celebrating the displacement of American silent film by talking pictures, mainly German in origin, in the foremost premiere theaters of Berlin’s west end. The triumph of sound was diminishing the American presence in the most representative German theaters.^[28] Early in March a second lead article reviewed recent developments and concluded that a corner had been turned.

Even if there were no patent problems there would no longer be a broad basis for the American talkie in Germany. On the other hand, American silent film is fading into the background with the boom in German language sound films. It poses no more threat to the existence of German silent film and even less to German language sound film.^[29]

Several months later Film-Kurier corroborated this break with the past in its annual poll of the most successful pictures at the box office. Since inauguration of the poll in 1925 domestic features had regularly accounted for roughly two-thirds of those submitted as commercial successes even though they represented less than half the total releases. By contrast, Hollywood consistently garnered about one-fifth of the total votes despite holding a two-fifths market share. The remaining ten to fifteen percent of the ballots went to productions from other European countries, corresponding approximately to their representation in Germany. In 1929–1930, however, America’s share of the vote dropped to less than one-sixth, to the benefit of imports from European filmmakers. Film-Kurier noted that for the first time in the history of the poll, the commercial worth of European imports outstripped that of American films.^[30] One year later Film-Kurier cited recently published censorship data to proclaim a “Market Revolution through Sound Film.” The ongoing erosion of Hollywood’s presence had quantitative and qualitative dimensions, both favoring further domestic recovery.

The Americans, who forced sound film to such an outrageous extent, have deprived themselves of their earlier paramount position on the European market. The conversion to sound film has an especially great impact on the German market, since because of the relatively numerous and qualitatively high-ranking sound films in the vernacular here, the public has already quickly rejected—apart from rather few exceptions—films with foreign dialogue.^[31]

Apart from editorializing on the changing ratios of American and domestic releases, the trade press registered the market revolution by disregarding Hollywood and lavishing attention on native achievements. In fact the outstanding characteristic of the trade press in the early thirties is less preoccupation with Hollywood’s demise than indulgence for domestic motion pictures. Once the novelty in domestic ascendancy wore off the basic fact remained: the German market no longer relied on American imports any more than it needed protection from a flood of them. The dialectic of dependency and antipathy characteristic of the mid-1920s gave way to relative indifference. Only the exhibitors, who by 1932 realized that national independence left them at the mercy of native producers, called for loosening of import restrictions. Commercially, Hollywood was an issue only insofar as its absence raised the fear of domestic monopoly.^[32]

While the commercial consequences of the sound revolution were relatively straightforward, the artistic and national dimensions raised by Haas and Spielhofer proved controversial. Hollywood’s diminishing influence was generally accepted as a natural consequence of the language barrier, but opinion was divided on the broader ramifications for German cinema. Some critics detected a logic in changing market shares which conformed to developments in other spheres and to earlier demands for restriction of American import to a minimum of top-grade features. Fritz Olimsky concluded, without any sense of regret, that the language barrier would occasion new approaches. “We’ll have to become more and more accustomed to the idea that sound film is the pacemaker of a predominantly nationally oriented film production.”^[33]Kinematograph took as its point of departure for this “national shift” the interplay of commercial and cultural determinants. Language restrictions dictated concentration on the domestic market, which in turn meant fewer extravagant productions financed by foreign earnings and more down-to-earth, domestically relevant themes. Reinforcement for the same trend came from a public tired of conventional spectacle. Widespread disenchantment with America and the “soulless worship of the mechanical” it represented provided the opportunity for German filmmakers to captivate Europe. National orientation would serve expansion into markets once dominated by Hollywood.^[34]

Other conservative sources detected an inherent link between sound pictures and national introversion. Various attempts to overcome the language barrier confirmed what they took as self-evident: forms of speech belonged to the very essence of a cultural type and could not be interchanged without loss of substance. Speech divided mankind and accentuated national differences in thought and feeling. Language represented the “basic element of national uniqueness” and transferred motion pictures from the realm of “international civilization” to the plateau of “volkhaft-national culture.” Talking film thus not only proved a barrier to import of American movies, but highlighted otherwise inexpressible elements of German culture.^[35]

Apart from these references to the cultural significance of language, attempts to identify the peculiarly German over against the typically American fell back on clichés. Antitheses popular after the war—culture and civilization, art and entertainment, authenticity and falsification, Geist and Technik—served to justify Hollywood’s relative decline in Germany. The ultimate triumph of the German (European) worldview became the logical outcome of a decade-old Kulturkampf.^[36] Even when Hollywood was not depicted as an enemy of German culture, the prospect of motion picture autarky acquired broader significance. A lead article in Deutsche Filmzeitung deduced from the restoration of domestic primacy that Germany enjoyed sufficient cultural resilience to assimilate foreign influence. Oblivious to the commercial and technical impulses which had spawned talking film, it maintained that legal exclusion of foreign motion pictures was no longer required because a national awakening had stimulated popular demand for patriotic subject matter. Developments in the cinema reflected deeper currents in contemporary Germany.^[37]

Against the heralds of national awakening who welcomed Hollywood’s declining role in Germany were grouped a number of critics who warned about the dangers of cultural introversion. Despite reservations about American cinema, they found growing isolation from international markets both constricting and perilous. Particularly ominous was the tightening of import regulations, at the very moment, ironically, that trade papers judged such restrictions superfluous given the recovery of domestic independence. Beginning in 1930 the quota system was indirectly tightened by legal redefinition of a “German” film. Previously, a feature film had been classified German so long as it was made in Germany in no less than fourteen studio days and was at least 1500 meters long. Effective 1 July 1930 the production company had to be German; the script writer, composer, director and majority of personnel in each production area had to be German speaking residents; all studio work and, if feasible, all outdoor scenes had to be shot in Germany. In 1932 these stipulations were considerably sharpened: the producer and seventy-five percent of all production personnel had to be German, and, most importantly, a German was redefined as a legal citizen of the Reich.^[38]

No one quarreled with the intent of these changes to encourage employment of native over foreign personnel when the economy was depressed. Insofar, however, as the legislation jeopardized investment by foreign firms in Germany, affecting both output and cost of native production, it met a more mixed response. As in the immediate postwar period, some experts questioned whether it might lead to retaliatory legislation from the United States. They also feared its impact on the number and nature of American films Germans would be permitted to see. Narrowing the definition of a German film, thereby enlarging the category of imports without expanding their numbers, appeared counterproductive for ensuring that Germany would receive the optimal selection of foreign pictures. The smaller the quantity of American imports, the greater pressure there would be for distributors to handle the commercially predictable ones to the exclusion of unusual or pioneering works.^[39] Most disturbing to proponents of liberal film trade were the assumptions behind tightening restrictions. Legal reinforcement for the declining marketability of American film in Germany seemed unnecessary and suggested unhealthy ethnocentrism. Its unspoken assumption was the inferiority or lack of culture of non-German, especially American, motion pictures. Despite the production of many inferior German pictures, the domestic industry was tacitly being awarded a patent for outstanding and cultivated filmmaking. The effect of the modified legislation would be to restrict competition on the German film market and thus foster lesser productions which would otherwise be marginalized.^[40]

Stephan Ehrenzweig related this growing cinematic chauvinism to a wider current of national opinion. Attitudes prevalent in film circles paralleled those expressed in response to the recent summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Following the defeat of German runners by black athletes, the National Socialists demanded the exclusion of the latter as competitors in the Games slated for Germany in 1936. In similar fashion, if less stridently, the German cinema was working to eliminate competition and would, as Ehrenzweig sardonically noted, soon be unbeatable. Nationalist appeals to the Prussian tradition and its military glory sufficed to earn accolades for a filmmaker. Already the critic bold enough to criticize a native picture risked denunciation as a cultural Bolshevik or traitor. In the cinema, as in other fields, Germany was retreating to a position beyond critical reach.

Negroes run faster? Well then we’ll run without them. Americans, Frenchmen make better films? We’ll just show more of our own. If the word “Prussian” appears three times in them, then they are good. If it appears ten times, then they are important.^[41]

Although Ehrenzweig’s critique was overdrawn for dramatic effect, it comes very close to capturing the mood of trade reviews in the dying phase of the Weimar Republic. Critics searched the language for superlatives adequate to capture their enthusiasm for the latest German talkie, but exhibited relative coolness toward American imports. What makes this double standard particularly remarkable is the fact that for the first time the popular demand among experts for import only of select, outstanding Hollywood products approached fulfillment. Apart from imports from American firms using German performers in Hollywood or Paris, the imports of 1930–1932 featured top-ranking American casts and directors. Numerical primacy went to films of Greta Garbo and those directed by Josef von Sternberg, of The Blue Angel fame (usually paired, as in that picture, with Marlene Dietrich). Next in line came the features of Ernst Lubitsch, essentially musical comedies featuring Maurice Chevalier, but including his melodramatic excursion into war and personal guilt entitled Broken Lullaby. Other leading figures of the American cinema represented by early sound imports were Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, George Bancroft, Erich Stroheim and Rouben Mamoulian. German moviegoers did not encounter the complete list of Hollywood’s best, but they saw very little of the so-called average work dumped on the market in the previous decade.^[42]

Contemporary indifference to Hollywood despite quantitative reduction and careful selection of American imports reflects not only growing national introversion but also reliance on well-entrenched critical paradigms. With rare exceptions, critics continued to flog the romantic and dramatic products of Hollywood for disproportion between form and content. Though hackneyed, this specific flaw of American moviemaking proved particularly apposite for discussion of pictures from leading Hollywood artists, whose cinematic prowess was indisputable. By itself, however, it does not account for coolness toward the slickest entertainment Hollywood could offer when the German cinema was outdoing itself with light amusement capable of diverting popular attention from the deepening socioeconomic and political crisis. Did the fact that American movies made up such a token share of the German market permit critics to indulge previously suppressed antipathies? Or was there, as some critics had long argued, an insuperable taste barrier beyond that of language?

A balanced response to these questions must first concede that critics often acknowledged the entertainment value of American pictures they otherwise faulted. Ernst Lubitsch, for example, whose almost exclusive preoccupation with light comedies and operettas began to exasperate even some of his long-time admirers, was still generally recognized as a master of filmic amusement.^[43] Greta Garbo, pitied for the directors and screenplays assigned to her, still commanded a reputation for captivating the viewer like no other screen personality.^[44] Even von Sternberg and Dietrich, whose propensity for screen kitsch outraged critics and audiences, still received plaudits for creating unrivaled thrillers.^[45]

This concession made, critics still detected a compound of flaws familiar from the mid-1920s. Ruthless exploitation of star value produced endless, boring remakes of successful pictures. Sensationalism and sentimentalism became calculated devices which might correspond to American tastes but alienated German viewers. Consequently, scenes intended to create drama provoked disbelief and laughter, even when handled by Hollywood’s foremost talents.^[46] Above all, Hollywood’s screenplays were both improbable and unrelated to real life. Characters and plot development lacked both internal consistency and connectedness to contemporary issues. Hermann Sinsheimer, for instance, repeatedly excoriated von Sternberg as a prisoner of the studio incapable of presenting life rather than a lie.^[47] Almost as guilty in this regard was Ernst Lubitsch, for whom conformity to the Hollywood production system had meant losing touch with the real world. Even such a long-time Lubitsch fan as Kurt Pinthus suggested that with his stream of musicals set in never-never land he had become averse to life as though it were a disease.^[48]

Unwillingness to gloss over shortcomings in content for the sake of technical polish had particular significance in a period in which Hollywood’s leading talents were represented in German cinemas. While conceding entertainment value, critics increasingly regretted that such extraordinary talent was squandered on irrelevant or unpalatable subject matter. The main target of their displeasure was von Sternberg, the Austrian émigré, whose undeniable genius still suffered tasteless, pulp-fiction film plots. Much as in Murnau’s Sunrise, the very brilliance of staging and camera work underscored the vacuity of von Sternberg’s thematic repertoire. Grandiose artistry coexisted with the most pathetic and schematic motifs known to the cinema. This appalling gap between form and content again betrayed Hollywood’s isolation from reality. In the unequivocal language of Rudolf Arnheim, von Sternberg needed forcing back to life. If he were in Russia instead of Hollywood, he would create the world’s greatest motion pictures.^[49]

Against this backdrop it is no surprise that the two American motion pictures which garnered most critical acclaim in this period brought slices of real life to the screen. King Vidor’s dramatized documentary of life among American blacks, Hallelujah, and Josef von Sternberg’s screen adaptation of the Theodore Dreiser novel, An American Tragedy, stood out as bold departures from studio convention. The former ventured into territory traditionally off-limits for Hollywood and the latter tackled a theme worthy of von Sternberg’s genius: the moral pressures and corruption of American society. Despite admission that neither possessed outstanding box office potential, the champions of realism had opportunity to become enthusiastic about Hollywood. In its concern for a touchy subject Hallelujah appeared an unparalleled sound document, a masterpiece of folklore and artistic justification for talking pictures. Its breathtaking authenticity was surpassed only by Soviet cinema.^[50]An American Tragedy peeled the layers of cosmetic off American values familiar from countless American society dramas. Von Sternberg discarded the pictorial poetry of his other films for reportage and cool realism. Manfred Georg read from it Hollywood’s adjustment to shifting American self-perceptions. The self-satisfaction typified by designation of America as “God’s own country” was dead. Even if Hollywood had yet to explore the causes of real-life problems, it was at least pursuing the facts.^[51]

Enthusiasm for these two departures from American film convention confirms the relative marginalization of Hollywood in Weimar film culture. It also hints that mainstream domestic cinema so much resembled Hollywood that any deviation from type was welcome. As in the early 1920s, when critics denigrated the sensationalist imports as un-German even while German directors made potboilers to challenge Hollywood, so now they took exception to American entertainment without confessing that German studios produced sufficient kitsch to make Hollywood’s redundant. In other words, Hollywood became a scapegoat for a domestic industry proficient at manufacture of inconsequential, escapist entertainment. For apart from a select group of socially realistic pictures—Menschen am Sonntag, Mädchen in Uniform, Kuhle Wampe, Kameradschaft, Cyankali—the German industry created settings and themes as socially and intellectually vacuous as any attributed to Hollywood. Whether historical or contemporary, smash hits such as Der Kongress tanzt, Die drei von der Tankstelle, Bomben auf Monte Carlo or Quick portrayed characters and circumstances as fantastic in their own way as the postwar Expressionist or serial pictures. Next to them the much despised American features of the 1920s appeared almost down-to-earth. This flight from socioeconomic chaos and political disintegration into wish-dreams, fueled by the increasingly reactionary behavior of the censors, encouraged critics to seek artistic stimulus from foreign pictures. Movies which, like An American Tragedy, confronted contemporary issues confirmed that cinema was more than a vehicle for mass escapism.^[52]

Since foreign duplication of mainstream domestic production was excess baggage, Hollywood’s last offensive in coproductions was abortive. Some dozen German language talkies, produced either in the United States or at a studio outside Paris, provoked little interest even though released within a relatively short time span from late 1930 through 1931. Casts and production values were almost uniformly second-class. Contrary to earlier practice, Hollywood employed lesser directors and performers whose departure meant scant loss to the German industry. Their achievements received correspondingly limited attention. The high-profile critics outside trade circles simply ignored them.^[53] Trade critics reviewed these coproductions but seldom judged them more than adequate. The greatest compliment they paid such a film, and rarely at that, was equality with its American prototype or with a comparable German production.^[54] This implied that Hollywood’s effort to establish German-language production offered nothing not supplied by either cinema working independently. Germany could manufacture sufficient talkies of the caliber of German versions produced in Paris or in the United States. Commercially and artistically these pictures created no synthesis of Hollywood and Berlin, any more than they posed a serious challenge to the dominant trend to national independence.^[55]

This chapter has chronicled, in fact and in perception, the demise of American film in Germany following the sound revolution. No longer was the German cinema fated, as one observer had commented ruefully in 1926, to be spice in the American soup.^[56] On the contrary, America seemed destined, insofar as the German market was concerned, to offer only occasional diversion from a fundamentally homegrown film diet. This destiny became apparent not only in the volume of American imports, but in the general indifference toward American efforts to produce German talkies. While some critics obviously showed more sensitivity than others to the box-office value of any motion picture, the dwindling commercial importance of American imports made it increasingly possible to downplay their role as entertainment which had to fill theaters. Run-of-the-mill American movies, including those made by Germans, became superfluous. By 1932 at the latest, native producers manufactured sufficient and sufficiently engaging amusement to satisfy the public and satiate the average critic’s appetite for pictures with broad popular appeal.

There is therefore a distinct sense of anticlimax in German-American motion picture interaction during the last years of Weimar. Hollywood was as conspicuous by its relative absence as it earlier had been by its presence. Apart from the famous clash provoked by All Quiet on the Western Front in late 1930, American films no longer elicited great concern, and that irrespective of whether they met enthusiastic or cool receptions. Nothing illustrates this better than Universal’s attempt in 1932 to turn the release of Frankenstein into a public spectacle. Bloodcurdling advertising, including the promise of medical assistance to those overcome by horror, boomeranged even more sharply than in the case of The Ten Commandments in 1924. The publicity campaign turned against itself when its object created as much laughter as horror.^[57] The Hollywood mystique suffered one more puncture and could not be repaired, as in 1924, by the threat of imminent domination. America had debuted a decade earlier with sensationalist serials which created amusement as well as excitement. It saw the curtain come down on a picture which drew laughter though designed to awe and frighten.

Notes