German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut

We asked female film and art critics to look at the Goethe-Institut Toronto's exhibition Early UFA Film Posters: Projecting Women with eight visuals from famous as well as rarely seen or lost Berlin UFA films from the 1920s and 30s that portray women as heroines or seductresses, debutantes or harlots. Toronto film critic Alex Heeney took a closer look at two of them:

I had been staring at the poster for "Die Nibelungen" (Fritz Lang’s 1924 fantasy-adventure film) from across the room at the Goethe-Institut for half an hour before I noticed a woman was on it. She’s leading the cavalry charge on the bridge. But she almost blends in. Of the eight posters in the exhibition “Early UFA Film Posters: Projecting Women”, this was the only poster where I didn’t immediately spot a woman. Since the poster was used, at the time, to advertise the film on pillars, walls, and billboards, most people would have had the same view as I did. So I probably wasn’t alone in missing her presence.

Yet Martin Lehmann-Steglitz’s poster is designed to draw attention to this woman as im-portant and different, the heroine of the piece, Kriemhild (Margarete Schön) — but only subtly so. Continue reading "UFA @ 100: Women at war with men" »

We asked female film and art critics to look at the Goethe-Institut Toronto's exhibition Early UFA Film Posters: Projecting Women with eight visuals from famous as well as rarely seen or lost Berlin UFA films from the 1920s and 30s that portray women as heroines or seductresses, debutantes or harlots. Toronto arts & culture writer Nathalie Atkinson took a closer look at "The Girl from Till 12", a 1927 comedy directed by Erich Schönfelder:

There are more than 300 film posters attributed to Josef Fenneker, the prolific German artist. In his near-weekly output of cinema materials for Berlin’s historic Marmorhaus throughout the 1920s, Fenneker is known for the more distorted and exaggerated melodrama (and often, violent emotion) of his signature Expressionist work. Both in subject and style his poster for Erich Schönfelder’s 1928 silent film "The Girl from Till 12" ("Das Fräulein von Kasse 12") is a radical departure; it was not part of the MoMA’s 1985 exhibition of Fenneker posters, for example. Yet this cinema design more than any other encapsulates the look and attitude of the neue Frau, with her sidelong gaze full of insouciance. Perhaps it’s even insolence, for she is a solitary, independent figure.

At a glance, "The Girl from Till 12" conveys nothing specific of the film’s plot or premise. Continue reading "UFA @ 100: The Girl from Till 12 - the New Woman" »

We asked female film and art critics to look at the Goethe-Institut Toronto's exhibition Early UFA Film Posters: Projecting Women with eight visuals from famous as well as rarely seen or lost Berlin UFA films from the 1920s and 30s that portray women as heroines or seductresses, debutantes or harlots. Toronto film critic Linda Barnard reexamined Brigitte Helm's Maria in METROPOLIS:


She is instantly recognizable: the female robot from Metropolis.

Even if people know nothing about Fritz Lang’s 1927 film, they know her face. Credit a visionary director, actress Brigitte Helm and a character named Maria for that. As one of the leading cinematic influencers of popular culture, fashion and film for 90 years, the image most closely associated with Metropolis is the blankly staring metal-clad Maschinenmensch, the robotic woman and sexualized creature created from pure-hearted Maria to bring down a city.

Everything about this compelling poster designed by Werner Graul for UFA to promote Metropolis is unexpected. It shoots up as a narrow, vertical image among traditional rectangles on the wall. A woman’s face fills the frame. Eyes closed, her lips are blood red, yet her skin is blue. Is it a trick of light? Or perhaps she’s not human?
Continue reading "UFA @ 100: Metropolis - The Robotic Woman" »

Continue reading "Early UFA Film Posters: Projecting Women" »

If you thought the Goethe-Institut Toronto, founded 55 years ago, was the first place to show German films in Toronto, think again. The Revue Cinema, opened in 1912 on Roncesvalles Avenue in Toronto's West End and now a second-run and arthouse theatre saved from the wrecking ball by a circle of film aficionados, used to host the large German community that immigrated to Canada after World War II.

Reason enough for the Goethe-Institut and the Revue to celebrate that enduring cinematic heritage with three rarely seen German classics on 35mm in the upcoming screening weekend Déjà Revue: German films of the 1950s.

In preparation, a look behind the scenes -or quite literally the screen- of the Revue reveals the theatre's rich archive including gems like 1919 silent films as well as a handful of hand-painted posters announcing the mix of post-war German escapist comedies and serious literary adaptation on offer in the early days:


Germany 1956. By Helmut Käutner, based on the 1931 play by Carl Zuckmayer, who also wrote THE BLUE ANGEL. THE CAPTAIN (famous speech here) was one of three Zuckmayer adaptations Käutner did in the 1950s, this one starring well-known actors Heinz Rühmann, Martin Held, and Hannelore Schroth. The tragi-comedy is based on the true story of Wilhelm Voigt, a German impostor who dressed up as a Prussian military officer in 1906 and held the mayor of Berlin-Köpenick for ransom. Since the original locations in the eastern part of Berlin were inaccessible, the film was made in Hamburg.
The play and the film (as well as Richard Oswald's much-lauded 1931 film version and Käutner's 1945 radio drama) are largely seen as ridiculing the absurdities of bureaucracy and people's blind belief in state institutions. Two years prior, Käutner had won the Prix International at Cannes for his anti-war film THE LAST BRIDGE. The choice of Rühmann as the lead was controversial because the actor had played in many Nazi comedies. Stars Curd Jürgens (THE SPY WHO LOVED ME) as well as Hans Albers (THE BLUE ANGEL) were being discussed instead, but Rühmann would enter German film history with this role. 10 million people saw the film in its first five months, and it was eventually shown in 53 countries. This was such a success, the first in post-war Germany, that the film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
"Take a very close look at Rühmann, and not for one second will you think of him as Quax (in the 1941 war propaganda comedy of the same name) but of Grock, of Chaplin, of Charlie Rivel.“ commented Die Welt when the film came out. In 2017, look out for Robert Schwentke's upcoming THE CAPTAIN, which relocates the misappropriation of a uniform to dupe authorities and to survive to the last days of the Second World War.

Continue reading "Déjà Revue: German films of the 1950s" »

Saving The Greats for last (for part I of this series, see previous article below): Ulrich Seidl* is working on two projects. The documentary IM KELLER, started three years ago, deals with Austrians‘ strange relationship with their basements. I shudder to think what it will unearth. And together with curator and wife Veronika Franz he is planning the horror film ICH SEH/ICH SEH for 2014: When a mother “comes home after cosmetic surgery entirely bandaged, nothing is like it was before,” as the producer’s announcement goes. Some might claim most of his films are horror films one way or another (I am still somewhat sick from his 2001 DOG DAYS, but no regrets!).

The Goethe-Institut has many times and across the globe --in Toronto in 2007-- shown Edgar Reitz' 3-day made-for-TV labour of love HEIMAT, a German chronicle of the 20th century as seen from the perspective of the fictional but authentic German village of Schabbach. The 80-year-old pioneer of the Oberhausen Manifesto is now back on the big screen. DIE ANDERE HEIMAT*, starring Werner Herzog, in theatres 3 October, jumps back to the mid-19th century and includes a story of emigration. Heimatfilm reimagined. Here's a German news report visiting the set of the latest, fourth part of the project.

Further ahead: Volker Schlöndorff ...

<* more in following entry on German Films @ TIFF 2013 to be posted on August 13!> Continue reading "In Production II" »