As much as any other branch of industry, Germany’s film corporations are feeling the extreme revolutionary effects of the new National Socialismus. Moving picture organizations will shortly release a new brand of films that promise unorthodoxies as radical as any departure that has come about since sound was applied to the silver screen.
Briefly, sex, silliness, stars, sin, syncopation, and suggestion will be purged from cinemas of New Germany. In their place nature, philosophy, simplicity, science, and one hundred percent Aryanism will be substituted.
Neubabelsburg, the European Hollywood, has begun to feel the effects of the Nazi drive for Aryan culture. Ufa studios, which have produced the greatest non-American cinema triumphs of the last decade, and other smaller concerns have already started work on pictures designed to reflect Nazi ideals. On the Ufa lots where “The Blue Angel”, “Metropolis”, and other magnificent productions were recorded, a half dozen plots are being worked out under regulations set forth by the Ministry of Propaganda.
ONE HUNDRED FIRED
One hundred Jewish actors and directors have been released from the Ufa studios to make way for the new experiment. Six remain. Their records as “front kampfers” and their indispensability to Ufa prevented them from going out with other Jews and a number of Aryans who were active in opposing the ascendancy of Hitler to power.
Among the famous film stars lost to Germany’s movie industry through Nazi restrictions are: Julius Falke### Otto Wallburg, Fritz Greenwald, Kurt Gerron, and the producer, Erich Pommer. Many of those released promptly secured contracts with French, British, and American producers.
Not a single inch of film will be given to necking scense; and words that might be construed as having a double meaning will find no space on the sound records. Directors of the Ufa studios announce that they have agreed with the board of censors to allow no suggestion of smut to enter the makeup of New Germany’s movies.
LOVERS WILL BE SENSIBLE
Lovers, they say, will henceforth do their wooing in a sensible manner. Men will court maidens with profound discourse of a philosophical and psychological nature. Actresses will be required to respond favorably to their screen lovers’ descriptions of historic incidents with here and there a dash of patriotic ejaculation.
The jazz sweetheart has been thrown from cinema casts. The national policy of glorifying women through the now famous “Kirche, Kinder, Kuche” will be followed implicitly. Perhaps the nearest approach to sex pictures will be those in which the plot calls for the triumph of patriotism over abortion. Two seven reelers now in the making are forecast by their producers as sure hits. One, “Was Wissen Die Manner,” which means, “What Do Men Know (of Woman’s Responsibilities)” portrays the sweetheart of a travelling salesman. She learns that she is to become a mother; and so does her father. She debates the desirability of an abortion. Her neighbors argue that the operation should be undertaken. Common sense and patriotism prove stronger than the arguments of the neighbors. The baby is born; the father is told; and there is a very happy ending.
GAIETY MUST BE SUBDUED
The second film, “Acht Madelen in Einem Boot,” meaning, “Eight Girls in a Boat,” depicts the consternation of a young unmarried woman who finds herself in the same predicament. Her seven girl companions urge abortion; but again finer instincts are triumphant. Here too, there is a happy ending.
Jazz and crime are prominent among blackballed subjects of the screen. Directors state that it will no longer be possible to depict high life in cabarets and dance halls. Gaiety must be of a wholesome and subdued sort. Old German folk songs will be revived to replace the hotcha music that has emanated from America.
In the same manner the speech, dress, and customs of various parts of Germany will be shown to movie goers. Old dances will be dug up. Of the modern dances, the waltz alone will prevail; and it will be executed with courtly grace.
Historic subjects with the German viewpoint will be presented; and there is promise of spectacles along these lines.
Crime and gangster pictures are barred without exception. The policy of the new film producers is to please without exciting. It is believed that the efficiency of the police can be portrayed without overly accentuating the modus operandi or the modus vivendi of the underworld. “Das Testament der Dr. Malbuse,” a gangster film produced by the Nero company, has been banned.
The philosophical and psychological means of entertainment will be brought out by portrayals of unpublicized types of Germans, the sort that seldom are mentioned in the newspapers. “Heide Schulmeister Uwe Carsten” depicting the beautiful simplicity of an old schoolmaster in a desolate, nondescript village will inaugurate the pictures that strive for beauty in simplicity.
The star system will be done away with. Hereafter, rather than one or two principals, pictures will be designed to have no less than five or six leading roles.
The youth movement of New Germany will be given considerable attention. A picture, recently released, has gained comment in all parts of the country. The plot concerns a young boy who is being brought up by Communist parents. He learns Nazi doctrines from his acquaintances, asks his parents to turn over a new leaf and substitute the wholesomeness of National Socialism for their red beliefs. When they refuse, he leaves home. He runs into many adventures and always gives a good account of himself because of his adherence to Nazi policies. His parents are impressed; they reform; and all live happy.
Another play, much the same, ends differently. The Nazi boy’s Communist mother, sensitive to the rift in the family, decides to end it all. She closets herself and son, turns on the gas, and waits for the finale. Hitlerjugende of the Nazi youth band break into the room in time to rescue the boy; but the mother dies. The boy is killed sometime later in election riots; and the father reforms. This is a Ufa production called “Hitlerjunge Zuex.”
Other pictures are being released by the dozen in which the Nazi movement is sympathetically viewed. Youth pictures portray patriotic boys who succeed in winning their parents from Communism or Socialism.
So numerous have become projected Nazi movies that the ministry of propaganda recently warned producers not to play up the party with intent to make money. Undaunted, however, a series of patriotic pictures are being planned to follow in the wake of the current success, “S. A. Mann Brand.”
Because of the waste that might be brought about by unfavorable censorship, all censoring now will be done before production is begun. Books are to be sent to the Ministry of Propaganda, where they will undergo a general delousing with regard to Marxist ideas, smut, anti-German elements.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
