By Robert Horton

Put them together, and the terms "East Germany" and "cinema" conjure up bleak associations: a gray Berlin, barbed wire, and the soul-frying bitterness of a Hollywood Cold War picture along the lines of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold [1] or a post-reunification lookback such as The Lives of Others [2].

But for "East German cinema" itself? There's a fair amount of barbed wire and bitterness in the films of the German Democratic Republic, but there's much more: the subject is ripe for re-discovery, a process helped along in the US by a 2005 Museum of Modern Art series and a steady stream of DVD releases from First Run Features [3]. In preparing a lecture on Cold War cinema for the Frye Art Museum [4] in Seattle, I had the chance to delve into the world of GDR film and found it arresting in many ways - an island unto itself, yet connected to the greater flow of movie history in unexpected flashes. Here's a bit of background, followed by a collection of films from this strange era.

It was an accident of history, probably, that Berlin's key filmmaking centers - including the location of the legendary Ufa studios, the Metropolis [5] playground itself - were occupied by Russian forces in the latter days of World War II. Not an accident is the fact that the Soviets set up a filmmaking apparatus much more quickly than the West did; a collective of filmmakers, Filmaktiv, formed in October 1945, documentary films were in production as early as January 1946, and the state-operated film studio, DEFA [6] (for Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) established itself shortly thereafter. The history of East German film is fundamentally the history of DEFA, which hit the ground running with Germany's first postwar feature, Wolfgang Staudte [7]'s Die Mörder sind unter uns [8] (The Murderers are Among Us, 1946).

[8]There's no soft-pedaling the central problem with DEFA: the Communist regime controlled the film industry, and the artists who worked within that industry had to fashion their work according to the prevailing winds blowing across the Soviet bloc. The chronicle of DEFA is marked by the kind of clampdown-thaw-clampdown rhythm that ruled cultural life in the other Soviet-bloc countries, which meant that projects were perpetually altered or canceled according to the whims of the censors, and careers could be foreshortened by someone making the wrong movie at the wrong time. As Bertolt Brecht [9] drolly put it in the early days of the studio, "DEFA has all sorts of problems finding subjects, especially contemporary ones. The head office lists significant themes: underground movement, distribution of land, two-year-plan, the new man, etc. - then writers are supposed to devise stories that interpret the theme and its associated problems. This naturally often goes wrong."

The mandate for Socialist Realism [10] made the early 1950s a period of searching for DEFA; among the most notable projects of the era was Kurt Maetzig [11]'s two-part biography of the German communist Ernst Thälmann [12], Ernst Thälmann: Sohn seiner Klasse [13] (Ernst Thalmann: Son of the Working Class, 1954) and Ernst Thälmann: Führer seiner Klasse [14] (Ernst Thalmann: Leader of the Working Class, 1955). The films were successful but Maetzig later expressed his embarrassment about their dutiful approach. Stalin's death in 1953 began a liberalization process, and DEFA films of the latter part of the decade roamed across more provocative territory, including Berlin: Ecke Schönhauser [15] (Berlin: Schonhauser Corner, 1957), a rebellious-teen picture directed by Gerhard Klein [16] and written by Wolfgang Kohlhaase [17] (it was the third in a series of Berlin movies by the filmmaking team).

Curiously, the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 actually initiated another easing of restrictions on East German film - as though with the Wall built, the authorities could relax a little with their captive audience. By 1965 the most ambitious East German filmmakers were embarking on rangier projects, but in December of '65 the Socialist Unity Party's Central Committee held its Eleventh Plenary and an entire year's worth of films made at DEFA were summarily wiped out - banned if they had been completed, and canceled if they were in pre-production--for being "un-socialist" and "pessimistic." This group is sometimes known as the "Rabbit Films," after the title of one banned picture, Maetzig's 1965 Das Kaninchen bin ich [18] (The Rabbit is Me; see below for more detail).

After a while, to East German audiences, DEFA films were a cause for skepticism. Frank Beyer [19] made a film, Spur der Steine [20] (Trace of Stones), in 1966, in which a man asks a woman out on a date by saying, "For a date with you, I'd even watch a DEFA film." Of course, this film was banned, thus adding an extra layer of irony.

The heavy hand of the Brezhnev era settled over East German film, although some inspired titles continued to sneak out; for instance, Frank Beyer created the only East German film ever nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar category, 1975's Jakob der Lügner [21] (Jakob the Liar; later remade [22], gruelingly, with Robin Williams [23]). Genre films succeeded, such as the daffy series of "Eastern Westerns" featuring American Indians as heroes (see Die Söhne der großen Bärin [24] (Sons of the Great Bear, below). The "Biermann Affair" of 1976 - the GDR's expulsion of the outspoken performer Wolf Biermann [25] - prompted a talent drain, as other actors and artists left the East.

Decent films sneaked through during the subsequent decade, while the GDR and the rest of the world waited for Gorbachev. The usual censorship problems obtained, such as the case of Ulrich Weiss [26]'s Dein unbekannter Bruder [27] (Your Unknown Brother, 1982), which was initially invited to the Cannes Film Festival but then withdrawn when GDR officials grew nervous about its ambiguous depiction of the 1930s anti-fascist movement.

In the wake of September 1989 and the exultant toppling of the Wall, banned films were revived and screened across Germany; in 1992 DEFA was sold to a French conglomerate, which is either a sad end or some kind of ironic justice, depending on your point of view. We'll catch up on some more DEFA history along the way, but let's consider a sampling of important East German titles, all currently available on DVD.

Die Mörder sind unter uns [28] (The Murderers are Among Us), 1946. Here's the Birth of a Nation [29] of East German films, the first feature made in Germany after the end of World War II. It's a knockout on almost every level, an example of the so-called Trümmerfilm, or "Rubble Film," shot in the debris of Berlin. Ernst Wilhelm Borchert [30] plays a disillusioned doctor who discovers that his wartime commander, a ruthless executioner, is now a comfortable bourgeois; future star Hildegard Knef [31] is the woman who lets the doctor stay in her disintegrating apartment. The old German Expressionist [32] style is alive here, but the film is also a companion piece to Open City [33] and the Italian Neorealism [34] flourishing at the time.

Der Rat der Götter [35] (Council of the Gods), 1950. This astonishing film from key DEFA director Kurt Maetzig [36] is a whistle-blowing chronicle of the development of poison gas during the Nazi regime, and the ass-covering that followed the end of the war. The movie tracks one naive scientist (Paul Bildt [37]) as he develops products that will eventually be shipped to Auschwitz, but it also shows the machinations of the business cabal that first brought Hitler to power and later ran for cover during the Nuremberg trials (which are depicted here). The film is based on various Nuremberg documents, and goes out of its way to argue that German industry needed Standard Oil, and vice versa, to keep the German and American war machines humming.

Sonnensucher [38] (Sun Seekers), 1958. Konrad Wolf [39] directed this bleak story of lost souls at work in a remote uranium mining village, a place with some of the wide-open feel of a Western gold rush town. The delicate mixing of rough, cynical East German characters with Russian authority figures proved a bit much for the Soviet censors, and the film was banned until 1972. Wolf remained an important figure whose subsequent films include Professor Mamlock [40] (1961) and Ich war 19 [41] (I Was Nineteen, 1968).

[41]Der schweigende Stern [42] (Silent Star), 1960. An East German-Polish sci-fi extravaganza, directed by Maetzig from a Stanislaw Lem [43] novel. Some great vintage visual effects and anti-American propaganda make this both a ditzy campfest and a respectable variation on the conventional voyage-to-the-stars picture (the crew is an impeccable melting pot of races and nationalities, including a sympathetic US scientist who bucks the concerns of his Commie-hating associates). It was cut and dubbed and released in the US as First Spaceship on Venus [44].

Der Fall Gleiwitz [45] (The Gleiwitz Case), 1961. World War II was a handy subject in the postwar years after the end of the war, a way for East Germany to lay down its antifascist cred. Gerhard Klein [46] and Wolfgang Kohlhaase [47]'s The Gleiwitz Case tells the real story behind the incident at a radio station that touched off the German invasion of Poland in 1939, showing how the incident was planned by the Germans to imply that the Poles had provoked at attack. Stylistically, this is one of the most intriguing GDR films: on the one hand, Gleiwitz Case takes a near-documentary-like tack, with a clipped style that presents the events as they might have happened; on the other hand, it has a visual approach that arcs back to the forced angles, dramatic compositions, and bold lighting of German Expressionism. That style was considered by East German and Soviet authorities to be dangerously close to the aesthetic of Nazi-cozy filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl [48] (some have argued that the film deliberately uses these techniques for parodistic purposes). Either way, The Gleiwitz Case was not actually banned, but was withdrawn from a Moscow film festival and given a short release.

Das zweite Gleis [49] (The Second Track), 1962. If The Gleiwitz Case was a history lesson, The Second Track made WWII a living presence in contemporary Germany. Two men meet by chance on the job at a railroad track, thus jogging the shameful memory of an incident involving a Jewish man hiding in someone's home during the war. It spins its wheels a little too long before homing in on its subject, but The Second Track creates a genuinely suspenseful moral problem (reminiscent of the central dilemma in The Murderers are Among Us), brought to nervy life by a young director, Joachim Kunert [50], and a creepy musical score.

[51]Karbid und Sauerampfer [51] (Carbide and Sorrel), 1963. Although it was difficult for screenwriters and directors to critically address the issues of the day, ingenious methods could be used for cultural observation. For Carbide and Sorrel director Frank Beyer, the solution was to cannily employ slapstick comedy to satirize the occupation of Germany in the divided years after World War II. The film is set in 1950, and concerns the efforts of an unemployed cigarette factory worker as he tries to transport seven barrels of carbide from Wittenberg to Dresden, despite having no transportation and no money. His picaresque adventures are hilarious by any standard, and they use the postwar scene as a delicious platform for jibes at Russians and Americans (and, absolutely, Germans). The long-suffering hero is brilliantly played by Erwin Geschonneck [52], one of East Germany's most popular actors - sort of a Walter Matthau [53] Every-mensch.

Das Kaninchen bin ich [54] (The Rabbit is Me), 1965. In an interview on this film's DVD [not currently available, alas - ed.], director Kurt Maetzig talks about its genesis: When Nikita Khrushchev came to Berlin for a meeting, presumably in 1962 or '63, Maetzig summoned up his nerve and asked Khrushchev about the limits on expression in films, at which point Khrushchev told him that the arts were stagnant in the Soviet bloc, that filmmakers should indeed be more provocative, and to go ahead and make those kinds of films. So Maetzig turned around and adapted a novel that had had censorship problems, which became The Rabbit is Me.

In the interim, Khrushchev was relieved of his duties and Leonid Brezhnev lumbered into power. The new Soviet regime mounted the notorious Eleventh Plenary, and The Rabbit is Me (plus a roster of others) was swiftly shelved in the repressive new era. The film is clearly influenced by the New Wave [55] cinema going on in other parts of the world in the 1960s, especially in France. But it was the film's story that probably got it in trouble: it tells of a young Berlin woman whose brother is jailed for maddeningly undefined counterrevolutionary actions; she then has an affair with the married judge who sentenced the brother. The film functions both as soap opera and as critique of the social system (maybe too much of the former), and its style feels fresh - saucy voiceover narration, sarcastic humor, and a fluid camera that seems unshackled from the heavier Teutonic approach of many DEFA films.

Jahrgang 45 [56] (Born in '45), 1965. Also banned by the Eleventh Plenary. If The Rabbit is Me was brushed by Truffaut [57], Born in '45 borrowed from Godard [58]. The only narrative movie directed by the painter and documentary filmmaker Jürgen Böttcher [59], this one takes a more radical approach to storytelling, with a clipped style and almost random selection of scenes, and a clear sympathy for interior, individual experience and angst, rather than the realistic representation of life as it would fit the ideological education of the workers. It doesn't quite sustain itself - too many longeurs and too little actorly charisma - but the experiment is worthy.

Die Söhne der großen Bärin [60] (Sons of the Great Bear), 1966. Not surprisingly, despite films extolling the virtues of the workers' state, GDR audiences dug genre movies, including a series of East German Westerns made from the mid-1960s onward. The chiseled Yugoslavian actor Gojko Mitic [61], truly the Schwarzenegger [62] of his time, often starred in these offerings (he's a noble Indian chief in this one, the first of his starring run). This film is fairly sluggish, but the appeal of cowpokes speaking German is undeniable, and the spectacle of white Americans portrayed as imperialist running-dog oppressors makes the subgenre a historically fascinating one.

Heisser Sommer [63] (Hot Summer), 1968. An all-singing, all-dancing East German version of a Beach Party [64] movie? That's right - except Hot Summer makes How to Stuff a Wild Bikini [65] look like The Graduate [66]. You might have spotted some of the more jaw-dropping moments from Hot Summer excerpted in East Side Story [67], that compendium of kooky Soviet-bloc musicals, but the movie itself achieves an even more exquisite note of perkiness mixed with nausea (the kind of madness that can be found in 60s-era Scopitone music videos). Pop stars Chris Doerk [68] and Frank [69]Schöbel [70] lead the horrifyingly upbeat cast in this film about fun 'n' sun on the Baltic coast.

[70]Die Legende von Paul und Paula [71] (The Legend of Paul and Paula), 1973. According to most sources, this is the most popular film ever made in East Germany, a fact that surely belongs in the "I guess you had to be there" category. It's a kitschy romance with a weird blend of cutesy fantasy and kitchen-sink realism, set to a rock soundtrack by the Puhdys [72]. At the very least, Angelica [73]Domröse [74] makes a luminous heroine of the working class, and the 70s views of life in East Berlin are valuable. Director Heiner Carow [75] later made Coming Out [76] as the GDR was ending in 1989, the first East German take on homosexuality.

Die Arkitekten [77] (The Architects), 1990. Peter Kahane [78]'s critical view of life in the GDR was filmed as the Wall was coming down, which might explain the openness of its frustration with a played-out system. It's ostensibly about a team of architects whose utopian design for a housing community is shredded by doctrinaire officials, but it's easy to read it as a general rejection of Socialist-dictated order and as a metaphor for East German filmmaking (the scenes of the architects hearing their best ideas get trashed could easily be an arts ministry turning thumbs-down on a provocative screenplay).

And so the DEFA era ends with a perfect allegory of its own compromised but (in hindsight, anyway) fascinating saga. Not even the "Ostalgic" denizens of Good Bye, Lenin! [79] would mourn its passing, but - like walking around Berlin and gazing upon the wacky architectural legacies of the GDR - DEFA remains a corner of film history with rewards for the curious.

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