In November 1957, Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory was released in West Germany. It would appear in American cinemas a month later. When it did, film critics were rightly impressed and singled out one scene as proof of Kubrick’s genius. It was the scene of the court-martial, where the soldiers are shot from an elevated …
Tag: Werner Bergmann
The Naked Man on the Sports Field
Three of Konrad Wolf’s feature films—Goya, The Naked Man on the Sports Field (Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz), and Solo Sunny—form a loose trilogy. On the face of things, the three films are as different as can be, musically, stylistically, and cinematically. On closer inspection, we notice that all three films are explorations of artistic …
Mama, I’m Alive
Occasionally, East Germany’s film studio DEFA worked with production companies from other countries. This gave those countries access to the Babelsberg film studios, which were some of the best in Europe, and it allowed DEFA to provide a better variety of films to the East German public. With many of these films, the influence of …
Professor Mamlock
In 1934, Friedrich Wolf’s play, Professor Mamlock, ruffled feathers around the world. In it, a conservative Jewish doctor tries to keep politics out of the clinic he runs despite the growing presence of Nazis and Nazi support in Germany. As the doctor is incrementally stripped of power and control, he eventually realizes that his staunch …
East German Cinema Blog 