FILM 2154 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Alicia Vikander, Oberhausen Manifesto, James Franco
Exam 3 Lecture 9: New German Cinema
1
• After WWI, Germany split into 2 countries; each has film industry
o Rubble films show aftermath of war 1946-49
▪ Murderers Among Us
• West Germany- industry de-Nazified, Nazi-era films banned if they were not propaganda.
o Heimat films- West German cinema soon returns to popular film genres for domestic
audiences
o Sissi Films- Glossy historical dramas and romances
o other popular genres such as comedies, crime films, etc.
• East Germany- DEFA company makes politically-oriented films, production owned/controlled by
government; also more popular types of films (science fiction. Red westerns, musicals_
o 800 feature films
o Chemie und Liebe (1948)
o The Silent Star (1960)- A.K.A First Spaceship on Venus
o Heisser Sommer (1968)
Oberhausen Manifesto & New German Cinema
• By 1962, annual feature film production in West Germany had declined to 63 feature films (East
German annual feature was always less, but lost of shorts & documentaries)
o Group of 26 young West German directors wrote & signed the Oberhausen Manifesto-
Papa’s Kio Ist tod Father’s Ciea is Dead
• Stressed
o The importance of films as a tool to educate rather than entertain
o German film should deal with contemporary German problems:
▪ Materialism of postwar society
▪ Morality of the bourgeoisie
▪ Alienation of the youth
▪ Moral disaster of the Nazi legacy
o Anti-oerial, strogly politial = freedo fro oetios of the estalished fil
idustry… the outside ifluee of oerial parters… otrol y speial iterest groups
o Very few signatories of Oberhausen Manifesto went on to have commercial careers
(Alexander Kluge, Hans-Jurgen, etc.)
o Not initially successful; but set the stage for new directors of late 60s and 1970s
New Welle: New German Cinema
• Directors inspired in some ways to begin making films by Oberhausen Manifesto
• Broke with traditional commercial cinema
• Strongly influenced by classic Hollywood cinema of 1930s-40s
• Critical of bourgeois society and German History
• Unlike French Nouvelle Vague, the German New Welle did’t have specific film-making style or
technique
• Each director developed his/her own style and some changed styles over the course of their careers
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