Equipping for Influence: The Modernization of German Studios

In the mid-1920s, Robert Florey offered some advice to French film producers wanting to compete with the Americans. His suggestions, pertinent to other national film industries as well, usefully summarize the beliefs widely held within the German film industry of 1921 and after:

Florey assumes “normal” films to be classical films, as made in Hollywood. They would have realistic-looking sets, lights directed into the scene from multiple points, cinematic acting, and above all comprehensibility (“simple, normal American films”).

I have argued that Lubitsch was simply the first and best of the German directors of popular cinema to integrate Hollywood influences into his films.We have seen that Lang and Murnau adapted aspects of continuity editing in their Expressionist films, but Lubitsch was earliest, I believe, to adopt the combination of techniques that constituted classical filmmaking. On a technical level, particularly in regard to lighting, he was able to do so because he had access to the American-style facilities of the EFA studio. The technical journals of the day suggest that other filmmakers would have liked to have made films in the new Hollywood style, but they were hampered by a lack of facilities. Nevertheless, as more dark studios were built and equipped with a variety of lamps, three-point lighting replaced the diffused sunlight and glaring, frontal arclight of the postwar years. Continuity “rules” of editing were less easy to assimilate, since the principle of maintaining constant screen direction would not be obvious when viewing a film; like Lubitsch, directors would learn cutting techniques more gradually.