Film fans, this one's for you! Let's go behind-the-scenes with Frank Brückner as he traces the history of cinema, and how innovations in "moving pictures" shaped what Barbara, Lisa, Alma and Anneliese were watching before - and after - their journeys across the ocean. ----- Cover art by Alexe Normandin. Jingle music composed by Frank Brückner. All other sounds and voices (except for the interviews of What They Can Teach Us): © Frank Brückner Source Links: M (movie, 1931) Furtwängler - Götterdämmerung, Prologue Dawn (Live) Film Projector Sound Effect - Home and Office Sounds Charlie Chaplin - Kid Auto Races At Venice. High Quality "Moloch Motiv", from Metropolis Medley - Gottfried Huppertz (1927 78 rpm Record) Der Blaue Engel (1930) – Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt Die Drei von der Tankstelle (1930) – Ein Freund, ein guter Freund Die Deutsche Wochenschau (1943) Die Feuerzangenbowle (1944) Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war (1937) – Jawohl, meine Herren Die Mörder sind unter uns (1946) Schwarzwaldmädel (1950) Bush Pilot (1947) Lisa Schwabe, Oral History interview by Alexander Freund (Vancouver, B.C., Canada; September 29, 1993), Identity in Immigration Collection, Alexander Freund Fond, German-Canadian Oral History Archive, University of Winnipeg Oral History Archive. ----- Transcript: [Movie clip plays] These were excerpts from the 1931 German movie M by Fritz Lang. It is considered by many to be one of the greatest films of all time. It is highly unlikely that Barbara, Anneliese, Lisa or Alma saw M when it was released in German cinemas, as they were small children in 1931, and M deals with grim subject matter. However, as these women grew up, they became true film lovers and often went to the movie theater to see a new movie as soon as it came out. Welcome to What They Can Teach Us: The Podcast. My name is Frank Brückner and I created the series to provide additional context to the website, “What They Can Teach Us,” which was developed from interviews with four women who immigrated from Germany to Canada in the early 1950s. The website and podcasts were initiated and are supported by the Chair in German-Canadian studies at the university of Winnipeg. In these podcasts, you will learn what life was like in the late 1940s and early 1950s when Barbara, Lisa, Alma, and Anneliese, like so many of our parents and grandparents, left Germany and crossed the Atlantic ocean to begin their lives anew in Canada. This is part 3 of a series of short podcasts, accompanying the interviews of “What They Can Teach Us”: What They Were Watching. Let's take a peek with our ears. [Movie clip plays] Among the many difficulties these women faced when they immigrated to Canada was the language barrier. Their English was not very good, if it existed at all. They came from a different culture and had just survived the most horrible war in world history started by their fellow Germans. They were seeking a new and better life in an unknown, sparsely populated country, 28 times the size of Germany. Barbara, Anneliese, Lisa, and Alma had to immerse themselves into every aspect of their new home country. Movies provided a genius way to do that as they are based in visual storytelling. New immigrants to Canada, even if they did not yet understand English, were mostly able to follow the plot of films that were showing in their local movie houses. By the time our four interviewees Anneliese, Barbara, Alma, and Lisa arrived in Canada in the early 1950s, the art of films with sound was only about 20 years old. Before sound films, which were also known as “talking pictures” or “talkies”, or Tonfilm in German, there were silent movies, often accompanied by live music to provide the score. Title cards explained the plot and or the dialogues. This silent film era spanned more than 30 years, from the late 19th century until the late 1920s. [Movie clip plays] Among the first inventors of film were the brothers Max and Eugen [sic] Skladanowsky in Berlin with their “Bioscope,” and Louis and August Lumière with their “Cinématograph” in Paris, who screened their short films in front of astonished audiences, just two weeks apart from each other in late 1895. No matter if we are talking about live action or an animated cartoon, one second of film is composed of 24 individual frames, as they are called. How does that translate into length? Let's do some math. With a 35-millimeter film, one second of film is about 45 centimeters long. One minute, about 27 meters. And a 90-minute movie is about 2,469 meters long, two and a half kilometers. That is almost 130,000 single frames. A five-minute short film contains 7,200 individual frames. That's a lot to take in. [Movie clip plays] We often associate the golden age of German silent movies with expressionist films, such as Fritz Lang's fantastic futuristic science fiction movie Metropolis from 1927, shot at Babelsberg film studio, which still exists to this day in Potsdam, just outside of Berlin. There's also The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with its crooked walls and dramatic lighting made by Robert Wiener in 1920. And of course the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, the terrifyingly beautiful vampire film Nosferatu by F.W. Murnau. In reality though, the overwhelming majority of films produced in Germany, Canada, and the United States were entertainment flicks that satisfied the taste of a broader audience. Period films, romantic comedies, or melodramas were actually more popular genres than expressionism. During the same time period, Canadian cinema was dominated by American productions. Of the few Canadian films that were produced, the most expensive one, the sentimental World War I drama Carry On Sergeant, dramatically failed at the box office after its release in 1928, and it took the Canadian film industry until after the Second World War to recover. In contrast, during the 14 years of the Weimar period, the first democracy in Germany, from late 1918 to early 1933, the German film industry churned out an average of 250 films per year, with Babelsberg Studio becoming the largest studio in Europe. It was often considered the German equivalent to Hollywood. Since silent films did not present a challenge when it came to language, even foreign actors could be hired. American actor Louise Brooks, as well as Greta Garbo from Sweden, played leading roles in German director G.W. Pabst’s films. The advent of sound in film in the late 1920s changed the industry once again. Some producers and studios were reluctant at first, but the 1930 drama The Blue Angel, or Der blaue Engel, Germany's first “talkie” by Josef von Sternberg, made Marlene Dietrich an international superstar. [Movie clip plays] Other early films with sound were Berlin Alexanderplatz, an adaptation of Alfred Dublin's novel, and the Threepenny Opera, adapted from Bertolt Brecht, as well as the previously mentioned thriller M by Fritz Lang, with the powerful actor Peter Lorre. [Movie clip plays] By 1932, Germany had 3,800 cinemas eligible to play Tonfilme, or sound films. One of the most successful productions was the musical film Die drei von der Tankstelle - The Three from the Gas Station - with its tunes that are still well-known today. [Movie clip plays] Very soon after sound hit the movie theaters, the time of artistic and personal freedom in Germany came to a brutal end. By the late 1920s, several German-Jewish filmmakers had already been invited to work in Hollywood, among them Ernst Lubitsch and Michael Curtiz. But when Hitler and his anti-Semitic and anti-democratic movement seized power in 1933, they immediately banned Jews from working in film, hospitals, at universities, in public administrations, and in many other places. They even banned lighthearted comedic musical films like The Three from the Gas Station, because too many of the cast and production crew were Jewish. In the years right after 1933, more than 1,500 film professionals, directors, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers, and others left Germany. Most of them went to the United States. This enormous artistic and intellectual brain drain was not limited to the film industry. Writers, artists, university professors, musicians, industrialists, doctors, journalists, politicians, and regular everyday people fled from the rapidly escalating regime of terror. Many of them were Jewish, like Hedy Lamarr and Billy Wilder. Others were communists, like writer Bertolt Brecht, or had a deep hatred of Nazis, like Marlene Dietrich. However, not everybody was lucky enough to get out of Germany and, later, Europe. Kurt Gerron, a highly successful actor and director who acted, among many other movies, in The Blue Angel and Die Drei von der Tankstelle, was forced to direct the Nazi propaganda film Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet, which means Theresienstadt. A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area. A fake documentary aimed at deceiving the Red Cross about the inhumane conditions in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Shortly after completion of filming, Kurt Gerron, his wife, and the entire film team were deported to Auschwitz and murdered in the gas chamber upon arrival in October 1944. Film artists who stayed in Germany either made arrangements with the Nazi regime, kept a low profile, or full-heartedly embraced the new movement. Still, there were exceptions. Some risked everything by helping Jewish or other persecuted Germans to hide and/or escape from their Heimat, or homeland. [Deutsche Wochenschau intro plays] When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Alma, Anneliese, Barbara and Lisa were six, nine, seven and 10 years old, respectively. As they came of age in the so-called Third Reich, they must have heard this opening sequence of the Deutsche Wochenschau, which translates to “German Weekly Revie
