MoMA to Showcase Largest Weimer Cinema Series in US
MoMA continues the very clever curating course they’re taking as of late with the announcement of the upcoming film exhibition, Weimer Cinema, 1919-1933: Daydreams and Nightmares which begins November 17, 2010–March 7, 2011.
According to MoMA, the four-month series includes 75 feature-length films and 6 shorts―a mix of classic films and many motion pictures unseen since the 1930s―and opens with the newly discovered film “Ins Blaue Hinein (Into the Blue)” (1929) by Eugene Schüfftan, the special effects artist and master cinematographer originally renowned for his work on Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis (1927).
Further, the series will be complemented by an exhibition of posters and photographs of Weimar filmmaking in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1 Lobby Galleries and an illustrated publication, which includes an extensive filmography supplemented by German criticism and essays by leading scholars of the period.
Classic films by Fritz Lang, F. W. Murnau, and G. W. Pabst will be shown; but there will also be a large swath of very obscure pictures that were restored after German reunification, including two films by Alexis Granovsky, the former director of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, Die Koffer des Herrn O. F. Ein Märchen für Erwachsene (The Trunks of Mr. O. F.) (1931) and Das Lied vom Leben (The Song of Life) (193), which was censored in Germany for its sexual suggestiveness.
Other highlights include Die Frau, nach der Man sich sehnt (Three Loves) (1929), the newly-restored film starring Marlene Dietrich, made prior to Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) in 1930, which was long considered to be the first film in which Dietrich starred; and Lohnbuchhalter Kremke (Bookkeeper Kremke) (1930), made by Marie Harder, one of the few female directors of the time. Harder, the director of the German Social Democratic Film Office, made only two known films before her accidental death in exile in Mexico in 1936.
German cinema‘s strong influences on American films can be seen in Ernst Lubitsch‘s Madame du Barry (Passion), 1919, which was the first film imported into the US after World War 1; and the 1933 musical Viktor und Viktoria—remade in 1982 starring Julie Andrews—one of the last of the Weimar films, made almost a year into the Third Reich.
No doubt this series is bound to be an event.
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