HAPPY 100th BIRTHDAY, BABELSBERG STUDIOS!
100 years ago, Babelsberg Studios, located in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany, was created. It is the oldest large-scale film studio in the world, beating Universal Studios (April 30th, 1912) and Paramount Pictures (May 8th, 1912). Babelsberg has 16 soundstages on 39 acres and 82 full-time staffers. It was at Babelsberg (formally known as Ufa Studios) that films such as Metropolis and Nosferatu were filmed, and the science fiction genre as we now know it born. Modern films such as The Pianist, The Reader, and Inglourious Basterds have also been filmed at Babelsberg’s lot. And right now, Tom Tykwer of Run Lola Run and The Matrix siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski are currently working on their sci-fic epic Cloud Atlas, starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry and the so far is the biggest indie film of 2012.The studio has a long, strenuous, and interesting history. Here’s the rundown:
- The Last Laugh (1924) was a drama about an aging doorman fired from his job. It’s not Babelsberg’s best film, but it’s place in cinematic history comes from cameraman Karl Fruend, who invented the dolly for the movie by putting a camera on a baby carriage and pulling it along a rail track. The “unchained” camera was an inspiration for a young English director’s assistant working on the lot. That assistant was Alfred Hitchcock.
- The Blue Angel (1930) was the film that introduced the world to Marlene Dietrich. This film was also a pioneer in the world of global co-productions. Ufa and Paramount produced this adaptation of Heinrich Mann’s novel in German and English.
- The Babelsberg studios have been part of two dictatorships — the Nazis and the Communist. In 1933, Two months after the Nazis took power, Joseph Goebbels, the country’s minister of propaganda, issued a resolution attacking Jewish dictators and demanding a more Germanic cinema culture. What followed were 12 years of Nazi propaganda, reaching its most repugnant trough with Veit Harlan’s 1940 release Jew Suss, the most vile anti-Semetic film in history. Of course, it was a huge box office success at the time and shown to German troops on the Eastern Front
- In 1945, the Soviets seized Berlin and Germany fell, making Joseph Stalin Bablesberg’s new boss. This caused 40 years of Communist propaganda, with the occasional cinema gem such as Frank Beyer’s Oscar nominated Holocaust drama Jacob the Liar.
- In 1990, the Berlin Wall was gone and Germany was reunited. Capitalism came to Babelsberg in the form of French conglomerate Generale des Eaux (later Vivendi Universal), who appointed Volker Scholondoroff to restore Babelsberg to its former glory. Although the studio has faced financial problems, they’ve managed to pull through from the 1999s to today, thanks to a bright outlook to the future of cinema in Germany.
