German Hollywood Presence and Parnassus: Central European Exiles and American Filmmaking

German Hollywood Presence and Parnassus: Central European Exiles and American Filmmaking Hans-Bernhard Moeller University of Texas at Austin The limited Douglas Sirk renaissance ofthe 1970s among American film students and German cinéastes, promoted by New Wave filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1971 reassessment of the older director (95-106), confirms that the exile position of many Germanspeaking film directors, artists, scenarists, and freelancers active in Southern California after 1933 is widely unappreciated. Neither in Fassbinder's praise nor in German studies, such as Ulrich GregorEnno Patalas' standard Geschichte des Films 1895-1960, is Sirk identified as director Detlef Hans Sierk (also Detlev Sierck) of Central European cinema fame in the 1930s. Similar name changes —director Kurt Bernhardt to Curtis Bernhardt, Hermann Kosterlitz to Henry Koster, composer Franz Wachsmann to Franz Waxman —suggest immediate assimilation of Hitler refugees in their American film haven. And this assimilation more than the German tone and film genre marked their contributions to American filmmaking. The German-speaking exiles' presence was, however, felt in their motifs, formal characteristics, and casting, as well as in directing and acting. During cold wars and open conflicts, there are obvious limits to practically realizing the ideal of an exclusively exile film project, i.e., a film created by German émigré alone. Such independent cinema activity in countries antagonistic to Germany had little chance of succeeding. Who would distinguish exile-German from German Reichs - national, or friendly from enemy alien? Successful independent film work by exiles did not even emerge from pre-war locales of German film exile on the continent, from Paris, London, Zurich, and Amsterdam, where German refugees congregated before 1939. The exception appears to be Gustav von Wangenheim's anti-Nazi film Kämpfer, or Fighters. Its year of production in the U.S.S.R., 1936, preceded World War II. This film profiles Bulgarian Communist George Dimitroff, who nearly reduced Goering to a ranting maniac in 1933 before the Supreme Court of Leipzig when the Nazi leader attempted to implicate the Bulgarian in the Reichstag fire. In Hollywood, the transatlantic center for German film exiles and the Parnassus of German exile literature from 1940 on, a similar production failed to reach the American public. The late and famous German exile playwright Carl Zuckmayer noted that a Hauptmann von Köpenick, or Captain ofKoepenick, remake originated as a totally German exile project. Under the same title, German director Richard 123 124Rocky Mountain Review Oswald in 1931 adapted Zuckmayer's stage play. According to Zuckmayer in a letter to this writer, from then on "the rights . . . resided with Richard Oswald who was to film the play in Hollywood utilizing German exile personnel exclusively. Notwithstanding [the renowned actor] Bassermann . . . the director failed to find a distributor." Thus, success was not possible in the U.S. for purely German exile projects. In Zuckmayer's recollection, Oswald later sold this remake to an American TV network; so he failed to help those other exiles involved in the project in their time of need. Of course the climate of the 1940s must be taken into account. In reaction to guidelines on evacuating aliens and the reality of confinement of Japanese-Americans, The FriendlyAdviser, a monthly publication for German-speaking exiles, in March 1942 raised fear: "In a war situation everyone . . . has to expect displacement .... The United States, our homeland, is in real danger and our state of California first and foremost. . . .Nonetheless — we don't now know whether or not we, Hitler's victims, will have to leave the country" (Wicclair 163-64). Under these circumstances, who could conceive of funding and an audience for German film productions ? German producers Seymour Nebenzal, Eric Pommer, and Sam Spiegel's (S.P. Eagle) choices were severely restricted. Sociological and economic considerations were more crucial to the exiles' filmmaking than their artistic endeavors. Exile productions like Kämpfer, which received Russian state support , were closely approximated by projects like Douglas Sirk's Hitler's Madman and Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die, 1943. Lang's noted anti-Nazi film, for example, brought director Fritz Lang, dramatist Bertolt Brecht, and composer Hanns Eisler together and was managed by former European independent producer Arnold Pressburger. It...