The German Genius

examination of a new class that he thought had come into existence since World War I, more akin to what we would now call, in English, “white-collar workers.” 38 Kracauer identified a rootlessness, a physical isolation, and an emotional insecurity that produced in this new group a longing for—and a love of—spectacle; as modern life became more streamlined and monotonized, so this new class developed in its leisure time what he called a “culture of distraction.” Elizabeth Harvey likewise argues that mass media came of age in Germany in the Weimar years and that the change produced its effect more among the working class than the middle class and more among women than men. 39 Kracauer’s book was the original model for a long line of popular sociological analyses that would dominate the Western world in the second half of the twentieth century, but he also sought to explain why there was such a demand for film in Weimar. More than sound, it was the distraction film offered, the mix of high and low culture that was, he said, the natural home of film. Going to the cinema, much more than the theater or the opera, offered an opportunity to experience what Hofmannsthal had called “ceremonies of the whole” of a kind and on a scale never before experienced, subverting and sabotaging the caste system that Bismarck’s reforms had left intact.
    Among the golden generation, who should take precedence? Probably Lubitsch. The son of a Jewish tailor, Ernst Lubitsch (1892–1947) was born in Berlin and, at the age of nineteen, joined Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater. He made his film debut a year later as an actor, but his main love was directing and, at the end of World War I, he had three hits, one after the other. The first was Die Augen der Mummie Ma ( The Eyes of the Mummy ; 1918), with Pola Negri in the starring role, followed by Carmen ( Gypsy Blood ), with the same star. Later that same year Lubitsch released Die Austernprinzessin ( The Oyster Princess ), a comedy of manners satirizing American foibles. In this film he first showed traces of what would become known as “the Lubitsch touch,” gentle humor driven home by witty visual flourishes, contrasting with brief scenes—often a single shot—that summed up the characters’ motivations and thereby explained the plot.
    On the strength of these successes, Lubitsch went to Hollywood early, in 1922, and became known for two entirely different types of film—comedies, often absurd comedies, and grand historical dramas. He made a number of classic films toward the end of the silent era ( Lady Windermere’s Fan and The Student Prince ), but when sound came along he responded with some of the earliest musicals— The Love Parade , Monte Carlo , The Smiling Lieutenant . In 1935 he was appointed production manager of MGM, becoming the only director to run a large studio. But the hits kept coming and in 1939 he directed Greta Garbo in Ninotchka , cowritten with Billy Wilder, and notable for the fact that, as the publicity for the film announced, “Garbo laughs!” Lubitsch had left Germany permanently when the Nazis achieved power, and he became an American citizen in 1936.
    Fritz Lang (1890–1976) was born in Vienna, studied painting in Paris, and saw action in Russia and Romania in World War I, where he was wounded three times. He was in some ways the quintessential Expressionist director, who began by working for Erich Pommer’s company and whose films in the pre-sound era were crammed with spies, dragons, historical heroes, master criminals, and tyrants. He loved big-budget epics and the special effects that Max Reinhardt had made so popular. Lang was probably the most famous film director in Weimar Germany, his work being likened to a cross between Franz Kafka and Raymond Chandler. In the silent era his biggest hits included Metropolis , the world’s most expensive film when it was released, and M , a study of a child murderer (based on an actual case in Düsseldorf and starring Peter Lorre), who is tracked down and brought to justice by his fellow criminals. Many consider this Lang’s masterpiece. 40 The famous story about Goebbels summoning Lang to his office, to tell him that his most recent film, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse ( The Testament of Dr. Mabuse ), was being banned as an incitement to public disorder, and at the same time offering him the position as head of UFA, the German film studio, has been dismissed as apocryphal. What is true