Showing posts with label ufa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ufa. Show all posts
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
My retro career just melted....
On top of reading The UFA Story
, I've been on a "behind-the-scenes" of Hollywood kick lately.
About John Gregory Dunne's The Studio
I have very little to say, other than that it is a fascinating view of how some great (and not-so-great) films were created over at 20th Century Fox, even as studio executives show an inability to relate to the realities of '60s America.
However, I also read Edward Jay Epstein's The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies
. I can't really recommend it as highly as Dunne's book, because most of Epstein's book is just reprints from his Slate and New Yorker columns, with even the new material feeling short and fluffy in the way that most magazines and internet publications expect from regular columns.
The snapshots that Epstein gives of the movie industry can be fascinating. He hints at what would have been a more interesting book in the epilogue, where he breaks down the ways that the loss of foreign financing and the bank/hedge fund collapse have severely impoverished the film world (artistically as well as financially). Epstein lays out the case that the recession strikes the independent production companies the hardest, since the difficulty in securing initial funding sinks almost anything without a big star already attached.
Furthermore, even the major studios, which are slightly better off as far as actually getting their films made, but still in an unenviable position re: making a profit, are relying more and more on overseas sales, which means a swing further towards the comic book/licensed property/shoot-out/car-chase side of the entertainment spectrum. So if you were hoping that the recession would mean smaller, smarter pictures and less empty blockbuster, Epstein's not on your side.
Which, jumping back to The UFA Story, sounds vaguely reminiscent of the German film industry's problems between 1924 and 1928 (which, I remind you, was during a period of economic improvement BEFORE the Great Depression hit). To quote Kreimeier:
That sounds rather familiar to me. Is this where the American film industry is heading for the near future?
, I've been on a "behind-the-scenes" of Hollywood kick lately.About John Gregory Dunne's The Studio
I have very little to say, other than that it is a fascinating view of how some great (and not-so-great) films were created over at 20th Century Fox, even as studio executives show an inability to relate to the realities of '60s America.However, I also read Edward Jay Epstein's The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies
. I can't really recommend it as highly as Dunne's book, because most of Epstein's book is just reprints from his Slate and New Yorker columns, with even the new material feeling short and fluffy in the way that most magazines and internet publications expect from regular columns.The snapshots that Epstein gives of the movie industry can be fascinating. He hints at what would have been a more interesting book in the epilogue, where he breaks down the ways that the loss of foreign financing and the bank/hedge fund collapse have severely impoverished the film world (artistically as well as financially). Epstein lays out the case that the recession strikes the independent production companies the hardest, since the difficulty in securing initial funding sinks almost anything without a big star already attached.
Furthermore, even the major studios, which are slightly better off as far as actually getting their films made, but still in an unenviable position re: making a profit, are relying more and more on overseas sales, which means a swing further towards the comic book/licensed property/shoot-out/car-chase side of the entertainment spectrum. So if you were hoping that the recession would mean smaller, smarter pictures and less empty blockbuster, Epstein's not on your side.
Which, jumping back to The UFA Story, sounds vaguely reminiscent of the German film industry's problems between 1924 and 1928 (which, I remind you, was during a period of economic improvement BEFORE the Great Depression hit). To quote Kreimeier:
This risky product with unpredictable sales potential, which even on the domestic market made life hard for producers wanting quick returns, was now pulled into the malestrom of crisis-prone international finance. (123)Moving on from there, Kreimeier notes that the studios that managed to weather this storm the best were those with vertical integration (control of distribution and exhibition) and investments in property (studio space, equipment, movie theatres). These giant conglomerates also usually had ties to a friendly and corporatized press that printed stories and reviews that were basically glorified press releases.
That sounds rather familiar to me. Is this where the American film industry is heading for the near future?
Saturday, January 15, 2011
UFA versus Hollywood: or, what Archie Hickox was talking about...
I'm reading Klaus Kreimeier's The UFA Story: A History of Germany's Greatest Film Company 1918-1945, because I've been very interested in Nazi Germany art and culture for a while and the way the state interacted with artists beyond mere censorship. Watching Inglourious Basterds again, which briefly touched on the way UFA tried to be both a branch of the entertainment industry and of the propaganda industry, definitely piqued that interest, but there have been other factors as well.
Spotts' Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics
already touched on the visual arts in Nazi Germany and Richard Evans' The Third Reich at War
touched on the performing arts, though Evans is most interested in statistics of consumption, production and attendance. It wasn't until I recently watched the fascinating Goebbels Experiment
on Netflix Instant Viewing and heard some of Goebbels' attempts at film criticism that I got an idea of how seriously the party (or Goebbels, at least) took the integration of art and propaganda in the film industry.
[A side note: only after watching The Goebbels Experiment did I get an idea of how unrepresentative of UFA's work Nation's Pride is. For the sake of the film, I understand why it ends up being a weird Samuel Fuller-esque shoot-out, but, at least judging from the clips of Uncle Krueger and Kolberg the documentary displays, UFA's directors seemed capable of some expressionism, but never such frenetic usage of editing and montage.]
I'm probably going to be blogging about it as I read, but right off the bat, what is most striking is how the early German film industry came down to a fight between big industrial interests and the military. Heaven knows Hollywood ended up being a giant collectivist trust, but it was never so heavily tied to the government and the corporatist state as the early German film industry was. On top of that, both sides of that fight are conservative or right-wing, but in different ways.
More to come...
Spotts' Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics
already touched on the visual arts in Nazi Germany and Richard Evans' The Third Reich at War touched on the performing arts, though Evans is most interested in statistics of consumption, production and attendance. It wasn't until I recently watched the fascinating Goebbels Experiment on Netflix Instant Viewing and heard some of Goebbels' attempts at film criticism that I got an idea of how seriously the party (or Goebbels, at least) took the integration of art and propaganda in the film industry.[A side note: only after watching The Goebbels Experiment did I get an idea of how unrepresentative of UFA's work Nation's Pride is. For the sake of the film, I understand why it ends up being a weird Samuel Fuller-esque shoot-out, but, at least judging from the clips of Uncle Krueger and Kolberg the documentary displays, UFA's directors seemed capable of some expressionism, but never such frenetic usage of editing and montage.]
I'm probably going to be blogging about it as I read, but right off the bat, what is most striking is how the early German film industry came down to a fight between big industrial interests and the military. Heaven knows Hollywood ended up being a giant collectivist trust, but it was never so heavily tied to the government and the corporatist state as the early German film industry was. On top of that, both sides of that fight are conservative or right-wing, but in different ways.
More to come...
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