During the Third Reich, several actors and filmmakers moved to Hollywood to escape having to make propaganda films for the Third Reich. Fritz Lang, the director of Metropolis and M, two extremely influential early films, came to the US and made a few westerns; Marlene Dietrich, an early sex symbol, renounced her German citizenship and starred in many Hollywood films. Before the War, Hollywood was competing with Germany to make the best films in the world – before sound it didn’t matter what language movies were in, and the first actor to win the Best Actor Oscar was German. Fast forward to the present day, and we see that Hollywood still has an appetite for German talent.
Little known fact, some of our favorite movie stars tried to defect to the Nazis.
In 1981, Wolfgang Peterson wrote and directed Das Boot, a film about forty Nazi soldiers on a submarine. Unusual for a Nazi film, we are not supposed to hate these soldiers. Instead, we feel that we are trapped in the submarine with them, and we can empathise with them in their claustrophobic nightmare. Das Boot was highly regarded upon its released; many people called it a masterpiece, and the director was considered a visionary. Personally, I think it is one of the most beautiful films ever made. Hollywood had no hand in making this film, but they knew a success when they saw one, and soon thereafter Wolfgang Peterson was brought to the US to make subsequent movies. He has been successful here, but has never achieved anything again to the level of Das Boot; you might know him as the director of Troy or Air Force One.
Peterson is not the only example of Hollywood enjoying German talent; several actors and directors have also come to America to enjoy bigger budgets and audiences. Like the case of Peterson, however, they sometimes fail to live up to their earlier successes in the new land. In 2007, first time director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for The Lives of Others, and soon thereafter he was hired by Hollywood to direct The Tourist, which was panned by most critics. Actress Franka Potente achieved great success as Lola in Run Lola Run, and was hired to play the love interest in The Bourne Identity and its sequel, but has since then dropped off the map. Maybe they would have had better success staying in Germany. Other Germans have had better success in Hollywood, such as Roland Emmerich, who never made anything of note in Germany but his American films Independence Day, 2012, and The Day After Tomorrow have been very successful, and I must pay respects to Werner Herzog, who would be successful no matter where he made films.
And then, as with the case of any argument, there is the counterpoint. There are instances where American directors become more popular abroad, so they travel there to shoot what are essentially foreign films. Woody Allen, who made a career for over twenty-five years shooting in New York, has now essentially become a foreign filmmaker. European financiers have adopted him – since 2005, he has made seven films, six of which were filmed in Europe and financed with European money. This is the opposite of these German directors – his films are unpopular with the Hollywood crowd, so he gets to make more artistic films for audiences more likely to enjoy them. A win – win situation, really. It is not a perfect counterpoint, because he has yet to make a film in Germany, but maybe next year he will, and Hollywood will love it so much that they decide to steal him, and his cycle can begin all over again.
A true up and coming director.
I must credit my German professor, Joshua Kavaloski, with inspiring this entry. He used to point out which actors or directors were now working in America when we would watch German films in his classes. I am writing these film essays with no access to films outside the ones I brought with me for my time in Africa, and when I write these entries I have no access to the internet, having to do all my research online afterwards and fix up any mistakes I might have made. Still, as long as I keep coming up with new ideas and can remember the films I watched a couple months ago, I will try to keep posting here.
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