The Weimar Republic, officially named German Reich, appeared in 1919, which was a year after WW1 ended. WW1 left Germany in substantial debt and thus its currency losing value, this meant that filmmakers couldn’t make films to the extent of other parts of the world due to shortages of film stock et cetera, although this unique and depressing era of Germany spawned German Expressionism in film. German Expressionism came around in the 1920’s when the Weimar Republic started to slowly recover from the debts left from the war, German Expressionism was seen to illustrate the toll of the war on the people of Germany, one way this was seen was the unique and skewed Mise-En-Scene, an example of this is shown in Figure 1 and 2
German expressionism involves using angles, chiaroscuro lighting, camera tilts, large-scale set design, and detailed costumes. Dark City includes all of the elements in the german expressionist film. A comparable film would be “Metropolis – 1927”.
UFA acquired one of the largest film production studios in 1923 after merging with the studio Decla Bioscop, an independent film studio who produced the films Der mude Tod, Phantom and more. Whilst still being on the edge of financial ruin UFA produced German Hollywood films with Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
UFA was purchased in 1927 by Alfred Hugenberg – a powerful German businessman who wanted to use the company to promote German nationalism
