The UFA was a movie company within Germany which was founded in December 1917. It was mainly used for propaganda for WW1 and to promote German Culture. During the 1930’s and 40’s it was used for Nazi propaganda due to it being purchased by Alfred Hugenberg in 1927, these films proved very popular within Germany at this time however internationally they were received very poorly due to the policies being shown within the films.

The government purchased the company from Alfred in 1937 and went bankrupt in 1945, was started up again in 1956 and declared bankruptcy again and so was absorbed into other companies and that is how the UFA still exists

Expressionism was an art movement and international tendency at the beginning of the 20th century, which spanned the visual arts, literature, music, theatre and architecture. The aim of Expressionist artists was to express emotional experience, rather than physical reality.

Explain how the political, social and economic context of the Weimar Republic affected the production and content of classic German Expressionist Cinema.

As a consequence, German expressionism gave birth to two new cinematic genres: the Gothic horror movie and film noir (crime thrillers which explore the darker aspects of human behaviour).

Probably the best-known German expressionist film, Metropolis is part-science fiction and part-social allegory. It depicts a future society where citizens have been split into two distinct classes: the elite, who enjoy lives of leisure in the sun, and the workers, who toil monotonously beneath the ground.

Metropolis was an incredibly ambitious project for its time. It cost around five million marks, took several months to film and employed up to 300 extras. It proved unpopular with movie-goers but was critically applauded and is considered a forerunner to modern science-fiction movies.

My favourite scene from Citizen Kane is when Kane and his first wife are confronted with Kane’s mistress in her house after Kane’s speech about integrity in his office as he’s running for governor. This is because of the lighting and blocking throughout.

This is my favourite scene as the blocking in the scene shows perfectly how Kane has lost all power in the situation and how he is only a small part of this problem. Another example of this is the lighting within the scene, this is because it contrasts between Kane and the other characters. It cloaks him in darkness as it represents the sins and darkness of his actions whereas his first wife and Getty both are lit up to represent how they’re not involved in Kane’s dark actions and how they’re the good people in the moment.  

This scene is another example of excellent blocking as it has little Kane in the background of the scene which makes him seem powerless and small within the situation which we know to be true as he is being put up for adoption in this scene and the bank takes him to look after him.  

The production of Citizen Kane was all up to Orson Welles as the studio allowed him to have full creative control over his production and allowed him to hire whoever he wanted. Welle’s took this to his advantage and decided to hire many of the people he used to work with in theatre as well as hiring some of the best technicians in Hollywood at the time. This was all agreed with the studio RKO as long as Welle’s did not exceed a $500,000 budget, this was a part of RKO’s strategy to attract new talent to the company as well as to increase artistic freedom within the film industry. 

https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/273e6bf4-798a-490d-81d0-08c0a3b00a28

1918-1928: The Hollywood Machine

Buster Keaton. Keaton used many editing tricks and was highly inventive. the General is one of his most famous movies, all jokes are repeated throughout the film however amplified in the second half of the movie.

Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin’s first movie was inspired by his own childhood. City Lights (another one of his films) shows how he came up with his ideas due to the improvisation of the piece of wood in the sewer grate.

Harold Lloyd. Lloyd climbed a building for his movie while having vertigo and also missing two fingers.

Citizen Kane was ground breaking for the lighting technique and went on to inspire David Fincher’s “Mank”

Keaton inspired Ellie Suleman. Chaplin has inspired Nicolas Roeg as well as Billy Wilder. Lloyd inspired people such as Keaton and even Jackie Chan