Posters and propaganda

>> A new exhibit showcases German movie promotion from the pre-Weimar era to the Third Reich

by MARK SLUTSKY

The undeniable giant in the German film world in its golden age from the '20s through the '40s was UFA, a company formed during World War I for the purpose of producing war propaganda. UFA was unique not only for its great size but its incredible promotional machine. Huge budgets were allotted for the marketing of films, and the studio's tactics ranged from extensive postering to the complete remodelling of cinemas (into a hotel, for instance, or a rocket launch pad).

UFA Film Posters (1918-1943), a travelling Austrian exhibit showing at the Cinemathèque québécoise this month, gives a glimpse of the studio's marketing genius. Displayed at the Cinemathèque are dozens of posters culled from the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek's extensive archives. They represent a wide range of artistic styles reflective of the times: lush, late-Secession-era Viennese painting, German Expressionism, Soviet-style Constructivism and photomontage. UFA's stable of directors included such greats as Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, G.W. Pabst, and Billy Wilder, most of whom would flee to Hollywood for fear of political persecution (Lang famously took the first train out of Germany the day after Goebbels offered him a job making propaganda films for the Third Reich).

One of the exhibit's strengths is that it features different posters advertising the same film, usually intended for separate markets (generally German or Austrian). In some cases the studio would hold a public competition to determine who would design a film's poster. The two winners for Murnau's Faust are markedly different, one a brightly coloured variation on a Medieval woodcut, the other a straightforward painting of Faust and Mephistopheles. One wall features several beautiful, radically different posters for Lang's Metropolis, and the two ads featured for his Dr. Mabuse der Spieler are both moody and haunting but completely dissimilar.

With Hitler's ascendancy, UFA once more became a propaganda machine. The titles of the films and their posters become gradually creepier: Wege zu Kraft und Schoenheit (Ways to Strength and Beauty), Verräter (Traitors), Urlaub auf Ehrenwart (On Leave but Still on Duty). What's interesting is that in some cases, UFA's marketing department continued to use radical artistic techniques, something the Nazis referred to as entartete kunst, or "degenerate art." The poster for Verräter, for instance, employs photomontage, a technique that German collage pioneer John Heartfield was using quite publicly at the same time to denounce Hitler. Later posters, though, like the ones advertising UFA's wartime escape fare, are gaudy and trite. UFA Film Posters is highly recommended for anyone interested in that fascinating and troubled period.

UFA Film Posters shows till June 5 at the Cinémathèque québécoise (335 de Maisonneuve E.)