The Ufa Story: A History of Germany's Greatest Film Company, 1918-1945

New York: Hill & Wang, 1996. Hardcover. VG/VG (Ex-library with stamps and labels on spine, inside front and rear covers, ffep and block.). White paper covered boards; black cloth spine with bronze lettering; bw illustrated dj, mylar cover; viii, 451 pp; bw illustrations, 56 unnumbered pages of plates. "Universum-Film AG - best known by its signature logo, Ufa - was once the largest, most exciting movie company in Europe. Founded by the German High Command as a propaganda outfit during World War I, and always central to Germany's nationalistic big-business interests, Ufa was also home to the most innovative talents of the Weimar Republic: Ernst Lubitsch, Marlene Dietrich, Fritz Lang, and Emil Jannings were Ufa stars; Metropolis, The Blue Angel, and Dr. Mabuse were only a few of its finest works. Now, in this striking new book, the cultural critic and historian Klaus Kreimeier tells The Ufa Story in all its multifaceted drama for the first time. From its dazzling theaters to its state-of-the-art studios and processing labs, from its comprehensive multimedia publicity campaigns to its avant-garde art films, Ufa challenged Hollywood for cultural dominance and market share in Jazz Age Europe. But that is only part of the story. The simultaneous advent of sound films and National Socialism only increased Ufa's power, and it was more than ready for both. The story of Ufa under Hitler is a horrifying tragedy, for although the company continued to make technically superb films - even when bombs were raining down on its studios and cinemas - it was corrupted, transformed, and eventually destroyed by the very brilliance and state-supported power that had once made it irresistible. The Ufa Story daringly revises our sense of what Germany and movies were all about in Weimar and under Hitler; it also makes clear why the mythic glow of Ufa's best films is indestructible."-dj. Contents: Ludendorff's Golem and how it came into the world -- The roofless house: The movies and everyday life during the war -- The end of the world and new beginnings: The first year of Ufa -- Lay down your arms! Cinema and revolution -- Ufa goes abroad -- Early monumentalism: On the way to becoming a major film power -- The allure of distant lands: Inflation and expansion -- The democratic department store: Ufa films in 1920-22 -- The builder's guild in Ufa's studios -- The aesthetics of the grandiose in Ufa's theaters -- The balance after liquidation: The cathedral in crisis -- Mind and power: Ufa and the intelluctuals -- Was there an Ufa style? The limits of illusion -- The general in civvies: Ufa under Hugenberg -- German musicality and the arrival of sound film -- Revue and decline: The last years of the Republic -- Rituals of death: The year 1933 -- Converting Ufa into a state-controlled company -- The censorship machine: Ufa and the Reich film guild -- Bacchic chaos: Consumerism, eroticism, and cinema in the Nazi state -- Architecture, film, and death -- Ufa under state ownership -- Sport on the warship: Newsreels, cultural films, and education for war -- The poisoned kitchen: Propaganda and "unpolitical entertainment" before the war -- Soldiers of art? The stars of Ufa -- Ufa goes to war -- Survival is all that matters -- German film policy in the occupied countries -- Blood red in dreadful beauty: Goebbels and melodrama -- The end of Universum-Film AG.