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Nero-Film AG was a German film production company founded in 1925 and based in Berlin during the Weimar era.
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Nero-Film AG was a German film production company founded in 1925 and based in Berlin during the Weimar era.
The company's name was derived from the names of its two founders: the letters "NE" stood for the name of the entrepreneur Heinrich Nebenzahl, and the letters "RO" for the initials of director Richard Oswald. It was founded as Nero-Film GmbH, a limited liability company, and was converted into an Aktiengesellschaft , Nero-Film AG, in 1927.
Under the influence of Nebenzahl's son Seymour Nebenzal, Nero-Film was one of the most artistically ambitious production companies in Germany, and with directors like G.W. Pabst and Fritz Lang it produced a number of major films of the Weimar era, such as Pandora's Box , Westfront 1918 , The Threepenny Opera , M , Kameradschaft , L'Atlantide and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse . In the film industry, the bourgeois-democratic Nero-Film and the proletarian Prometheus Film were the last bulwark against the rise of artistic Nazism. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Seymour Nebenzal was forced to emigrate, and Nero-Film AG was put out of business. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse became the first film censored by the Nazi government; Nebenzal and Director Fritz Lang appeared before Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who ordered Mabuse destroyed and banned it from the Reich.
Nebenzal, using his American passport, fled that evening to Switzerland and then to France, where he re-established his company as Production Nero Film and, among other French productions, collaborated with the Director Anatole Litvak to produce Mayerling, a huge success for the star, Charles Boyer. Fleeing again to Los Angeles, as the Nazis invaded France, Nebenzal again re-established the company under the name of Nero Films Inc. Nebenzal's son, Harold, still manages the films in the Nero collection, including supervising a new print of his father's remake for Columbia Pictures in 1951 of M , directed by Joseph Losey that was featured at Cannes Film Festival in 2016.
As Production Nero Film
As Nero Films Inc.
Seymour Nebenzal's son Harold Nebenzal continued the three-generation tradition of Nero-Film through the production of such motion picture masterpieces as Cabaret and Gabriela.
Friedrich Christian Anton Lang, better known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian-American film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States. One of the best-known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute. He has been cited as one of the most influential filmmakers of all time.
M is a 1931 German mystery suspense thriller film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert, a serial killer who targets children. An early example of a procedural drama, the film centers on the manhunt for Lorre's character, conducted by both the police and the criminal underworld.
Georg Wilhelm Pabst was an Austrian film director and screenwriter. He started as an actor and theater director, before becoming one of the most influential German-language filmmakers during the Weimar Republic.
UFA GmbH, shortened to UFA, is a film and television production company that unites all production activities of the media conglomerate Bertelsmann in Germany. The original UFA was established as Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft on December 18, 1917, as a direct response to foreign competition in film and propaganda. UFA was founded by a consortium headed by Emil Georg von Stauß, a former Deutsche Bank board member. In March 1927, Alfred Hugenberg, an influential German media entrepreneur and later Minister of the Economy and Minister of Agriculture and Nutrition in Adolf Hitler's cabinet, purchased UFA and transferred ownership of it to the Nazi Party in 1933.
M is a 1951 American film noir directed by Joseph Losey. It is a remake of Fritz Lang's 1931 German film of the same title about a child murderer. This version shifts the location of action from Berlin to Los Angeles and changes the killer's name from Hans Beckert to Martin W. Harrow. Both versions of M were produced by Seymour Nebenzal, whose son, Harold, was associate producer of the 1951 version.
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, also called The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse, is a 1933 German crime-thriller film directed by Fritz Lang. The movie is a sequel to Lang's silent film Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) and features many cast and crew members from Lang's previous films. Dr. Mabuse is in an insane asylum where he is found frantically writing his crime plans. When Mabuse's criminal plans begin to be implemented, Inspector Lohmann tries to find the solution with clues from gangster Thomas Kent, the institutionalized Hofmeister and Professor Baum who becomes obsessed with Dr. Mabuse.
Kurt Paul Schmitt was a German jurist versed in economic matters. A supporter of the Nazis since 1930, he joined the Nazi party in 1933, becoming also an honorary SS. He presided over Allianz insurance company, and was the Reich Economy Minister from 1933 to 1934. His antisemitic views let him believe that the role Jews played in politics, law and the arts was excessive, and had to be drastically curtailed if not totally eliminated.
Otto Karl Robert Wernicke was a German actor. He is best known for his role as police inspector Karl Lohmann in the two Fritz Lang films M and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.
People on Sunday is a 1930 German silent drama film directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer from a screenplay by Robert and Curt Siodmak. Curt was the younger brother of Robert Siodmak. The film follows a group of residents of Berlin on a summer's day during the interwar period. Hailed as a work of genius, it is a pivotal film in the development of German cinema and Hollywood. The film features the talents of Eugen Schüfftan (cinematography), Billy Wilder (story) and Fred Zinnemann.
Ludwig Stössel was an actor born in Lockenhaus, now Austria, then Hungary. He was one of many Jewish actors and actresses who were forced to flee Germany when the Nazis came to power in 1933.
The Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold was an organization in Germany during the Weimar Republic with the goal to defend German parliamentary democracy against internal subversion and extremism from the left and right and to compel the population to respect and honor the new Republic's flag and constitution. It was formed by members of the left-wing Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the centre-right to right-wing German Centre Party, and the centrist German Democratic Party in February 1924.
The Threepenny Opera is a 1931 German musical film directed by G. W. Pabst. Produced by Seymour Nebenzal's Nero-Film for Tonbild-Syndikat AG (Tobis), Berlin and Warner Bros. Pictures GmbH, Berlin, the film is loosely based on the 1928 musical theatre success of the same name by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. As was usual in the early sound film era, Pabst also directed a French language version of the film, L'Opéra de quat'sous, with some variation of plot details. A planned English version went unproduced. The two existing versions were released on home video by The Criterion Collection.
Lil Dagover was a German actress whose film career spanned between 1913 and 1979. She was one of the most popular and recognized film actresses in the Weimar Republic.
Seymour Nebenzal was an American-born Jewish-German film producer. He produced 46 films between 1927 and 1961.
Fritz Arno Wagner is considered one of the most acclaimed German cinematographers from the 1920s to the 1950s. He played a key role in the Expressionist film movement during the Weimar period and is perhaps best known for excelling "in the portrayal of horror," according to noted film critic Lotte H. Eisner.
Ernő Metzner was a film director and production designer.
Lothar Wolff was a German film editor, producer and assistant director. He worked in Weimar Germany on films such as The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933). Following the rise of the Nazi party to power he left Germany, working in Austria, France and Denmark before eventually settling in the United States. In America he became known for his work on the documentary March of Time series.
Heinrich Gotho was an Austrian film actor. Born in Dolina, he started his acting career at some provincial theatres until he found an engagement at the Neues Volkstheater in Berlin. The character actor appeared in over 50 films between 1922 and 1933, mostly in smaller roles. He notably appeared in numerous films by director Fritz Lang, among them Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922), Metropolis (1927) and M (1931). Gotho was forced to retire from film acting in 1933; as a Jew he could no longer work in Nazi Germany. He died in 1938 in the Jewish Hospital of Berlin-Wedding.
Heinrich Nebenzahl (1870–1938) was an Austrian-born film producer. In 1925 he founded the German production company Nero Film which prospered under the management of his son Seymour Nebenzahl. In 1933 the Jewish Nebenzahls were forced to leave Germany by the coming to power of the Nazi Party. They resettled in Paris where Seymour continued to operate the company following the Nazi censorship of Seymour's film made with Fritz Lang. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. In 1938 Heinrich died and his son Seymour and grandson, film producer Harold Nebenzal subsequently relocated to the United States.
Hans Jacoby (1898–1967) was a German art director who designed the film sets for many German productions. He worked for a number of companies during the Weimar Era, notably Bavaria Film, Terra Film and Universum Film AG. Of Jewish background, he emigrated to Austria following the Nazi takeover in Germany, where he worked on The Eternal Mask (1935). He later emigrated to Argentina where he worked under the name Juan Jacoby Renard and also directed one film Sombras en el río in 1939. He was employed by the Argentina Sono Film company.
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