The year 1919 in film involved some significant events.
1917 in film was a particularly fruitful year for the art form, and is often cited as one of the years in the decade which contributed to the medium the most, along with 1913. Secondarily the year saw a limited global embrace of narrative film-making and featured innovative techniques such as continuity cutting. Primarily, the year is an American landmark, as 1917 is the first year where the narrative and visual style is typified as "Classical Hollywood".
The year 1914 in film involved some significant events, including the debut of Cecil B. DeMille as a director.
The year 1912 in film involved some significant events.
The year 1910 in film involved some significant events.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 German silent horror film directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. Considered the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, it tells the story of an insane hypnotist who uses a brainwashed somnambulist to commit murders. The film features a dark, twisted visual style, with sharp-pointed forms, oblique, curving lines, structures and landscapes that lean and twist in unusual angles, and shadows and streaks of light painted directly onto the sets.
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.
Erich Pommer was a German-born film producer and executive. Pommer was perhaps the most powerful person in the German and European film industries in the 1920s and early 1930s.
The Hunchback and the Dancer is a 1920 silent German horror film directed by F. W. Murnau and photographed by Karl Freund. This is now considered to be a lost film. The film was written by Carl Mayer, who also wrote The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Karl Freund later emigrated to Hollywood where he directed such classic horror films as The Mummy (1932) and Mad Love (1935). It premiered at the Marmorhaus in Berlin.
Jules Greenbaum was a German pioneering film producer. He founded the production companies Deutsche Bioscope, Deutsche Vitascope and Greenbaum-Film and was a dominant figure in German cinema in the years before the First World War. He is also known for his early experiments with sound films around twenty years before the success of The Jazz Singer made them a more established feature of cinema.
Friedrich Feher was an Austrian actor and film director. He first entered the film business in 1913, starting out as an actor but quickly gravitated toward directing.
Continental-Kunstfilm GmbH was a short-lived German film production company based in Berlin, formed in February 1912 by Walter Schmidthässler and Max Rittberger. A large number of Continental-Kunstfilm's productions are now probably lost, although some significant films have survived into the 21st century.
Madame de La Pommeraye's Intrigues is a 1922 German silent film directed by Fritz Wendhausen and starring Olga Gsowskaja, Margarete Schlegel and Grete Berger. The film was produced by Russo Film, a short-lived company backed by Decla-Bioscop which aimed to adapt literary works for the screen. The film was released shortly after Decla-Bioscop had been absorbed into the larger UFA group. It was based on a story by Denis Diderot. It premiered at the Tauentzienpalast on 20 January 1922.
Wandering Souls is a 1921 German silent drama film directed by Carl Froelich and starring Asta Nielsen, Alfred Abel, and Walter Janssen. It was based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1869 novel The Idiot. The film was the first of three to be made by Russo Film, a small production company set up by Decla-Bioscop to make literary adaptations. The 123-minute film was shot at the Johannisthal Studios in Berlin. It premiered on 3 March 1921 at the Marmorhaus in Berlin.
Figures of the Night (German:Nachtgestalten) is a 1920 German silent horror film written, directed and produced by Richard Oswald and starring Paul Wegener, Conrad Veidt, Reinhold Schünzel and Erna Morena. It is based on the novel Eleagabal Kuperus by Karl Hans Strobl. Strobl was the editor of a German horror fiction magazine called Der Orchideengarten which was said to have been influenced by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Strobl was an anti-Semitic and later willingly joined the Nazi Party, which may explain why he has become an obscure literary figure today.
Otto Rippert was a German film director during the silent film era.
Homunculus is a 1916 German silent science fiction serial film directed by Otto Rippert and written by Robert Reinert. Other sources list Robert Neuss as a co-writer. Fritz Lang was one of Rippert's assistants during filming. It was originally produced by Deutsche Bioscop GmbH.
The Dance of Death is a 1919 German silent horror film directed by Otto Rippert and starring Werner Krauss, Sascha Gura and Karl Bernhard.
The Weissensee Studios was a collection of separate film production studios located in the Berlin suburb of Weißensee during the silent era.
Decla-Film was a German film production and distribution company of the silent era, founded by Erich Pommer and Fritz Holz in February 1915.
