 |
Nero-Film AG was a German film production company founded in 1925 and based in Berlin during the Weimar era.
| |
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.
 | This article about an organisation based in Germany is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-German-American film director, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best-known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute.
M is a 1931 German thriller film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre in his breakthrough role as Hans Beckert, a serial killer of 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.
Thea Gabriele von Harbou was a German screenwriter, novelist, film director, and actress. She is remembered as the screenwriter of the science fiction film classic Metropolis (1927) and for the 1925 novel on which it was based. Harbou collaborated as a screenwriter with film director Fritz Lang, her husband, during the period of transition from silent to sound films.
UFA GmbH, shortened to UFA, is a film and television production company that unites all production activities of the media conglomerate Bertelsmann in Germany. Its name derives from Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, a major German film company headquartered in Babelsberg, producing and distributing motion pictures from 1917 until the end of the Nazi era. The name UFA was revived by Bertelsmann for an otherwise unrelated film and television outfit, UFA GmbH.
German Expressionism consisted of a number of related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments in Germany were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central European culture in fields such as architecture, dance, painting, sculpture and cinema. This article deals primarily with developments in German Expressionist cinema before and immediately after World War I, approximately from 1910 to the 1930s.
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 name 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.
Nazism created an elaborate system of propaganda, which made use of the new technologies of the 20th century, including cinema. Nazism courted the masses by the means of slogans that were aimed directly at the instincts and emotions of the people. The Nazis valued film as a propaganda instrument of enormous power. The interest that Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels took in film was not only the result of a personal fascination. The use of film for propaganda had been planned by the Nazi Party as early as 1930, when the party first established a film department.
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. 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, formed by members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the German Centre Party, and the (liberal) German Democratic Party in February 1924. Its goal was to defend parliamentary democracy against internal subversion and extremism from the left and right, to compel the population to respect the new Republic, to honor its flag and the constitution. Its name is derived from the Flag of Germany adopted in 1919, the colors of which were associated with the Weimar Republic and liberal German nationalism.
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.
The Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft was a national network of German regional public radio and television broadcasting companies active from 1925 until 1945. RRG's broadcasts were receivable in all parts of Germany and were used extensively for Nazi propaganda after 1933.
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 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.
