Art Movie Pinups

Between the wars, the German silent cinema was the most artistically influential and prestigious in the world, dominated by the great triumvirate of directors Fritz Lang, G.W. Pabst and F.W. Murnau. They all flourished in the Weimar Republic, an all-too-brief period in which all the arts flowered in an era of experimentation marked by a bold Expressionist style--one that captured the impact of economic chaos and social upheaval on the German people in the unstable post-World War I era.

Lang’s “Dr. Mabuse,” “Die Nibelungen” and “Metropolis”; Pabst’s “Joyless Street” and “Pandora’s Box”; and Murnau’s “Nosferatu,” “Faust” and “The Last Laugh” are among the most famous and most often-revived films of the silent era.

But even those who know and revere these films are usually not familiar with the posters designed to promote them, outside of those for “Metropolis,” with either its image of the film’s skyscraper city of the future or depiction of its famous robot, the False Maria. So the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “Ufa Film Posters, 1918-1943” exhibition, which commences Friday and runs through April 25, is a rare treat, at once kindling fond memories of masterpieces seen and making one eager to see numerous films yet unseen.

The presentation of 70 posters was assembled in Germany last year to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the founding of Ufa (Universum-Film Corp.), a conglomerate that has survived the Third Reich, World War II and the Berlin Wall and its dismantling. Conservative in management yet a risk taker artistically, Ufa was very much the model of the modern studio, with headquarters in Berlin, theaters all over the country and a fabled studio in New Babelsberg, just outside Potsdam. (Studio Babelsberg was long the home of the East German Defa production organization and, after reunification, was reorganized under the leadership of director Volker Schlondorff.)

In his article in a handsome catalog accompanying the exhibition, writer Michel Toteberg stresses that the posters on display were not examples of avant-garde art, but since many of the films they were promoting were innovative, the posters not surprisingly have a timeless vibrancy characteristic of the films themselves. The sleek, simple rocket created by Alfred Hermann for Lang’s 1929 “Woman in the Moon” could just as easily be used to sell a sophisticated space adventure 70 years later.

And in addition to the famous poster for “Metropolis,” there are several others for the film, including one for French release designed by Boris Bilinsky that forecasts a modern skyline more accurately than the film itself, a monochromatic complex of structures in which the film’s title is spelled out in red letters, with each letter placed atop buildings of varying heights.

Indeed, the poster artists could be boldly experimental in their use of lettering. For Lang’s “Spies,” a delightful 1928 precursor to much of Alfred Hitchcock and all of James Bond, artist Max Fleiss placed flashlight beams emanating from the “holes” in the P, O and E in the film’s German title, “Spione.”

By no means are all the posters in the spare graphics of the emerging Art Deco style. Many of them are illustrations in the N.C. Wyeth-Maxfield Parrish tradition, as well as those emulating the Expressionism of numerous Ufa films. Interestingly, a number of the posters retain a rigorous artistic integrity well into the Third Reich, although several reflect the sentimentality of Nazi heimat kitsch.

Toteberg states that Ufa never allowed producers or directors a say in the extensive advertising campaigns for their films, but that did not always stop them. The late Rudi Feld, who had a substantial Hollywood career as an art director in the ‘40s and later as a Las Vegas set designer, was appointed art and business director of Ufa’s publicity department in 1926. Feld, who also oversaw the decoration of the Ufa theaters for their major releases, recalled several years before his death in 1994 that when Lang was unhappy with designs for posters and other promotional materials, he simply tore them up. Ironically, both Lang and Feld had illustrated posters earlier in their careers.

BE THERE

“Ufa Film Posters, 1918-1943,” Friday through April 25 at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd. For more information: (310) 247-3600.