Let Us Now Praise German Movies

At least praise for a movie called "Taking Sides" $1.99 at Blockbuster

We forget that at one time Hollywood was the German/Austrian film business West

TAKING SIDES is a German movie taken directly from a play. It is in English starring Harvey Kietel and a cast of terrific Germans, real Russians and so on. The subject matter will either grab you or it won't. It's about the subtleties of "selling out", even life or death. Is it possible to just "lease out". Or can you just "sub let" for a while? The focus of the story is "the greatest conductor in Germany" and his decision to stay in Germany under Hitler rather than leave as most artists did. But it's about a hell of a lot more than that. Nobody in this movie has sold out completely but all sell out to a degree. Everybody in the movie is a good/bad person or a bad/good person. If you like action, forget it. If you want sex, forget it. Remember I mentioned in my essay on The Cool Communism that Germany was the only country where "civilization" and "culture" were considered separate. This movie is also about the impossibility of that. So if you want a move that is actually about something big and is done by top of the line talent from top to bottom, risk $1.99 at Blockbuster.

A terrific movie. Best I've seen in a year.

We tend to forget just how much of Hollywood was always Germany transported west. Were it not for the Nazis taking over in 1933, the German movie industry was poised to compete with Hollywood head to head. Great directors, actors, writers, and crew people fled Germany in 1933 but before that, American companies brought von Stroheim, Marlene Dietrich (and her famous director Josef von Sternberg), Peter Lorre, Fred Astaire (Frederick Austerlitz), a German named Felix Salten wrote Bambi in 1926, Casablanca was loaded with German talent and directed by German Michael Curtiz, the very first winner of an Academy Award for acting was Emil Jannings (Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz), Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, and I could fill this whole page with top of the line Germans and Austrians who came to Hollywood and created it.

The German tide continues. Two of this summer's blockbuster features are made by two more German directors; Roland Emmerich and Wolfgang Petersen. The Germans are still here, and cracking.