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.pdfexile studies which examine the conditions of exile of film personnel, and which discuss the influence of those personnel upon the national industry that they have settled within.
Unfortunately, by ‘personnel’ I refer to actors, directors, producers and screenwriters. The authorial dominance of these figures has once again caused the struggle of other, lesser known personnel, to be overlooked. This is perhaps an example of film theory and criticism reflecting film history: the struggles of prominent figures such as Fritz Lang were far less than the struggles of craftspeople such as Schüfftan. Their prominence afforded them some luxury in exile, and this prominence has been remembered at the cost of lesser others, and their greater struggles. There is no text, for example, which examines the conditions of exile for cinematographers and other technicians. The reality is that German émigré directors, stars, producers and screenwriters were welcomed to Hollywood and other industries. The technicians, not recognised for any individual artistic skill, were subject in exile to strict quotas, permit regulations and industry unions, in order to protect the indigenous personnel of the host nation. Schüfftan’s own struggles shall become clear during the course of this thesis. But to offer here a dramatic example, Curt Courant, the famous cinematographer of Weimar Germany, who also found success in exile in France, failed entirely to succeed as a cinematographer upon his arrival in the US, thanks to the protectionism of the unions. After arriving in 1941, Courant was only able to photograph two films before his death in 1968, Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux in 1947 (for which he is uncredited) and It Happened in Athens (Andrew Marton) in 1962. Such stories of exile trauma for film technicians, including
Schüfftan’s, remain largely unwritten, although Phillips (2004: 46-50) does provide a rare case study of Courant’s work in French cinema and Omasta (2008: 78-88) has addressed
Günther Krampf’s work in Britain. Conversely, the list of texts which examine exile for major European directors includes Exiles in Hollywood: Major European Film Directors in Hollywood (Phillips, 1998), Passport to Hollywood: Hollywood Films, European Directors
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(Morrison, 1998), Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Émigrés, 1933-1950 (Taylor, 1983) and The Hollywood Exiles (Baxter, 1976). Furthermore, major directors who were forced into exile, such as Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, Billy Wilder, Douglas Sirk, G.W. Pabst, Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer have all had texts dedicated solely to their work. In examining the work of a single cinematographer who experienced the traumas of exile I seek to redress this balance, demonstrating the very different conditions of exile for technicians.
The de rigueur text in recent years for exile studies of cinema has been Hamid Naficy’s An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001), however I shall employ a different key text in this thesis to elaborate upon the understanding of Schüfftan’s exile. I feel that Naficy’s approach of designating exilic cinema as ‘accented’ risks the same oversimplification and labelling that has already blighted mention of Schüfftan’s style in previous criticism (although Gemünden (2008) chooses to apply this label to his subject in his exile study of the films of Billy Willder). For I argue during the course of this thesis that Schüfftan is not a cinematographer of German Expressionism, contrary to the belief of many. This exile story highlights the lazy shorthand in film studies for discussing cinematographic style. In the case of Schüfftan, the failure to investigate the history of his cinematographic style and his actual conditions of exile has resulted in a crucial misconception of his style. This misconception is that Schüfftan is a cinematographer of German Expressionism. A large task of this thesis has been to disprove this myth, to demonstrate a far more complex development of Schüfftan’s style (which actually began in realism rather than
Expressionism), which goes far beyond the tokenistic descriptions ‘chiaroscuro’ and ‘Expressionist’ that are so readily employed for Schüfftan’s work. The risk of employing Naficy is that Schüfftan can then simply be designated an ‘Accented Expressionist’ instead.
This could perhaps be viewed as an accurate description, however it is not a productive one, nor is it in fact correct. This still offers an oversimplification, for Schüfftan’s style and its
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development is far too dense and complex to be understood when reduced to the human desire for nomenclature. Therefore, I seek not a term to capture Schüfftan’s style and development, but rather a way of understanding why and how Schüfftan’s style has been subject to misrecognition during the process of exile. For this I turn to Thomas Elsaesser and his concept of the ‘historical imaginary’ and of ‘mis-cognition’, put forward in Weimar
Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary (2000).
Elsaesser’s theory of the historical imaginary seeks, ‘to name the way in which the perception of the German cinema’s film, genres, stars and directors has been warped’, by the overbearing significance of the Weimar cinema and of German Expressionism (2000: 437). One such example that Elsaesser provides is the cause-and-effect drive within film history that has seen film noir positioned as a direct descendent of German Expressionism, thanks in part to the number of European exile directors who made Hollywood noir films. This is despite, as Elsaesser and Marc Vernet before him have pointed out, a long history of chiaroscuro-style lighting in Hollywood. As Vernet (1993: 11-12) notes, after a reading of early American cinema by the likes of Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith, ‘the American cinema had, ever since the 1910s, a long and important tradition of “noir” lighting, whether in gothic or detective films, or simply in order to give greater pathos to scenes set at night.’
In the authoritative text ‘The Classical Hollywood Cinema’ (Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, 1985), Kristin Thompson (1985: 223) supports Vernet’s view, demonstrating how, during the teens, Hollywood moved away from ‘a dominant use of diffused, overall illumination toward a concentration of “effects” lighting,’ characterized as a greater use of ‘directional patches of light’, although she does clarify that ‘extreme contrasts of light and dark […] did not become the standard way of creating a selective lighting set-up.’ (1985:
225)
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Vernet’s (1993: 7-8) revisionist reading of the film noir, also debunks another myth, and demonstrates how Expressionist lighting was a rareity in the early films of noir: ‘the “expressionist” image is relatively rare in the period 1941-45 (it is represented only by a few isolated scenes in an otherwise “normally” lit film)’.
Elsaesser, commenting on the connection between German Expressionism and film noir, makes the point clearly that ‘By placing them across a listing of German émigré directors, the histories are made to mirror each other in an infinite regress that has tended to produce a selfvalidating tautology, where mutually sustaining causalities pass off as film history what is in effect more like a time loop.’ (2000: 420) This thesis aims to demonstrate how Schüfftan has been subject to the same historical imaginary, which has led to him being viewed as a cinematographer of German Expressionism. As I shall demonstrate during the course of this thesis, Schüfftan’s style in Weimar Germany was actually opposed to that of German
Expressionism, and that it was during his exile in Europe that a process of mis-cognition occurred – an expectation for Schüfftan to provide an Expressionist form of lighting – which led to Schüfftan incorporating elements of Expressionism into his developing style, even though, as I shall demonstrate, Schüfftan’s style in this context is far more painterly. Indeed he turns to the Old Masters (especially Rembrandt) for his inspiration.
By channeling the influence of Rembrandt and the Old Masters in his work for the cinema (particularly in the case of the pulp material shot for Poverty Row, which is discussed in Chapter II, Part Two), Schüfftan can be seen to be challenging the boundaries of high and low culture. Furthermore, this can be understood as a challenge to the boundaries between high art Modernism, and a pulp form of Modernism, which is termed ‘vernalcular’ by Miriam
Bratu Hansen (in a rejection of the term popular) (2000: 333). Hansen examines the distinction between these two forms of Modernism through a reading of the classic
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Hollywood cinema, and in particular, our understanding of this cinema as classic (2000: 332350). Schüfftan embraces classical forms of aesthetic representation, informed by an understanding of the canon of great artists, which can be understood as High Modernism and in opposition to mass culture. However, Schüfftan applies this aesthetic approach to the cinema, an art created by design for mass reproduction and mass consumption. He applies this artistic approach to a broad range of films, from those which handle Modernity for the youth of Berlin, such as Menschen am Sonntag, to those pulp films of the 1940s made on Poverty Row, which I shall read as examples of Exile Modernism, displaying the imprint of the divide of exile suffered by the filmmakers.
The influence of Rembrandt, therefore, has a far greater impact upon Schüfftan’s aesthetic than Expressionism, demonstrating how he is a perfect example of Vernet’s (1993: 7) argument that, ‘a good number of the directors and cinematographers of German or related origin who are often invoked have nothing in common with expressionism.’ I intend to rectify the assumption in film studies that Schüfftan hailed from German Expressionism, and demonstrate the far more complex development of Schüfftan’s cinematographic style. For as
Elsaesser argues:
Rather than subsume all the directors, stars and movie personnel in the general category of émigré, we would have to study, in each and every case, the precise reasons and circumstances that brought a German director to the United States. This is not only a condition of sound historical scholarship, but also a requirement for a fair consideration of every human fate that otherwise – even with the best of intentions – would remain hidden, blocked out and lost to history by such a blanket term. (2000: 429)
In this thesis I help to answer Elsaesser’s call, by adding to our understanding of the émigrés’
role in film history the case of Eugen Schüfftan.
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Structure
The challenges of writing about cinematography have been numerous. As this thesis seeks to tread new ground, there is no great wealth of existing literature upon which to base my approach. Nick James has noted this fact, when highlighting the absence of any text on cinematography from Sight & Sound’s 2010 poll of the most inspirational film books: ‘Some whole subject areas […] get short shrift. Cinematography […] doesn’t seem to have an urtext to call its own’ (2010: 18). Therefore, there are bounds to be gaps in my approach, as I begin to explore ways in which the cinematographic style of a cinematographer can be discussed. Indeed, my early research followed a number of different approaches to addressing the career of a cinematographer, which were ultimately not conducive. For example, I attempted detailed statistical analysis, which proved to be reductive, and did not aid in arguing for the artistry of a cinematographic style. Genre was another approach, which again felt too limiting to the breadth and variety of a cinematographer’s career. These problems were compounded by a lack of availability of the majority of Schüfftan’s films (at the start of my research only around 10 of Schüfftan’s films were readily available on DVD). Another major obstacle was also a large cause for the undertaking of this thesis – the lack of information available on a cinematographer. My aim was to examine an undervalued key member of personnel, however a cinematographer such as Schüfftan has been so undervalued that there are no interviews with him, and nothing to suggest his artistic intentions. Furthermore, large biographical details remained unknown, largely surrounding Schüfftan’s prevention from the
ASC upon his arrival in the US in the 1940s. Even American Cinematographer has failed to address Schüfftan’s work, despite his eventual admission into the American Society of
Cinematographers, and his success at the Academy Awards in 1962. I began to understand why so few had undertaken the task of analysing cinematography.
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A breakthrough of sorts occurred with the discovery of Schüfftan’s correspondence with
Siegfried Kracauer (reprinted by Asper, 2003). Although much of the contents of these letters was anecdotal between friends, it nonetheless helped to fill some of the gaps in
Schüfftan’s movements, and unfulfilled film projects. However, the major breakthrough of this thesis was a research trip to the film archives of Berlin and Paris. I was able to view a great number of unavailable films photographed by Schüfftan at the Bibliothèque du film, Paris, and the Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin. Furthermore, the Deutsche Kinemathek is home to the archives of the Paul Kohner Talent Agency. This agency specialized in representing émigré film personnel in Hollywood, and provides a valuable resource on the conditions of exile for those newly arrived on the West Coast of the United States. The Eugen Schüfftan files in the Paul Kohner archive revealed the reality of the many challenges faced by Schüfftan. The wealth of information that I gained from this trip informed my approach thereafter. I came to realize that a great misunderstanding clouded Schüfftan’s work: that he was a cinematographer of German Expressionism. Schüfftan’s style was in fact informed and shaped during the processes of exile, and slowly developed to suit demand. To clarify this complex development of Schüfftan’s style I settled upon an approach which examines the full breadth of Schüfftan’s career, and discusses his approach to lighting each film. This allows the development of Schüfftan’s style to be revealed in accordance with the conditions of life for a cinematographer, and the demands and expectations of those around him. Crucially, by understanding how Schüfftan’s style had developed, I was then able to understand what Schüfftan’s lighting brought to a film’s meaning.
This thesis therefore has three main goals: 1) to foreground the role of the cinematographer, and to identify the development of Schüfftan’s cinematographic style over the course of his career; 2) to examine the conditions of exile upon the cinematographer, and to demonstrate how the process of exile has led to an oversimplification and mis-cognition of Schüfftan’s
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style; 3) to demonstrate how films can be analysed, in a variety of manners, from the perspective of cinematography. The structure of my thesis aims to achieve all these goals. Its overarching structure is a comprehensive biographical overview, by far the most exhaustive to date, of Schüfftan’s career. This encompasses thorough research upon Schüfftan’s career in order to reinsert him into the narrative of film history, and a discussion of his lighting practices and their development throughout his career. As part of this study I also tackle the impact of his exile, and demonstrate both the challenges of his career in exile, and how his style has come to be misrecognised by film history.
The thesis is divided into four chapters, each of which comprises a stage in the career of Eugen Schüfftan. The biographical study accounts for one part of each chapter. To accompany the biographical study, a second part of each chapter comprises a closer case study of one or more of the films made by Schüfftan during that period. These case studies seek to illuminate a number of the films which Schüfftan has worked up, by examining them from the role of the cinematographer. More generally, through these case studies I aim to demonstrate how film studies may incorporate an understanding of the cinematographer’s contribution to more traditional approaches to film. Therefore, across these case studies are a variety of different approaches to filmic analysis, rather than a singular analytical approach.
What they share is that in each case study I demonstrate how Schüfftan’s use of lighting impacts upon the meaning of the image and therefore the reading of the text as a whole.
Chapter I of this thesis tackles the years 1886 to 1933, addressing Schüfftan’s early life in
Germany, and his first years as a cinematographer until his escape from Germany in 1933. However, before the events of this period are detailed, I turn first to address the single film Schüfftan is perhaps most famous for, despite not acting as cinematographer. Chapter I, Part
One of this thesis deals with Schüfftan’s famous special effects invention, the Schüfftan Process, and its usage in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. The process still represents Schüfftan’s
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most significant achievement for many, and is largely the reason why his name may be known. The process launched Schüfftan’s career and its heritage stayed within him throughout. And yet, its actual design and function is rarely thoroughly understood. In this section, titled ‘The Technology and Aesthetics of the Schüfftan Process’, I set out to explain the process, by employing Schüfftan’s original patents, before then addressing the aesthetic results of the process in its most famous application, on Metropolis. I provide this analysis against the backdrop of Modernism, which dominated Berlin during the 1920s, and argue that
Metropolis and the Schüfftan Process are both products of this period of Modernity. I thereby demonstrate how theorists of Modernism, such as those of the Frankfurt School, become insightful to a reading of the film and the process, in terms of the individual and his/her relationship to society. Chapter I, Part Two is titled ‘Smoke and Mirrors, 1886-1933’. This deals with Schüfftan’s early years in Weimar Germany as an inventor and cinematographer. Crucially, this part establishes that Schüfftan’s role in Weimar cinema was not as a cinematographer of German Expressionism. I demonstrate that he was in fact keenly interested in issues of realism, which he was exploring as part of his promising career with
Ufa and his own (little known) directorial projects.
Chapter II addresses the second stage of Schüfftan career, between 1933 and 1947, in exile, first in Europe and then in America. Part One, ‘European Exile, 1933-1940’, deals with Schüfftan’s political exile from Nazi Germany and his movements throughout Europe to find work. Schüfftan found particular success in this period, alongside a number of other émigré technicians, in France. In this part I show how, in exile, Schüfftan gradually moved away from his interests in realism, towards a more stylized form of lighting. This occurred, it would seem, to fulfil the needs of European directors and producers who, through a process of mis-cognition, expected Schüfftan to provide the forms of lighting they had witnessed of the German cinema during the 1920s. Part Two continues this tale of exile to the United
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States, covering the period 1941 to 1947. This forms the case study of the second chapter, titled ‘Exile Modernism on Poverty Row, 1941-1947’. This case study handles Schüfftan’s failure to be accepted into the American Society of Cinematographers, forcing him into
Hollywood’s Poverty Row studios, where he relied upon the diasporic community of fellow émigré directors and producers to keep him in work. I discuss these low budget speedily produced films, made in the underbelly of Hollywood, as examples of Exile Modernism, a form of Modernism which tended to communicate the traumas and experiences of exile. To support this reading I also discuss how these films can be viewed in similar terms to Deleuze and Guattari’s description of minor literatures, involving processes of deterritorialization, collectivization and politicization. My case study is therefore divided into these three terms.
The first section, ‘Deterritorialization’ examines the process of Schüfftan’s exile from
Europe, and his further deterritorialization from the major Hollywood studios by the protectionism of the union. The section ‘Collectivization’ then examines the importance of collaboration amongst the diasporic community, with particular reference to Schüfftan’s collaborations with the director Edgar G. Ulmer, who kept him employed throughout most of the decade. Finally, in the section ‘Politicization’ I offer a close reading of one of Schüfftan’s Poverty Row films, Hitler’s Madman (Sirk, 1942), to demonstrate how the film can be seen as an example of Exile Modernism in the cinema.
The third chapter of this thesis turns its attention to the period 1948 to 1959. In Part One, ‘A Return to Work in Europe’, I address Schüfftan’s rather nomadic filmmaking experiences of the late 1940s and 50s. Having received American citizenship in 1947, but still unable to gain admittance to the union, Schüfftan returned to Europe, where he had found his greatest successes, safe in the knowledge that he could return to America. As I demonstrate, Schüfftan still encountered a great number of struggles in this period, and endured a restless lifestyle in his constant search for the next film project. The case study that forms Part Two
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