The Silent German Film Algol: Tragedy Of Power

This paper was prepared for Introduction to Film History, Module 1 Homework Assignment, taught by Professor Stephanie Sandifer.

1. What is the title of this film? When was it made? Who wrote the original novel?

Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is considered a masterpiece. It is her best-selling novel and had sold more than 100 million copies since it was published in 1939. Our culture was likewise highly impacted by the book and it has been adapted into a play, and a video game, and 25 different movies/tv shows. This locked-door mystery has ten strangers lured to an unknown island by a mysterious individual and, one-by-one, murdered off according to a nursery rhyme. Created in 1945, the first movie was adapted by René Clair and quickly grew popular worldwide. Starring Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Louis Hayward, and June Duprez, who all did an exquisite job producing Agatha Christie's classic all over again. While René Clair made significant changes to the movie, his changes successfully stayed true to the book.

To begin with, some background information on movies and Hollywood in the 1920’s. In the 1920’s, movie attendance soared (The Rise of Hollywood par. 4). As stated in the introduction, with the influx of money in the American economic system, the average person also had an influx of time on their hands. The normal solution was to spend that time on entertainment and movies were the perfect way to do that. By the mid-decade, movie attendance rose to fifty million and only increased from then. The five main movie studios were Warner Brothers, Paramount, MGM, RKO Radio Pictures, and 20th Century Fox (Dirks 1). Before these studios were formed, every aspect of making movies was separated into different companies. The aspects may include filming, editing, or distributing. With the spark of interest in movies, these five companies took it upon

In my opinion, I feel that this movie, compared to today’s standards, is poor quality. From the 1980’s to the current time, the Hollywood industries and other movie producers have made astronomical improvements with every film released, and ever since

Movies were becoming one of the biggest businesses during the 1920s and most people would spend their leisure time going to the theatre to watch the silent films. They were becoming huge in the popular culture and Hollywood was the place to be. Roughly by 1922, 40 million people a year in attendance over the entire country for the movie theatres and in 1930 over 100 million people would attend the movies every year. By 1927, the movie industry became the fourth largest industry in the country. “The Great Train Robbery” which was released in 1903 was the beginning of the film industry and would eventually change everything. “Jazz Singer” was the first movie that had synchronized sounds throughout the entire film. The popular genres during this decade were western,

1939 created into a film. It was a masterpiece that was to be one of

All the movies were silent until The Jazz Singer came out in 1927. The next year the first animated sound film produced by Walt Disney came out. It was Steamboat Willie which introduced Mickey Mouse. Other movies in the 1920's were The Gold Rush, The Wizard of Oz, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Phantom of the Opera. About three-quarters of Americans went to the movie theaters every week to go see those movies and others.

Being one of the world’s most popular art forms, it was inevitable that these archetypes would find their way into film as well. In this essay I will argue that the

Spielberg at the age of 27. The film was based on a book titled ‘A

Silent horror films continued throughout the early 20th century. Some of the most famous horror films of this era included; The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), The Golem (1920), and Nosferatu (1920). These films feature a mad doctor, a vampire, and a monster that is never seen. (Wilson) These monsters were some of the very first to be introduced to horror but certainly not the last.

The science-fiction film genre serves as an excellent medium for examining shifting power structures, social paranoia and Cold War politics during the 1950s. A number of films released during this period, including: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Them (1954) and Attack of the 50ft Woman (1958), are particularly symptomatic of the social and political atmosphere of the time. These films navigate not only narrative based issues such as the threat of aliens and science experiments gone wrong; but also wider issues of the time, such as the Cold War, changes in the US film industry, urbanisation, politics, the growing power of women and most significantly, social concern about nuclear energy.

Fritz Lang's 1931 film M takes a look how one German town comes together to take down a prolific child serial killer. The film is interesting in theme, narrative, and editing and is a standout film in Germany's cinematic history. M can also be considered to be one of the last great German films to come out of the country before Hitler took over the German film industry in 1933 (Mast & Kawin 148). M is also Peter Lorre's first film and his performance helped to catapult him as an actor and allowed him to establish a villainous persona that he would later be known for. M is not only a significant film due to its narrative and editing, but it is also significant because of its style.

The novel is the basis of the exceptionally admired Academy Award-winning 1939 film of the same name. The film rights were acquired to the novel in July, 1936 for fifty thousand dollars. That was a record amount for a novel from an unknown author. Once the film was released the novel had surpassed one half million copies sold. Additional records were set when the movie had its first air date on television in two parts in 1976. It was restored and released in theaters in

The introduction of sound films in the late 1920’s was a divisive issue among those involved and interested in the emerging motion picture industry. Even though it wasn’t the sudden breakthrough it is often perceived to be, the addition of sound and voice to mainstream cinema revolutionized movie making and led to conflicting viewpoints as to whether or not this innovation was a positive progression for film as an art and as an industry.