Director: Wolfgang Staudte, Kurt Maetzig, Gerhard Lamprecht, Werner Klingler and Erich Englel
1945–1948 Germany
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Films Include : The Murderers Are Among Us • Somewhere in Berlin • Police Raid • Marriage in the Shadows • The Blum Affair
The first film studio to begin operating in post-war Germany, DEFA was officially authorised to begin making films in the Soviet occupation zone in 1946. Overseen by the Soviet Military Administration, one of its primary mandates was to aid in the denazification of Germany by focusing on anti-fascist themes in films that would ruminate on the literal and figurative wreckage left behind by the Third Reich. Often shot on location in the ruins of Berlin, these early DEFA productions have come to be called Trümmerfilme or “rubble films,” and remain some of the most important pictures the studio ever made.
The first film produced in post-war Germany, The Murderers Are Among Us sees a concentration camp survivor return home to Berlin only to find a stranger living in her apartment: an ex-soldier who harbours a terrible secret. Somewhere in Berlin follows a group of children who spend their days playing in bombed-out buildings and a returning prisoner-of-war seeking a new sense of purpose. In Police Raid, a determined detective leads a crackdown on black marketeers who aim to exploit the chaos of the post-war period to their own advantage. Set during the Nazi era, Marriage in the Shadows charts the tragic life of an actor and his Jewish wife as they attempt to survive the Third Reich. Finally, The Blum Affair recounts the true case of a Jewish industrialist who was tried for murder in the 1920s.
Encompassing a range of genres – including the thriller, the police procedural and the courtroom drama – and ranging in visual style from expressionism to stark realism, DEFA’s rubble films are bound together by a concern with the physical and psychological damage wrought by Nazism, World War II and the Holocaust. The Masters of Cinema series is honoured to present all five films for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK, accompanied by a wealth of new and archival extras.
