Egon Jacobsohn (1922)

Egon Jacobsohn (1895-1969), son of a cigar dealer and an actress (and nephew to the famous Berlin comedian duo Anton and Donat Herrnfeld), wrote his first irreverent articles about films and film people for the slightly disreputable "Kleiner Journal" and the "Lichtbild-Bühne" while still at school. In about 1916 he made the grade as editor-in-chief (!) of the "Erste Internationale Filmzeitung" and, subsequently, of the "Illustrierte Filmwoche". Between 1920 and 1923 he was already master of his own film magazine, the "Filmhölle", in which, waiving advertising, he campaigned against the corruption and lapses in taste that were rife in the film industry. When Jacobsohn revealed that Harry Piel used a double in the most dangerous scenes of his sensationalist films, Piel took him to court, and lost. The "Lexikon des Films (Wie ich zum Film kam)" ("Dictionary of Film (How I Came to the Cinema)") compiled in collaboration with Kurt Mühsam, and which was based on personal information supplied by the film personalities listed, remains an indispensable source of biographical information on the history of German silents. He interviewed whoever was en vogue at the time for the "Berliner Morgenpost", the "B.Z. am Mittag" and other Ullstein papers: Asta Nielsen and Henny Porten, Conan Doyle and Einstein. He even interviewed Haarmann, the mass murderer, before the police managed to do so. He was not only an admired news sleuth - he became news himself as he pursued his various assignments in a wide range of disguises: as casual waiter, croupier, tramp, sausage vendor, barrel-organ player, fireman, or burglar. Following the coming to power of Hitler on 30 January 1933, Jacobsohn lived in clandestinity for almost a year until he succeeded in escaping to London with a false passport, where he took on a new identity as the journalist Egon Jameson. After 1945 he worked for nine years as chief reporter for the American "Neue Zeitung", wrote further books - there were over forty all told - including his highly readable memoirs (Wenn ich mich recht erinnere. Das Leben eines Optimisten in der besten aller Welten. Bern/Stuttgart 1963)(If I remember rightly. The life of an optimist in the best of all possible worlds). Egon Jacobsohn, the most original and agile Berlin reporter of the years before Hitler, died in exile in London on 23 December 1969. The following text, an ironic vision of the one hundredth birthday of cinematography, is taken from Jacobsohn's book "Film-Geheimnisse" ("Film Secrets") published in 1922. (Gero Gandert)

Ladies and gentlemen,

As Minister for Cinematographic Affairs it is my pleasurable duty to make the opening address at this celebratory banquet on the occasion of the centennial of the cinema. After a tremendous effort by the human mind and technology, we have finally succeeded in raising the once so trashy "flicks" to the level of an outstanding form of art. All of you, ladies and gentlemen, in your capacity as professors and doctors of the Film University, are well aware of the difficulties even the generation of our fathers faced in the late twenties and early thirties in resuscitating the almost extinct cinema as an entertainment medium. A brief review of the storm and stress years of the cinema would probably meet with great interest on this festive occasion, especially since a patron of the arts has presented the film museum of our Ministry with all the motion pictures exhibited between 1920 and 1930. This gives us film scholars the possibility of undertaking enormously valuable studies of the taste and ways of life of those times, and particularly to examine in the finest detail the impact of the 1914-18 war to end all wars.

One hundred years ago the first shots were taken with a motion-picture apparatus in Germany. On 4 May 1896 the first German to be filmed was the former Emperor Wilhelm II, recorded by a German cameraman as he returned amidst his troops from the Berlin spring parade. "Only" five days later one could admire the little pictures in various exhibition booths for the price of five pfennigs, which would now be worth about one fiftieth of the international standard heller. Gradually there were more and more pictures of soldiers and people. The showmen did a roaring trade with the motion pictures. Photographers, who had worked with the motion-picture camera as a sideline, no longer waited until the street offered new opportunities. They engaged a few funny looking men and women for a mark, now about one third of a standard heller, and had them act out very brief farces. Toff in the Bath was one title. Max Loves Edith another. The performance lasted four minutes. The success was astonishing. The producers found their wares selling like hot cakes. The first cinema public, not yet as blasé as it is today, doubled up with laughter. Some fairground booths eliminated all other attractions and called themselves "living picture shows".

From these sheds and modest beginnings today's cinema developed. Soon photographers abandoned their principal profession and devoted themselves entirely to their erstwhile sideline occupation, now producing only short films that found a ready market. Every enterprise grew overnight.

And when the world war broke out in 1914, there was already a powerful cinematographic industry, that had flourished particularly in America, France, and Italy. The war compelled the exclusion of foreign films, which had until then set the tone, thus forcing the production of German cinematographic works, so that after the end of the war a new cinematographic industry in Germany was revealed to the surprise of former enemies.

With indefatigable effort, inventors now went about perfecting the black-and-white art. No day passed without some new technological advance being registered with the patent offices. German films found their way abroad, opening up new profit-making opportunities. The sensationalist film was in demand. Acrobats commanded the silver screen. But this fashion was soon passé. The public grew weary of the cinema. The entire film world complained about the decline in business. By about 1930, the biggest firms were struggling to survive. All smaller companies with little capital had long since been bought out by the trusts. A new bait was tried: films were exhibited with famous actors personally speaking the accompanying text. For a few months the once so ardent love of the fickle public for the cinema seemed to have ignited anew. In vain. In this period, 1932 and thereabouts, people were keen on aeroplane races, they undertook summer trips to the North Pole or brief excursions to luxurious Tibet. Finally, in 1935, a young technician succeeded in inventing a speech film without the use of gramophone recordings. His invention was a small device with a voice that sounded deceptively like the human voice. A mechanism set the voice in motion when the film started. The imitation of the spoken word was so amazing that the theatres begin to fill once again. However, there were no longer any smaller picture theatres, because the enormous overheads would have made them uneconomical. Only the big picture palaces accommodating more than 3000 people could hold their own. Thanks to the new invention, they did very nicely indeed. The devices were perfected. The introduction of the speech film required a complete change in the way films were made. The cinema writers could now no longer call for pantomimic performances. Like their colleagues, the playwrights, they had now to lay words in the mouths of their hitherto silent actors, they had to think up admirable, brilliant, and witty dialogues. The cinematic poets had to supply cinematic poetry. Acting, which had previously been only indicated by pantomimic means, was transformed. The actors no longer remained silent. They spoke. Cinema music was eliminated. Everyone streamed to experience the speaking cinema. The many film stars discovered in past years had to take their departure because they were inadequate speakers. Film style changed radically. The cinema of 1925 had no points of comparison with the cinema of 1935. It was unrecognisable.

In 1936, when the world was just celebrating the 40th anniversary of the cinema, the breakthrough was achieved in creating the cinematic work in natural colours. For three decades this problem had occupied whole armies of chemists. It was only the discovery of a new chemical dye in conjunction with a recently introduced process in the manufacture of film stock that made it possible to produce pictures cheaply in perfect, completely genuine colours. Strangely enough, however, public interest was soon to let up again.

In the meanwhile, the sciences had laid claim to cinematography. Schoolbooks were used only for revision purposes. Film was the one and only possible medium of instruction. There was no book, however comprehensive, that could explain matters so clearly and memorably as the scientific film. It was modern to attend the Cinematographic University, founded as long ago as 1923, and do a "Dr.cin". Cinematography had become an academic discipline. Entertainment films were seldom shown.

In about 1950 the film devil woke again from his slumbers. After various unsuccessful attempts, the four-dimensional film was invented. Characters and landscapes disappeared from the screen. They moved before a dark backdrop, giving the impression that all the beauties revealed were really present before the astounded eyes of the spectator. The cinema, until then a model of semblance, now became an illusion of reality. The sharpest of eyes were incapable of distinguishing between a mere cinematographic exhibition and a performance on stage. Although literary theatre critics were highly indignant about this "image fraud" and sought to play down the victory of technology, the fact remained that, now that the stage and the cinema were on a completely equal footing, the "genuine" performance became extremely unpopular because of the enormous costs involved. The broad public was quite unable to discern whether the people on stage were real or only cinematic images. The only way to tell was from the price: the film was a hundred times cheaper than the theatre.

And so came the 27 January 1996, the day on which the last live theatre had to close its doors. After a century of struggling against its grimmest rival, the stage, the cinema has everywhere entered upon its inheritance. Its greatest opponents now have to recognise the cultural worth and significance of the cinema. In the different countries, the very best actors and actresses rehearse each stage play for months to be presented a single time for filming. The copies of this masterly achievement are distributed to theatres throughout the world, so that, for example, Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" can be seen and admired in the ten best productions from all countries in the remotest of hamlets.

Over the past century, we film people have thus eliminated all other forms of public performance. There is no theatre any more. No music hall, no circus, no cabaret. Everything has become cinema. Technology has won the day against the human body. And it is to celebrate this occasion, ladies and gentlemen, that we are gathered here today. I have applied to the government to declare 4 May a holiday for the German cinematographic industry. After a hundred years of tremendous effort by the millions of people involved in cinema, I consider that we have well earned such a day of rest. May I request you, ladies and gentlemen, to raise your glasses with me and join in my toast: "May the film advance: ever onward!"