Rebuke and Reorganization

First countries outside the U. S. to produce good moving pictures were Germany and Russia. Most famed cinema company in Germany for the last 15 years has been UFA (Universum Film Akteingesellschaft), which made such famed silent pictures as The Last Laugh, Variety, The Golem (see p. 48). Most famed Russian director has been Sergei Eisenstein (Ten Days That Shook the World, Potemkin), who four years ago spent two years producing Thunder Over Mexico. Last week, UFA and Director Eisenstein, neither of whom has been much in the U. S. news lately, reappeared in it, both to their disadvantage.

In Moscow, Director Eisenstein has spent the last two years and 2,000,000 Government rubles on a picture called Bezhin Meadow, about Pavlik Morozov, twelve-year-old Soviet Martyr who was killed by kulaks (landowning farmers) for informing the Government of chicaneries by his kulak father. Last week, one version of Bezhin Meadow already having proved unsatisfactory, the second version was previewed by the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party. Result of the preview was that the Committee banned the picture as "inartistic and politically bankrupt." Main sin of Director Eisenstein seemed to have been that he "confused the class struggle with the struggle between good and evil." Further Eisenstein faults were showing a collective campaigner with "an enormous beard and the manner of a Biblical Saint," showing the hero with a halo around his head.

In Berlin, How to control the cinema industry as effectively as the press has long been a problem for German Nazis. First system tried, whereby the industry got suggestions from the Government, submitted to a rigorous censorship, proved unsuccessful. Last winter, two of Germany's major producing companies, Tobis and Bavarian Films, were quietly acquired by Government-subsidized syndicates. Last week, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who fortnight ago warned producers that if they did not pay better heed to suggestions, means would be found to make them do so, made the German film industry virtually a Government monopoly. Into control of UFA, which makes about 30 of Germany's annual output of 200 feature films, went a Government-backed group headed ostensibly by the Deutsche Bank und Disconto-Gesellschaft. Out went Dr. Alfred Hugenberg, first minister of national economy in the Hitler regime, who has served as a member of the board of UFA since 1927. Once run largely by Jews, like the U. S. cinema, the German cinema industry has waned rapidly since 1933, lately failed not only to produce films worthy of export but even films that can compete successfully with foreign-made films in Germany.

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