After the ending of the First World War and the accompanying dissolution of a binding system of values, the cinema experienced the much-quoted era of the expressionist film. One title in particular has become synonymous with this period: “Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari”, written by Carl Mayer and Horst Jannowitz, produced by Erich Pommer, directed by Robert Wiene, with the actors Werner Krauss, Lil Dagover and Conrad Veidt - with the famous sets by Walter Reimann, Walter Röhrich and Hermann Warm.“Caligari” simultaneously marked the beginning of a remarkably fruitful artistic period.

Directors such as Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, and names such as Lupu Pick, Paul Leni or E.A. Dupont created the golden age of the German film.
The famous film historian Lotte Eisner called this epoch the age of the ‘demonic screen’.

The most important part of this film heritage is preserved, both physically and legally, by the Friedrich-
Wilhelm-Murnau-Foundation.
The outstanding examples of this heritage belong to the classics of German film history.

Superficially, these films could be briefly summarised under the term “silent film era”, whereby we simultaneously associate this era with age of the black and white film. But the fact is that the silent film was never silent and the black and white film was rarely only black and white - facts, which are not without repercussions for the restoration and reconstruction work at the Murnau Foundation.

Colour: As early as the turn of the century, the technical departments of the filmmakers attempted to market copies of originally black and white film that they had tinted. The spectrum covered initial hand colouring of each individual frame to the later monochrome colouring of whole film sequences.

Sound: Shortly after the turn of the century there were attempts to combine the moving picture with sound. The sound source was at that time always a separate apparatus, such as a gramophone, connected synchronously to the film projector.
From the beginning of the nineteen-twenties, efforts were made to put the sound directly onto the strip of film in order to guarantee exact synchronicity of image and sound.
To this end, the TriErgon method developed by German inventors Engel, Vogts and Masolle, is most worthy of mention.
Then, in the late nineteen-twenties, the so-called optical sound method won through, in which the acoustic signals were transformed into light impulses and attached to the edge of the strip of film. When playing it with a sound projector the process took place in reverse: the light impulses became sound signals.

German inventors played an important part, not only in the invention of sound film, but also in the development of colour film methods. However, the artistic handling of sound film technology was of decisive importance. Masterpieces such as Josef von Sternberg’s “Der blaue Engel” with Marlene Dietrich from 1930, are particular highlights of this development.

One of the consequences of the introduction of the sound film was the creation of a large number of musicals, operettas and revue films, in which optimal use could be made of the new technical possibilities.

Movies such as Der Kongress tanzt (1930), Die Drei von der Tankstelle (1931) or F.P.1 antwortet nicht (1932) were simultaneously produced in serveral languages, guaranteeing Ufa international success.

Actually, the early 1930s were among the most fruitful phases of the German movie industry. In 1931, a staggering 195 full-length productions were completed, with a further 168 in 1932.

In an era characterised by mass unemployment, street-fights and permanent governmental crises, hardly a movie was made in Germany in which people did not sing, play music and dance.

To this end, the end of the Weimar Republic was accompanied by a veritable wave of comedies.

But even movies such as Fritz Lang’s M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931) utilised the new technical potential of sound in a consummate manner.