Marlene Dietrich in Der blaue Engel (1930; The Blue Angel), directed by Josef von Sternberg.Universum Film A.G.; photograph from a private collection
After Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, the German film industry came under the complete control of the Nazi Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. Its head, Joseph Goebbels, believed ideological indoctrination worked best when conveyed through entertainment, so Nazi cinema put forth its political propaganda in the form of genre films such as comedies, musicals, and melodramas. The most famous and controversial films produced in Nazi Germany were documentaries by Leni Riefenstahl, whom Hitler recruited to record a Nazi party rally for Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935) and the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin for Olympia (1938).
The situation was similar in Italy, where popular genre films as well as historical epics carried the messages of the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini. Italy also sought to strengthen its film culture during this era by establishing a national film school, the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (founded 1935; “Experimental Centre of Cinematography”), and a major new studio complex in Rome, Cinecittà (opened 1937). Both of these institutions continued in operation after World War II and played a significant role in subsequent film history. Soviet Union
Although the Soviet engineers P.G. Tager and A.F. Shorin had designed optical sound systems as early as 1927, neither was workable until 1929. Sound was slow in reaching the Soviet Union: most Soviet transitional films were technically inferior to those of the West, and Soviet filmmakers continued to make silent films until the mid-1930s. As in Germany and Italy, however, sound reemphasized film’s propaganda value, and, through the authoritarian government’s policy of Socialist Realism, the Soviet cinema became an instrument of mass indoctrination as never before. The filmmakers most affected by the new policy were the great montage artists of the 1920s. Each of them made admirable attempts to experiment with sound—Lev Kuleshov’s The Great Consoler (1933), Dziga Vertov’s Symphony of the Donbas (1931) and Three Songs About Lenin (1934), Sergey Eisenstein’s Bezhin Meadow (1935; terminated by Boris Shumyatsky in midproduction), Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin’s A Simple Case (1932) and Deserter (1933), and Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s Ivan (1932)—but their work was ultimately suppressed or defamed by the party bureaucracy. Only Eisenstein was powerful enough to reassert his genius: in the nationalistic epic Alexander Nevsky (1938), whose contrapuntal sound track is a classic of its kind, and in the operatically stylized Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II (1944–46), a veiled critique of Stalin’s autocracy. Most of the films produced at the time were propaganda glorifying national heroes. Japan
In Japan, as in the Soviet Union, the conversion to sound was a slow process: in 1932 only 45 of 400 features were made with sound, and silent films continued to be produced in large numbers until 1937. The main reason for the slow conversion was that Japanese motion pictures had “talked” since their inception through the mediation of a benshi, a commentator who stood to the side of the screen and narrated the action for the audience in the manner of Kabuki theatre. The arrival of recorded sound liberated the Japanese cinema from its dependence on live narrators and was resisted by the benshi, many of whom were stars in their own right and possessed considerable box-office appeal. In the end, however, Japan’s conversion to sound was complete.
As in the United States, the introduction of sound enabled the major Japanese film companies (Nikkatsu, founded 1912; Shochiku, 1920; Toho, c. 1935) to acquire smaller companies and form vertical monopolies controlling production, distribution, and exhibition. Production procedures were standardized and structured for the mass production of motion pictures, and the studios increased their efficiency by specializing in either jidai-geki, period films set before 1868 (the year marking the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, 1868–1912, and the abolition of the feudal shogunate), or gendai-geki, films of contemporary life, set any time thereafter. Although, as a matter of geopolitical circumstance, there was hardly any export market for Japanese films prior to World War II, the domestic popularity of sound films enabled the Japanese motion-picture industry to become one of the most prolific in the world, releasing 400 films annually to the nation’s 2,500 theatres. Most of these films had no purpose other than entertainment, but in the late 1930s, as the government became increasingly expansionist and militaristic, Japan’s major directors turned to works of social criticism called “tendency” films, such as Ozu Yasujirō’s Hitori musuko (The Only Son, 1936) and Mizoguchi Kenji’s Naniwa hika (Osaka Elegy, 1936) and Gion no shimai (Sisters of the Gion, 1936). In response the government imposed a strict code of censorship that was retained throughout the war. India
In India, sound created a major industrial boom by reviving a popular 19th-century theatrical form: the folk-music drama based on centuries-old religious myths. Despite the fact that films had to be produced in as many as 10 regional languages, the popularity of these “all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing” mythologicals or historicals played an enormous role in winning acceptance for sound throughout the subcontinent and in encouraging the growth of the Indian film industry. An average of 230 features were released per year throughout the 1930s, almost all for domestic consumption. The war years and post-World War II trends Decline of the Hollywood studios
During the U.S. involvement in World War II, the Hollywood film industry cooperated closely with the government to support its war-aims information campaign. Following the declaration of war on Japan, the government created a Bureau of Motion Picture Affairs to coordinate the production of entertainment features with patriotic, morale-boosting themes and messages about the “American way of life,” the nature of the enemy and the allies, civilian responsibility on the home front, and the fighting forces themselves. Initially unsophisticated vehicles for xenophobia and jingoism with titles such as The Devil with Hitler and Blondie for Victory (both 1942), Hollywood’s wartime films became increasingly serious as the war dragged on (Fritz Lang’s Hangmen Also Die, Jean Renoir’s This Land Is Mine, Tay Garnett’s Bataan, all 1943; Delmer Daves’s Destination Tokyo, Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, Lewis Milestone’s The Purple Heart, all 1944; Milestone’s A Walk in the Sun, 1946). In addition to commercial features, several Hollywood directors produced documentaries for government and military agencies. Among the best-known of these films, which were designed to explain the war to both servicemen and civilians, are Frank Capra’s seven-part series Why We Fight (1942–44), John Ford’s The Battle of Midway (1942), William Wyler’s The Memphis Belle (1944), and John Huston’s The Battle of San Pietro (1944). The last three were shot on location and were made especially effective by their immediacy.