Film Nitrate

"Among us, the greatest attribute... is loyalty." There aren't too many films which can claim to have started an entire sub-genre of cinema. Dr. Arnold Fanck's The Holy Mountain , made in 1926, started a unique and wholly German type of film - the Bergfilm  (or ' Mountain Film '). Essentially, Bergfilme were films that were made in the stunning alpine scenery of Bavaria, aiming to capture on nitrate the grand nature of these epic, snowy landscapes. Fanck, who held a PhD in geology, had a background in making documentary films in mountainous areas, beginning with The Wonders of Skiing (1919), a film which tapped into Germany's affinity with the sport which was then still in its early days, and the film became an instant success in the country. Fanck continued to make similar documentary films through the 1920s, including the first film to be shot at altitude in the mountains, but it was The Holy Mountain ( Der heilige Berg ) that was to be his firs...

After his success in Germany in the early 1920s with silent films such as Nosferatu   (1922) and The Grand Duke's Finances (1924), German director F.W. Murnau was headhunted by UFA film studios, who were at the time the largest studios in Germany. They provided him with a modest budget of one million marks in order to make his debut feature for the company. By moving to UFA he was able to work with celebrated screenwriter Carl Mayer, demand for whose scripts had increased greatly since he co-wrote the screenplay to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). The script for The Last Laugh  was actually in place before Murnau joined the project, but a falling out between Mayer and his usual partner Lupu Pick opened up a vacancy which Murnau was able to fill. Indeed the film is most remembered today for having hardly any intertitles (title cards with text telling the audience things they couldn't pick up from visibly watching the film, such as speech or background), and thou...