Agfacolor
Encyclopedia
Agfacolor is a series of color photographic products produced by Agfa of Germany. The first product named Agfacolor, introduced in 1932, was a film-based version of the Agfa-Farbenplatte (Eng: Agfa Color Plate, introduced in 1916), a 'screen plate' similar to the Autochrome plate, but in late 1936 Agfa introduced Agfacolor-Neu transparency film, based upon the patent no. 253335 of Dr. Rudolf Fischer 1911, Berlin. The Agfacolor brand has also been associated with several color negative films
Negative (photography)
In photography, a negative may refer to three different things, although they are all related.-A negative:Film for 35 mm cameras comes in long narrow strips of chemical-coated plastic or cellulose acetate. As each image is captured by the camera onto the film strip, the film strip advances so that...

 (i.e. "print" films) produced by Agfa for still photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

.

One of the first motion-picture three-color films developed in the 1930s, Agfacolor was the German response to Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...

 and Kodachrome
Kodachrome
Kodachrome is the trademarked brand name of a type of color reversal film that was manufactured by Eastman Kodak from 1935 to 2009.-Background:...

. The new Agfacolor film was a 'tri-pack', like Kodachrome, introduced by Eastman Kodak
Eastman Kodak
Eastman Kodak Company is a multinational imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company headquarted in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded by George Eastman in 1892....

 in 1935. Unlike the Kodachrome process, the color couplers were integral with the emulsion layers. This greatly simplified processing of the film. The basic difference between the Agfacolor and Kodachrome materials is that Agfacolor contains several layers of emulsion in the film itself, creating the color as it is being developed. With Kodachrome, colors are added to the film at a later stage by different development baths.

There is a special ‘touch’ to Agfacolor that has delighted audiences since it was introduced. The character of the material is rather pastel colored, emphasizing golden and warm tones, making the picture look like "old paintings." A significant number of Agfacolor movies shot between 1939 and 1945 survived the war, but most of them exist only in fragments today.

Background

Realizing they were at least one year behind their American competitors, German technicians decided to steer away from Kodak’s approach to capturing color images on film and invested on their own technology. Their work bore fruits in the summer of the same year, when chemical engineers of the Agfa company in Germany tested their new material Agfacolor at the swimming competition of the 1936 Summer Olympics
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona, Spain on April 26, 1931, at the 29th IOC Session in Barcelona...

 in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. Although the German technology promised the use of one and the same material for different purposes, ranging from photographic negative-film for prints to photographic slides and motion-picture films, it took another three years––until July 1939––for any German film-maker to experiment with the film.

The Third Reich's Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...

 was in a hurry. He admired Hollywood movies and examined them carefully in regular private screenings (sometimes with Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 and his staff). Technicolor films such as A Star Is Born
A Star Is Born (1937 film)
A Star Is Born is a 1937 Technicolor romantic drama film produced by David O. Selznick and directed by William A. Wellman, with a script by Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell. It stars Janet Gaynor as an aspiring Hollywood actress, and Fredric March as an aging movie star who...

(1937), The Garden of Allah (1936) or Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...

(1937) made him realize that Hollywood feature films presented a threat to Germany's internal market and that Hollywood's dominance of color film technology should be matched, at least if Germany was serious about entering in a cultural war with the U.S. and Britain.

Frauen sind doch bessere Diplomaten

It was not until the beginning of principal photography for Frauen sind doch bessere Diplomaten in 1939 (English title: Women Are Better Diplomats), starring the popular singer/dancer Marika Rökk
Marika Rökk
Marika Rökk was an Austrian-German singer, dancer and actress of Hungarian descent, who became famous in German films, notably in the Nazi era.- Life and work :...

 and actor Willy Fritsch
Willy Fritsch
Willy Fritsch was a German theater and film actor, the popular leading man in German silent motion-pictures.-Biography:...

, that Agfacolor was used to shoot a major motion picture. The use of Agfacolor was reinforced by the top of the Nazi film industry, Reichsminister Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...

, and the executives at UFA eventually gave in to his pressure. Agfacolor was then used throughout the entire film shoot of Women Are Better Diplomats.

Throughout the shoot, the film yielded mixed results as it was still very sensitive to different color temperature
Color temperature
Color temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in lighting, photography, videography, publishing, manufacturing, astrophysics, and other fields. The color temperature of a light source is the temperature of an ideal black-body radiator that radiates light of...

s caused by solar altitude at different times of the day. Thus, outdoor shots were difficult to handle: A lawn in front of a castle appeared completely yellow, later brown, then bluish. The technology was not fully developed yet, and Agfa labs were virtually using the shooting of the film as testing grounds for their new stock, continually changing the formula throughout the shoot based upon unsatisfactory results so that entire scenes had to be repeated once a new formula was being tested.

Meanwhile the production costs had risen from 1.5 to 2.5 million Reichsmarks. More than two years after its start date, Women Are Better Diplomats opened in October 1941. Despite its rather weak color quality, the film proved to be a major hit, earning more than 8 million Reichsmarks by the end of the war.

The Golden City

After the process's growing pains had been overcome throughout the production of Women are better diplomats, the following Agfacolor movies were shot and printed much quicker and with better results. The technology was improved at a rapid pace. Veit Harlan
Veit Harlan
Veit Harlan was a German film director and actor.-Life and career:Harlan was born in Berlin. After studying under Max Reinhardt, he first appeared on the stage in 1915 and, after World War I, worked in the Berlin stage. In 1922 he married Jewish actress and cabaret singer Dora Gerson; the couple...

, perhaps the most prominent 'official' film director of the Third Reich, was allowed to shoot his next picture in Agfacolor. Between the summers of 1941 and 1942, Veit Harlan finished Die goldene Stadt
Die goldene Stadt
Die goldene Stadt , is a 1941 German film directed by Veit Harlan, starring Kristina Söderbaum, who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, and in Agfacolor.-Plot:...

(Eng: The Golden City), a dreamy propaganda fairytale starring his wife Kristina Söderbaum
Kristina Söderbaum
Kristina Söderbaum was a Swedish-born German film actress, producer and photographer.Her father, Professor Henrik Gustaf Söderbaum , was the permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences....

 as a young, innocent country girl who comes to the golden city of Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

 and is seduced by an unscrupulous gigolo
Gigolo
Gigolo may refer to:* A male prostitute, escort, or dancer, who offers services to women* Gigolo , a 2006 single by Helena Paparizou* Gigolo , a 2003 single by Nick Cannon...

.

The Golden City premièred at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...

 in September 1942 and was awarded for its outstanding technical quality and actress Kristina Söderbaum won an acting award.

Shot by cameraman Werner Krien, who had done black-and-white-pictures before, and assisted by special effects specialist Konstantin Irmen-Tschet (once in charge of the SFX camera in Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...

’s Metropolis
Metropolis (film)
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...

), the film displays an impressive symphony of colors.

Later Agfacolor films throughout the Third Reich

Made for the UFA's 25th Anniversary, Münchhausen (1943) was the third German feature film––out of over a dozen––to be produced using Agfacolor film between 1939 and 1945.

Other notable Agfacolor productions include Kolberg
Kolberg (film)
Kolberg is a 1945 German propaganda film directed by Veit Harlan and Wolfgang Liebeneiner. It opened on January 30, 1945 simultaneously in Berlin and to the crew of the naval base at La Rochelle. It was also screened in the Reich chancellery after the broadcast of Hitler's last radio address on...

(1945), a dramatization of German resistance throughout the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

 and the regime's last major propaganda feature film.

Legacy after WWII

Towards the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, large quantities of raw Agfacolor stock were seized by the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 and served as the basis for the Sovcolor process, which was widely used in the USSR and other Eastern bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...

 nations. One of the best-known Sovcolor films is War and Peace (1965-'67).

After the war, Agfa's former production plant at Wolfen
Wolfen, Germany
Wolfen is a town in the district Anhalt-Bitterfeld, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Since 1 July 2007 it is part of the town Bitterfeld-Wolfen. It is situated approximately 6 kilometres northwest of Bitterfeld, and 20 kilometres south of Dessau....

 was located in the Soviet occupation zone which was to become East Germany. For several years after the war, the Wolfen plant continued producing Agfacolor films, until in 1964 East Germany lost the licence to the Agfa brand name. From 1964 onwards, the plant was re-named into ORWO
ORWO
ORWO was an East German manufacturer of photographic film and magnetic tape. The basis for ORWO was the Agfa Wolfen plant, where the first modern colour film with incorporated colour couplers, Agfacolor, was developed in 1936....

 (short for Original Wolfen), producing color films under the name of ORWOcolor.

Agfacolor consumer products were also marketed in North America under the names Ansco Color and Anscochrome (from Agfa's U.S. subsidiary, Agfa Ansco, which was later merged with General Aniline and had the name changed to General Aniline and Film), but met with limited success.

Ansco Color was also used in Hollywood films, including some produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...

, where it later appeared under the handle of Metrocolor
Metrocolor
Metrocolor is the trade name used by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for films processed at their laboratory. Virtually all of these films were actually shot on Kodak's Eastmancolor film.-External links:* at Internet Movie Database...

 (the generic name used for all films processed by MGM's lab). Films shot in Ansco Color included The Man on the Eiffel Tower
The Man on the Eiffel Tower
The Man on the Eiffel Tower is a 1949 American mystery film directed by Burgess Meredith, Charles Laughton, Irving Allen and starring Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone, Meredith, and Robert Hutton. It is based on the 1931 novel La Tête d'un homme by Belgian writer Georges Simenon featuring his...

(1949), Brigadoon
Brigadoon
Brigadoon is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. Songs from the musical, such as "Almost Like Being in Love" have become standards....

(1954), Kiss Me, Kate
Kiss Me, Kate (film)
Kiss Me Kate is the 1953 MGM film adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name.Inspired by The Taming of the Shrew, it tells the tale of musical theater actors, Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi, who were once married and are now performing opposite each other in the roles of Petruchio and...

(1953), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Lust for Life
Lust for Life (film)
Lust for Life is a MGM biographical film about the life of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, based on the 1934 novel by Irving Stone and adapted by Norman Corwin.It was directed by Vincente Minnelli and produced by John Houseman...

(1956), the final film shot on this film stock.

In 1978, Agfa ceased production of color film based upon the original Agfacolor process, switching to Kodak's E-6 process
E-6 process
The E-6 process is a chromogenic photographic process for developing Ektachrome, Fujichrome and other color reversal photographic film....

.
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