Midnight Revue

You might think that musicals weren’t on top of the DEFA’s production list—which was true until the late 1950s. The very popular fairy tale genre had already paved the way for musical operas, and, as lots of East Germans were finding ways to sneak over to the West to watch the escapist musicals from Hollywood or West Germany’s Schlagerfilme, a shift happened. Gottfried Kolditz’s Midnight Revue manages to be a meta-musical as well as a vibrant spectacle in itself. Filled to the brim with the most popular actors of the GDR, it shows that Babelsberg could measure up to Hollywood very well.  

When producer Kruse fails to put together a cast and crew for a musical he promised, his assistant Claudia takes over and locks a creative team inside a villa in the hopes of creating a musical masterpiece. Composer Alexander accidentally ends up among the captives and ends up saving the day. Midnight Revue was shot on chromogenic Agfacolor Wolfen film stock and in Totalvision, East Germany’s version of CinemaScope.

Streaming as part of “Spotlight on Genre”, a series revisiting post-war genre films made in Germany. From the postwar era to the present, this collection spans a wonderfully unruly range of genres: cult horror, dystopian science fiction, revisionist Westerns, dark fairy tales, psychological thrillers, rock musicals, and bittersweet social comedies. Whether embracing genre conventions or gleefully dismantling them, these films show how genre filmmaking can explore social anxieties, challenge expectations, and push cinematic boundaries. Discover the unexpected side of German cinema. 

Image © DEFA-Stiftung, Horst Blümel