From Nazis to Jess Franco -or- The Importance of the System of Railway Station Cinemas to the Development of Non-Linear Narration in European Exploitation Movies

Just go back 120 years and think about the new technology called kinematoraph. Think about what producers of content for this new medium would have had in mind back then. And now fast forward to 2020.

If you put on a VR-device and you are looking for suitable content, you will find three forms of vr-films: First, to show off the technical possibilities of the device, The second type will try to infom you (documentaries) and the third will simply exploit the possibilies for sheer titillation (ie. porn). You will not find VR-Movies that try to carry a story and use the vr technology as an integral device (just now it starts with a few short films, like back then with Meliès).

The drive behind producing content, esp. if you are a film distributor, is solely a financial one. If you produce films, you have to serve the outlets, the POSs and they will demand, which form the product will have to take.

When cinemas began to become stationary (as opposed to the travelling show attractions they had been before), you basically can find two kind of outlets for the movies. The first are the direct descendants of the carnivals, showing shorter films, mostly with more exploitative nature and/or newsreels. The second are the movie theaters who take on the movies as direct and cheaper competition on stage theaters.

The Nazis took cinema seriously and used both channels for their propaganda. The second thing the Nazis took seriously was transportation and the third was architecture. Putting these three things together, you come up with a plan that looks like this:

 - Rebuild the Railway System, tear down the useless old railway stations and raise modern, bigger ones that will include cinemas. Why? Travelling by train you often experienced long waiting times between train connections. That time should not be passed aimlessly but in the comfort of a warm, cozy cinema, where you could smoke and drink and be subject to the latest propaganda newsreel of the nazis.

Tearing down the old railway stations was then taken care of by the allies in form of bombing them in the war. The destruction of complete cities was not unwelcome by the Nazis as it provided them with the opportunity to rebuild them in that Germania-style that Adolf Speer had created. So those plans were created and - after the war
- simply carried out because mostly the people that were responsible for city-development had benn the same before-in-and after WWII (as there was no money -of course- this was done very cheaply and quickly but nevertheless exactly as it was planned in the Third Reich)

So all of the railway stations rebuilt after WWII had a movie theatre in it, or very close by in case the station had not been hit by a bomb (you could be shure that at least one of the surrounding houses had been... )
A Company was founded in 1950, the AKI (AktualitätenKIno corpration) whose aim was to operate these cinemas, calld the BALIs (BAhnhofsLIchtspiele -Railway Station Bioscopes). The content should not be longer than 20 minutes as that was the expected time a traveller would stay inside.

So there, in 1960 you had three distinctive kinds of cinemas: The Cinemas for premieres which would keep the movie as long as the box-office returns were right - they became the multiplexes we know. The cinemas that would get the secondary rights to show the film after it's initial run (that became the cinemas with schedules/programms, who would show movies only a few (fixed) times, including "art" movies - they became the arthouse cinemas). The Newsreel-Cinemas in the railway station that would show a 20 minute newsreel, then a 20 minute short movie, then a 20 minute documentary without ever interrupting that cicle as they had only one screen - and being "trapped" inside the station's architecture could not easily expand. But they would not (as in the US) be the "grindhouses" that would show the feature-length movies until they were physically useless.

That changed when TV took over in the mid-to-late sixties. People would not pay money anymore for the news that they got for free with the TV (and much more in time).  And with the introduction of the IC (InterCity) system for the trains the time the traveller had to wait for the connecting train was reduced (or at least the amount of people that would have to wait).

The up to 25 BALIs or "Bahnhofskinos" (Railway Station Cinemas) now were in trouble. Who would actually pay money? Well there was something left over from the travelling shows, remember? Sensationalism! That was the answer, quick and dirty, exciting and titillating. The customer would be satisfied if he would see somthing exciting every 15 minutes or so, and he would not care about plots and characterization as he would come in in the middle of a movie and get out before the end.

Movie producers and distributors that would feed that market would have to take care that they could produce 60-70 min (1 reel in 16mm) as cheaply as possible with something interesting happening every 15 minutes. That could be violence, horror or sex.

Although the establishment of BALIs is a particularly German thing, West Germany was still the biggest European movie market. American "B" movies were not of interest as they still were "normal" feature-length dramas with a slow build-up and lots of explanation and plotting up to the final twist. Those movies were practically unusable. So the production money went into cheaply produced plot-boilers that would have no linear (or any) narration. Just set-pieces.

Take for example the development from KRIMI to GIALLO or from WINNETOU to SPAGHETTI WESTERN.
The transition took place when the first of those german films were shown on TV and the producers had to find other outlets for their work. With the emphasis on set-pieces (the murders in the Gialli and the shoot-outs in the spaghettis) and them showing up every 15 minutes or so, those italian products (often financed by german money) were suitable for the market. Of course pornography was too.

And now we have the ingrediences for a classic eurosleaze movie to be shown in the BALIs: No exposition, no motivation, no characterization, only Sex&Violence and in between some neglectable plot, but spiced up by beautiful cinematography.

And who would be better equipped for this than Jesus Franco??? That is why his ventures with german money produced his most outragous (and financially successful) movies.

With the advance of home videos, the cheap thrills of the BALIS could be experinced at home and today waiting times are basically neglectable. So all of them closed in the mid-eighties. And thus the source of income for Franco too.

Further viewing: Try to check out the highly interesting  documentary "Cinema Perverso" it's available on amazon.de
Trailer:
Cinema Perverso on Youtube