Nero-Film

Nero-Film AG was a German film production company founded in 1925 and based in Berlin during the Weimar era.

The company's name was derived from the names of its two founders: the letters "NE" stood for the name of the entrepreneur Heinrich Nebenzahl, and the letters "RO" for the initials of director Richard Oswald. Originally founded as Nero-Film GmbH, a limited liability company, it was converted into an Aktiengesellschaft, Nero-Film AG, in 1927. Under the influence of Nebenzahl's son Seymour Nebenzal, Nero-Film was one of the most artistically ambitious production companies in Germany, and with directors like G.W. Pabst and Fritz Lang it produced a number of major films of the Weimar era, such as Pandora's Box, Westfront 1918, The Threepenny Opera, M, Kameradschaft, L'Atlantide and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. In the film industry, the bourgeois-democratic Nero-Film and the proletarian Prometheus Film were the last bulwark against the rise of artistic Nazism. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Seymour Nebenzal was forced to emigrate, and Nero-Film AG was forced to discontinue their work. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse became the first film censored by the Nazi government; Nebenzal and Director Fritz Lang appeared before Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who ordered Mabuse destroyed and banned it from the Reich. Nebenzal, using his American passport, fled that evening to Switzerland and then to France, where he collaborated with the Director Anatole Litvak to produce Mayerling, a huge success for the star, Charles Boyer.

In Los Angeles, Nebenzal led various later film production companies under the famous name of Nero-Film.

Selected filmography

Seymour Nebenzal's son Harold Nebenzal continued the three-generation tradition of Nero-Film through the production of such motion picture masterpieces as Cabaret and Gabriela.

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