On 28 October 1929 the first all-talking German film, Atlantik, loosely based on the foundering of the “unsinkable” Titanic, premiered in Berlin. Although the director, E. A. Dupont, and all the main actors were indeed of German origin (Schöning), the film had been shot in the “British Hollywood,” at the Elstree studios near London (Warren). German filmmakers responded to the coming of sound film by shooting movies simultaneously in two or three languages (primarily English, German, and French) with different casts, but on identical sets, and based on the same script. Atlantik, shot in a German and an English version (Atlantic) by the same director, inaugurated the concept.

In Germany and elsewhere, multiple language versions (MLVs) soon became the predominant method of adapting films for other countries. They had two important advantages over dubbing: they guaranteed unity of body and voice, important to secure the credibility of the new technology with contemporary audiences; and the stories could be adapted to the different tastes of the respective target audience. Over time, however, international audiences got used to seeing dubbed or subtitled films (Wahl, Sprechen, 105–20 and 139–44), and film producers increasingly decided to sell or buy the rights to remake films instead of shooting expensive multiple versions. British and American companies abandoned MLVs in the early 1930s, and only the largest European film company of the time, the German Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft (Ufa) based in Babelsberg near Berlin, continued to produce MLVs on a grand scale until 1936. By the end of the Weimar Republic, Ufa had produced a total of twenty-nine MLVs of its German films (seventeen in French; six in French and English; three in English; two in Hungarian; and one in French, English, and Hungarian) (fig. 14.1).

Ufa's directors had initially been extremely hesitant to switch to sound film production, although the sound-on-film system had actually been developed in Germany in the early 1920s by two engineers, Hans Vogt and Joseph Massolle, and physicist Jo Engl, who called their invention Tri-Ergon (“Work of the Three”). Driven by American successes, however, in February 1929 Ufa became the first German film company to stop producing silent films (Mühl-Benninghaus, 70). During June and July 1929, while Atlantik was being filmed in England, Ufa shot its own first talkie, also as an MLV, Melodie des Herzens (Melody of the Heart, directed by Hanns Schwarz), which premiered in Berlin on 16 December 1929.