‘A Brilliant Meteor Across the Filmic Heavens’: Brigitte Helm in British Film Culture, 1926–33

Abstract

This article examines German star Brigitte Helm within British film culture across 1926–33. I identify three stages in her active career on British screens. Firstly, I analyse the impact of her debut role in Metropolis (1927), demonstrating how Helm was central to its marketing and reception within the UK – and how this legacy shaped her subsequent stardom within British film culture. Secondly, I argue that the apogee of Helm’s stardom within the UK was 1929–30, when her silent films achieved their greatest critical and commercial successes. I show that she became a central figure not just to popular trade discussion, but to highbrow critics associated with Close Up. Finally, I identify the specific circumstances that led to her premature disappearance from British screens after 1933. I analyse how – despite her English-language productions of 1931–32 – the coming of sound limited her appeal to the UK market, a situation exacerbated by the breakdown of industrial/political relations with Germany. Through an analysis of a wide range of contemporary trade and press material, I present Helm as a case study of the shifting industrial and cultural landscape of a transitional era of British film culture.