FROM CAUGARI TO HITLER
A PSYCHOLOGICAL HISTORY
OF THE GERMAN FILM
By SIEGFRIED KRACAUER
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright, 1947, by Princeton University Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
Hardback Reprint Edition, 1W
PREFACE
THIS book is not concerned with German films merely for their own
sake ; rather, it aims at increasing our knowledge of pre-Hitler Germany
in a specific way.
It is my contention that through an analysis of the German
films deep psychological dispositions predominant in Germany from
1918 to 1933 can be exposed dispositions which influenced the
course of events during that time and which will have to be reckoned
with in the post-Hitler era.
I have reason to believe that the use made here of films as a
medium of research can profitably be extended to studies of current
mass behavior in the United States and elsewhere. I also believe that
studies of this kind may help in the planning of films not to mention
other media of communication which will effectively implement
the cultural aims of the United Nations.
I am most indebted to Miss Iris Barry, Curator of the Museum
of Modern Art Film Library, New York, to whom my book literally
owes its existence; she not only suggested this study, but assisted
generously and in many ways towards its realization. I am grateful
to the Rockefeller Foundation, which enabled me to embark upon
my enterprise, and to Mr. John Marshall of that office for his continued
interest in its progress. I wish to express my deep gratitude
to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which honored
me twice with a fellowship, and to Mr. Henry Allen Moe,
Secretary General of this Foundation, who never tired of furthering
my endeavors. Among those to whom I am very indebted for continual
advice and help in the organization of the material and in
matters of style, I expressly name Miss Barbara Deming, former
analyst of the Library of Congress Film Project; and Miss Margaret
Miller, Miss Ruth Olson and Mr. Arthur Rosenheimer, Jr.,
staff members of the Museum of Modern Art. Sincere thanks are also
due to the Librarian of the Museum of Modern Art, Mr. Bernard
Karpel, and the members of the Library staff ; they patiently and
vi PREFACE
expertly lent me a helping hand whenever I needed it and made me
feel at home in this Library, with its invaluable facilities for studies
of the film. Finally, I wish to thank my wife, though whatever I may
say to thank her is insufficient. As always, she has helped me in the
preparation of this book, and as always I have benefited greatly
from her faculty of perceiving the essential and penetrating to its
core.
SIEGFRIED KKACAUER
May, 1946
New York City
CONTENTS
PREFACE v
INTRODUCTION 3
I: THE ARCHAIC PERIOD (1895-1918)
1. PEACE AND WAR. 15
2. FOREBODINGS 28
3. GENESIS OF UFA 35
II: THE POSTWAR PERIOD (1918-1984)
4. THE SHOCK OF FREEDOM 43
5. CALIGARI 61
6. PROCESSION OF TYRANTS 77
7. DESTINY 88
8. MTTTE CHAOS 96
9. CRUCIAL DILEMMA 107
10. FROM REBELLION TO SUBMISSION 115
III: THE STABILIZED PERIOD (19&4-19S9)
11. DECLINE 131
12. FROZEN GROUND 138
13. THE PROSTITUTE AND THE ADOLESCENT 153
14. THE NEW REALISM 165
15. MONTAGE 181
16. BRIEF REVEILLE 190
IV: THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD (1930-1983)
17. SONGS AND ILLUSIONS 203
18. MURDERER AMONG Us 215
19. TIMID HERESIES 223
20. FOR A BETTER WORLD 232
21. NATIONAL EPIC 251
vii
viii CONTENTS
SUPPLEMENT: PROPAGANDA ANJ> THE NAZI WAR FILM
1. NAZI VIEWS AND MEASURES 275
2. FILM DEVICES 277
3. THE SWASTIKA WORLD 280
4. SCREEN DRAMATURGY 288
5. CONFLICT WITH REALITY 297
STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS 308
BIBLIOGRAPHY 333
INDEX 347
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. PASSION: The threat of mass domination
2. CATJGABI : Insane authority
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
3. CAXJGARI: A draftsman's imagination
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
4*. CALIGARI: The three flights of stairs in the lunatic
asylum symbolize Or. Caligari's position at the top of the
hierarchy
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
5. NOSFERATTT: The vampire, defeated by love, dissolves
into thin air
(From Paul Rotha, The Film Till Now, Jonathan Cape, Ltd.,
1930)
6. DR. MABTJSE THE GAMBLER :
Interpenetration of realistic
and expressionist style, betraying the close relationship
between Mabuse and Caligari
(From the collection of Charles L. Turner)
7. WAXWORKS: A phantasmagoria Jack-the-Bippcr pursuing
the lovers
(From the collection of Charles L. Turner)
8. WAXWORKS: Ivan the Terrible, an incarnation of insatiable
lusts and unheard-of cruelties
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
9. DESTINY: The huge wall symbolizing Fate's inacces-
sibility
(From the collection of Charles L. Turner)
10. NIBKLUNGKN: Triumph of the ornamental over the
human
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
11. NIBELUNGBN : The patterns of Nibelungen are resumed
in Nazi pageantry
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
12. TRIUMPH OF THE WILL: The patterns of Nibelungen are
resumed in Nazi pageantry
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
13. NEW YEAR'S EVE: The suicide of the caf6-owncr
14*. THE LAST LATTGH: Humiliation incarnate
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
iz
x ILLUSTRATIONS
15. THE LAST I^UGH: The revolving door something between
a merry-go-round and a roulette wheel
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
16. A GILASS oir WATER: With its stress on symmetry tne
de*cor breathes romantic nostalgia
rFrom the collection of Charles L. Turner)
17. PEAK OF DESTINY: Mountain climbers are devotees performing
the rites of a cult
CFrom the collection of Dr. Kurt Pintbus)
18. THE GOI^EM: The Golem, a figure of clay, animated by
his master, Rabbi Loew
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
19. WABNi^a SHADOWS: Magical therapy the Count and
his guests follow their shadows into the realm o tne
subconscious
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
20. FRIDERICUS REX: The young king
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
21 THE STRKET: Mute objects take on life
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
22 THE STREET: This gesture recurrent in many German
films is symptomatic of the desire to return to the
maternal womb
CFrom the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
23. VARIETY: .Tannings' bulky back plays a conspicuous role
in the prison scene
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
24. VARIETY: The inquisitive camera breaks into the magic
circle of action
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
25. WATS TO STRENGTH AND BEAUTY: Tableau vivant of a
Greek gymnasium
(From the collection of Dr. Kurt Pinthus)
26. TARTTJITE : The grand-style manner
27. METROPOLIS : Sham alliance between labor and capital
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
28. METROPOLIS : Ornamental despair
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
29. THE JOYUESS STREET : Asta Nielsen in one of the roles in
which she discards social conventions in her abundance
of love
(From the Museum o Modern Art Film Library)
30. KlAMPF DER TERXIA: One of the many youth films expressing
a longing for adolescence
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
ILLUSTRATIONS xl
31. THE JOYLESS STREET: The ghastliness of real life
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
32. THE JOYLESS STREET :
Realism, not symbolism
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
33. SECRETS OF A SOUL: Dreams cinematically externalized
34s. THE LOVE OP JEANNE NEY: The orgy of anti-Bolshevist
soldiery a scene elicited from life itself
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
35. THE LOVE OF JEANNE NEY : The broken mirror, a silent
witness, tells of glamour and destruction
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
36. THE LOVE OF JEANNE NEY : Casual configurations of life
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
37. BERLIN : Patterns of movement
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
38. BERLIN : What once denoted chaos is now simply part of
the record a fact among facts
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
39. BERLIN: A close-up of the gutter illustrates the harshness
of mechanized life
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
40. ACCIDENT: The use of distorting mirrors helps to defy
deep-rooted conventions
(From the collection of Charles L. Turner)
41. DREI VON DER TANKSTELLE: A playful daydream woven
of the materials of everyday life
42. SONG OF LIFE : A symbolic scene which glorifies vitality
(From the collection of Herman G. Weinberg)
43. THE MAN WITHOUT A NAME: The nightmarish workings
of bureaucracy
44. THE VICTOR: Hans Albers, the embodiment of popular
daydreams
45. THE BLUE ANGEL :
Jannings as the professor taunted by
his pupils
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
46. THE BLUE ANGEL: Marlene Dietrich as Lola Lola
provocative legs and an over-all impassivity
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
47. M: The empty stairwell echoing with the cries of Elsie's
mother
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
48. M: The knives reflected around Lorre's face define him
as a prisoner of his evil urges
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
xii ILLUSTRATIONS
4<9. M: The group of criminals, beggars and street women
sitting in judgment on the child-murderer
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
50. EMXX, TJ3srr> i>rm DETEXTIVE: The thief, a Pied Piper in
reverse, pursued by the children under a radiant morning
sun
51. MADCHEN IN UNIFORM: The headmistress a feminine
Frederick the G-reat
(From the collection of Theodore Huff)
52. MAJDCHEN nsr UNIFORM: : To prepare the audience for this
scene, the staircase is featured throughout the film'
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
53. WEST-FRONT 1918: Field hospital filled with moans and
agonized cries
(From the collection of Herman O. Weinberg)
54. THE BEGGAR'S OPERA: Glass screens transform the
crowded and smoky caf6 into a confusing maze
(From Paul Rotha, Celluloid, Longmans, Green & Co., Inc.,
1933)
55. COMRADESHIP : The German miners about to remove the
iron fence set up since Versailles
(From the collection of Herman G. Weinberg)
56. COMRADESHIP : Grerman miners in the shower room the
audience is let into one of the arcana of everyday life
(From William Hunter, Scrutiny of Cinema, Wishart & Co.,
1982)
57. KTTECIJE WAMPE: Young athletes at the Red sports
festival which glorifies collective life
58. EIGHT GTRLS nsr A BOAT : This film betrays the affinity of
the earlier Youth Movement with the Nazi spirit
59. AVALANCHE: Emphasis on cloud conglomerations indicates
the ultimate fusion of the mountain- and the
Hitler-cult
60. TRIUMPH: OB- THE WIXIL: Emphasis on cloud conglomerations
indicates the ultimate fusion of the mountain- and
the Hitler-cult
(From the Museum of Modern Art Film Library)
61. THE REBEL: A thinly masked Hitlerite
62. THE BI/UE LIG-HT: Junta, an incarnation of elemental
powers
(From the collection of Herman G. Weinberg)
63. THE ANTTHEM: OE- HIETTXHEN: The old king
64. DAWIQ-: The smell of real war
FROM CALIGARI TO HITLER
A PSYCHOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE GERMAN FILM
INTRODUCTION
WHEN, from 1920 on, German films began to break the boycott
established by the Allies against the former enemy, they struck
New York, London and Paris audiences as achievements that were
as puzzling as they were fascinating.
1
Archetype of all forthcoming
postwar films, THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGABI aroused passionate discussions.
While one critic called it "the first significant attempt at
the expression of a creative mind in the medium of cinematog-
raphy,"
2
another stated : "It has the odor of tainted food. It leaves
a taste of cinders in the mouth." 3
In exposing the German soul, the
postwar films seemed to make even more of a riddle of it. Macabre,
sinister, morbid: these were the favorite adjectives used in describing
them.
With the passage of time the German movies changed themes
and modes of representation. But despite all changes they preserved
certain traits typical of their sensational start even after 1924, a
year considered the beginning of a long period of decline. In the
appraisal of these traits complete unanimity has been reached among
American and European observers. What they most admire is the
talent with which, from the time of CALIGARI, German film directors
marshaled the whole visual sphere: their outspoken feeling for impressive
settings, their virtuosity in developing action through appropriate
lighting. Connoisseurs also appreciate the conspicuous
part played in German films by a camera which the Germans were
the first to render completely mobile. In addition, there is no expert
who would not acknowledge the organizational power operative in
these films a collective discipline which accounts for the unity of
*
Lubitsch's historical costume film PASSION the first German production to be
brought to this country was shown at New York late in 1920. In April 1921, there
followed the New York release of THE CABINET OF DR. CAUOABI.
a
Rotha, FUm Titt Now, p. 178.
9
Amiguet, Cintma/ CMmat, p. 87.
4 INTRODUCTION
narrative as well as for the perfect integration of lights, settings and
actors.
4
Owing to such unique values, the German screen exerted
world-wide influence, especially after the total evolution of its' studio
and camera devices in THE LAST LAUGH (1924) and VARIETY
(1925). "It was the German camera-work (in the fullest sense of
that term) which most deeply impressed Hollywood."
5
In a characteristic
expression of respect, Hollywood hired all the German film
directors, actors and technicians it could get its hands on. France,
too, proved susceptible to screen manners on the other side of the
Rhine. And the classic Russian films benefited by the German science
of lighting.
6
Admiration and imitation, however, need not be based on intrinsic
understanding. Much has been written about the German cinema, in
a continual attempt to analyze its exceptional qualities and, if possible,
to solve the disquieting problems bound up with its existence.
But this literature, essentially aesthetic, deals with films as if they
were autonomous structures. Eor example, the question as to why it
was in Germany that the camera first reached complete mobility has
not even been raised. Nor has the evolution of the German cinema
been grasped. Paul Rotha, who along with the collaborators of the
English film magazine Close Up early recognized the artistic merits
of German films, confines himself to a merely chronological scheme.
"In surveying the German cinema from the end of the war until the
coming of the American dialogue film," he says, "the output may
roughly be divided into three groups. Firstly, the theatrical costume
picture ; secondly, the big middle period of the studio art films ; and
thirdly, the decline of the German film in order to fall into line with
the American 'picture-sense' output."
7
Why these three groups of
films were bound to follow each other, Rotha does not try to explain.
Such external accounts are the rule. They lead straight into dangerous
misconceptions. Attributing the decline after 1924 to the exodus
of important German film people and American interference in
German film business, most authors dispose of the German pictures
of the time by qualifying them as "Americanized" or "international-
4
Rotha, Film Till Now, pp. 177-78; Barry, Program Notes, Series I, program 4,
and Series III, program 2; Potamkin, "Kino and Lichtspiel," Close Up, Nov. 1929, p.
388; Vincent, Sistoire de VArt Cintmatographiq'ue, pp. 189-40.
5
Barry, Program Notes, Series I, program 4.
Jahier "42 Ans de Cinema," Le Role intellectuel fa Cintma, p. 86.
7
Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 177. It should be noted that Rotha expresses the views
then held of the German movies by French and English film aesthetes, although his
book is more vigorous and perceptive than those which had preceded it
INTRODUCTION 5
ized" products.
8
It will be seen that these allegedly "Americanized"
films were in fact true expressions of contemporaneous German life.
And, in general, it will be seen that the technique, the story content,
and the evolution of the films of a nation are fully understandable
only in relation to the actual psychological pattern of this nation.
n
The films of a nation reflect its mentality in a more direct way
than other artistic media for two reasons :
First, films are never the product of an individual. The Russian
film director Pudovkin emphasizes the collective character of film
production by identifying it with industrial production: "The technical
manager can achieve nothing without foremen and workmen
and their collective effort will lead to no good result if every collaborator
limits himself only to a mechanical performance of his narrow
function. Team work is that which makes every, even the most
insignificant, task a part of the living work and organically connects
it to the general task," 9
Prominent German film directors shared
these views and acted accordingly. Watching the shooting of a ffl
directed by G. W. Pabst in the French Joinville studios, I noticed
that he readily followed the suggestions of his technicians as to
details of the settings and the distribution of lights. Pabst told me
that he considered contributions of that kind invaluable. Since any
film production unit embodies a mixture of heterogeneous interests
and inclinations, teamwork in this field tends to exclude arbitrary
handling of screen material, suppressing individual peculiarities in
favor of traits common to many people.
10
Second, films address themselves, and appeal, to the anonymous
multitude. Popular films or, to be more precise, popular screen
motifs can therefore be supposed to satisfy existing mass desires.
It has occasionally been remarked that Hollywood manages to sell
films which do not give the masses what they really want. In this
opinion Hollywood films more often than not stultify and misdirect
a public persuaded by its own passivity and by overwhelming publicity
into accepting them. However, the distorting influence of
8 Bardeche and Brasillach, History of Motion Pictures, p. 258 ff.; Vincent, JETfctoire
de ?Art Cintmatographigue, pp. 161-62; Rotha, Film Till Now, pp. 176-77;
Jeanne, Le Cinema Allemand," I/Art Cmtmatoffraphique, VIII, 4fl ff.j etc.
8
Pudovkin, Film Techv&gue, p. 186.
>
Balazs, Der Oeist dtt Films, pp. 187-88.
6 INTRODUCTION
Hollywood mass entertainment should not be overrated. The manipulator
depends upon the inherent qualities of his material; even the
official Nazi war films, pure propaganda products as they were, mirrored
certain national characteristics which could not be fabricated.
11
What holds true of them applies all the more to the films of a competitive
society. Hollywood cannot afford to ignore spontaneity on
the part of the public. General discontent becomes apparent in waning
box-office receipts, and the film industry, vitally interested in
profit, is bound to adjust itself, so far as possible, to the changes of
mental climate.
12
To be sure, American audiences receive what Hollywood
wants them to want; but in the long run public desires determine
the nature of Hollywood films.
18
Ill
What films reflect are not so much explicit credos as psychological
dispositions those deep layers of collective mentality which
extend more or less below the dimension of consciousness. Of course,
popular magazines and broadcasts, bestsellers, ads, fashions in language
and other sedimentary products of a people's cultural life also
yield valuable information about predominant attitudes, widespread
inner tendencies. But the medium of the screen exceeds these sources
in inclusiveness.
Owing to diverse camera activities, cutting and many special
devices, films are able, and therefore obliged, to scan the whole visible
world. This effort results in what Erwin Panofsky in a memorable
lecture defined as the "dynamization of space" : "In a movie theater
... the spectator has a fixed seat, but only physically. . . .
Aesthetically, he is in permanent motion, as his eye identifies itself
with the lens of the camera which permanently shifts in distance
and direction. And the space presented to the spectator is as movable
as the spectator is himself. Not only do solid bodies move in space,
but space itself moves, changing, turning, dissolving and recrystallizing.
. . ,"
14
11 See the analyses of these films in the Supplement.
"Cf. Farrell, "Will the Commercialization of Publishing Destroy Good Writing?"
New Directions, 9, 1946, p. 26.
13 In pre-Hitler Germany, the film industry was less concentrated than in this
country. Ufa was preponderant without being omnipotent, and smaller companies carried
on beside the bigger ones. This led to a diversity of products, which intensified the
reflective function of the German screen.
Panofsky, "Style and Medium in the Moving Pictures," transition, 1987, pp.
124U25.
INTRODUCTION 7
In the course of their spatial conquests, films of fiction and films
of fact alike capture innumerable components of the world they
mirror: huge mass displays, casual configurations of human bodies
and inanimate objects, and an endless succession of unobtrusive
phenomena. As a matter of fact, the screen shows itself particularly
concerned with the unobtrusive, the normally neglected. Preceding
all other cinematic devices, close-ups appeared at the very beginning
of the cinema and continued to assert themselves throughout its history.
"When I got to directing films," Erich von Stroheim told an
interviewer, "I would work day and night, without food, without
sleeping sometimes, to have every detail perfect, even to descriptions
of how facial expressions should change."
15
Films seem to fulfill an
innate mission in ferreting out minutiae.
Inner life manifests itself in various elements and conglomerations
of external life, especially in those almost imperceptible surface
data which form an essential part of screen treatment. In recording
the visible world whether current reality or an imaginary universe
films therefore provide clues to hidden mental processes. Surveying
the era of silent films, Horace M. Kallen points to the revealing
function of close-ups: "Slight actions, such as the incidental play of
the fingers, the opening or clenching of a hand, dropping a handkerchief,
playing with some apparently irrelevant object, stumbling,
falling, seeking and not finding and the like, became the visible hieroglyphs
of the unseen dynamics of human relations. . . ."
le
Films
are particularly inclusive because their "visible hieroglyphs" supplement
the testimony of their stories proper. And permeating both the
stories and the visuals, the "unseen dynamics of human relations"
are more or less characteristic of the inner life of the nation from
which the films emerge.
That films particularly suggestive of mass desires coincide with
outstanding box-office successes would seem a matter of course. But a
hit may cater only to one of many coexisting demands, and not even
to a very specific one. In her paper on the methods of selection of
films to be preserved by the Library of Congress, Barbara Deming
elaborates upon this point : **Even if one could figure out . . . which
were the most popular films, it might turn out that in saving those
at the top, one would be saving the same dream over and over again
. . . and losing other dreams which did not happen to appear in the
18
Lewis, "Erich von Stroheim . . ," New York Times, June 22, 1941.
Kallen, Art and Freedom, II, 809.
8 INTRODUCTION
most popular individual pictures but did appear over and over again
in a great number of cheaper, less popular pictures."
17
What counts
is not so much the statistically measurable popularity of films as the
popularity of their pictorial and narrative motifs. Persistent reiteration
of these motifs marks them as outward projections of inner
urges. And they obviously carry most symptomatic weight when they
occur in both popular and unpopular films, in grade B pictures as
well as in superproductions. This history of the German screen is a
history of motifs pervading films of all levels.
IV
To speak of the peculiar mentality of a nation by no means
implies the concept of a fixed national character. The interest here
lies exclusively in such collective dispositions or tendencies as prevail
within a nation at a certain stage of its development. What fears and
hopes swept Germany immediately after World War I? Questions of
this kind are legitimate because of their limited range ; incidentally,
they are the only ones which can be answered by an appropriate
analysis of the films of the time. In other words, this book is not concerned
with establishing some national character pattern allegedly
elevated above history, but it is concerned with the psychological
pattern of a people at a particular time. There is no lack of studies
covering the political, social, economic and cultural history of the
great nations. I propose to add to these well-known types that of a
psychological history.
It is always possible that certain screen motifs are relevant only
to part of the nation, buť caution in this respect should not prejudice
one against the existence of tendencies affecting the nation as a
whole. They are the less questionable as common traditions and permanent
interrelationship between the different strata of the population
exert a unifying influence in the depths of collective life. In preNazi
Germany, middle-class penchants penetrated all strata; they
competed with the political aspirations of the Left and also filled the
voids of the upper-class mind. This accounts for the nation-wide
appeal of the German cinema a cinema firmly rooted in middleclass
mentality. From 1930 to 1933, the actor Hans Albers played
"Deming, 'The Library of Congress Fflm Project: Exposition of a Method,"
Library of Congrest Quarterly, 1944, p. 20.
INTRODUCTION 9
the heroes of films in which typically bourgeois daydreams found
outright fulfillment; his exploits gladdened the hearts of worker
audiences, and in MADCHEN IN UNIFORM we see his photograph
worshiped by the daughters of aristocratic families.
Scientific convention has it that in the chain of motivations
national characteristics are effects rather than causes effects of
natural surroundings, historic experiences, economic and social conditions.
And since we are all human beings, similar external factors
can be expected to provoke analogous psychological reactions everywhere.
The paralysis of minds spreading throughout Germany between
1924 and 1929 was not at all specifically German. It would be
easy to show that under the influence of analogous circumstances a
similar collective paralysis occurs and has occurred in other
countries as well.
18
However, the dependence of a people's mental
attitudes upon external factors does not justify the frequent disregard
of these attitudes. Effects may at any time turn into spontaneous
causes. Notwithstanding their derivative character, psychological
tendencies often assume independent life, and, instead of
automatically changing with ever-changing circumstances, become
themselves essential springs of historical evolution. In the course of
its history every nation develops dispositions which survive their
primary causes and undergo a metamorphosis of their own. They
cannot simply be inferred from current external factors, but, conversely,
help determine reactions to such factors. We are all human
beings, if sometimes in different ways. These collective dispositions
gain momentum in cases of extreme political change. The dissolution
of political systems results in the decomposition of psychological
systems, and in the ensuing turmoil traditional inner attitudes, now
released, are bound to become conspicuous, whether they are challenged
or endorsed.
That most historians neglect the psychological factor is demonstrated
by striking gaps in our knowledge of German history from
World War I to Hitler's ultimate triumph the period covered in
this book. And yet the dimensions of event, milieu and ideology have
18 Of course, such similarities never amount to more than surface resemblances.
External circumstances are nowhere strictly identical, and whatever psychological
tendency they entail comes true within a texture of other tendencies which color its
meaning.
!0 INTRODUCTION
been thoroughly investigated. It is well known that the German
"Revolution" of November 1918 failed to revolutionize Germany;
that the then omnipotent Social Democratic Party proved omnipotent
only in breaking the backbone of the revolutionary forces, but
was incapable of liquidating the army, the bureaucracy, the bigestate
owners and the moneyed classes ; that these traditional powers
actually continued to govern the Weimar Republic which came into
shadowy being after 1919. It is also known how hard the young
Republic was pressed by the political consequences of the defeat and
the stratagems of the leading German industrialists and financiers
who unrestrainedly upheld inflation, impoverishing the old middle
class. Finally, one knows that after the five years of the Dawes Plan
that blessed era of foreign loans so advantageous to big business
the economic world crisis dissolved the mirage of stabilization, destroyed
what was still left of middle-class background and democracy,
and completed the general despair ty adding mass unemployment.
It was in the ruins of "the system" which had never been a true
structure that the Nazi spirit flourished.
1*
But these economic, social and political factors do not suffice to
explain the tremendous impact of Hitlerism and the chronic inertia
in the opposite camp. Significantly, many observant Germans refused
until the last moment to take Hitler seriously, and even after
his rise to power considered the new regime a transitory adventure.
Such opinions at least indicate that there was something unaccountable
in the domestic situation, something not to be inferred from
circumstances within the normal field of vision.
Only a few analyses of the Weimar Republic hint at the psychological
mechanisms behind the inherent weakness of the Social Democrats,
the inadequate conduct of the communists and the strange
reactions of the German masses.20 Franz Neumann is forced to
explain the failure of the communists partly in terms of "their inability
to evaluate correctly the psychological factors and sociological
trends operating among German workers. . . ." Then he adds to a
statement on the Reichstag's limited political power the revealing
remark: "Democracy might have survived none the less but only if
the democratic value system had been firmly rooted in the soci19
Cf. Kosenberg, QetohichU far J>evtch6n Repvblik; Schwaraschild, World in
Trance; etc.
a*
Outstanding among these analyses is Horkheimer, ed., Studien fiber Autorit&t
und FamiKe; see especially Horkheimer, "Theoretische Entwtirfe Uber Autoritat und
Familie," pp. 8-76.
INTRODUCTION 11
ety. . . ." 21
Erich Promm amplifies this by contending that the
German workers' psychological tendencies neutralized their political
tenets, thus precipitating the collapse of the socialist parties and the
trade-unions.22
The behavior of broad middle-class strata also seemed to be determined
by overwhelming compulsions. In a study published in 1930 I
pointed out the pronounced '^white-collar" pretensions of the bulk
of German employees, whose economic and social status in reality
bordered on that of the workers, or was even inferior to it.
23
Although
these lower middle-class people could no longer hope for bourgeois
security, they scorned all doctrines and ideals more in harmony with
their plight, maintaining attitudes that had lost any basis in reality.
The consequence was mental forlornness :
they persisted in a kind of
vacuum which added further to their psychological obduracy. The
conduct of the petty bourgeoisie proper was particularly striking.
Small shopkeepers, tradesmen and artisans were so full of resentments
that they shrank from adjusting themselves. Instead of realizing
that it might be in their practical interest to side with democracy,
they preferred, like the employees, to listen to Nazi promises. Their
surrender to the Nazis was based on emotional fixations rather than
on any facing of facts.
Thus, behind the overt history of economic shifts, social exigencies
and political machinations runs a secret history involving
the inner dispositions of the German people. The disclosure of these
dispositions through the medium of the German screen may help in
the understanding of Hitler's ascent and ascendancy.
21
Neumann, Behemoth, pp. 18-19, 25.
33
Fromm, Escape from Freedom, p. 281.
33 Cf. Kracaucr, Die Angetteltten.
THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
(1895-1918)
1 PEACE AND WAR
IT WAS only after the first World War that the German cinema really
came into being. Its history up to that time was prehistory, an
archaic period insignificant in itself. However, it should not be overlooked.
During that period especially during the course of the
war certain conditions materialized which account for the extraordinary
power of the German film after 1918.
Theoretically speaking, the German cinema commenced in 1895,
when, almost two months before Lumi&re's first public performance,
the Brothers Skladanovsky showed their
'fr
Bioscop" in the Berlin
Wintergarten bits of scenes shot and projected with apparatus they
had built.
1
But this beginning was of little consequence; for until
1910 Germany had virtually no film industry of its own. Films of
French, Italian and American origin among them those of Melies
ingratiated themselves with the audiences of the early tent-shows
(Wanderhinos) , poured into the nickelodeons (Ladenkmos) after
1900, and then passed across the screen of the primitive movie theaters
proper which slowly began to evolve.
2
One French celluloid
strip of 1902, THE BEGGAR'S PKEDE, features a noble Paris beggar
who, after rescuing a lady, contemptuously refuses the money she
offers him, because she has previously indicted him for being a thief.
8
These films of high moral standards competed with pornographic
ones which, of course, never lived up to their exciting promises. Between
1906 and 1908, the films increased in length, and spoken comments
gave way to printed titles. Owing to such improvements, these
years were marked by the opening of many new theaters and the
advent of German film distributors.
4
1
Olimsky, Fibmiovrttchaft, p. 20; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkwwt, 1, 11.
a
Olimsky, Filmwirtschaft, p. 14; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, I, 12.
a Shown by Hans Ricbter in a New York lecture, May 25, 1948.
4
Messter, Mevn Weg, p. 98; Boehmer and Reitz, Film in Wirtschaft und Recht,
pp. 4-6
15
16 THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
The outstanding figure among the few native producers of the
period was Oskar Messter, who makes no effort in his autobiography
to belittle any of his merits. Messter began working in a modest
apartment studio in the Berlin Friedrichstrasse, later the headquarters
for numerous film-makers of low caliber and questionable business
ethics. He possessed the eagerness of a pioneer to experiment, to
try every innovation. At a time in which close-ups were still unusual,
one of his early comedies intermingled with long shots of several
female cyclists a close shot of their fidgeting legs a procedure
anticipating a favorite German camera usage.
6
Messter also promoted
the fashion of "sound films." Originating in France and
America, this species flourished in Germany about 19081909. A costumed
tenor standing before a painted canvas pretended to sing,
endeavoring to synchronize the movements of his mouth with a hidden
gramophone. In addition to grand-opera scenes, folk-songs and
musical parodies, one could listen to Otto Reutter, the incomparable
cabaret artist, whose songs cloaked bitter criticism of life with goodnatured
humor. Sound films of this kind had already been exhibited
during the Paris Worlďs Fair of 1900, but proved too expensive and
intricate to be continued.7
The particular interest they met with in
Germany doubtless resulted from the traditional German concern
with all forms of musical expression.
During that whole era the film had the traits of a young street
arab ; it was an uneducated creature running wild among the lower
strata of society. Many people enticed by the movies had never
attended artistic spectacles before ; others were lured from the stage
to the screen. About 1910 the theater of the provincial town of
Hildesheim reported having lost 50 per cent of those customers who
previously frequented the three cheapest categories of seats. Variety
and circus shows complained of similar setbacks.8
An attraction for
young workers, salesgirls, the unemployed, loafers and social nondescripts,
the movie theaters were in rather bad repute. They afforded
a shelter to the poor, a refuge to sweethearts. Sometimes a
crazy intellectual would stray into one.
In France, the freedom of the film from cultural ties and intellectual
prejudices enabled artists like Georges Melies or ^rnile Cohl
5 Cf. Messter, Mein Weg.
e This scene is included in S. Licoťs cross-section Aim, Quarante AIM de Cvntma.
See also Messter, Mein Weg, p. 98.
7
Acherknecht, Lichtspielfragen, p. 151; Zaddach, Ver Uterarhche Film. pp. 14-16;
Messter, Mein Weg, pp. 64-66, 78-79.
8
Zimmereimer, Filmzentur, pp. 27-28; see also Altenloh, Soxiologie
PEACE AND WAR 17
to prosper, but in Germany it seems not to have stirred the cinematic
sense. Then, after 1910, in response to a movement which started in
France, that freedom vanished. On November 17, 1908, the newly
founded French film company Film ďArt released THE ASSASSINATION
OF THE Due DE GUISE, an ambitious creation acted by members
of the Come"die Fran9aise and accompanied by a musical score of
Saint-Saens.9
This was the first of innumerable films which were to be
mistaken for works of art because, spurning cinematic potentialities,
they imitated the stage and adapted celebrated literary productions.
Italy followed the French example, and the American screen temporarily
favored famous players in famous plays.
The same thing happened in Germany. The upper world of stage
directors, actors and writers began to show interest in the cinema
after having despised it as an inferior medium. Their change of mind
must be traced, in part, to the missionary zeal of Paul Davidson, the
great promoter of the early German film, who, under the spell of
the new Danish film actress Asta Nielsen, firmly proclaimed the
cinema's artistic future. He headed the Projektion-A. G. Union,
which steadily extended its ownership of movie theaters and turned
to producing films of its own even before the war. To boost the
movies, Davidson made contact with Max Reinhardt, the leading
Berlin stage producer, and, about 1911/1912, participated in the
founding of a kind of guild which was to regulate the relations between
film-makers and playwrights.
10
Of course, the prospect of
tangible advantages did much to soften the resistance of many
formerly hostile to films. Young actors from the Berlin stages were
not unwilling to make a little extra money in the studios. Stage
directors for their part profited by reducing the wages of these
actors; moreover, they realized, not without satisfaction, that the
theaters could now appeal to moviegoers anxious to adore their screen
favorites in the flesh.
11
Admission of films into the realm of the officially sanctioned arts
went hand in hand with the evolution of a native film industry. During
the last four prewar years, big film studios were constructed at
Tempelhof and Neubabelsberg in the immediate neighborhood of
Berlin, on grounds reserved to this day for the production of films
studios whose removable glass walls made possible the combination
9 Bardfeche and Brasfflach, History of Motion Pictures, p. 42.
10 Boehmer and R-eitz, FUm in Wirtschaft tmd Reckt, p. 5; Davidsohn, "Wie das
dcutsche LIchtspieltheater entstand," Lioht B&d B&hne, pp. 7-8; Diaz, Aita Nielten,
pp. 84-85; Zaddach, Der Uterarische Film, p. 28.
11
Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, I, 18.
THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
of indoor and outdoor work favored at the time.
12
All looked bright
and promising. Max Reinhardt himself was engaged in directing
motion pictures. Hugo von Hofmannsthal was writing a "dreamplay,"
DAS FKEMDE MADCHEN (THE STRANGE Gnu,, 1913),
13
among
the first of the fantastic films soon to become a German institution.
From Arthur Schnitzler's comedy Liebelei to Richard Voss's obsolete
middle-class novel Eva, few reputable works were being overlooked by
the screen.
But this elevation of the film to literary high life proved, as might
be expected, a blunder. Traditionally attached to the ways of the
theater, the stage people were incapable of grasping the different
laws of the new cinematic medium. Their behavior towards the movies
was condescending. They welcomed them as a means of emphasizing
the art of the actor, and moreover, as a wonderful opportunity to
popularize theatrical productions. What the screen meant to them
was simply the stage again. In the summer of 1910, Reinhardťs
pantomime Sumurun was made into a film which bored its audience
by washing 2,000 meters on an exact duplication of the original
stage performance.
The so-called film reformers (Kmoreformbewegwng) 9 including
teacher associations, Catholic societies and all kinds of Vereine in
pursuit of cultural aims, exerted an analogous influence. From 1912
on, these pressure groups set out to justify their existence by opposing
the immorality of the films and denouncing them as a source of
corruption of the youth. The resemblance to the American Puritan
leagues is obvious. However, the German movement differed from
all similar movements abroad in that it drew much delicious indignation
from the carelessness with which most films treated literary
masterpieces.
14
It happened, in 1910, that a DON CARLOS film suppressed
two main characters of Schiller's drama. In the eyes of the
film reformers this was a crime. For any "literary" film had but one
duty: to preserve the full integrity of its model. Was it for the sake
of art that these spokesmen of the educated middle class shielded
Schiller so ardently? Rather, classic literature enjoyed an aweinspiring
authority, and in defending it they yielded to the truly
"25 Jahre Filmateller," M Jdhre Kinematograpk p. 66.
13 In all cases where a German film has been shown In the United States under an
English title accepted by the trade, this title will be used In the text. If no American
trade title exists, the translation appearing in parentheses is the author's own. The
date given with a title always refers to the year of release.
14 For a discussion of the arty and literary-minded film and the film reformers, see
Zaddach, Der Kterarisohe Film, pp. 17, 22-29, 30-38.
PEACE AND WAR 19
German desire to serve the established powers. Harassing the motion
picture industry with their cultured demands, the film reformers survived
the war and continued to stigmatize what they considered trash
on the screen through numerous pamphlets, invariably couched in
metaphysical terms.
Fortunately, all efforts to ennoble the film by dragging it into the
sphere of stage and literature aroused the scepticism of film experts
and encountered the salutary indifference of the masses. The film
version of Swmwrun was reproached by its audiences for a complete
lack of details and close-ups offered by even the average film. Discouraged
by such reactions, Ernst von Wolzogen, a German poet,
desisted from contributing further film scenarios on the grounds that
the crowd always favors the banal. People preferred to these elevated
screen adaptations the current output of historical films and melodramas
which dealt in a primitive way with popular themes. Of most
films of the time only the titles and perhaps a few stills remain to us ;
but it can be presumed that they somewhat resembled the exercises
of a student who has not yet learned to express himself with facility.
In 1913 the detective film emerged, a genre obviously inspired by
the French cint-roinans, which were adopted in America during the
war.15
The first German master-detective to be serialized was Ernst
Reicher as eagle-eyed Stuart Webbs, who, with the peaked cap and
the inevitable shag pipe, had all the trademarks of Sherlock Holmes.
Since he enjoyed an immense popularity, he was soon followed by
competitors vainly trying to outdo him. They called themselves
"Joe
Deebs" or "Harry Higgs," were on excellent terms with Scotland
Yard, and lived up to their English names by looking exactly like
tailor-made gentlemen.
16
It is noteworthy that, while the French and Americans succeeded
in creating a national counterpart of Conan Doyle's archetype, the
Germans always conceived of the great detective as an English character.
This may be explained by the dependence of the classic detective
upon liberal democracy. He, the single-handed sleuth who makes
reason destroy the spider webs of irrational powers and decency
triumph over dark instincts, is the predestined hero of a civilized
world which believes in the blessings of enlightenment and individual
freedom. It is not accidental that the sovereign detective is disap-
15
Jahier, "42 Ans de Cin&na," Le R6le intettectuel du Cintma, p. 26.
16
Kalbus, Deutsche FUmtomst, I, 89.
20 THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
pearing today in films and novels alike, giving way to the tough
"private investigator" : the potentialities of liberalism seem, temporarily,
exhausted. Since the Germans had never developed a democratic
regime, they were not in a position to engender a native version
of Sherlock Holmes. Their deep-founded susceptibilities to life
abroad enabled them, nevertheless, to enjoy the lovely myth of the
English detective.
Despite the evolution of domestic production, foreign films continued
to flood German movie theaters, which had considerably increased
in number since 1912.1T
A new Leipzig Lichtspiel palace was
inaugurated with Quo VADIS, an Italian pageant that actually received
press reviews as if it were a real stage play.
18
Towards the end
of the prewar period, the Danish films gained more and more influence.
Greatly indebted to Asta Nielsen, they appealed to German
audiences by focusing upon psychological conflicts unfolded in
natural settings. The success of the American Westerns was particularly
sweeping. Broncho Bill and Tom Mix conquered the hearts
of the young German generation, which had devoured, volume after
volume, the novels of Karl May novels set in an imaginary Far
West and full of fabulous events involving Indian tribes, covered
wagons, traders, hunters, tramps and adventurers. To staid and
settled adults the spell this shoddy stuff exerted on boys in the early
teens was inexplicable ; but youngsters would shed tears of delight
when the noble Indian chief Winnetou, having become a Christian,
died in the arms of his friend Old Shatterhand, a righter of wrongs,
and a German, of course. By their simple manner and untroubled
outlook, their ceaseless activity and heroic exploits, the American
screen cowboys also attracted many German intellectuals suffering
from lack of purpose. Because they were mentally tossed about, the
intelligentsia welcomed the simplifications of the Westerns, the life
in which the hero has but one course to fallow. In the same fashion, at
the outbreak of the war, numerous students enthusiastically rushed
to volunteer in the army. They were drawn not so much by patriotism
as by a passionate desire to escape from vain freedom into a life
under compelling pressure. They wished to serve.
Besides the Westerns, short comedies featuring Max Linder,
Fatty and Tontolini were the vogue of those years. All strata of Ger-
17
Jason, "Zahlen sefaen uns an," 25 Jahre Kiwmatograph, p. 67.
Olimskf, miafiwirtsck&ft, p. 21.
PEACE AND WAR 21
man moviegoers participated in the gay laughter they aroused. The
Germans liked that sort of visual fun. It is all the more surprising,
therefore, that they themselves were incapable of producing a popular
film comedian. As early as 1921, a German writer stated plainly
that the Germans were short of comical film ideas a domain which,
he admitted, the French and after them the Americans had learned
to explore with mastery.
19
This strange deficiency may be connected with the character of
the old screen buffooneries. Whether or not they indulged in slapstick,
they invariably exposed their hero to all kinds of pitfalls and
dangers, so that he depended upon one lucky accident after another
to escape. When he crossed a railroad, a train would approach,
threatening to crush him, and only in the very last moment would
his life be spared as the train switched over to a track hitherto invisible.
The hero a sweet, rather helpless individual who would never
harm anyone pulled through in a world governed by chance. The
comedy adjusted itself in this way to the specific conditions of the
screen ; for more than any other medium the film is able to point up
the contingencies of life. It was a truly cinematic type of comedy.
Had it a moral to impart? It sided with the little pigs against the big
bad wolf by making luck the natural ally of its heroes. This, incidentally,
was comforting to the poor. That such comedy founded on
chance and a naive desire for happiness should prove inaccessible to
the Germans arises from their traditional ideology, which tends to
discredit the notion of luck in favor of that of fate. The Germans
have developed a native humor that holds wit and irony in contempt
and has no place for happy-go-lucky figures. Theirs is an emotional
humor which tries to reconcile mankind to its tragic plight and
to make one not only laugh at the oddities of life but also realize
through that laughter how fateful it is. Such dispositions were of
course incompatible with the attitudes underlying the performances
of a Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd. There exists, moreover, a close
interrelationship between intellectual habits and bodily movements.
The German actors may have felt that, owing to their credos, they
were hardly the type for gags and gestures similar to those of the
American film comedians*
The war began. Not only part of the German youth, but also the
clan of the film reformers firmly believed that it would imbue their
Mollhausen, "Aufstieg des Films," Ufa-BWter.
22 THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
drab life with a new and marvelous meaning. Hermann Hafker's
preface to his book on the cinema and the cultured classes is illuminating
in tils respect. Dated September 1914, it extols the war as a
sure means of realizing the noble designs of the film reformers, and
finally turns into one of those bellicose dithyrambs not at all unusual
then. "May it [i.e., the war] purify our public life as a thunderstorm
does the atmosphere. May it allow us to live again, and make us
eager to risk our lives in deeds such as this hour commands. Peace
had become insupportable."
20
Hafker and his like were in a frenzy.
Peace, to be sure, had seen the German film industry caught in a
crisis. The domestic output was far too insignificant to compete with
the foreign films crowding the movie theaters, which had seemed to
increase for the sole purpose of absorbing the influx from abroad.
Products of Path Freres and Gaumont inundated the German
market. The Danish Nordisk went to the limit to ruin Davidson's
Projektion-A.G. Union.
21
This embarrassing situation was reversed by the war, which
abruptly freed the native industry from the burden of foreign competition.
After the frontiers had been shut, Germany belonged to the
German film producers, faced now with the task of satisfying on their
own all internal demands. These were immense. In addition to
the regular movie theaters numerous military ones spreading behind
the front lines demanded a permanent supply of fresh films. It was
lucky for the film-makers that just before the war large and modern
studio plants had been completed. A boom set in, and new film companies
cropped up with incredible speed. According to a seemingly
reliable survey, the number of these companies rose from 28 in 1913
to 245 in 1919. Movie theaters also flourished and grew more and
more luxurious. It was a period of abundant dividends. The middle
class began to pay some attention to the cinema.
22
Thus the German film was offered a unique chance: it became
autonomous ; it no longer needed to emulate foreign products to sustain
its market value. One would think that under such auspicious
circumstances Germany might have succeeded in creating a cinema
of her own, of truly national character. Other countries did. During
20
HMker, 1>er Ktoo vnd die Oebildeten, p. 4.
"Boehmer and Reitz, Film in Wirtschaft und RecJit, p. 5; Kalbus. Deutsche
FUmkunst, I, 28.
32 Boehmer and Reitz, Film in WirUehaft und Recht, pp. 6-Gj Olimsky, Fiknwirtackaft,
pp. 28-24; Jason, "Zahlen schen Tins an," 8 Jdhre Kinevnatograph, p. 67;
Bardfeche and Brasillach, History of Motion Pictures, pp.
PEACE AND WAR 23
those war years, D. W. Griffith, Chaplin and Cecil B. De Mille developed
the American film, and the Swedish industry took shape.
But the German evolution was not similar. From October 1914
on, Messter substituted for the prewar newsreels of Path Freres,
Gaumont and Eclair weekly film reports which pictured diverse war
events with the help of documentary shots. Disseminated among the
neutrals as well as in the fatherland, these illustrated bulletins were
supplemented by staged propaganda films in which extras put into
British uniforms surrendered to valiant German troops. The government
encouraged efforts of that kind as a means to make people
"stick to it." Later in the course of the war the High Command
ordered selected cameramen to participate in military actions. The
design was to obtain impressive pictorial material which would also
serve as an historic record. One reel which was taken from a submarine,
and closely 'detailed the sinking of Allied ships, gained a
wide reputation.
23
But these cinematic activities were by no means
peculiar to the Germans. The French had nearly the same ideas
about the utility of war documentaries, and realized them with no less
determination.24
In the domain of the fictional film, scores of patriotic dramas,
melodramas, comedies and farces spread over the screen rubbish
filled to the brim with war brides, waving flags, officers, privates, elevated
sentiments and barracks humor. When, about the middle of
1915, it became obvious that the gay war of movement had changed
into a stationary war of uncertain issues, the moviegoers apparently
refused to swallow the patriotic sweets any longer. A marked shift in
entertainment themes occurred. The many pictures exploiting
patriotism were superseded by films which concentrated upon peacetime
subjects. By resuming part of their normal interests, people
adjusted themselves to the stabilized war.
A multitude of comedies emerged, transferring to the screen
popular Berlin stage comedians in proved theatrical plays. They laid
hold of such stereotyped figures as the Prussian lieutenant or the
adolescent girl, and, in the main, indulged in wanton sex fun. Ernst
Lubitsch started his amazing career in the field of these slight comedies.
Not content with minor stage roles in classic dramas, he, the
Reinhardt actor, found an outlet for his nimble wit and ingenuity by
33
Rohde, "German Propaganda Movies9
"
American Cinematographer, Jan. 1948,
p. 10; Ackerknecht, Liohtspielfragen, pp. 21-22; Messter, Mein W&g, pp. 128-80.
24 Bardeche and Brasillach, History of Motion Pictures, p. 98.
24 THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
playing the comic in screen farces. One of them features him as a
Jewish apprentice in a Berlin shop who, always on the verge of being
fired, ends as the son-in-law of his boss. He soon took pleasure in
directing, himself, such one-reel comedies. Although, under the Nazis,
Kalbus denounced Lubitsch for displaying "a pertness entirely alien
from our true being," the contemporary German audience did not
feel at all scandalized, but enjoyed the actor and his films whole-
heartedly.
25
The war failed to provoke vital innovations, nor did it engender
additional film types, with the exception, perhaps, of a group of
cheap serials promoting favorite actors such as Fern Andra and
Erna Morena.2ff
The German film-makers continued to explore mines
opened by prewar activities, and, at best, played new variations on
old tunes. Occasionally, a sure instinct seized upon a story that later
would be picked up again and again. Sudermann's outmoded novels
and theatrically effective plays were first translated to the screen
during that period.
27
They were full of dramatic suspense, good roles
and a bourgeois outlook, abounded in realistic details, and rendered
the melancholy East Prussian landscape painstakingly qualities
which made them attractive to film producers for many years to
come.
Only towards the end of the war did the events take place that
caused the birth of the German film proper, but that they proved so
effective was due to the whole development prior to their intervention.
Although this development lacked strong impulses and striking
results, it nevertheless established traditions that facilitated the final
breakthrough.
The decisive contribution of the war and prewar years was the
preparation of a generation of actors, cameramen, directors and
technicians for the tasks of the future. Some of these old-timers continued
under Hitler ; among them was Carl Froelich, a pre-eminent
German director who did not mind occupying a key post in the Nazi
film industry. He entered one of the first Messter studios as an electrician,
then cranked a camera, and, as early as 1911 or 1912, began
directing films.
28
Many others gained practice by making primitive
25
Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunat, I, &4. Kalbus deals extensively with the German
war output; cf. pp. 18-19, 82-87.
26
76i&, pp. 25-26.
27
Zaddach, JD*r Uteraritche Film, p. 84.
88
Messter, Mein Weg, pp. 57, 99 ff.
PEACE AND WAK 25
films long since passed into oblivion. They learned by their own
mistakes. Emil Jannings he, too, subsequently prominent in Nazi
Germany writes about his debut as a film actor during the war:
"When I watched myself for the first time on the screen, the impression
was crushing. Did I really look as stupid as that?" 29
Jannings was only one of numerous actors who underwent their
basic training in the course of the archaic period. They all were later
to build up a sort of repertory company. Indeed, the cast of every
film to be released in Germany would include members of this
"guild," which, in spite of continually acquiring new recruits, kept
its old guard intact. While Hollywood cultivates stars rather than
ensemble effects, and the Russian cinema often uses laymen as film
figures, the German film is. founded upon a permanent body of
players highly disciplined professionals who adjust themselves to
all changes in style and fashion.
80
To meet actors familiar to contemporary moviegoers in a past
that has become history is an uncanny experience : what was once our
life is now stored away, and we have somehow unknowingly moved on.
Not the predecessors of Werner Krauss or Albert Bassermann, but
they themselves passed across the screen during the first World War
figures irrevocably separated from the present day. One of their
companions was Henny Porten who she was a rare exception
began her film career without any previous stage experience. From
about 1910 on, this ingenious blonde, much praised as the ideal type
of German woman, maintained herself in the favor of the public,
playing with equal ease comic and tragic parts, vulgar farmer's wives
and sensitive ladies.
81
Another figure of those early days was Harry
Piel, called the German Douglas Fairbanks. He appeared in the
middle of the war as the hero of UNTEB. HEISSER SONNE (UNDER A
HOT STJN), a film in which he forced several lions (from Hamburg's
Hagenbeck Zoo) to yield to his spell.
82
From the very beginning Piel
seems to have been true to the type he was to impersonate in the
future: that of a chivalrous daredevil who excels in defeating re-
38
Jannings, "Mein Werdegang," UforMagmfa, Oct. 1-7, 1926.
30 C. A. Lejeune, the English film writer, comments on this ppint in an interesting
way. The German repertory company, she says, "is right for the mood of Germany, and
will always be the type for any segment of cinema that works from the psychologicalfantastic
basis, any production that builds up a whole from the materials of the studio
rather than cleaving out a meaning from the raw materials of life." Lejeune, Cinema,
p. 142.
31
Kalbus, Deutsche FUmkwwt, I,
Ibid., pp. 89-00.
26 THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
sourceful criminals and rescuing innocent maidens. When he showed
up in evening attire, he epitomized an immature girľs daydream of a
perfect gentleman, and the boyish charm he radiated was as sweet as
the colored sugar-sticks which, in European fairs, are the delight of
children and blase aesthetes. His films were in the black-and-white
style of the dime novels rather than the shadings of psychological
conflicts; they superseded tragic issues with happy endings, and,
on the whole, presented a German variation of the Anglo-American
thriller. This bright and pleasing trash stands isolated against a
mass of somber "artistic" products.
The most fascinating personality of the primitive era was the
Danish actress Asta Nielsen. In 1910, after years of stage triumphs,
she made her screen debut in AFGRTTNDEN ( ABYSS), a Copenhagen
Nordist film directed by her husband, Urban Gad. This film, distinguished
by a length which was then unusual, has left no trace other
than an enthusiastic comment on some footage devoted to her pantomime
a sign that she must have been predestined for the cinema.
Convinced of her future, Paul Davidson offered Asta Nielsen fabulous
salaries and working conditions if she would agree to put her
gifts at the disposal of his film company, Union. She agreed, settled
in Berlin, and there, about 1911, began to appear in films which
during the war stirred French as well as German soldiers to adorn
their dugouts with her photograph. What they obscurely felt, Guillaume
Apollinaire expressed in a torrent of words: "She is all! She
is the vision of the drinker and the dream of the lonely man. She
laughs like a girl completely happy, and her eye knows of things so
tender and shy that one could not speak of them," and so forth.
This exceptional artist enriched the German film in more than
one way. At a time when most actors still clung to stage devices, Asta
Nielsen developed an innate film sense which could not but inspire
her partners. Her knowledge of how to produce a definite psychological
effect by means of an adequately chosen dress was as profound
as her insight into the cinematic impact of details. Diaz, her
early biographer, wondered at the confusion of futile objects piled
up in her home a collection including semielegant articles of men's
clothing, optical instruments, little walking sticks, distorted hats and
impossible wrappers. "What I am playing," she told him, "I am
throughout. And I like to form so detailed an idea of my characters
that I know them down to the last externals, which consist precisely
of all these many bagatelles. Such bagatelles are more revealing than
PEACE AND WAR 27
obtrusive exaggerations. I really build up my characters and here
you find the most decorative, most effective elements of which to compose
the facade." The German screen world would be incomplete
without the characters Asta Nielsen created during the silent era,88
33
Diaz, Asia Nielsen, p. 61. For the Apollinaire quotation, see Diaz, p. 7. See
also Mollhausen, "Aufstieg des Films," Ufct-BWtter; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkuntrt, I,
15.
2, FOREBODINGS
FROM the junk heap of archaic films four call for special attention
because they anticipated important postwar subjects. Three of them
mirrored fantastic worlds full of chimerical creatures; this was in
harmony with the progressive German film theories of the time.
Many a contemporary writer encouraged the film-makers to substantiate
the specific possibilities of their medium by rendering not so
much existing objects as products of pure imagination. Hermann
Hafker he who praised war as the salvation from the evils of peace
advised film poets to interweave real and unreal elements. The
war enthusiast fond of fairy tales : it was a truly German phenomenon.
Similarly, Georg Lukacs, who was later to change from
a bourgeois aesthete into a Marxist thinker (going to the extreme
in both cases), wrote in 1913 that he considered the film tantamount
to the fairy tale and the dream.1
The first to put in practice the doctrines of his contemporaries
was Paul Wegener, a Reinhardt actor whose Mongolian face told of
the strange visions that haunted him.2
His desire to represent them
on the screen resulted in films that were true innovations. They swept
into regions ruled by .other laws than ours; they rendered events
which only the film could make seem real. Wegener was animated by
the same cinematic passion which had inspired Georges Mlies to make
such films as A TBIP TO THE MOON and THE MERRY FROLICS or
SATAN. But while the amiable French artist enchanted all childlike
souls with his bright conjuring tricks, the German actor proved
a sinister magician calling up the demoniac forces of human
nature.
Wegener started, as early as 1913, with DER STUDENT VON PRAG
(THE STUDENT ov PRAGUE), a pioneer work also in that it inaugurated
the exploitation of old legends. Harms Heinz Ewers who wrote
1
Of. Pordes, Dot Lichtapiel, p. 10.
a
Mack, Wie komme ich zum Film?, p. 114.
28
FOREBODINGS 29
the script, in collaboration with Wegener himself, possessed a real
film sense. He had the good fortune to be a bad author with an
imagination reveling in gross sensation and sex a natural ally for
the Nazis, for whom he was to write, in 1933, the official screen play
on Horst Wessel. But precisely this kind of imagination forced him
into spheres rich in tangible events and sensual experiences always
good screen material.
Borrowing from E. T. A. Hoffmann, the Faust legend and Foe's
story ''William Wilson," Ewers presents us with the poor student
Baldwin signing a compact with the queer sorcerer Scapinelli. This
incarnation of Satan promises Baldwin an advantageous marriage
and inexhaustible wealth on condition that he, Scapinelli, be given
the studenťs mirror reflection. It was a brilliant film idea to have the
reflection, lured out of the looking-glass by the wizard, transform
itself into an independent person. According to the terms of the compact,
Baldwin meets a beautiful countess and falls in love with her;
whereupon her official suitor challenges him. A duel is inevitable. At
the demand of the countess* father, the student, who is reputed to be
an excellent fencer, agrees to spare the life of his adversary. But as
Baldwin hurries to the rendezvous having been prevented by Scapindli's
machinations from reaching it at the appointed time he
learns that his ghostly counterpart has supplanted him and slain the
unhappy suitor. Baldwin is disgraced. He tries to convince the
countess of his innocence ; but all attempts at rehabilitating himself
are ruthlessly frustrated by his double. Obviously the double is nothing
more than a projection of one of the two souls inhabiting Baldwin.
The greedy self that makes him succumb to devilish temptations
assumes a life of its own and sets out to destroy the other and
better self he has betrayed. At the end the desperate student shoots
his reflection in the same attic from which he once emerged. The shot
fired at the apparition kills only himself. Then Scapinelli enters
and tears the compact; its pieces drop down and cover Baldwin's
corpse.
8
The cinematic novelty of THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE seems to
have stirred contemporaries. One critic compared it with paintings of
Ribera a praise that was to be crudely reversed by a reviewer who,
on the occasion of a revival in 1926, called the film "incredibly naive
3 Of. Ewers, Der Student von Pray; Kalbus, Deutsche Fttmkunst, I, 17; Wesse,
Qrostmaoht Film, p. 125 ff. For Stellan Rye, the director of the film, see CobSken,
"Als ich noch rund um die Friedrichstrasse ging . . ," $$ John Kimmatograph, p. )8.
80 THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
and often ridiculous."
4
The film belongs among the many lost ones.
Much as this may be regretted, its significance undoubtedly rests less
on the camera-work than on the story proper, which despite all its
Anglo-American affiliations attracted the Germans as irresistibly as
if it had been exclusively drawn from native sources.
THE STUDENT OP PRAGUE introduced to the screen a theme that
was to become an obsession of the German cinema: a deep and fearful
concern with the foundations of the self. By separating Baldwin
from his reflection and making both face each other, Wegener's
film symbolizes a specific kind of split personality. Instead of being
unaware of his own duality, the panic-stricken Baldwin realizes that
he is in the grip of an antagonist who is nobody but himself. This
was an old motif surrounded by a halo of meanings, but was it
not also a dreamlike transcription of what the German middle
class actually experienced in its relation to the feudal caste running
Germany? The opposition of the bourgeoisie to the Imperial
regime grew, at times, sufficiently acute to overshadow its hostility
towards the workers, who shared the general indignation over the
semi-absolutist institutions in Prussia, the encroachments of the military
set and the foolish doings of the Kaiser. The current phrase,
"the two Germanys," applied in particular to the differences between
the ruling set and the middle class differences deeply resented by
the latter. Yet notwithstanding this dualism the Imperial government
stood for economic and political principles which even the
liberals were not unwilling to accept. Face to face with their conscience
they had to admit that they identified themselves with the
very ruling class they opposed. They represented both Germanys.
The determination with which THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE treats
its horror story as a case of individual psychology is also revealing.
The whole external action is merely a mirage reflecting the events
in Baldwin's soul. Baldwin is not part of the world; the world is
contained in Baldwin. To depict him thus, nothing was more appropriate
than to locate the play in a fantastic sphere where the demands
of social reality did not have to be considered. This explains,
in part, the predilection of the German postwar cinema for imaginary
subjects. The cosmic significance attributed to Baldwin's interior
life reflects the profound aversion of all German middle-class
4
Seeber, "Szenen aus dem Film mefnes Lebens," Lioht BUd BtikM, p. 16, The
quotation comes from the Hanover newspaper, VolkiwiUe, Winter 1926-1927 (clipping
in the possession of Mr. Henrik Galeen, New York).
FOREBODINGS SI
strata to relating their mental dilemma to their ambiguous social
plight. They shrank from tracing ideas or psychological experiences
to economic and social causes after the fashion of the socialists.
Founded upon the idealist concept of the autonomous individual,
their attitude was in perfect harmony with their practical interests.
Since any concession to the materialist thinking of the socialists
might have undermined these interests, they instinctively avoided
one by exaggerating the autonomy of the individual. This led them
to conceive outer duplicities as inner dualities, but they preferred
such psychological complications to issues involving a loss of their
privileges. Nevertheless they seem to have sometimes doubted whether
their retreat into the depth of the soul would save them from a
catastrophic breakthrough of social reality. Baldwin's ultimate suicide
mirrors their premonitions.
Wegener produced his second film, DEB GOLEM (THE GOLEM;
like his first film, remade after the war), with the assistance of
Henrik Galeen, an imaginative artist who wrote the script, directed
the film and also played a role in it. Released at the beginning of
1915, the film exemplified anew Wegener's genuine passion for
drawing screen effects from fantastic themes. This time the legend
behind the film was the medieval Jewish one in which Rabbi Loew
of Prague infuses life into a Golem a statue he had made of clay
by putting a magic sign on its heart. In the film, workmen digging
a well in an old synagogue excavate the statue and take it to an
antique dealer. The dealer subsequently comes upon a report on
Rabbi Loew's procedures in some cabalistic volume, and, following
its directions, he achieves the miraculous metamorphosis. Now the
story turns to modern psychology. While the Golem functions as the
dealer's servant, a second transformation occurs : he, the dull robot,
falls in love with the daughter of his master and thus changes into
a human being with a soul of his own. The frightened girl tries to
escape her eerie suitor, whereupon he realizes his terrible isolation.
This rouses him to fury. A raging monster, he pursues the daughter,
blindly destroying all obstacles in his way. At the end he perishes by
falling from a tower; his corpse is the shattered statue of clay.
5
The motifs of THE GOLEM reappear in HOMUNCTJLUS (j.916),
a thriller in six parts which enjoyed an enormous success during
5 Based on information offered by Mr. Henrik Galeen. For Wegener's other films,
see Kalbus, Deutsche Fttmkvnst, I, 68, and Zaddach, Der literarische Film, p. 86.
32 THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
the war. Its title role was taken by the popular Danish actor Olaf
F0nss, whose romantic attire in the film reportedly influenced
the fashions of elegant Berlin. Since this serial, an early forerunner
of the Frankenstein films, sprang from quite other sources than
Wegener's screen legend THE GOLEM, the analogies between the
two movies are particularly striking.
Like the Golem, Homunculus is an artificial product. Generated
in a retort by the famous scientist Professor Hansen and his
assistant, Eodin, he develops into a man of sparkling intellect and
indomitable will. However, no sooner does he learn the secret of his
birth than he behaves as the Golem had. Homunculus is a Golem
figure in the sphere of consciousness. He feels like an outcast and
yearns for love to rid himself of his fatal loneliness. This overpowering
desire drives him to far countries where he expects his secret to
be safe, but the truth leaks out, and whatever he does to conquer
their hearts, people recoil in horror, saying: "It is Homunculus,
the man without a soul, the deviľs servant a monster!" When
they happen to kill his dog, even Rodin, his sole friend, cannot keep
the deluded Homunculus from despising all mankind. In elaborating
his further career, the film foreshadows Hitler surprisingly. Obsessed
by hatred, Homunculus makes himself the dictator of a large
country, and then sets out to take unheard-of revenge for his sufferings.
Disguised as a worker, he incites riots which give him, the
dictator, an opportunity to crush the masses ruthlessly. Finally he
precipitates a world war. His monstrous existence is cut short by
nothing less than a thunderbolt.
6
Both HOMUNCULUS and THE GOLEM portray characters whose
abnormal traits are presented as the result of abnormal origins.
But the postulate of such origins is actually a poetic subterfuge
rationalizing the seemingly inexplicable fact that these heroes are,
or feel themselves to be, different from their fellow creatures. What
makes them so different? Homunculus formulates the reason of
which the Golem is only obscurely aware: "I am cheated out of the
greatest thing life has to offer!" He hints at his inability to offer
and receive love a defect which cannot but give him a strong feeling
of inferiority. At about the time HOMUNCULUS appeared, the
German philosopher Max Scheler lectured in public meetings on the
causes of the hatred which Germany aroused everywhere in the
8 Cf. F0nss, Krifft Suit Off Fflm. See also note on the film in Museum of Modern
Art Library, clipping files.
FOREBODINGS S3
world. The Germans resembled Homunculus: they themselves had
an inferiority complex, due to an historic development which proved
detrimental to the self-confidence of the middle class. Unlike the
English and the French, the Germans had failed to achieve their
revolution and, in consequence, never succeeded in establishing a
truly democratic society. Significantly, German literature offers not
a single work penetrating an articulated social whole after the
manner of Balzac or Dickens. No social whole existed in Germany.
The middle-class strata were in a state of political immaturity
against which they dreaded to struggle lest they further endanger
their already insecure social condition. This retrogressive conduct
provoked a psychological stagnation. Their habit of nurturing the
intimately associated sensations of inferiority and isolation was as
juvenile as their inclination to revel in dreams of the future.
The two artificial screen figures react to frustration in a similar
way. In the case of Homunculus the impulses prompting him to
action are quite obvious. He combines lust for destruction with sadomasochistic
tendencies manifesting themselves in his wavering between
humble submission and revengeful violence. Rodin's muchstressed
friendship with him adds a touch of homosexuality that
rounds out the picture. Modern psychoanalysis is undoubtedly justified
in interpreting these perversions as means of escape from the
specific suffering Homunculus undergoes. That both films dwell
upon such outlets reveals a strong predisposition on the part of the
Germans to utilize them.
Having gone berserk, the Golem and Homunculus die deaths as
remote from the normal as their origins. That of Homunculus is
strictly supernatural, although he might well have been killed by
an act of revenge or justice. Isolating him definitely from the rest
of humanity, his end testifies not only, as did THE STUDENT OP
PRAGUE, to the desire of the middle-class German to exalt his independence
of social exigencies, but also to his pride in this selfchosen
isolation. Like Baldwin's suicide, the deaths of both monsters
betray gloomy forebodings.
The fourth archaic film denoting psychological unrest was DEB
ANDERE (THE OTHER), a realistic counterpart of the three fantasies.
Released in 1913, it was based on Paul Lindau's stage play
of the same title, which dramatized a Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde case,
drawing it into a stuffy bourgeois atmosphere. The Dr. Jekyll is
84 THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
here an enlightened Berlin lawyer, Dr. Hallers, who, during a house
party, smiles sceptically at an account of a split personality. Nothing
of that kind, he contends, can ever happen to him. But, overworked,
Hallers falls from a horse, and, as a consequence, becomes increasingly
often the victim of a compulsory sleep from which he
emerges as "the other." This other self of his, a rogue, joins a burglar
to break into the lawyer's own flat. The police interfere, arresting
the burglar. While they examine him, his accomplice falls asleep
and awakes as Dr. Hallers a Hallers completely unconscious of his
participation in the crime. He collapses after being forced to identify
himself as the burglar's partner. The story has a happy ending.
Hallers regains his health and gets married: the prototype of a
citizen immune to all psychological disturbances.
7
Hallers5
adventure intimates that anyone can fall prey to mental
disintegration like Baldwin, and thereby become an outcast like
Homunculus. Now, Hallers is defined as a middle-class German.
Owing to his spiritual kinship with the fantastic figures of the other
films, it seems all the more justifiable to consider them middle-class
representatives as well. Instead of elaborating on this kinship, THE
OTHER treats it as a temporary one. Hallers7
disintegration appears
as a curable disease, and far from ending tragically, he returns to
the calm haven of normal life. This difference must be laid to a
change of perspective. While the fantastic films spontaneously reflect
certain attitudes symptomatic of collective uneasiness, THE
OTHER approaches the same attitudes from the standpoint of banal
middle-class optimism. Guided by this optimism, the story minimizes
the existing uneasiness, and, in consequence, symbolizes it through
an ephemeral accident which cannot invalidate confidence in everlasting
security.
7
Publicity program for the film; Kalbus, Deutsche FilmkwMt, I, U. The part of
Dr. Hallers was Albert Bassermann's first film role.
3, GENESIS OF UFA
THE birth of the German film proper resulted in part from organizational
measures taken by the German authorities. These measures
must be traced to two observations all informed Germans were in a
position to make during World War I. First, they became increasingly
aware of the influence anti-German films exerted everywhere
abroad a fact which startled them all the more as they themselves
had not yet realized the immense suggestive power inherent in this
medium. Second, they recognized the insufficiency of the domestic
output. To satisfy the enormous demands, incompetent producers
had flooded the market with films which proved inferior in quality
to the bulk of foreign pictures
1
; moreover, the German film had not
been animated by the propagandists zeal that those of the Allies
evinced.
Aware of this dangerous situation, the German authorities tried
to change it by intervening directly in the production of motion
pictures. In 1916 the government, with the support of associations
promoting economic, political and cultural objectives, founded
Deulig (Deutsche Lichtspiel-Gesellschaft), a film company which,
through appropriate documentary films, was to publicize the fatherland
at home and abroad.2
At the beginning of 1917, there followed
the establishment of Bufa (BUd- und Fflmamt) ; set up purely as a
government agency, it supplied the troops at the front with movie
theaters and also assumed the task of providing those documentaries
which recorded military activities.
3
This was something, but not enough. When after the entrance
of the United States into the war American movies swept over the
world, impressing hatred of Germany with an unrivaled force upon
1
Boehmer and Reitz, Film in Wirtschaft wid Recht, p. 6.
a
Ibid., p. 6; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkvnst, I, 42.
3
Kalbus, ibid., p. 44; Bardfeche and Brasillach, History of Motion Pictures, p. 135.
35
S6 THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
enemies and neutrals alike, leading German circles agreed that only
an organization of tremendous proportions would be able to counteract
that campaign. The omnipotent General Ludendorff himself
took the initiative by recommending a merger of the main film companies,
so that their scattered energies might be channeled in the
national interest. His suggestions were orders. On the strength of a
resolution adopted in November 1917 by the German High Command
in close touch with prominent financiers, industrialists and
shipowners, Messter Film, Davidson's Union and the companies controlled
by Nordisk with backing from a group of banks merged
into a new enterprise: Ufa (Universum Film A. 6?.). Its stock of
shares amounted to about 25 million marks, of which the Reich took
over one-third, i.e., 8 million. The official mission of Ufa was to
advertise Germany according to government directives. These asked
not only for direct screen propaganda, but also for films characteristic
of German culture and films serving the purpose of national
education.
4
To attain its aims, Ufa had to raise the level of domestic production,
because only films of high standards could be expected to
compete with, let alone outstrip, foreign achievements in effective
propaganda. Animated by this interest, Ufa assembled a team of
talented producers, artists and technicians, and organized the studio
work with that thoroughness upon which the success of any propagandistic
campaign depends. In addition, Ufa had to sell its goods.
Conscious of this task, it began to infiltrate the occupied Ukraine
as early as March 1918.
8
In its effort to make the German film a propaganda weapon,
the government had not reckoned with defeat and revolution. However,
the events of November left this weapon intact, except, of
course, for Bufa which, as a residue of the Imperial administration,
was dissolved at the end of 1918. In the case of Ufa, a transfer
of property took place: the Reich renounced its partnership, and
the Deutsche Bank began to acquire most of the shares, including
those of Nordisk.6
Yet this economic shift did not imply a change
of conduct. Since the new masters of Ufa scarcely differed from the
*Jdhrbvc1i der Filmindustrl*, 1922/8, p. 26, and 1928/25, p. 12; Neumann, Film"Kunst",
pp. 86-57 j Olimsky, Filmarirttchaft, p. 24; Vincent, JBittoire de VArt C\nt~
matographique, p. 189.
tJahrbvch dor FiMnduttrie, 1922/8, p. 27; Jacobs, American Film, p. 808.
Neumann, Ftim-"S:wi*t", pp. 86-37; Jahrbvch tor Filmindwtrie, 1922/8, p. 28,
and 1928/25, p. 12.
GENESIS OF UFA S7
old ones, they were inclined to perpetuate on the screen the conservative
and nationalist pattern set by the former regime. Only a
slight retouching was desirable: in view of the actual domestic situation
the films to be promoted would have to make it absolutely clear
that the Germany of which Ufa dreamed was by no means identical
with the Germany of the socialists.
Owing to Ufa's transformation into a private company, its concern
with propaganda was somewhat overshadowed by purely commercial
considerations, especially those of export. But export was
of propagandistic use, too, and precisely in the interest of economic
expansion there now remained, as before, the task of perfecting the
German film, so that it might be forced upon a world utterly disinclined
to accept any such contribution. German postwar films encountered
a stiff international boycott calculated to last several
years. To run this blockade, Ufa began immediately after the war
to secure rights to movie theaters in Switzerland, Scandinavia, Holland,
Spain and other neutral countries. Deulig, which like Ufa
continued working under the Republic, adopted the same policy by
building up contacts in the Balkans.7
The genesis of Ufa testifies to the authoritarian character of
Imperial Germany. Although, in wartime, the authorities of all
belligerent countries assume virtually unlimited powers, the use they
can make of these powers is not everywhere the same. When the
German war lords ordered the foundation of Ufa, they initiated
activities which in democracies result from the pressure of public
opinion. Manipulated as this opinion may be, it preserves a certain
spontaneity which no democratic government can afford to disregard.
After America's entrance into the war, anti-German films
were officially encouraged, but the administration relied on existing
emotional trends.
8
These films expressed what the people actually
felt. No such consideration for popular sentiments influenced decisions
in favor of a similar screen campaign in Germany. Dictated
by the necessities of the war, they were based exclusively upon the
arguments of experts. The German authorities took it for granted
that public opinion could be molded into any pattern they desired.
Symptomatically, the Germans were so accustomed to an authoritive
handling of their affairs that they believed the enemy screen propaganda
also to be the outcome of mere government planning.
i
Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, I, 42.
8
Jacobs, American Film, p. 258 ff.
38 THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
Any framework of organizational measures has to be filled out
with life. The birth of the German film originated not only in the
foundation of Ufa, but also in the intellectual excitement surging
through Germany after the war. All Germans were then in a mood
which can best be defined by the word Aufbruch. In the pregnant
sense in which it was used at the time, the term meant departure
from the shattered world of yesterday towards a tomorrow built on
the grounds of revolutionary conceptions. This explains why, as in
Russia, expressionist art became popular in Germany during that
period.
9
People suddenly grasped the significance of avant-garde
paintings and mirrored themselves in visionary dramas announcing
to a suicidal mankind the gospel of a new age of brotherhood.
Intoxicated by such prospects, which now seemed within reach,
intellectuals, students, artists and whoever felt the call set out to
solve all political, social and economic problems with equal ease.
They read Capital or quoted Marx without having read him ; they
believed in international socialism, pacifism, collectivism, aristocratic
leadership, religious community life or national resurrection, and
frequently presented a confused mixture of these variegated ideals
as a brand-new creed. But whatever they advocated seemed to them
a universal remedy for all evils, particularly in cases in which they
owed their discovery to inspiration rather than knowledge. When
in a meeting after the Armistice Max Weber, the great scholar and
German democrat, criticized the humiliating peace conditions which
the Allies had in store, a sculptor of local reputation shouted: "Germany
should let the other nations crucify her for the sake of the
world!" The eagerness with which the sculptor jumped into this
Dostoievsky-like declaration was quite symptomatic. Innumerable
manifestoes and programs spread all over Germany, and the smallest
meeting room resounded with the roar of heated discussion. It was
one of those rare moments in which the soul of a whole people overflows
its traditional bounds.
In the wake of this uproarious Awfbruck the last prejudices
against the cinema melted away. Even more important, the cinema
attracted creative energies which longed for an opportunity to express
adequately the new hopes and fears of which the era was full.
Young writers and painters just back from the war approached the
film studios, animated, like the rest of their generation, by the desire
to commune with the people. To them the screen was more than a
9
Kurtz, JSxprMsionitmus, p. 61.
GENESIS OF UFA 39
medium rich in unexplored possibilities; it was a unique means of
imparting messages to the masses. Of course, the film producers and
big executives interfered with such upward flights, engineering all
kinds of compromises. But even so this postwar effervescence enriched
the German screen with singular content and a language of
its own.
THE POSTWAR PERIOD
(1918-1924)
4 THE SHOCK OF FREEDOM
To call the events of November 1918 a revolution would be abusing
the term. There was no revolution in Germany. What really took
place was the breakdown of those in command, resulting from a
hopeless military situation and a sailors' revolt which gained momentum
only because people were sick of the war. The Social
Democrats who took over were so unprepared for a revolution that
they originally did not even think of establishing a German Republic.
Its proclamation was improvised.
1
These leaders, in whom Lenin
had placed such hope, proved incapable of removing the big landowners,
the industrialists, the generals, the judiciary. Instead of
creating a people's army, they relied on the antidemocratic Freikorps
formations to crush Spartacus. On January 15, 1919, Freikorps
officers murdered Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht a crime
soon to be followed by the series of notorious JFemtf-murders, not one
of which was ever punished. After the first weeks of the new Republic
the old ruling classes began to re-establish themselves. Except
for a few social reforms not much had been changed.
2
However, the sweep of intellectual excitement accompanying
even this abortive revolution reveals the cataclysm Germany endured
after the collapse of the old hierarchy of values and conventions.
For a brief while the German mind had a unique opportunity
to overcome hereditary habits and reorganize itself completely.
It enjoyed freedom of choice, and the air was full of doctrines
trying to captivate it, to lure it into a regrouping of inner attitudes.
In the domain of public life nothing was settled as yet. People
suffered from hunger, disorder, unemployment and the first signs of
inflation. Street fighting became an everyday event. Revolutionary
solutions seemed now remote, now just around the corner. The eversmoldering
class struggle kept fears and hopes aflame.
1
Schwarzschild, World in Trance, pp. 51-58.
3
Rosenberg, Geschichte der Deutschen Republik, pp. 48, 71-78.
48
44 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
Of the two types of films in vogue immediately after the war
the first elaborated upon matters of sex life with an undeniable
penchant for pornographic excursions. Films of this kind took
advantage of the sexual enlightenment officially promoted in prewar
Germany. In those days eighteen-year-old boys did not leave high
school for a university without being initiated by some medical man
into the dangers of venereal diseases and the use of prophylactics.
During the war, Richard Oswald, a versatile film director with a flair
for the needs of the market, divined that the hour had come to
transfer this indoctrination to the screen. He wisely managed to have
the Society for Combatting Venereal Diseases (Gesettschaft wr
Bekampfung der GeschlechtsJcrarMieiteri) sponsor his film Es WERDE
LIGHT (LET THERE BE LIGHT) which dealt with the destructive
nature of syphilis. This was in 1917. As box-office receipts justified
his hygienic zeal, Oswald continued to keep the light burning by
adding, in 1918, a second and third part.
8
The film was drawn out
like an accordion. In the same year Davidson's Union, obviously
stimulated by Oswalďs success, released KJEIMENDES LEBEN (GEEMUTATING
LIFE) ; featuring Jannings, it advertised hygiene under
the auspices of a high-ranking medical officer.
4
This dignified
patronage of course bewitched the censors.
When, immediately after the war, the Council of People's Representatives
abolished censorship a measure revealing that governmenťs
confused ideas about revolutionary exigencies the effect was
not a transformation of the screen into a political platform, but a
sudden increase of films which pretended to be concerned with sexual
enlightenment. Now that they had nothing to fear from official supervision,
they all indulged in a copious depiction of sexual debaucheries.
Refreshed by the atmosphere of freedom, Richard Oswald felt
in so creative a mood that he annexed a fourth part to LET THERE
BE LIGHT, and also made a film called PROSTITUTION. Scores of
similar products swarmed out under such alluring titles as VOM
RANDE DES SUMPFES (FROM THE VERGE OF THE SWAMP), FRATJEN,
DIE DER ABGRTJND VERSCHLINGT (WOMEN ENGTTI.FED BY THE
ABYSS), VEBXORENE TOCHTER (LosT DAUGHTERS), HYANEN DER
LUST (HYENAS OF LUST), and so forth. One of them, GELtiBDE DER
KETJCHHEIT (Vow OF CHASTITY), intermingled pictures detailing
the love affairs of a Catholic priest with shots of devotees reciting
3
Kalbus, DeutscJie Fttmkuntt* I, 40-41.
Ibid., p. 41 ; Jahrbuch der Fihninduttrie, 1922/8, p. 28.
THE SHOCK OF FREEDOM 45
the rosary for the sake of the priesťs soul. Two other films, significantly
entitled Aus EINES MANNES MADCHENJAHREN (A MAN'S
GIRLHOOD) and ANDERS AXS DIE ANDERN (DIFFERENT FROM THE
OTHERS) ,
dwelt upon homosexual propensities ; they capitalized on
the noisy resonance of Dr. Magnus Hirschfelďs campaign against
Paragraph 175 of the penal code which exacted punishment for
certain abnormal sex practices.
5
The appeal to sensual curiosity proved a sound commercial
speculation. According to the balance sheets, many a movie theater
doubled its monthly revenues whenever it exhibited outspoken sex
films.
6
These were naturally advertised in suitable terms. For instance,
the film DAS MADCHEN TTND DIE MANNER (THE Gmi, AND
THE MEN) was played up as "a very spicy picture drawn from the
life of a girl who storms through her youth in the arms of men, and
fades away with a nostalgic longing for the greatness of unattainable
purity."
7
Films of that ilk attracted the multitude of demobilized
soldiers not yet adjusted to a civilian life which seemed to
reject them, the numerous youngsters who had grown up like weeds
while their fathers were in the war, and all those who in times out
of joint always come to the fore, seeking jobs, gambling, waiting
for opportunities or simply prowling the streets. The more privileged
also enjoyed these stimulants, as can be inferred from the
success of OPIUM, which ran in an expensive Berlin movie theater with
the house sold out for three weeks.8
Of course, one avoided being
seen on such occasions.
The sex films testified to primitive needs arising in all belligerent
countries after the war. Nature itself urged that people who had,
for an eternity, faced death and destruction, reconfirm their violated
life instincts by means of excesses. It was an all but automatic
process ; equilibrium could not be reached at once. However, since
the Germans survived the slaughter only to undergo the hardships
of a sort of civil war, this fashion of sex films cannot be explained
fully as a symptom of sudden release from pressure. Nor did it
convey a revolutionary meaning. Even though some affected to be
scandalized by the penal code's intolerance, these films had nothing
in common with the prewar revolt against outmoded sexual convenKalbus,
Deutsche Filmkunst, I, 41; Bger, Kinoreform, pp. 17-18; Zimmereimer,
Film&ensur, p. 76.
*
Eger, Rinoreform, p. 28.
7
Ibid., p. 17.
8
Ibid., p. 18.
46 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
tions. Nor did they reflect the revolutionary erotic feelings that
quivered in contemporary literature, They were just vulgar films
selling sex to the public. That the public demanded them rather
indicated a general unwillingness to be involved in revolutionary
activities; otherwise interest in sex would have been absorbed by
interest in the political aims to be attained. Debaucheries are often
an unconscious attempt to drown the consciousness of deep, inner
frustration. This psychological mechanism seems to have forced
itself upon many Germans. It was as if they felt paralyzed in view
of the freedom offered them, and instinctively withdrew into the
unproblematic pleasures of the flesh. An aura of sadness surrounded
the sex films,
With the favorable response to these films mingled, as might
be expected, stiff opposition. In Diisseldorf the audience of Vow
OF CHASTITY went so far as to tear the screen; in Baden the public
prosecutor seized the copies of Oswalďs PROSTITUTION and recommended
his indictment.
9
Elsewhere youth took the lead, Dresden
demonstrated against the film FRAITLEIN MUTTER (MAIDEN
MOTHER), while the Leipzig boy scouts (Wandervogel) issued a
manifesto disapproving of all screen trash and its promoters among
the actors and owners of movie theaters.
10
Were these crusades the outcome of revolutionary austerity?
That the demonstrating Dresden youth distributed anti-Semitic
leaflets reveals this local campaign to have been a reactionary
maneuver calculated to turn the resentments of the suffering petty
bourgeoisie away from the old ruling class. By making the Jews
responsible for the sex films, the wirepullers in Dresden could be
fairly sure to influence lower middle-class people in the desired direction.
For these orgies and extravagances were condemned with a
moral indignation which was all the more poisonous as it cloaked envy
of those who embraced life unhesitatingly. The socialists too launched
attacks against the sex films. In the National Assembly as well as in
most diets they declared that their move to socialize and communalize
the film industry would best serve to exterminate the plague
on the screen,
11
But to suggest socialization for reasons of conventional
morality was an argument that discredited the cause it sup*
ported. The cause was a revolutionary shift ; the argument suited the
Kalbus, D0t*ch* Fttmtotntt, I, 41-42.
10
Eger, Kinoreformt pp. 27-28.
Tlid., p. 81 j Moreck, SitUngwMeMit pp. 87-39.
THE SHOCK OF FREEDOM 47
mind of philistines. This exemplifies the cleavage between the convictions
of many socialists and their middle-class dispositions.
The plague raged through 1919 and then subsided. In May
1920, the National Assembly rejected several motions in favor of
socialization, and simultaneously passed a law governing all film
matters of the Reich. National censorship was resumed.12
The other type of film in vogue after the war was the historical
pageant. While the sex films crowded the lower depths of the screen
world, the histories self-assuredly settled themselves in the higher
realms reserved for art. Whether they really represented summits
of artistic perfection or not, they were planned as such by the
founding fathers of Ufa who, as has been seen, promoted the idea
of putting art to the service of propaganda.
An interesting article published in January 1920 by Rudolf
Pabst testifies to the thoroughness with which the Germans prepared
for the reconquest of a prominent economic and cultural position.
18
Pabst severely criticized the current advertising shorts for subordinating
entertainment to propaganda. Since any audience, he
argued, desires to be entertained, these shorts were resented as boring
interludes. He explained the tremendous success of most foreign
propaganda films precisely by the fact that they were feature films
full of suspense and action films, he emphasized, which implied
propaganda subtly instead of shouting it from the rooftops. His
conclusion was that the Germans should not outrightly advertise
to people abroad their unbroken economic efficiency, but should
rather lure them into recognizing it through full-length pictures
offering outstanding entertainment. To serve as a means to an end
this screen entertainment would have to seem an end in itself. It
was not by mere chance that, about 1920, Deulig, which until now
had specialized in propagandists documentaries, began to include
in its production program films of fiction.
14
No sooner had Ufa been founded than its masters went ahead
in the direction Pabsťs article praised as good policy. There existed
a pattern of entertainment strongly appealing to their taste
for all that was kolosscd: the Italian superspectacle. Such films as
Quo VADIS and CABIRIA had been the rage of two continents. Of
ia Jahrbuch der FUmindustrie, 1922/8, p. 81.
13
Pabst, "Bedeutung des Films," Modern* Kinematographic, 1920, p. 26 ff. See
also Vincent, Histoire de I'Art Cintmatographique, p. 140.
14 Boehrner and Reitz, Film in Wirtschaft und Recht, p. 6.
48 THE POSTWAK PERIOD
course, their cost was exorbitant; but Ufa could afford to spend
millions. It began investing them in the film VERITAS VINCIT made
by Joe May in 1918 a gigantic nonentity which resorted to the
theory of the transmigration of souls to drag a love story through
three pompously staged historic ages.
15
More important achievements followed this first attempt at
grandiloquence; they were inspired by Davidson who, after the
great merger of November 1917, had become one of Ufa's chief
executives. Davidson dreamed of gorgeous dramas featuring his new
favorite, Pola Negri, and since he considered Lubitsch the only one
to handle such a superior woman, he tried hard to make the project
alluring to him. "No, dear director," Lubitsch answered, "this is not
for me. I am going on with my comedies." But he finally yielded to
Davidson's wishes. While the war was slowly approaching its end,
Lubitsch directed Pola Negri in two films, DIE MUMIE MA (THE
EYES or THE MXTMMY) and CABMEN (GYPSY BLOOD). These films,
which co-starred his actor-friends Emil Jannings and Harry
Liedtke, established his reputation as a dramatic director and revealed
him to be a true disciple of Max Reinhardt, whose stage devices
he adapted to the screen.
16
The response to GYPSY BLOOD was sufficiently promising to encourage
further production of spectacular dramas. In the first two
postwar years Lubitsch made four of them which thoroughly justified
the hopes Davidson had for their international success. This
famous series began with MADAME DTJ BARRY (PASSION), released in
Berlin's largest movie theater, the Ufa-Palast am Zoo, on September
18, 1919, the very day of its opening to the public.
17
Huge demonstrations
swept continuously through the Berlin streets at that
time; similar throngs of aroused Parisians were unleashed in PASSION
to illustrate the French Revolution. Was it a revolutionary
film? Here are the salient points of the plot: After becoming the
omnipotent mistress of King Louis XV, Countess du Barry, a
former milliner's apprentice, frees her lover, Armand de Foix, who
has been imprisoned for slaying his adversary in a duel, and ap-
15
Tannenbaum, "Der Grossfilm," J>er Film von Margen, p. 65 j Kalbus, Devtsche
Filmtomst, I, 44.
10
Davidson, "Wie das deutsche Lichtspieltheater entstand," and Lubitsch, "Wte
mein erster Grossfilm entstand," Licht Bild B&hne, pp. 8, 18-14; Kalbus, Veuttch*
Fttmkunst, I, 45 ff. For Davidson, see "Was is los?" Ufa Magaxin, April 8-14, 1927.
POP Pola Negri, see Kalbus, DeutscJi* Filmkunst, I, 81-32, and Balazs, Ddr tiehtbar*
Mensch, p. 67.
der Filmindustrie, im/8, p. 29,
THE SHOCK OF FREEDOM 49
points him a royal guard at the palace. But, as the Ufa synopsis
puts it, "Armand cannot bear these new conditions, and plots,
making the cobhler Paillet head of the revolutionary plans." Paillet
leads a deputation to the palace at the very moment when the King
falls prey to deadly smallpox. Meeting the cobbler on a stairway,
Madame du Barry sends him to the Bastille. A little later the
story's contempt for historic facts is matched only by its disregard
for their meaning Armand incites the masses to storm that symbol
of absolutist power. Louis XV dies, and his mistress, now banished
from the court, is dragged to the revolutionary tribunal over which
Armand presides. He tries to rescue her. However, Paillet forestalls
this tender project by killing Armand and having Madame du Barry
sentenced to death. At the end, she is seen on the scaffold surrounded
by innumerable vengeful fists that emerge from a crowd fanatically
enjoying the fall of her beautiful head.
This narrative of Hans Kraly's, who also fashioned the rest of
the Lubitsch pageants in collaboration with Norbert Falk and
others, drains the Revolution of its significance. Instead of tracing
all revolutionary events to their economic and ideal causes, it persistently
presents them as the outcome of psychological conflicts.
It is a deceived lover who, animated by the desire for retaliation,
talks the masses into capturing the Bastille. Similarly, Madame du
Barry's execution is related not so much to political reasons as to
motives of personal revenge. PASSION does not exploit the passions
inherent in the Revolution, but reduces the Revolution to a derivative
of private passions. If it were otherwise, the tragic death of
both lovers would hardly overshadow the victorious rising of the
people.
18
Lubitsch's three subsequent superproductions were in the same
vein. In ANNA BOLEYN (DECEPTION, 1920) he spent 8% million
marks on an elaborate depiction of Henry VIII's sex life, setting it
off against a colorful background which included court intrigues,
the Tower, two thousand extras and some historic episodes. In this
particular case he did not have to distort the given facts very much
to make history seem the product of a tyranťs private life. Here,
too, despotic lusts destroy tender affections: a hired cavalier kills
Anne Boleyn's lover, and finally she herself mounts the executioner's
block. To intensify the sinister atmosphere torture episodes were
""Passion," Exceptional Photoplays, Nov. 1920; Ufa VerUihrProgramme, 1928,
1,2.
50 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
inserted which an early reviewer called a "terse suggestion of medieval
horror and callous infliction of death."
19
All these ingredients reappeared in DAS WEIB DBS PHARAO (THE
LOVES OF PHARAOH, 1921), which nevertheless impressed the audience
as new, because it substituted the Sphinx for the Tower, and
considerably increased the number of extras and intrigues. Its tyrant
figure, the Pharaoh Amenes, is so infatuated with the Greek slave
Theonis that he refuses to hand the girl back to her legitimate
owner, an Ethiopian king; whereupon the two nations become involved
in a bloody war. That Theonis prefers a young man named
Ramphis to the Pharaoh adds the desired final touch to the emotional
and political confusion. In a state of absent-mindedness the story
unexpectedly heads for a happy ending, but at the last moment
the tragic sense prevails, and instead of surviving their troubles, the
lovers are stoned by the people, while Amenes dies from a stroke
or inner exhaustion.
20
STTMURUN (ONE ARABIAN NIGHT, 1920), a screen version of
Reinhardťs stage pantomime Swm/wrim with Pola Negri in the title
role, withdrew from the realms of history into Oriental fairy-tale
surroundings, making an old sheik in search of sex adventures the
comical counterpart of Amenes and Henry VIII. The sheik surprises
his son and his mistress, a young dancer, in each other arms an
incident prearranged by a hunchbacked juggler who wants to take
revenge for the indifference the dancer has shown him. In a fit of
jealousy the sheik kills the sinful couple, whereupon the sensitive
hunchback, in turn, feels urged to stab the sheik. Loaded with
kisses and corpses, this showy fantasy pretended superiority to its
theme by satirizing it pleasantly.
21
The whole series gave rise to numerous historical pageants which
invariably adopted the standardized plot Lubitsch and his collaborators
had fashioned. Buchowetski's much-praised DANTON (Aix
FOR A WOMAN, released in 1921) outdid even PASSION in its contempt
for the French Revolution. Envying Danton his popularity,
the Robespierre of this film accuses him of debauchery and connivance
with the aristocrats, but Danton's masterful speech during
Quotation from "Deception," Exceptional Photoplays, April 1921, p. 4. See also
Tamnenbaum, "Der GrossfiJm," Der Film von Morgtn, pp. 66, 68, 71; Ufa VerMfiProfframme,
1928, I, 10. For Henny Porten in this film, see Amiguet, Cintmat
Cintmal, pp. 61-62.
*
Program to this film; Kalbus, Deutsche Fitmkwwt, I, 47.
**
Program to this film; Jacobs, American Film, p. 806 j Film Index, p. 800b.
THE SHOCK OF FREEDOM 51
the trial transforms the suspicious audience into a crowd of ecstatic
followers. To avert this threat Robespierre spreads the rumor that
food has arrived and will be gratuitously distributed. The trick
works : the people run away, leaving Danton to the mercy of his
pitiless enemy. According to this film, the masses are as despicable
as their leaders.
22
The international reception of any achievement depends upon
its capacity for arousing fertile misunderstandings everywhere.
Lubitsch's films the first German postwar productions to be shown
abroad possessed this capacity. Towards the end of 1920, they
began to appear in America, enthusiastically received by a public
which at that time rather repudiated costume drama. All contemporary
reviewers were unanimous in praising as the main virtue of
these films their sense of authenticity, their outstanding "historical
realism." "History," a critic wrote of DECEPTION, "is presented to
us naked and real and unromanticized in all its grandeur and its
barbarism." Uneasy about the failure of Wilson's policy, the American
people had obviously such a craving for history debunked that
they were attracted by films which pictured great historic events
as the work of unscrupulous wire-pullers. Consequently, Lubitsch
was called the "great humanizer of history" and the "Griffith of
Europe."
*
The French had suffered too much from Germany to react as
naively as the Americans. Obsessed by distrust, they imagined that
anything coming from beyond the Rhine was intended to poison
them. They therefore considered Lubitsch a clever propagandist
rather than a great humanizer, and suspected his films of deliberately
smearing the past of the Allies. In these films, the Paris film writer
Canudo declared, "French history . . . was depicted by the perverted
and sexual pen of the Germans." The same opinion prevailed
in other countries neighboring Germany. Although Fred.-Ph.
Amiguet of Geneva was amiable enough to admire the verve of the
Lubitsch spectacles, he bluntly stigmatized them as "instruments
of vengeance."
24
These emotional judgments were hardly justified.
M "AU for a Woman," Exceptional Photoplays, Nov. 1921, pp. 4-6; Zaddach, Z>r
Kterarische Film, p. 41.
as
Quotation about DECEPTION comes from "Deception," Exceptional Photoplays,
April 1921, p. 4; quotation about Lubitsch cited by Jacobs, American Film, p. 805.
34 Canudo quotation from Jahier, "42 Ans de Cinema," Le Bdle intellectuel dot
Cintma, pp. 59-60. Amiguet, Cintma! Cinema!, pp. 88-84; Bardeche and BrasiUach,
History of Motion Pictures, p. 189; Vincent, Hittoire de VArt Cine'matographigue, p.
142.
62 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
That the Lubitsch films did not aim at discrediting French or
English history follows conclusively from the vital interest Ufa had
in selling them to the Allies.
In his history of German film art, a Nazi-minded product with
some remnants of pre-Nazi evaluations, Oskar Kalbus connects the
vogue of historical pageants with the moment of their production;
they were produced, he contends, "because in times of national emergency
people are particularly susceptible to representations of great
historic periods and personalities."
2{s
He completely overlooks the
fact that this susceptibility was betrayed by films representing not
so much historic periods as personal appetites and seeming to seize
upon history for the sole purpose of removing it thoroughly from
the field of vision.
36
It is not as if the historical films of Italian or
American origin had ever achieved miracles of perspicacity ; but the
sustained lack of comprehension in the Lubitsch films is significant
inasmuch as they emerged at a moment when it would have been
in the interest of the new democratic regime to enlighten the people
about social and political developments. All these German pageants
which the Americans mistook for summits of "historical realism"
instinctively sabotaged any understanding of historic processes, any
attempt to explore patterns of conduct in the past.
A hint of the true meaning of the Lubitsch films can be found
in the fact that Lubitsch played the hunchback in ONE ARABIAN
NIGHT. It was at that time quite exceptional for him to take a role
himself. After stabbing the sheik and freeing all the women in his
harem, the hunchback returns from the scene of wholesale murder
to his fair booth, "He must dance and gambol again," the Ufa
prospectus states, "for the public wants a laugh." Through his
identification with a juggler who drowns horrors in jokes, Lubitsch
involuntarily deepens the impression that the vogue he helped to
create originated in a blend of cynicism and melodramatic sentimentality.
The touch of melodrama made the implications of this
cynicism more palatable. Its source was a nihilistic outlook on world
affairs, as can be inferred from the stern determination with which
the Lubitsch films and their like not only put insatiable rulers to
death, but also destroyed young lovers representative of all that
counts in life. They characterized history as meaningless. History,
they seemed to say, is an arena reserved for blind and ferocious
" Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, I, 51.
28 Cf. Chowl, "The French Revolution," Close Up, May 1929, p. 49.
THE SHOCK OF FREEDOM 53
instincts, a product of devilish machinations forever frustrating our
hopes for freedom and happiness.
Designed for mass consumption, this nihilistic gospel must have
satisfied widespread wants. It certainly poured balm on the wounds
of innumerable Germans who, because of the humiliating defeat of
the fatherland, refused any longer to acknowledge history as an instrument
of justice or Providence. By degrading the French Revolution
to a questionable adventure in both PASSION and ALL FOB A
WOMAN, that nihilism moreover revealed itself as a symptom of
strong antirevolutionary, if not antidemocratic, tendencies in postwar
Germany. It was, for once, a nihilism that did not scare the
nation. Why? The only tenable explanation is that, whether consciously
or not, the majority of people lived in fear of social changes
and therefore welcomed films which defamed not only bad rulers
but also good revolutionary causes. These films outrightly encouraged
the existing resistance to any emotional shift that might have
enlivened the German Republic. Their basic nihilism made them
indulge also in images of utter destruction, which, like those of THE
STUDENT or PRAGUE or HOMUNCULUS, reflected forebodings of a
final doom.
American observers admired the free use made of the camera
in these Lubitsch pageants. Lewis Jacobs remarks of them that it
was revolutionary in those days "to tilt a camera toward the sky
or turn it toward an arabesque mosaic in a floor, and to see the backs
of a crowd was unorthodox ; quick cutting, too, was shocking."
27
His statement mistakenly suggests that the Lubiix i. films were the
first to develop this camera initiative, but it was the war that had
aroused the camera's curiosity by making it focus upon subjects
of military importance. Photographs of a shell crater with a few
pairs of legs at the upper margin or an agglomeration of rifles,
truck wheels and torsos were then quite common.28
While traditional
aesthetics would have condemned such photographs as incoherent,
the war generation which had become accustomed to them
began enjoying their singular power of expression. This change
of visual habits emboldened the camera to emphasize parts of bodies,
to capture objects from unusual angles.
Lubitsch's method of furthering the dramatic action through
37
Jacobs, American Film, p. 806. Surprisingly, Jacobs forgets to mention in this
connection D. W. Griffith, whose film techniques surpassed those of Lubitsch.
88
Gregor, Zeitalter fas Film*, pp. 81-82.
54 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
shots of this kind was an additional innovation. Shaken by catastrophe,
the Germans had to adjust their conventional notions to the
needs of the moment. In the wake of any such metamorphosis perspectives
change :
things consecrated by tradition lose their prestige,
wliile others that have been as yet overlooked suddenly come to the
fore. Since the Lubitsch pageants substituted for the old conception
of history one that dissolved history into psychology, they were
naturally obliged to resort to a new set of pictorial elements. Their
psychological tendency made them single out such details as the
arabesque mosaic or the backs of a crowd seeming bagatelles
which, however, effectively underlined major emotional events.
What fascinated the public most was "Mr. Lubitsch's indisputable
talent for handling crowds."
29
Many years after the release
of his films moviegoers still remembered as their main attraction
the throngs of the Paris rabble in PASSION, the agitated battle scenes
in THE LOVES OF PHARAOH and that episode of DECEPTION which
showed all London before the Tower attending Anna Boleyn's solemn
entrance.
30
Lubitsch had of course learned from Max Reinhardt,
who early proved himself a master in the art of surrounding his
stage crowds with appropriate space and orchestrating their movements
dramatically. Perhaps Reinhardt sensed coming events, for
crowds were to develop from an element of his stage into one of
German everyday life a process that reached its climax after the
war, when no one could avoid encountering them on streets and
squares. These masses were more than a weighty social factor ; they
were as tangible as any individual. A hope to some and a nightmare
to others, they haunted the imagination. Ernst Toller's "speaking
chorus
9 '
tried to endow them with a voice of their own, and Reinhardt
himself paid tribute to them by founding his short-lived "Theater
of the Five Thousand." 81
The moment for rendering crowds on the screen was well chosen
inasmuch as they now assumed the aspect of dynamic units sweeping
through large spaces an aspect which the screen rather than the
stage was able to mirror. Lubitsch knew how to handle such crowds,
and even showed true originality in elaborating a feature familiar
Quotation from "The Loves of Pharaoh," Exceptional Photoplays, Jan^-Feb.
1922, p, 8. See also "Passion," ibid., Nov. 1920, p. 3,
a
Birnbaum, "Massenscenen im Film," Ufa-Blatter; Tannenbaura, "Der Grossfilm,"
Der Film von Morgen, p. 66.
31
Birnbaum, "Massenscenen ira Film," Ufa-B fatter; Samuel and Thomas, Expressionism
in German Life, pp. 46-47; Freedley and Reeves, History of the Theatre,
esp. p. 529.
THE SHOCK OF FREEDOM 55
to all postwar Germans: the contrast between the individual in the
crowd and the crowd itself as a solid mass. To this end he used an
exclusively cinematic device which cannot better be described than
in the following words of Miss Lejeune: "Lubitsch had a way of
manipulating his puppets that gave multitude, and in contrast,
loneliness, a new force. No one before had so filled and drained his
spaces with the wheeling mass, rushing in the figures from every
corner to cover the screen, dispersing them again like a whirlwind,
with one single figure staunch in the middle of the empty square."
82
The mass scene typical of the Lubitsch films decomposed the crowd
to exhibit as its nucleus "one single figure" who, after the crowďs
dissolution, was left alone in the void. Thus the individual appeared
as a forlorn creature in a world threatened by mass domination
[Ulus. 1] .
Paralleling the stereotyped plot of all those pageants, this
pictorial device treated the pathetic solitude of the individual with
a sympathy which implied aversion to the plebeian mass and fear
of its dangerous power. It was a device that testified to the antidemocratic
inclinations of the moment.
In the Lubitsch films and their derivatives these portrayed, in
addition to Danton, such characters as Lucrezia Borgia and Lady
Hamilton two disparate tendencies constantly intermingled.
83
One
manifested itself in architectural structures, costumes and genre
scenes which resurrected bygone surface life. With this extrovert
tendency an introvert one competed: the depiction of certain psychological
configurations with an utter disregard for given facts. But
this medley did not disturb anyone. The film-makers were expert at
molding the ingredients of a film into a prepossessing mixture that
would conceal divergences rather than expose them. What this mixture
did reveal, of course, was the inherent nihilism of which I have
spoken.
The deceptive blend of conventional realism and overweening
psychology Lubitsch and his followers devised was never generally
adopted. In most important German postwar films introspection
outweighed the extrovert tendency. Influenced not so much by
Lubitsch's pseudo-realistic PASSION as by Wegener's fantastic STIT-
3a
Lejeune, Cinema, p. 64; Tannenbaum, "Der Grossfilm," Der Film von Morgen,
p. 66.
33 For LtrcBEziA BOEOIA (1922), see Tannenbaum, ibid., p. 67, and Zaddach, Der
literarische Film, pp. 45-49. For LADY HAMILTON (1921), see Tannenbaum, ibid., p. 67,
and Birnbaum, "Massenscenen im Film," Ufa-BUtter. See also Kalbus, Deutsche
FUmkunst, I, 52-68, 60.
56 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
DENT OF PRAGUE, these films reflected major events in emotional
depths with an intensity that transformed customary surroundings
into strange jungles. They predominated between 1920 and 1924,
a period which will be considered as a consecutive whole.
But before examining the essential achievements of the postwar
period, some attention must be given to films of secondary importance.
To characterize them in this way is a verdict on their symptomatic
rather than aesthetic value. They satisfied wants of the moment
or obsolete tastes, seized upon provincial peculiarities as well as upon
themes of world-wide interest. Significantly, they did not follow
the introvert tendency of the time, but dealt with subjects that
allowed them more or less to preserve the usual aspects of life.
Among them, flourishing from 1919 to 1920, was a group of popular
films concerned with sensational adventures encountered at every
known or unknown spot on earth. The unknown spots were preferred
because of their exotic spell. In DIE HEREIN DEB WELT
(MISTRESS or THE WOULD), a serial in eight parts, a valiant German
girl traveled from the unexplored interior of China to the
legendary country of Ophir to find there the fabulous treasure of
the Queen of Sheba.3*
Other films of this kind such as the gay DER MANN OHNE
NAMEN (MAN WITHOUT A NAME) and Fritz Lang's first picture,
DIE SPINNEN (THE SPIDERS) also assumed the form of lengthy
serials, perhaps tempted by the immensity of geographical space
they covered.
35
Even though Joe May's 20-million-mark film DAS
INDISCHE GRABMAI/ (THE INDIAN TOMB) modestly confined itself
to India and normal footage, it outdid the serials in thrilling episodes.
This superproduction, which imparted the same sinister moral
as the Lubitsch pageants, not only adapted the miraculous practices
of yoga to the screen, but showed rats gnawing the fetters of its
captive hero, elephants forming a gigantic lane and an all-out
fight against tigers.
36
Circuses at that time made nice profits out of
animal rentals.
The whole group of films, with its craving for exotic sceneries, resembled
a prisoner's daydream. The prison was of course the muti-
34
Program to this film; Kalbus, ibid., pp. 41U8.
35
Kalbus, ibid., p. 48. For other exotic adventurer films of this kind, see Birnbaum,
"Massenscenen im Film," Ufar-Blatter, and Kalbus, ibid., pp. 90-91.
3*
Kalbus, ibid., pp. 49, 94; Mtihsam, "Tiere im Film," Ufa^Bldtter; Tannenbaum,
**Der Grossfilm," Der Film von Morgen, p. 71 ; Balazs, X>0r tiohtbare Menaoh, p. 113.
THE SHOCK OF FREEDOM 57
lated and blockaded fatherland; at least, this was the way most Germans
felt about it. What they called their world mission had been
thwarted, and now all exits seemed barred. These space-devouring
films reveal how bitterly the average German resented his involuntary
seclusion. They functioned as substitutes ; they naively satisfied
his suppressed desire for expansion through pictures that enabled his
imagination to reannex the world, including Ophir. As for Ophir,
the prospectus of MISTRESS OF THE WORLD did not forget to note
that the idea of locating this mythical kingdom in Africa had been
advocated by Karl Peters. Since Karl Peters was the promoter of the
German Colonization Society (Deutseller Kolonialverem) and one of
the founders of German East Africa, the mention of his name overtly
indicated the film's timely connotations. Inflation prevented the film
producers at that moment from sending costly expeditions to the
edge of the world.87
The consequence was that a Chinese pagoda
topped a German hill, and Brandenburg's sandy plain served as a
genuine desert. This extensive faking proved a vehicle of progress
inasmuch as it forced the German studio teams to develop many a
new craft.
In the interest of completeness a mania too boring to be cultivated,
yet too rewarding to be altogether suppressed one should not
overlook the comedies produced during that period of introvert
films. It was again Lubitsch who took the lead in this field, which
he had left only to oblige Davidson. Had he left it? While he was
inciting a mass of extras to curse Madame du Barry and cheer
Anne Boleyn, he was also directing a sort of film operetta, DEB
PUPPE (THE DOLL, 1919), and the satire DIE AUSTERNPRINZESSEN
(THE OYSTER PRINCESS, 1919) which is said to have clumsily ridiculed
American habits within spectacular settings.
38
Thus he put
into practice the philosophy of his hunchback in SUMXJRXJN who
"must dance and gambol again, for the public wants a laugh."
Considering the speed with which Lubitsch exchanged murders and
tortures for dancing and joking, it is highly probable that his
comedies sprang from the same nihilism as his historical dramas.
This tendency made it easy for him to drain great events of their
seriousness and realize comical potentialities in trifles. Seasoned by
him, such trifles became truffles. From 1921 on, having done away
*7
Kalbus, Deutsche Fihnkuntt, 1, 102-4.
38
Vincent, Sistoire de VArt Ointmatographique, p. 142; Bardfeche and Brasillach,
History of Motion Pictures, pp. 189-90; Kalbus, Devitche Fitmkunst, I, 85-86.
58 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
with history, Lubitsch devoted himself almost exclusively tôthe
savory entertainment of which he was master. In his coolly received
DIE BERGKATZE (MOUNTAIN CAT, 1921), Pola Negri moved, a
catlike briganďs daughter, between swollen architectural forms
which assisted in a parody of boastful Balkan manners, pompous
militarism and, perhaps, the expressionist vogue.
89
If it were not for Lubitsch, the German film comedies of the time
would hardly be worth mentioning. Adaptations of operettas and
stage plays among these the indestructible AM HEIDELBERG ( STUDENT
PRINCE, 1923) prevailed over products of genuine screen
humor, and American comedies ingratiated themselves more effectively
than the native ones with a public eager for a momenťs laugh-
ter.
40
This proves again that in Germany the natural desire for happiness
was not so much catered to as tolerated.
Escapist needs were somewhat balanced by the urge to take sides
in the conflict of opinions. A true expression of philistine indignation,
several films deplored the general postwar depravity, the craze
for dancing and the nouveaux riches.*
1
Outright propaganda messages
intermingled with these moral verdicts. Two films discredited
the French army, causing the French government to send sharp
notes to Berlin; others incurred the censor's veto by spreading antiSemitic
and antirepublican views.
42
Owing to the tense atmosphere
of those years, even remote themes occasionally aroused political
passions. In 1923, the Munich performance of a film version of
Lessing's Nathan the Wise had to be discontinued because of antiSemitic
riots an incident foreshadowing the notorious Berlin Nazi
demonstrations which, nine years later, were to result in the prohibition
of Remarque's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT.48
However, all these screen events are of a merely ideological interest;
they characterize group intentions rather than group dispositions.
As early as 1919 Dr. Victor E. Pordes, a German writer on
aesthetics, complained of the awkwardness with which the German
screen shaped stories involving scenes of society life and questions
of savoir-faire. Whenever civilized manners are to be mirrored, he
39
Kalbus, ibid.t p. 86; Kurtz, Expressionismus, p. 82.
<
Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkwwt, I, esp. 77. For early German film comedies, see also
Ufa Verleih-Programme, 1928/1924, p. 68 ff.
41
Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, I, 58.
Jahrbuch der Filmfadwttrie, 1922/8, pp. 88, 41.
a Jahrbuch der Filmtodufitrie, 1922/8, p. 46 j Kalbus, Deuttch* Filmkwmt, I, 68;
Zaddach, Der literaritche Film, pp. 49-50.
THE SHOCK OF FREEDOM 59
said, Danish, French and American films by far surpass the German
ones "in the social education and quality of the bulk of players, in
the tone, shading and artistic discretion of acting, and finally hi the
precise knowledge and observance of manners." 44
But it was certainly
not sheer inability that interfered with the rendering of manners
on the German screen. Rather, Pordes' criticism corroborates
what has already been stated about the introvert tendency of all
representative films up to 1924. They were not intended to record
given phenomena; their failure to do so was an inevitable consequence
of their intrinsic design. The progressive literary products
and paintings of the time manifested exactly the same aversion to
realism. Yet this similarity of style did not exclude differences of
content and meaning; on the contrary, in all such essentials the
screen went its own, independent way. The introvert tendency it followed
up must be traced to powerful collective desires. Millions of
Germans, in particular middle-class Germans, seem to have shut
themselves off from a world determined by Allied pressure, violent
internal struggles and inflation. They acted as if under the influence
of a terrific shock which upset normal relations between their outer
and inner existence. On the surface, they lived on as before; psychologically,
they withdrew within themselves.
This retreat into a shell was favored by several circumstances.
First, it admirably suited the interests of the German ruling set,
whose chances of survival depended upon the readiness of the masses
to pass over the reasons for their sufferings. Secondly, the middleclass
strata had always been content with being governed, and now
that political freedom had come overnight, they were theoretically
as well as practically unprepared to assume responsibilities. The
shock they experienced was caused by the inroads of freedom.
Thirdly, they entered the arena at a moment when any attempt to
make up for the aborted bourgeois emancipation was bound to precipitate
a socialist solution. And would the Social Democrats themselves
venture on revolutionary experiments? The whole situation
seemed so thorny that no one felt bold enough to cope with it.
Nevertheless, it would be an undue simplification to label the
psychological exodus from the outer world a merely retrogressive
move. During the period of its retreat, the German mind was shaken
by convulsions which upset the whole emotional system. While this
mind neglected, or obstructed, all external revolutionary possibilities,
Pordes, DM Lichtaptol, p. 106.
60 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
it made an extreme effort to reconsider the foundations of the self, to
adjust the self to the actual conditions of life. Qualms about those
deep-rooted dispositions which had supported the collapsed authoritative
regime constantly interfered with the desire to keep them alive.
It is true that during the postwar years introspection dealt solely
with the isolated individual. But this does not necessarily mean that
the Germans insisted upon perpetuating the individuaľs autonomy
at the expense of his social liabilities. Rather, the German conception
of the individual was so rich in traditional values that it could not
unhesitatingly be thrown overboard.
The films of the postwar period from 1920 to 1924 are a unique
mcmologue intSrieur. They reveal developments in almost inaccessible
layers of the German mind.
5, CALIGARI
THE Czech Hans Janowitz, one of the two authors of the film DAS
CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI (THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI), was
brought up in Prague that city where reality fuses with dreams,
and dreams turn into visions of horror.1
One evening in October 1913
this young poet was strolling through a fair at Hamburg, trying to
find a girl whose beauty and manner had attracted him. The tents of
the fair covered the Reeperbahn, known to any sailor as one of the
worlďs chief pleasure spots. Nearby, on the Holstenwall, Lederer's
gigantic Bismarck monument stood sentinel over the ships in the
harbor. In search of the girl, Janowitz followed the fragile trail of
a laugh which he thought hers into a dim park bordering the Holstenwall.
The laugh, which apparently served to lure a young man,
vanished somewhere in the shrubbery. When, a short time later, the
young man departed, another shadow, hidden until then in the
bushes, suddenly emerged and moved along as if on the scent of
that laugh. Passing this uncanny shadow, Janowitz caught a glimpse
of him: he looked like an average bourgeois. Darkness reabsorbed
the man, and made further pursuit impossible. The following day big
headlines in the local press announced: "Horrible sex crime on the
Holstenwall! Young Gertrude . . . murdered." An obscure feeling
that Gertrude might have been the girl of the fair impelled Janowitz
to attend the victim's funeral. During the ceremony he suddenly had
the sensation of discovering the murderer, who had not yet been
captured. The man he suspected seemed to recognize him, too. It was
the bourgeois the shadow in the bushes.
Carl Mayer, co-author with Janowitz of CALIGARI, was born in
the Austrian provincial capital of Graz, where his father, a wealthy
1
The following episode, along with other data appearing in my pages on CAIJOABI,
is drawn from an interesting manuscript Mr. Hans Janowitz has written about the
genesis of this film. I feel greatly indebted to him for having put his material at my
disposal. I am thus in a position to base my interpretation of CAUOAM on the true
inside story, up to now unknown.
61
62 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
businessman, would have prospered had he not been obsessed by the
idea of becoming a "scientific" gambler. In the prime of life he sold
his property, went, armed with an infallible "system," to Monte
Carlo, and reappeared a few months later in Graz, broke. Under the
stress of this catastrophe, the monomaniac father turned the sixteenyear-old
Carl and his three younger brothers out into the street and
finally committed suicide. A mere boy, Carl Mayer was responsible
for the three children. While he toured through Austria, peddling
barometers, singing in choirs and playing extras in peasant theaters,
he became increasingly interested in the stage. There was no branch
of theatrical production which he did not explore during those years
of nomadic life years full of experiences that were to be of immense
use in his future career as a film poet. At the beginning of the war,
the adolescent made his living by sketching Hindenburg portraits on
postcards in Munich cafe's. Later in the war, Janowitz reports, he
had to undergo repeated examinations of his mental condition. Mayer
seems to have been very embittered against the high-ranking military
psychiatrist in charge of his case.
The war was over. Janowitz, who from its outbreak had been
an officer in an infantry regiment, returned as a convinced pacifist,
animated by hatred of an authority which had sent millions of men
to death. He felt that absolute authority was bad in itself. He settled
in Berlin, met Carl Mayer there, and soon found out that this eccentric
young man, who had never before written a line, shared his
revolutionary rnoods and views. Why not express them on the screen?
Intoxicated with Wegener's films, Janowitz believed that this new
medium might lend itself to powerful poetic revelations. As youth
will, the two friends embarked on endless discussions that hovered
around Janowitz* Holstenwall adventure as well as Mayer's mental
duel with the psychiatrist. These stories seemed to evoke and supplement
each other. After such discussions the pair would stroll through
the night, irresistibly attracted by a dazzling and clamorous fair on
Kantstrasse. It was a bright jungle, more hell than paradise, but a
paradise to those who had exchanged the horror of war for the terror
of want. One evening, Mayer dragged his companion to a side-show
by which he had been impressed. Under the title "Man or Machine"
it presented a strong man who achieved miracles of strength in an
apparent stupor. He acted as if he were hypnotized. The strangest
thing was that he accompanied his feats with utterances which
affected the spellbound spectators as pregnant forebodings.
CALIGARI 63
Any creative process approaches a moment when only one additional
experience is needed to integrate all elements into a whole. The
mysterious figure of the strong man supplied such an experience.
On the night of this show the friends first visualized the original story
of CALIGABI. They wrote the manuscript in the following six weeks.
Defining the part each took in the work, Janowitz calls himself "the
father who planted the seed, and Mayer the mother who conceived
and ripened it." At the end, one small problem arose: the authors
were at a loss as to what to christen their main character, a psychiatrist
shaped after Mayer's archenemy during the war. A rare
volume, Unknown Letters of Stendhal, offered the solution. While
Janowitz was skimming through this find of his, he happened to
notice that Stendhal, just come from the battlefield, met at La Scala
in Milan an officer named Caligari. The name clicked with both
authors.
Their story is located in a fictitious North German town near the
Dutch border, significantly called Holstenwall. One day a fair moves
into the town, with merry-go-rounds and side-shows among the
latter that of Dr. Caligari, a weird, bespectacled man advertising
the somnambulist Cesare. To procure a license, Caligari goes to the
town hall, where he is treated haughtily by an arrogant official. The
following morning this official is found murdered in his room, which
does not prevent the townspeople from enjoying the fair's pleasures.
Along with numerous onlookers, Francis and Alan two students
in love with Jane, a medical man's daughter enter the tent of
Dr. Caligari, and watch Cesare slowly stepping out of an upright,
coffinlike box. Caligari tells the thrilled audience that the somnambulist
will answer questions about the future. Alan, in an excited
state, asks how long he has to live. Cesare opens his mouth ; he seems
to be dominated by a terrific, hypnotic power emanating from his
master. "Until dawn," he answers. At dawn Francis learns that his
friend has been stabbed in exactly the same manner as the official.
The student, suspicious of Caligari, persuades Jane's father to assist
him in an investigation. With a search warrant the two force their
way into the showman's wagon, and demand that he end the trance
of his medium. However, at this very moment they are called away
to the police station to attend the examination of a criminal who has
been caught in the act of killing a woman, and who now frantically
denies that he is the pursued serial murderer.
Francis continues spying on Caligari, and, after nightfall, se-
64 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
cretly peers through a window of the wagon. But while he imagines
he sees Cesare lying in his box, Cesare in reality breaks into Jane's
bedroom, lifts a dagger to pierce the sleeping girl, gazes at her, puts
the dagger away and flees, with the screaming Jane in his arms, over
roofs and roads. Chased by her father, he drops the girl, who is then
escorted home, whereas the lonely kidnaper dies of exhaustion. As
Jane, in flagrant contradiction of what Francis believes to be the
truth, insists on having recognized Cesare, Francis approaches Caligari
a second time to solve the torturing riddle. The two policemen
in his company seize the coffinlike box, and Francis draws out of it
a dummy representing the somnambulist. Profiting by the investigators'
carelessness, Caligari himself manages to escape. He seeks
shelter in a lunatic asylum. The student follows him, calls on the
director of the asylum to inquire about the fugitive, and recoils
horror-struck: the director and Caligari are one and the same
person.
The following night the director has fallen asleep Francis
and three members of the medical staff whom he has initiated into the
case search the director's office and discover material fully establishing
the guilt of this authority in psychiatric matters. Among a pile
of books they find an old volume about a showman named Caligari
who, in the eighteenth century, traveled through North Italy, hypnotized
his medium Cesare into murdering sundry people, and,
during Cesare's absence, substituted a wax figure to deceive the
police. The main exhibit is the director's clinical records ; they evidence
that he desired to verify the account of Caligari's hypnotic
faculties, that his desire grew into an obsession, and that, when a
somnambulist was entrusted to his care, he could not resist the
temptation of repeating with him those terrible games. He had
adopted the identity of Caligari. To make him admit his crimes,
Francis confronts the director with the corpse of his tool, the somnambulist.
No sooner does the monster realize Cesare is dead than he
begins to rave. Trained attendants put him into a strait jacket.
This horror tale in the spirit of E. T. A. Hoffmann was an outspoken
revolutionary story. In it, as Janowitz indicates, he and Carl
Mayer half-intentionally stigmatized the omnipotence of a state
authority manifesting itself in universal conscription and declarations
of war. The German war government seemed to the authors
the prototype of such voracious authority. Subjects of the AustroHungarian
monarchy, they were in a better position than most citi-
CALIGARI 65
zens of the Reich to penetrate the fatal tendencies inherent in the
German system. The character of Caligari embodies these tendencies ;
he stands for an unlimited authority that idolizes power as such, and,
to satisfy its lust for domination, rutlilessly violates all human rights
and values [Illus. 2] .
Functioning as a mere instrument, Cesare is
not so much a guilty murderer as Caligari's innocent victim. This is
how the authors themselves understood him. According to the pacifist-minded
Janowitz, they had created Cesare with the dim design
of portraying the common man who, under the pressure of compulsory
military service, is drilled to kill and to be killed. The revolutionary
meaning of the story reveals itself unmistakably at the end,
with the disclosure of the psychiatrist as Caligari: reason overpowers
unreasonable power, insane authority is symbolically abolished.
Similar ideas were also being expressed on the contemporary
stage, but the authors of CALIGARI transferred them to the screen
without including any of those eulogies of the authority-freed "New
Man" in which many expressionist plays indulged.
A miracle occurred: Erich Pommer, chief executive of DeclaBioscop,
accepted this unusual, if not subversive, script. Was it a
miracle? Since in those early postwar days the conviction prevailed
that foreign markets could only be conquered by artistic achievements,
the German film industry was of course anxious to experiment
in the field of aesthetically qualified entertainment.2
Art assured export,
and export meant salvation. An ardent partisan of this doctrine,
Pommer had moreover an incomparable flair for cinematic
values and popular demands. Regardless of whether he grasped the
significance of the strange story Mayer and Janowitz submitted to
him, he certainly sensed its timely atmosphere and interesting scenic
potentialities. He was a born promoter who handled screen and
business affairs with equal facility, and, above all, excelled in stimulating
the creative energies of directors and players. In 1923, Ufa
was to make him chief of its entire production.
3
His behind-the-scenes
activities were to leave their imprint on the pre-Hitler screen.
Pommer assigned Fritz Lang to direct CAUGARI, but in the
middle of the preliminary discussions Lang was ordered to finish his
serial THE SPIDERS; the distributors of this film urged its comple-
tion.
4
Lang's successor was Dr. Robert Wiene. Since his father, a
a
Vincent, Htetoire do VArt CinAmatogrcuphique, p. 140.
3 Jahrbuch der FUmindwttrie, 1922/8, pp. 85, 46. For an appraisal of Pommer, see
Lejeune, Cinema, pp. 125-31.
4 Information offered by Mr. Lang. Cf. p. 56.
66 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
once-famous Dresden actor, had become slightly insane towards the
end of his life, Wiene was not entirely unprepared to tackle the
case of Dr. Caligari. He suggested, in complete harmony with what
Lang had planned, an essential change of the original story a
change against which the two authors violently protested. But no
one heeded them*5
The original story was an account of real horrors ; Wiene's version
transforms that account into a chimera concocted and narrated
by the mentally deranged Francis. To effect this transformation
the body of the original story is put into a framing story which
introduces Francis as a madman. The film CALIGARI opens with the
first of the two episodes composing the frame. Francis is shown
sitting on a bench in the park of the lunatic asylum, listening to the
confused babble of a fellow sufferer. Moving slowly, like an apparition,
a female inmate of the asylum passes by: it is Jane. Francis
says to his companion: "What I have experienced with her is still
stranger than what you have encountered. I will tell it to you."
6
Fade-out. Then a view of Holstenwall fades in, and the original story
unfolds, ending, as has been seen, with the identification of Caligari.
After a new fade-out the second and final episode of the framing
story begins. Francis, having finished the narration, follows his companion
back to the asylum, where he mingles with a crowd of sad
figures among them Cesare, who absent-mindedly caresses a little
flower. The director of the asylum, a mild and understanding-looking
person, joins the crowd. Lost in the maze of his hallucinations,
Francis takes the director for the nightmarish character he himself
has created, and accuses this imaginary fiend of being a dangerous
madman. He screams, he fights the attendants in a frenzy. The
scene is switched over to a sickroom, with the director putting on
horn-rimmed spectacles which immediately change his appearance:
it seems to be Caligari who examines the exhausted Francis. After
this he removes his spectacles and, all mildness, tells his assistants
that Francis believes him to be Caligari. Now that he understands the
case of his patient, the director concludes, he will be able to heal him.
With this cheerful message the audience is dismissed.
Janowitz and Mayer knew why they raged against the framing
story: it perverted, if not reversed, their intrinsic intentions. While
Extracted from Mr. Janowitafs manuscript. See also Vincent, Sistoire de VArt
Cintmatoffraphique, pp. 140, 148-44.
6 Film license, issued by Board of Censors, Berlin, 1921 and 1925 (Museum of
Modern Art Library, clipping files) ; Film Society Programme, March 14, 1925.
CALIGABI 67
the original story exposed the madness inherent in authority, Wiene's
CALIGABI glorified authority and convicted its antagonist of madness.
A revolutionary film was thus turned into a conformist one following
the much-used pattern of declaring some normal but troublesome
individual insane and sending him to a lunatic asylum. This change
undoubtedly resulted not so much from Wiene's personal predilections
as from his instinctive submission to the necessities of the
screen ; films, at least commercial films, are forced to answer to mass
desires. In its changed form CALIGABI was no longer a product expressing,
at best, sentiments characteristic of the intelligentsia, but
a film supposed equally to be in harmony with what the less educated
felt and liked.
If it holds true that during the postwar years most Germans
eagerly tended to withdraw from a harsh outer world into the intangible
realm of the soul, Wiene's version was certainly more consistent
with their attitude than the original story; for, by putting the
original into a box, this version faithfully mirrored the general rt
treat into a shell. In CALIGABI (and several other films of the time)
the device of a framing story was not only an aesthetic form, but also
had symbolic content. Significantly, Wiene avoided mutilating the
original story itself. Even though CALIGABI had become a conformist
film, it preserved and emphasized this revolutionary story as a
madman's fantasy. Caligari's defeat now belonged among psychological
experiences. In this way Wiene's film does suggest that
during their retreat into themselves the Germans were stirred to
reconsider their traditional belief in authority. Down to the bulk of
social democratic workers they refrained from revolutionary action ;
yet at the same time a psychological revolution seems to have prepared
itself in the depths of the collective soul. The film reflects this
double aspect of German life by coupling a reality in which Caligari's
authority triumphs with a hallucination in which the same
authority is overthrown. There could be no better configuration of
symbols for that uprising against the authoritarian dispositions
which apparently occurred under the cover of a behavior rejecting
uprising.
Janowitz suggested that the settings for CALIGABI be designed by
the painter and illustrator Alfred Kubin, who, a forerunner of the
surrealists, made eerie phantoms invade harmless scenery and
visions of torture emerge from the subconscious. Wiene took to the
68 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
idea of painted canvases, but preferred to Kubin three expressionist
artists: Hermann Warm, Walter Rohrig and Walter Reimann.
They were affiliated with the Berlin Sturm group, which, through
Herwarth Walden's magazine Sturm, promoted expressionism in
every field of art.
7
Although expressionist painting and literature had evolved years
before the war, they acquired a public only after 1918. In this
respect the case of Germany somewhat resembled that of Soviet
Russia where, during the short period of war communism, diverse
currents of abstract art enjoyed a veritable heyday.
8
To a revolutionized
people expressionism seemed to combine the denial of bourgeois
traditions with faith in man's power freely to shape society and
nature. On account of such virtues it may have cast a spell over many
Germans upset by the breakdown of their universe.
9
"Films must be drawings brought to life": this was Hermann
Warm's formula at the time that he and his two fellow designers were
constructing the CAUGARI world.10
In accordance with his beliefs, the
canvases and draperies of CALIGABI abounded in complexes of
7 Mr. Janowitz's manuscript; Vincent, Histoire de VArt Qin6ma,tograpUgu6> p.
144; Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 43.
8
Kurtz, Expressionisms, p. 61.
9 In Berlin, immediately after the war, Karl Heinz Martin staged two little
dramas by Ernst Toller and Walter Hasenclever within expressionist settings. Cf.
Kurtz, ibid., p. 48; Vincent, Histovre de VArt QinematograyUque, pp. 142-48;
Schapiro, "Nature of Abstract Art," Marxist Quarterly, Jan-March 1987, p. 97.
10
Quotation from Kurtz, Expressionisma*, p. 66. Warm's views, which implied a
verdict on films as photographed reality, harmonized with those of Viking Eggeling,
an abstract Swedish painter living in Germany. Having eliminated all objects from his
canvases, Eggeling deemed it logical to involve the surviving geometrical compositions
in rhythmic movements. He and his painter friend Hans Richter submitted this idea
to Ufa, and Ufa, guided as ever by the maxim that art is good business or, at least,
good propaganda, enabled the two artists to go ahead with their experiments. The first
abstract films appeared in 1921. While Eggeling he died in 1925 orchestrated spiral
lines and comblike figures in a short he called DIAGONAL SYMPHONY, Richter composed
his RHYTHM 21 of squares in black, gray and white. One year later, Walter Ruttmann,
also a painter, joined in the trend with OPUS I, which was a dynamic display of spots
vaguely recalling X-ray photographs. As the titles reveal, the authors themselves considered
their products a sort of optical music. It was a music that, whatever else it
tried to impart, marked an utter withdrawal from the outer world. This esoteric avantgarde
movement soon spread over other countries. From about 1924, such advanced
French artists as Fernand Le"ger and Rene* Glair made films which, less abstract than
the German ones, showed an affinity for the formal beauty of machine parts, and molded
all kinds of objects and motions into surrealistic dreams. I feel indebted to Mr.
Hans Richter for having permitted me to use his unpublished manuscript, "Avantgarde,
History and Dates of the Only Independent Artistic Film Movement, 1921-1981." See
also Film Society Programme, Oct. 16, 1927; Kurtz, Expr6*toniamu$, pp. 86, 94; Vincent,
Histoire de VArt Qintmatographique, pp. 159-61; Man Ray, "Answer to a Questionnaire,"
Film Art, no. 7, 1980, p. 9; Kraszna-Krausz, "Exhibition in Stuttgart, June
1929, and Its Effects," Close Up, Dec. 1929, pp. 461-62.
CALIGARI 69
jagged, sharp-pointed forms strongly reminiscent of gothic patterns.
Products of a style which by then had become almost a
mannerism, these complexes suggested houses, walls, landscapes. Except
for a few slips or concessions some backgrounds opposed the
pictorial convention in too direct a manner, while others all but preserved
them the settings amounted to a perfect transformation of
material objects into emotional ornaments. With its oblique chimneys
on pell-mell roofs, its windows in the form of arrows or kites and its
treelike arabesques that were threats rather than trees, Holstenwall
resembled those visions of unheard-of cities which the painter Lyonel
Feininger evoked through his edgy, crystalline compositions.
11
In
addition, the ornamental system in CAXJGARI expanded through
space, annuling its conventional aspect by means of painted shadows
in disharmony with the lighting effects, and zigzag delineations
designed to efface all rules of perspective. Space now dwindled to a
flat plane, now augmented its dimensions to become what one writer
called a "stereoscopic universe." 12
Lettering was introduced as an essential element of the settings
appropriately enough, considering the close relationship between lettering
and drawing. In one scene the mad psychiatrisťs desire to
imitate Caligari materializes in jittery characters composing the
words "I must become Caligari" words that loom before his eyes
on the road, in the clouds, in the treetops. The incorporation of
human beings and their movements into the texture of these surroundings
was tremendously difficult. Of all the players only the two
protagonists seemed actually to be created by a draftman's imagination.
Werner Krauss as Caligari had the appearance of a phantom
magician himself weaving the lines and shades through which he
11 Mr. Feininger wrote to me about his relation to CAUGASI on Sept. 18, 1944:
"Thank you for your . . . letter of Sept 8. But if there has been anything I never had
a part in nor the slightest knowledge of at the time, it is the film CAUGA&I. I have never
even seen the film. ... I never met nor knew the artists you name [Warm, Rohrig and
Reimann] who devised the settings. Some time about 1911 1 made, for my own edification,
a series of drawings which I entitled: *Die Stadt am Ende der Welť Some of
these drawings were printed, some were exhibited. Later, after the birth of CALIOABI,
I was frequently asked whether I had had a hand in its devising. This is all I can tell
you. . . ."
12 Cited by Carter, The New Spirit, p. 250, from H. G. Scheffauer, The New Spirit
in the German Arts. For the CAIIGARI dcor, see also Kurtz, Expressionisms, p. 66;
Rotha, Film TUl Now, p. 46; Jahier, "42 Ans de Cinema," Le Rdle intellectual du
Cinema,, pp. 60-61; "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," Exceptional Photoplays, March
1921, p. 4; Amiguet, Gvntmal CintmaJ, p. 50. For the beginnings of Werner Krauss
and Conrad Veidt, see Kalbus, Deutsche FUmkwut, I, 28, 80, and Veidt, "Mein
Leben," UfarMaga&fa, Jan. 14r-20, 1927.
70 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
paced, and when Conrad Veidťs Cesare prowled along a wall, it wa&
as if the wall had exuded him [Illus. 3]. The figure of an old dwarf
and the crowďs antiquated costumes helped to remove the throng on
the fair's tent-street from reality and make it share the bizarre life of
abstract forms.
If Decla had chosen to leave the original story of Mayer and
Janowitz as it was, these "drawings brought to life" would have told
it perfectly. As expressionist abstractions they were animated by
the same revolutionary spirit that impelled the two scriptwriters
to accuse authority the kind of authority revered in Germany
of inhuman excesses. However, Wiene's version disavowed this revolutionary
meaning of expressionist staging, or, at least, put it, like
the original story itself, in brackets. In the film CALIGARI expressionism
seems to be nothing more than the adequate translation of a
madman's fantasy into pictorial terms. This was how many contemporary
German reviewers understood, and relished, the settings and
gestures. One of the critics stated with self-assured ignorance: "The
idea of rendering the notions of sick brains . . .
through expressionist
pictures is not only well conceived but also well realized.
Here this style has a right to exist, proves an outcome of solid
logic."
1S
In their triumph the philistines overlooked one significant fact:
even though CAUGARI stigmatized the oblique chimneys as crazy, it
never restored the perpendicular ones as the normal. Expressionist
ornaments also- overrun the film's concluding episode, in which, from
the philistines' viewpoint, perpendiculars should have been expected
to characterize the revival of conventional reality. In consequence,
the CALIGARI style was as far from depicting madness as it was from
transmitting revolutionary messages. What function did it really
assume?
During the postwar years expressionism was frequently considered
a shaping of primitive sensations and experiences. Gerhart
Hauptmann's brother Carl a distinguished writer and poet with expressionist
inclinations adopted this definition, and then asked how
the spontaneous manifestations of a profoundly agitated soul might
best be formulated. While modern language, he contended, is too
perverted to serve this purpose, the film or the bioscop, as he termed
it offers a unique opportunity to externalize the fermentation of
inner life. Of course, he said, the bioscop must feature only those
" Review In 8 Uhr Abendblatt, cited In Caligari-Heft, p. 8.
CALIGARI 71
gestures of things and of human beings which are truly soul-
ful.
14
Carl Hauptmann's views elucidate the expressionist style of
CAUGARI. It had the function of characterizing the phenomena on
the screen as phenomena of the soul a function which overshadowed
its revolutionary meaning. By making the film an outward projection
of psychological events, expressionist staging symbolized
much more strikingly than did the device of a framing story that
general retreat into a shell which occurred in postwar Germany. It is
not accidental that, as long as this collective process was effective,
odd gestures and settings in an expressionist or similar style marked
many a conspicuous film. VARIETY, of 1925, showed the final traces
of them.15
Owing to their stereotyped character, these settings and
gestures were like some familiar street sign "Men at Work,"
for instance. Only here the lettering was different. The sign read:
"Soul at Work."
After a thorough propaganda campaign culminating in the puzzling
poster "You must become Caligari," Decla released the film in
February 1920 in the Berlin Marmorhaus.16
Among the press reviews
they were unanimous in praising CALIGARI as the first work
of art on the screen that of Vorwarts, the leading Social Democratic
Party organ, distinguished itself by utter absurdity. It commented
upon the film's final scene, in which the director of the asylum
promises to heal Francis, with the words : "This film is also morally
invulnerable inasmuch as it evokes sympathy for the mentally diseased,
and comprehension for the self-sacrificing activity of the
psychiatrists and attendants." 1T
Instead of recognizing that Francis'
attack against an odious authority harmonized with the Party's own
antiauthoritarian doctrine, Vorwarts preferred to pass off authority
itself as a paragon of progressive virtues. It was always the same
psychological mechanism: the rationalized middle-class propensities
of the Social Democrats interfering with their rational socialist designs.
While the Germans were too close to CALIGARI to appraise its
symptomatic value, the French realized that this film was more than
just an exceptional film. They coined the term "Cdigarisme" and
14 Carl Hauptmann, "Film und Theater," Der Film von Morgen, p. 20. See also
Alten, "Die Kunst in Deutschland," Ganymed, 1920, p. 146; Kurtz, Expressionism,
p. 14.
Cf. p. 127.
" Jahrbuch der Filmindustrie, 1922/8, p. 81.
17
Quoted from OaligarirHeft, p. 28.
72 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
applied it to a postwar world seemingly all upside down ; which, at
any rate, proves that they sensed the film's bearing on the structure
of society. The New York premiere of CALIGABI, in April 1921,
firmly established its world fame. But apart from giving rise to stray
imitations and serving as a yardstick for artistic endeavors, this
"most widely discussed film of the time" never seriously influenced
the course of the American or French cinema.18
It stood out lonely,
like a monolith.
CALIGARI shows the "Soul at Work." On what adventures does
the revolutionized soul embark? The narrative and pictorial elements
of the film gravitate towards two opposite poles. One can be labeled
"Authority," or, more explicitly, "Tyranny." The theme of tyranny,
with which the authors were obsessed, pervades the screen from beginning
to end. Swivel-chairs of enormous height symbolize the superiority
of the city officials turning on them, and, similarly, the gigantic
back of the chair in Alan's attic testifies to the invisible presence of
powers that have their grip on him. Staircases reinforce the effect of
the furniture: numerous steps ascend to police headquarters, and in
the lunatic asylum itself no less than three parallel flights of stairs
are called upon to mark Dr. Caligari's position at the top of the hierarchy
[Ulus. 4], That the film succeeds in picturing him as a tyrant
figure of the stamp of Homunculus and Lubitsch's Henry VIII is
substantiated by a most illuminating statement in Joseph Freeman's
novel, Never Call Retreat. Its hero, a Viennese professor of history,
tells of his life in a German concentration camp where, after
being tortured, he is thrown into a cell: "Lying alone in that cell,
I thought of Dr. Caligari; then, without transition, of the Emperor
Valentinian, master of the Roman world, who took great delight
in imposing the death sentence for slight or imaginary offenses.
This Caesar's favorite expressions were : 'Strike off his head !' 'Burn
him alive!' 'Let him be beaten with clubs till he expires !' I thought
what a genuine twentieth century ruler the emperor was, and
promptly fell asleep."
19
This dreamlike reasoning penetrates Dr.
Caligari to the core by conceiving him as a counterpart of Valentinian
and a premonition of Hitler. Caligari is a very specific premonition
in the sense that he uses hypnotic power to force his will upon
his tool a technique foreshadowing, in content and purpose, that
"Quotation from Jacobs, American Film, p. 803; see also pp. 804-5.
19
Freeman, Never Call Retreat, p. 528,
CALIGAEI 73
manipulation of the soul which Hitler was the first to practice on a
gigantic scale. Even though, at the time of CAuaARi, the motif of the
masterful hypnotizer was not unknown on the screen it played a
prominent role in the American film TRILBY, shown in Berlin during
the war nothing in their environment invited the two authors to
feature it.
20
They must have been driven by one of those dark impulses
which, stemming from the slowly moving foundations of a
people's life, sometimes engender true visions.
One should expect the pole opposing that of tyranny to be the
pole of freedom; for it was doubtless their love of freedom which
made Janowitz and Mayer disclose the nature of tyranny. Now this
counterpole is the rallying-point of elements pertaining to the fair
the fair with its rows of tents, its confused crowds besieging them,
and its diversity of thrilling amusements. Here Francis and Alan
happily join the swarm of onlookers; here, on the scene of his triumphs,
Dr. Caligari is finally trapped. In their attempts to define
the character of a fair, literary sources repeatedly evoke the memory
of Babel and Babylon alike. A seventeenth century pamphlet describes
the noise typical of a fair as "such a distracted noise that you
would think Babel not comparable to it," and, almost two hundred
years later, a young English poet feels enthusiastic about "that
Babylon of booths the Fair." 21
The manner in which such Biblical
images insert themselves unmistakably characterizes the fair as an
enclave of anarchy in the sphere of entertainment. This accounts for
its eternal attractiveness. People of all classes and ages enjoy losing
themselves in a wilderness of glaring colors and shrill sounds, which
is populated with monsters and abounding in bodily sensations
from violent shocks to tastes of incredible sweetness. For adults it is
a regression into childhood days, in which games and serious affairs
are identical, real and imagined things mingle, and anarchical desires
aimlessly test infinite possibilities. By means of this regression the
adult escapes a civilization which tends to overgrow and starve out
the chaos of instincts escapes it to restore that chaos upon which
civilization nevertheless rests. The fair is not freedom, but anarchy
entailing chaos.
Significantly, most fair scenes in CALIGABI open with a small irisin
exhibiting an organ-grinder whose arm constantly rotates, and,
behind him, the top of a merry-go-round which never ceases its cir-
a
Kalbus, Deutsche FUmkwut, I, 95.
ai
McKechnie, Popular Entertainments, pp. 88, 47.
74 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
cular movement.
22
The circle here becomes a symbol of chaos. While
freedom resembles a river, chaos resembles a whirlpool. Forgetful of
self, one may plunge into chaos; one cannot move on in it. That the
two authors selected a fair with its liberties as contrast to
the^
oppressions
of Caligari betrays the flaw in their revolutionary aspirations.
Much as they longed for freedom, they were apparently incapable
of imagining its contours. There is something Bohemian in their
conception ; it seems the product of naive idealism rather than true
insight. But it might be said that the fair faithfully reflected the
chaotic condition of postwar Germany.
Whether intentionally or not, CALIGARI exposes the soul wavering
between tyranny and chaos, and facing a desperate situation: any
escape from tyranny seems to throw it into a state of utter confusion.
Quite logically, the film spreads an all-pervading atmosphere of
horror. Like the Nazi world, that of CAMGARI overflows with sinister
portents, acts of terror and outbursts of panic. The equation of
horror and hopelessness comes to a climax in the final episode which
pretends to re-establish normal life. Except for the ambiguous figure
of the director and the shadowy members of his staff, normality
realizes itself through the crowd of insane moving in their bizarre
surroundings. The normal as a madhouse: frustration could not be
pictured more finally. And in this film, as well as in HOMUNCUI/CTS, is
unleashed a strong sadism and an appetite for destruction.
28
The
reappearance of these traits on the screen once more testifies to their
prominence in the German collective soul.
Technical peculiarities betray peculiarities of meaning. In
GARI methods begin to assert themselves which belong among the
special properties of German film technique. CALIGARI initiates a
long procession of 100 per cent studio-made films. Whereas, for instance,
the Swedes at that time went to great pains to capture the
actual appearance of a snowstorm or a wood, the German directors,
at least until 1924, were so infatuated with indoor effects that they
built up whole landscapes within the studio walls. They preferred
the command of an artificial universe to dependence upon a haphazard
outer world. Their withdrawal into the studio was part of
M Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 285. For the role of fairs in films, sec E. W. and
M. M. Robson, The Film Antwers Back, pp. 196-97. An iris-in is a technical term for
opening up the scene from a small circle of light in a dark screen until the whole frame
is revealed.
Cf.
p. 88.
CALIGARI 75
the general retreat into a shell. Once the Germans had determined
to seek shelter within the soul, they could not well allow the screen
to explore that very reality which they abandoned. This explains the
conspicuous role of architecture after CALIGARI a role that has
struck many an observer. "It is of the utmost importance," Paul
Rotha remarks in a survey of the postwar period, "to grasp the
significant part played by the architect in the development of the
German cinema." 24
How could it be otherwise? The architecťs
fa$ades and rooms were not merely backgrounds, but hieroglyphs.
They expressed the structure of the soul in terms of space.
CAUGARI also mobilizes light. It is a lighting device which enables
the spectators to watch the murder of Alan without seeing it; what
they see, on the wall of the studenťs attic, is the shadow of Cesare
stabbing that of Alan. Such devices developed into a specialty of the
German studios. Jean Cassou credits the Germans with having invented
a "laboratory-made fairy illumination,"
25
and Harry Alan
Potamkin considers the handling of the light in the German film its
"major contribution to the cinema." 26
This emphasis upon light can
be traced to an experiment Max Reinhardt made on the stage shortly
before CAUGARI. In his mise-en-scdne of Sorge's prewar drama The
Beggar (Der Eettler) one of the earliest and most vigorous manifestations
of expressionism he substituted for normal settings
imaginary ones created by means of lighting effects.
27
Reinhardt
doubtless introduced these effects to be true to the drama's style. The
analogy to the films of the postwar period is obvious: it was their
expressionist nature which impelled many a German director of
photography to breed shadows as rampant as weeds and associate
ethereal phantoms with strangely lit arabesques or faces. These efforts
were designed to bathe all scenery in an unearthly illumination
marking it as scenery of the soul.
c
*Light has breathed soul into the
expressionist films," Rudolph Kurtz states in his book on the expressionist
cinema.28
Exactly the reverse holds true: in those films the
soul was the virtual source of the light. The task of switching on this
inner illumination was somewhat facilitated by powerful romantic
traditions.
94
Rotha, Film TiU Now, p. 180. Cf. Potamldn, "Kino and Lichtspiel," Close Up,
Nov. 1929, p. 887.
a6 Cited in Leprohon, "Le Cindma AUemand," Le Rouge et le Noir, July 1928, p.
185.
a
Potamkin, "The Rise and Fall of the German Film,** Cinema, April 1980, p. 24.
a7
Kurtz, Eapretfionismu*, p. 59.
/6W.,p. 60.
76 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
The attempt made in CALIGARI to co-ordinate settings, players,
lighting and action is symptomatic of the sense of structural organization
which, from this film on, manifests itself on the German
screen. Rotha coins the term "studio constructivism" to characterize
"that curious air of completeness, of finality, that surrounds each
product of the German studios."
2d
But organizational completeness
can be achieved only if the material to be organized does not object
to it. (The ability of the Germans to organize themselves owes much
to their longing for submission.) Since reality is essentially incalculable
and therefore demands to be observed rather than commanded,
realism on the screen and total organization exclude each other.
Through their "studio constructivism" no less than their lighting
the German films revealed that they dealt with unreal events displayed
in a sphere basically controllable.
80
In the course of a visit to Paris about six years after the premiere
of CALIGABI, Janowitz called on Count Etienne de Beaumont in
his old city residence, where he lived among Louis Seize furniture
and Picassos. The Count voiced his admiration of CAUOABI, terming
it "as fascinating and abstruse as the German soul." He continued:
"Now the time has come for the German soul to speak, Monsieur.
The French soul spoke more than a century ago, in the Revolution,
anď you have been mute. . . . Now we are waiting for what you
have to impart to us, to the world." 81
The Count did not have long to wait.
Rotha, Film Till Now, pp. 107-8. Cf. Potamkin, "Kino and Lichtspiel," Clot*
Up, Nov. 1929, p. 888, and "The Rise and Fall of the German Film," Cinema, April
1930, p. 24.
30 Film connoisseurs have -repeatedly criticized CAIIGARI for being a stage imitation.
This aspect of the film partly results from its genuinely theatrical action. It
is action of a well-constructed dramatic conflict in stationary surroundings action
which does not depend upon screen representation for significance. Like CALIOARI,
all "indoor" Alms of the postwar period showed affinity for the stage in that they
favored inner-life dramas at the expense of conflicts involving outer reality. However,
this did not necessarily prevent them from growing into true films. When, in the
wake of CALIOARI, film technique steadily progressed, the psychological screen dramas
increasingly exhibited an imagery that elaborated the significance of their action.
CAUGARI'S theatrical affinity was also due to technical backwardness. An immovable
camera focused upon the painted decor; no cutting device added a meaning of its own
to that of the pictures. One should, of course, not forget the reciprocal influence
CALIGABI and kindred films exerted, for their part, on the German stage. Stimulated
by the use they made of the iris-in, stage lighting took to singling out a lone player,
or some important sector of the scene. Cf. Barry, Program, Notes, Series III, program
1; Gregor, ZeitalUr d8 Films, pp. 184, 144-45; Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 2T5;
Vincent, Hittoire d* I'Art CinJmatographique, p. 189.
31 From Janowitz's manuscript.
6. PROCESSION OF TYRANTS
CALIGARI was too high-brow to become popular in Germany. However,
its basic theme the soul being faced with the seemingly unavoidable
alternative of tyranny or chaos exerted extraordinary
fascination. Between 1920 and 1924, numerous German films insistently
resumed this theme, elaborating it in various fashions.
One group specialized in the depiction of tyrants. In this film
type, the Germans of the time a people still unbalanced, still free to
choose its regime nursed no illusions about the possible consequences
of tyranny ; on the contrary, they indulged in detailing its
crimes and the sufferings it inflicted. Was their imagination kindled
by the fear of bolshevism? Or did they call upon these frightful
visions to exorcise lusts which, they sensed, were their own and now
threatened to possess them? (It is, at any rate, a strange coincidence
that, hardly more than a decade later, Nazi Germany was to put into
practice that very mixture of physical and mental tortures which the
German screen then pictured.)
Among the films of this first group, NOSFERATU, released in 1922,
enjoyed particular fame for initiating the fashion of screen vampires.
The film was an adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula,
but Henrik Galeen, the script writer, managed to impregnate it with
ideas of his own.
A real estate agent in Bremen sends his recently married clerk to
Nosferatu, who, living far away in the Carpathian woods, wants to
settle some business matter. The clerk's travel across these woods
macabre with mists, shying horses, wolves and eerie birds proves
but an innocent prelude to the adventures awaiting him in Nosferatu's
castle. The day after his arrival he wanders, in search of his host,
through abandoned rooms and cellars, and eventually discovers Nosferatu
lying in a sarcophagus like a corpse with eyes wide open in a
ghastly face. Nosferatu is a vampire, and vampires sleep by day. By
night the monster approaches the slumbering clerk to suck his blood.
77
78 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
At this very moment Nina, the clerk's wife, awakens in Bremen with
the name of her hushand on her lips, whereupon Nosferatu withdraws
from his victim. It was Galeen's idea to demonstrate through
this telepathic phenomenon the supernatural power of love. After the
clerk's escape, the vampire, who comes to appear more and more as
an incarnation of pestilence, leaves his castle to haunt the world.
Wherever he emerges, rats swarm out and people fall dead. He goes
aboard a sailing ship: the crew dies, and the ship continues cutting
the waves on its own. Finally Nosferatu makes his entrance
in Bremen and there meets Nina in an episode which symbolizes
Galeen's credo that the deadly evils for which Nosferatu stands cannot
defeat those who encounter them fearlessly. Instead of fleeing
the vampire's presence, Nina, her arms extended, welcomes him into
her room. As she does so, a supreme miracle occurs : the sun breaks
through, and the vampire dissolves into thin air
x
[Illus. 5].
P. W. Murnau, who directed NOSFERATTT, had already a few
films to his credit among them JANTJSKOPF (JANUS-FACED, 1920),
a version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; SCHXOSS VOGELOD (VOGELOD
CASTLE, 1921) ,
a crime picture visibly influenced by the Swedes ; and
the realistic farm drama BBENNENDER ACKER (BUKNDTG SOIL,
1922) , in which he is said to have furthered the action through sustained
close shots of facial expressions. In VOGELOD CASTLE, too, he
knowingly used faces to reveal emotional undercurrents and orchestrate
suspense. This early film moreover testified to Murnau's unique
faculty of obliterating the boundaries between the real and the
unreal. Reality in his films was surrounded by a halo of dreams and
presentiments, and a tangible person might suddenly impress the
audience as a mere apparition.
2
Bela Balazs, a German film writer of Hungarian descent, wrote
in 1924 that it was as if "a chilly draft from doomsday" passed
through the scenes of NOSFERATTJ.S
To obtain this effect Murnau
and his cameraman, Fritz Arno Wagner, used all kinds of tricks.
Strips of negative film presented the Carpathian woods as a maze
of ghostlike white trees set against a black sky ;
shots taken in the
1 Based on information offered by Mr. Galeen, who also permitted me to use the
manuscript of his lecture on the fantastic film. Cf. Film Society Programme, Dec. 16,
1928; Dreyfus, "Films ďepouvante," Revue du Otee'ma, May 1, 1980, p. 29 5 Vincent,
Hiatoire de PArt Cindmatoffraphique, p. 101.
a
Vincent, ibid,, p. 151; "Auch Murnau . .
," FUwwelt, March 22, 1981; "Der
Regisseur F. W. Muxnau," Ufa-Magazin, Oct. 15-21, 1926; Kalbus, Deutsche Fitmkunst,
I, 58.
Balazs, Der tichtbare Mentch, p. 108.,
PROCESSION OF TYRANTS 79
"one-turn-one-picture" manner transformed the clerk's coach into a
phantom vehicle uncannily moving along by jerks. The most impressive
episode was that in which the spectral ship glided with its terrible
freight over phosphorescent waters. It is noteworthy that such an
amount of picture sense and technical ingenuity served the sole purpose
of rendering horrors. Of course, film sensations of this kind are
short-lived; at the end of 1928, the Film Society in London revived
the film with the remark that it "combined the ridiculous and the
horrid." 4
When speaking of NOSFERATTT, the critics, even more than in the
case of CALIGARI, insisted upon bringing in E. T, A. Hoffmann.5
However, this reference to the film's romantic antecedents does not
account for its specific meaning. The horrors NOSFEBATTJ spreads are
caused by a vampire identified with pestilence. Does he embody the
pestilence, or is its image evoked to characterize him? If he were
simply the embodiment of destructive nature, Nina's interference
with his activities would be nothing more than magic, meaningless
in this context. Like Attila, Nosferatu is a "scourge of God," and
only as such identifiable with the pestilence. He is a blood-thirsty,
blood-sucking tyrant figure looming in those regions where myths
and fairy tales meet. It is highly significant that during this period
German imagination, regardless of its starting-point, always gravitated
towards such figures as if under the compulsion of hate-love.
The conception that great love might force tyranny into retreat,
symbolized by Nina's triumph over Nosferatu, will be discussed
later.
6
VANISTA, also released in 1922, dwelt upon the psychological
causes and effects of tyranny. Carl Mayer, who fashioned the script
after Stendhaľs story Vanma Vanmi, termed the film a "ballad."
The Germans had then a penchant for ballads and legends, which,
because of their unreal character, were as timely as the expressionist
films proper. This predilection for an imagined world was early
recognized and praised as a German feature. "The strength of the
German film lies in the fantastic drama," the program-magazine of
the Ufa theaters contended in 1921, lest its readers worry about the
4 Film Society Programme, Dec. 16, 1928. See also Rotha, Film Till Now, pp. 197,
276; Oswell Blakeston, "Comment and Review," Close 17<p, Jan. 1929, pp. 71-72.
5
Vincent, Sistoire de VArt Ontmatographique, p. 151; Canudo, ĽUtvM awt
Images, p. 138.
6 Cf. pp. 90, 109.
80 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
superiority of the Americans, Italians and Swedes in other departments
of screen entertainment.7
Vanina is the daughter of a royalist governor who wields his
power so tyrannically that the people, exasperated, rebel against him
and storm his feudal palace. The governor is a cripple, walking with
crutches: this bodily defect makes him a counterpart of Homunculus.
Like Homunculus, he is a tyrant whose sadism appears to stem
from a basic inferiority complex. If this explanation of tyranny
had not touched something in the Germans, it would hardly have
been resumed. The rebellion is crushed, and the governor imprisons
Octavio, its leader, with whom Vanina has fallen in love. Surprisingly,
she succeeds in persuading her father to free Octavio and
arrange for their marriage. However, his apparent generosity turns
out to be sadistic finesse. While the wedding is still going on, the
governor orders Octavio to be thrown again into the dungeon and
then hanged. Enraged by this perfidy, Vanina strikes her crippled
father and extorts from him Octavio's pardon. She runs to the
dungeon, fetches her lover and heads with him for the portal of the
palace. But in the meantime the governor, too, moves along with his
crutches. On the strength of his counterorder the young lovers are
seized just as they reach the last gate that separates them from freedom.
Octavio, accompanied by Vanina, is dragged to the gallows,
and the governor, convulsed with laughter, pronounces his deathsentence.
Vanina drops dead; she cannot survive her lover.
8
Supported by such actors as Asta Nielsen and Paul Wegener,
Arthur von Gerlach made this study in sadism into a film which
emphasized certain emotional complexes rampant under a tyrannical
regime. Conspicuous in that respect is the sequence of the lovers'
flight from the dungeon. Instead of giving the impression of speed,
this sequence shows the couple walking endlessly through endless
corridors. It is an escape in slow motion. Whereas an American reviewer
complained of these boring "miles of passages,"
9
Be"la
Balazs, who was more familiar with the climate of the film, considered
each new passage a "mysterious and uncanny aspect of doom." 10
There is, at any rate, no doubt that the corridors are intended to be
7
Quotation from MBllhausen, "Der Aufstieg des Films," UforBUitter.'For film
ballads and legends of the time, see Jahier, "42 Ans de Cinema," Le R6le intellect^
du Cinema, p. 61; Kalbus; Dattttcht Filmkunst, I, 64, 66.
8
Ufa Verleih-Programme, 1928, p. 18; Weinberg, ScrapbooJct, 1928.
9
Weinberg, Scrapbooks, 1928.
10
Balazs, Der sichtbare Mensch, p. 184; see also p. 58.
PROCESSION OF TYRANTS 81
symbolic rather than realistic. Their uninterrupted succession, which
is certainly not in the interest of suspense, delineates the dread of
ever-impending punishment at the hand of a merciless tyrant. This
dread decomposes the traditional hierarchy of feelings. The terrorized
fugitives experience one moment as an eternity, and limited
space as space beyond any limits. Hope drives them towards the
portal, but panic, which under the reign of terror is inseparable from
hope, transforms their route into a monotonous repetition of blind
alleys.
11
The third important tyrant film appearing in 1922 was Fritz
Lang's DR. MABUSE, DER SPIELER (DR. MABITSE, THE GAMBLER) , a
screen version of a much-read novel by Norbert Jacques. Lang and
his wife, Thea von Harbou, collaborated on the script, as was their
custom. Their design was to portray contemporary life. Two years
after the release of DR. MABUSE, Lang himself called the film a document
about the current world, and attributed its international success
to its documentary virtues rather than to the many thrills it
offered.
12
Whether or not the film lived up to this claim, Dr. Mabuse,
its main character, was a contemporary tyrant. His appearance
proves that those remote tyrants of NOSFERATU and VANINA also had
topical significance.
Dr. Mabuse's family likeness to Dr. Caligari cannot be overlooked.
He, too, is an unscrupulous master-mind animated by the
lust for unlimited power. This superman heads a gang of killers,
blind counterfeiters and other criminals, and with their help terrorizes
society in particular the postwar multitude in search of easy
pleasures. Proceeding scientifically, Dr. Mabuse hypnotizes his presumptive
victims another resemblance to Dr. Caligari and evades
identification by impersonating diverse characters, such as a psychiatrist,
a drunken sailor, a financial magnate. No one would even
suspect his existence, if it were not for Dr. Wenk, the public prosePotamkin
praised VAIHN-A for its fluidity. Cf. Potamkin, "Kino and Lichtspiel,"
Close Up, Nov. 1929, p. 891, and "The Rise and Fall of the German Film," Cinema,
April 1980, p. 25. Similar tyrant films were LTJISE MILLERWT (1922) and PETER DER
GROSSE (PETER THE GREAT, 1928). For the former, see Decla-Bioacop Verier-Programme,
1928, p. 84. For the latter: Zaddach, Der Uterarisohe Film, p. 50; Kalbus,
J>eut*ohe Ftimkunst, I, 70; "Peter the Great," Exceptional Photoplays, Feb-March
1924, pp. 1-2.
ia
Lang, "Kitsch Sensation Kultur und Film," Kultwrfllmbuch, p. 80. According
to Jahrbuch der FUmmdustrie, 1922/8, p. 46, the film's London premiere was a big
success.
82 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
cutor, who is determined to track down the mystery man. Wenk has
found an able helper in the degenerate Countess Told, while Mabuse
relies on his mistress, Cara Carozza, a dancer slavishly devoted to
him. A gigantic duel takes place : it is set against a background of
swanky gambling haunts, and involves a considerable amount of
violence and cunning. In its course Mabuse abducts the countess,
with whom he has fallen in love, ruins her husband systematically,
and orders the jailed Cara to poison herself, which she gladly does.
It looks as if Mabuse is to triumph, for, after two unsuccessful
attempts on Wenk's life, he finally hypnotizes him into a suicidal
state : Wenk drives his car at high speed towards a perilous quarry.
However, the police intervene in time, and, led by Wenk, storm
Mabuse?
s house, kill the members of the gang and free the countess.
Where is Mabuse himself? Days afterwards, they find him, a
raving maniac, in the secret cellar which served the blind counterfeiters
as a workshop. Like Caligari, Mabuse has gone mad.13
Owing to its two parts, the film is of an extraordinary length
a dollar-dreadful rather than a penny-dreadful. Trash need not be
untrue to life ; on the contrary, life may culminate in heaps of trash,
such as no writer could ever amass. However, instead of making DR.
MABUSE reflect familiar surroundings, Lang frequently stages the
action in settings of pronounced artificiality. Now the scene is an
expressionist club-room with painted shadows on the wall, now a dark
back street through which Cesare might have slipped with Jane in
his arms. Other decorative forms help these expressionist ones to
mark the whole as an emotional vision. DR. MABUSE belongs in the
CALIGARI sphere [Dlus. 6]. It is by no means a documentary film,
but it is a document of its time.
The world it pictures has fallen prey to lawlessness and depravity.
A night-club dancer performs in a dcor composed of outright
sex symbols. Orgies are an institution, homosexuals and prostitute
children are everyday characters. The anarchy smoldering in this
world manifests itself clearly in the admirably handled episode of
the police attack against Mabuse's house an episode which through
its imagery intentionally recalls the tumultuous postwar months with
their street fights between Spartacus and the Noske troops. Circular
ornaments emerge prominently time and again. Both the tricky floor
in a new gambling club and the chain of hands formed during a
13
Program brochure to the film; Deeto-Biotcop Verltfh-Progrcvmme* 1928. pp.
10-14.
PROCESSION OF TYRANTS 83
spiritualist stance are shown from above to impress their circular
appearance upon the spectator. Here, as in the case of CAJLIGABI,
the circle denotes a state of chaos.14
The relation between Dr. Mabuse and this chaotic world is revealed
by a shot to which Rudolf Arnheim has drawn attention. A
small bright spot, Mabuse's face gleams out of the jet-black screen,
then, with frightening speed, rushes to the foreground and fills the
whole frame, his cruel, strong-willed eyes fastened upon the audi-
ence.
15
This shot characterizes Mabuse as a creature of darkness,
devouring the world he overpowers. Much as Mabuse resembles
Caligari, he surpasses him in that he continually changes his identity.
Commenting upon this film, Lang once remarked that he was guided
by the idea of rendering the whole of society, with Mabuse everywhere
present but nowhere recognizable. The film succeeds in making
of Mabuse an omnipresent threat which cannot be localized, and thus
reflects society under a tyrannical regime that kind of society in
which one fears everybody because anybody may be the tyranťs ear
or arm.
Throughout the film Mabuse is stigmatized as a man of genius
who has become Public Enemy No. 1. The final scene depicts the
outbreak of his madness in grandiose terms. Trapped in the cellar,
Mabuse finds himself surrounded by all the persons he murdered
pale apparitions who urge him to join their company and cheat at
cards. In the middle of the game the ghosts vanish; whereupon the
lonely Mabuse amuses himself by throwing scores of banknotes into
the air. They flutter about, flow around him. In vain, he tries to fend
them off. Then Wenk arrives. . . . Wenk himself is scarcely more than
a smart representative of the law, a kind of legal gangster, with the
police functioning as his gang. Unlike Francis, who pursues Caligari
for strong and just reasons, Wenk is morally so indifferent that his
triumph lacks significance. To be sure, Mabuse is wrecked; but social
depravity continues, and other Mabuses may follow. Here as well as
in CALIGARI not the slightest allusion to true freedom interferes with
the persistent alternative of tyranny or chaos.
DE. MABXJSE adds to CALIGARI only in one respect: it attempts to
show how closely tyranny and chaos are interrelated. The program
brochure Decla-Bioscop published on the occasion of the film's
premiere describes the Mabuse world as follows :
"Mankind, swept
" Cf.
p. 74.
" Arnheim, Film dU Kunat, p. 124.
84 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
about and trampled down in the wake of war and revolution, takes
revenge for years of anguish by indulging in lusts . . . and by
passively or actively surrendering to crime." 16
That is, chaos breeds
tyrants like Mabuse who, for their part, capitalize on chaos. One
should not overlook the seemingly harmless word "and" through
which the prospectus chooses to connect the weighty terms <c
war" and
"revolution": this "and" throws a dazzling light on Dr. Mabuse's
origin in the middle-class mind.
To stress the film's documentary value the prospectus also states :
"This Dr. Mabuse . . . was not possible in 1910 and, perhaps, will
not be possible any more in 1930 let us hope so, one should like to
say. But with regard to the year 1920 he is a bigger-than-life portrait.
. . ." The hope for the future proved illusory. In 1932, Lang,
in THE LAST WILL OP DR. MABTJSE,
IT
resuscitated his supercriminal
to mirror the obvious Mabuse traits of Hitler. Through this second
Mabuse film the first one is revealed to be not so much a document as
one of those deep-rooted premonitions which spread over the German
postwar screen.
The cycle of imaginary tyrant films came to a close with DAS
WACHSFIGURENKABINETT (WAXWORKS) . Released as late as November
1924 at a time when life was just beginning to look normal
again WAXWORKS marked the end of that period in which the
harassed German mind retreated into a shell. The script was written
by Henrik Galeen, who, in NOSFERATU, had identified the tyrant with
pestilence. He peopled the new film with no less than three tyrants,
but reduced all of them to wax figures.
18
As in CAUGARI, the scene is a fair, with a booth in which these
figures are exhibited. A starved young poet (William Dieterle)
approaches the showman, who has advertised that he wants someone
to write stories about the waxworks. The showman takes this promising
aspirant into the dark booth and slowly lights up one figure after
another. Entranced by the sight of them, the poet sits down and
writes and writes, with the showman's daughter sympathetically
peeping over his shoulder. What he concocts emerges in the form
of three successive episodes. The first, devoted to the figure of Harun-
ie
"Vorwort," program brochure to the film.
" Cf. p. 248 ff.
18
Vincent, Histoir* de VArt Cinfmatographiq'ue, p. 168; Film Society Programme,
Oct. 26, 1925. Besides the three tyrant figures of the film, Galeen's original script also
included the figure of Rinaldo Rinaldini.
PROCESSION OF TYRANTS 85
al-Rashid (Emil Jannings), is an Oriental burlesque ridiculing the
manner of tyrants. They make passes at every pretty woman ; in a
fit of temper they order innocent people beheaded, and a moment
later magnanimously pardon unpardonable crimes. This burlesque
it displays Harun's dealings with a jealous pastry-cook and his
coquettish wife turns out to be a rather insignificant prelude to the
following more serious variations on the same theme.
The second episode animates the wax figure of Ivan the Terrible
(Conrad Veidt), presenting him as an incarnation of insatiable lusts
and unheard-of cruelties [Illus. 8] .
Compared with him, the governor
in VANEHTA is somewhat unimaginative. Ivan not only derives
pleasure from interrupting a wedding party to make the bride his
mistress for a night, but also shows true ingenuity in combining
mental and physical tortures. He places an hourglass before each of
his poisoned victims, so that these unfortunates may anticipate the
precise moment of their death, calculated to coincide with the running-down
of the last grain of sand. The Marquis de Sade would
have liked that one. Owing to the machinations of a revengeful conspirator,
Ivan finally believes himself poisoned and moreover comes
upon a sandglass labeled "Ivan." Horror-stricken, the tyrant turns
it incessantly to postpone the end. His mind out of joint, he shares
the fate of Mabuse and Caligari.
In the third episode, the figure of Jack-the-Ripper (Werner
Krauss) and the characters of the framing story are interlinked by
means of a dream. Falling asleep from exhaustion, the poet dreams
that, while he is taking a walk with the showman's daughter, Jackthe-Ripper
appears and pursues them relentlessly. This is about all ;
but chase and flight perfectly render the nightmarish character life
assumes under any Ivan. To round out the framing story, the film
concludes with the heartening intimation that the poet and the girl
please each other.
WAXWORKS was staged by Paul Leni, a former Reinhardt collaborator
and one of the outstanding film directors of the postwar
era. He had a special gift for designing sets.
19
In the case of WAXWORKS,
he developed a dcor which, in its attempt to create a fantastic
atmosphere, borrowed much from expressionism. The halo of
unreality with which Leni surrounded the film's three episodes was
the more appropriate as these episodes center around wax figures.
Such figures usually counterfeit kings, murderers or heroes who
19 For Leni, see Vincent, Hittoire de VArt Cintmatographigue, p. 158.
86 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
belong in the past counterfeit them to permit contemporaries to
enjoy the shudders of awe or fright they once aroused. Their waxen
appearance in a fair booth characterizes Harun and Ivan as phantoms
that are remote in time as well as remote from reality.
The three episodes seize upon types of tyrants haunting a bygone
period. (Haunting also former films :
Jack-the-Ripper originates in
CALIGARI, the Harun episode recalls Lubitsch's SUMURUN, and Ivan
is an offspring of both the CALIGARI and the Lubitsch sphere.
20
) However,
since dreams as a rule bear on the dreamer's current plight, the
dream character of the Jack-the-Ripper episode arouses the suspicion
that Jack and his confreres are not merely figures of the past,
but tyrants still among us.
Like the imagery of MABUSE, VANESTA and similar films, that of
WAXWORKS culminates in scenes which, exceeding their task of illustrating
the plot, penetrate the nature of tyrannical power. The insistence
with which, during those years, pictorial imagination reverted
to this subject indicates that the problem of absolute authority
was an intrinsic concern of the collective mind. One shot in the Ivan
episode reveals the magic spell power radiates: Ivan appears in a
folding-door, the portrait of a saint in life-size on each leaf, and as
he stands there, vested with all the insignia of his dignity, he seems
a living icon between the two painted ones. Another picture unit of
the same episode shows the bride whom Ivan wants to make his
mistress looking through the iron bars of a window into the torturechamber
where her husband is undergoing terrible sufferings ; and
the shot of her face, distorted with horror, is followed by a close-up
of Ivan's well-groomed, ring-adorned hand clasping those iron
bars. This unit foreshadows a device common to all Russian screen
epics of the Revolution :
they never tire of contrasting the degraded
oppressed with the smug Czarist oppressor in such a way that the
latter's appearance exemplifies the dreadful alliance between culture
and atrocity. Here the Germans intuitively visualize an aspect of
tyranny which the Russians, doubtless on the strength of experience,
were to emphasize as a basic one.
The most significant episode is that of Jack-the-Ripper a very
short sequence which must be counted among the greatest achieve20
In their book, The Film Answers Baok, p. 196, though questionable in both
premises and conclusions, the English authors E. W. and M. M. Robson noted this
point: "If it is permissible to describe the Caligari and the Lubitsch trends as thesis
and antithesis in the early German film, we may say that Wa&worka represents the
synthesis of these two influences. . . ."
PROCESSION OF TYRANTS 87
ments of film art.
21
It evolves outside the waxworks, in the fair with
which the audience has already been familiarized by the framing
story. But what in the framing story was nothing more than a
crowded pleasure spot is now a deserted hunting ground for specters.
Expressionist canvases, ingenious lighting effects and many other
devices at hand in 1924 have been used to create this eerie phantasmagoria,
which substantiates more forcibly than the analogous decor
in CALIGARI the notion of chaos. Disparate architectural fragments
form pell-mell complexes, doors open of their own accord and all
proportions and relations depart from the normal. Much as the
episode recalls CALIGARI, it goes beyond its model in stressing the
role of the fair: the fair that in CALIGARI merely served as a background
is here the very scene of action. In the course of their flight,
the poet and the girl hurry past the constantly circling merry-goround,
while Jack-the-Ripper himself, Caligari and Cesare in one,
pursues them on miraculous dream paths, hovering through a gigantic
Ferris wheel that also turns without pause. [Illus. 7] .
Completing
the kindred pictorial efforts of DR. MABTJSE, these images symbolize
the interpenetration of chaos and tyranny in a definite manner.
WAXWORKS adds the final touch to the tyrant films proper.
21
Barry, Program Notes, Series II, program 4; Kurtz, Expressionismus, p. 80;
Vincent, Histoire de VArt Cintinatographique, p. 158 ff.
7 DESTINY
IN ITS attempt to reconsider the foundations of the self, German
imagination did not confine itself to elaborating upon tyranny, but
also inquired into what might happen if tyranny were rejected as a
pattern of life. There seemed a sole alternative : for the world to turn
into a chaos with all passions and instincts breaking loose. From
1920 through 1924 years in which the German screen never championed
or even visualized the cause of liberty films depicting the
sway of unchecked instincts were as current as those devoted to
tyrants. The Germans obviously held that they had no choice other
than the cataclysm of anarchy or a tyrannical regime. Either possibility
appeared pregnant with doom. In this plight contemporaneous
imagination resorted to the ancient concept of Fate. Doom decreed
by an inexorable Fate was not mere accident but a majestic event
that stirred metaphysical shudders in sufferers and witnesses alike.
As an outcome of superior necessity doom at least had grandeur.
General susceptibility to this aspect is proved by the sweeping success
of Spengler's The Decline of the West during that period. Even
though many prominent German philosophers and scientists
launched vigorous anathemas against the book, they were not able to
weaken the overwhelming appeal of a vision that seemed to derive its
timely prophecy of decline from laws inherent in history itself. This
vision conformed to the emotional situation so perfectly that all
counter-arguments sounded thin.
The second group of films in the wake of CAUGARI is composed of
two films by Fritz Lang, both playing up the role of Fate. DER
MUDE TOD (DESTINT), the first of them, appeared in 1921, one year
before DR. MABUSE. Lang again wrote the script in collaboration
with Thea von Harbou. After the release of the film, which in Germany
is called THE TIRED DEATH, a sarcastic Berlin critic thought
it fit to entitle his review "The Tiresome Death." However, when a
88
DESTINY 89
little later the French praised the work for being truly German, the
Germans also discovered its value, and what had at first looked like
a failure developed into a complete victory on the home front.
1
Part legend, part fairy tale, the romantically involved story
starts with a girl and her young lover putting up at the inn of a
small old town. An uncanny stranger joins them. According to a
flashback, this man has long ago bought land bordering the nearby
cemetery, and has surrounded it with a huge wall entirely bare of
doors. In the inn, the girl pays a short visit to the kitchen ; when she
returns, her lover has disappeared with the stranger. Terrified, she
hurries to the huge wall, swoons there, and after a while is found by
the town's old pharmacist, who takes her to his home. While he is
preparing a tonic, the girl in her despair lifts a poison cup to her
mouth. But before the liquid wets her lips, she dreams a long dream,
in which the huge wall re-emerges. This time there is a door in it, and
behind the door an endless flight of stairs appears. At the top of the
steps the stranger is waiting for the girl. As she wants her lover back
from him, the stranger he is the Angel of Death and as such the
agent of Fate, if not Fate itself- leads her to a dark hall filled with
burning candles, each representing a human soul. Her wish will be
satisfied, he says, if she can prevent three flaring candle-lights from
being extinguished. Now the authors utilize a compositional device
later adopted in WAXWOKKS: three longish episodes narrating the
stories of these lights interrupt the course of the main action.2
The
first episode is located in a Moslem city, the second in the Venice of
the Renaissance, the third in a fantastic China. In all three episodes,
as if passing through successive stages of the transmigration of
souls, the girl and her lover are pursued by a jealous, greedy and
cruel tyrant; which, incidentally, makes these episodes resemble the
Lubitsch pageants. Three times the girl tries to outwit the tyrant
intent on killing her lover; three times the tyrant realizes his murderous
design with the aid of Death, alias Fate, who in each case is
incarnated in the executioner. . , . The three candle-lights die away,
and again the girl implores the mercy of Death; whereupon Death
offers her a last chance: if she can bring him another life, he is
willing to return that of her lover. Here the dream of a split second
ends, with the pharmacist snatching the poison cup away from the
1 Based on information offered by Mr. Lang himself. Of. Zaddach, Der literaritche
Filmy pp. 41-42.
a Cf.
p. 84. ff.
90 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
girľs mouth. He intimates that he himself feels tired of life ; but when
the girl asks him to sacrifice his life, he throws her out of his house.
A weary beggar and several infirm old women in a hospital likewise
refuse to make such a sacrifice. Fire breaks out in the hospital and
after their flight the inmates learn that a baby has been left behind.
Touched by the grief of the mother, the girl fights her way through
the flames. At the very moment she seizes the baby, Death, keeping
his promise, extends his arms to take this life. But the girl reneges ;
instead of ransoming her lover, she hands the baby out of a window to
the happy mother. Amidst the blaze in the crashing house Death
finally guides the dying girl to her dead lover, and, forever united,
their souls wander heavenward over a blossoming hill.
3
This plot forces one point strongly upon the audience :
that, however
arbitrary they seem, the actions of tyrants are realizations of
Fate. The agent of Fate supports tyranny not only in all three
episodes but also in the story proper. The death he inflicts upon the
young lover appears so senseless that it is as if some unscrupulous
tyrant had pulled the strings. There is an old fairy tale about a
traveler startled by the misdeeds of his companion ; this enigmatic
fellow sets an inhabited house afire, obstructs justice and persistently
returns evil for good. At the end he reveals himself as an angel and
initiates the traveler into the true meaning of those apparent misdeeds
; they were measures of Providence to protect the very people
they wronged from future catastrophes. No such paradoxical meaning
can be read into the shocking actions of Fate in DESTINY. The
film ends with the girľs self-renunciation accompanied by a caption
that emphasizes its religious significance : "He who loses his life gains
it." This sacrifice conveys about the same message as Nina's final
surrender in NosFERATtr.4
The long-lived power of DESTINY'S imagery is the more amazing
as all had to be done with the immovable, hand-cranked camera, and
night shots were still impossible. These pictorial visions are so precise
that they sometimes evoke the illusion of being intrinsically real. A
"drawing brought to life," the Venetian episode resuscitates genuine
Renaissance spirit through such scenes as the carnival procession
silhouettes staggering over a bridge and the splendid cockfight
radiating bright and cruel Southern passion in the mode of Stendhal
8
Vincent, Histolre de VArt Cintmatographigue, p. 147; Welnberg, Scraabookt,
1926-27; Botha, Film Till Now, p. 192.
4 Cf.
p. 79.
DESTINY 91
or Nietzsche. The Chinese episode abounds in miraculous feats. It
is well known that its magic steed, its Liliputian army and its
(jerkily) flying carpet inspired Douglas Fairbanks to make his
THIEF OF BAGDAD, a spectacular revue of similar conjuring tricks.
The imagery rather than the plot brings the humane character
of Death to the fore. With infinite care Death lifts the light of a
candle, softly separating a chilďs soul from his body. This gesture
as well as the tenderness he shows for the girl betrays his inner
opposition to the duty enjoined on him. He is sick of his duty. Precisely
by humanizing the agent of Fate, the film emphasizes the
irrevocability of Fate's decisions. Different pictorial devices serve an
analogous purpose ; it is as if the visuals were calculated to impress
the adamant, awe-inspiring nature of Fate upon the mind. Besides
hiding the sky, the huge wall Death has erected runs parallel with
the screen, so that no vanishing lines allow an estimate of the walľs
extent [Ulus. 9]. When the girl is standing before it, the contrast
between its immensity and her tiny figure symbolizes Fate as inaccessible
to human entreaties. This inaccessibility is also denoted by
the innumerable steps the girl ascends to meet Death.
A very ingenious device makes it clear that no one can hope to
evade Fate. In the Chinese episode the girl and her lover try to escape
the revenge of the emperor who is deeply hurt by the girľs insensibility
to his feelings. But instead of speeding their flight, the girl uses
her magic wand to call upon the slowest means of transportation
an elephant. While they move along on the elephant, troops sent out
by the emperor are following them with the speed of a snail, and
there is obviously not the slightest danger of the couplers being
recaptured. This operatic pursuit it vaguely recalls the escape in
slow motion in VANTNA 5
characterizes the inscrutable ways of Fate.
No matter what people do or fail to do, Fate strikes when the time
has come and not a moment before. The mock chase ends in a scene
corroborating this meaning. On the emperor's command, his archer,
who is none other than the agent of Fate, mounts a magic steed,
rides through the skies, and in a trice overtakes the couple. Now
that Fate wants to strike, all magic artifices prove ineffective:
the archer's arrow pierces the lover.
Released at the beginning of 1924, Fritz Lang's world-famous
DIE NIBELUNGEN (NiBELUNGEN) was produced by Decla-Bioscop,
Cf.p. 80 f.
92 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
which by then had merged with Ufa. The preparation of this film
classic took two years. Thea von Harbou, who had a propensity
for titanic themes, fashioned the script freely after ancient sources,
attempting to imbue them with current meaning. The Nordic myth
became a gloomy romance featuring legendary characters in the grip
of primitive passions. Notwithstanding its monumental style,
NIBELUNGEN was by no means intended to compete with what Lang,
in a statement published on the occasion of the film's premiere, called
"the external enormousness of the American costume film." According
to him NIBELUNGEN had quite another mission : to offer something
strictly national, something that, like the Lay of the Nibelungs
itself, might be considered a true manifestation of the German mind.6
In short, Lang defined this film as a national document fit to publicize
German culture all over the world. His whole statement somewhat
anticipated the Goebbels propaganda.
Even though the NIBELTJNGEN film differs entirely from The
Ring of the Nibelivng, it is rich in events which no one can witness
without being haunted by Wagnerian leitmotivs. In SIEGFRIED, the
film's first part, the hero goes through his adventures with the dragon
and Alberic, and then visits the court of Burgundy to propose to
Kriemhild, sister of King Gunther. But Hagen, the king's blackminded
confidant, demands that, before marrying Kriemhild, Siegfried
help conquer the fierce Brunhild for Gunther. Siegfried agrees,
and by means of his magic hood cheats Brunhild into becoming
Gunther's wife. The denouement is well known :
Brunhild, learning
of this base transaction from Kriemhild, insists upon Siegfrieďs
death, and Hagen contrives to kill the hero. At the bier of her husband
Kriemhild swears revenge. KREEMHILĎS REVENGE, the film's
second part, shows her marrying Attila, king of the barbarian Huns,
and persuading him to invite Gunther to visit them. No sooner has
Gunther arrived, than Kriemhild incites the Huns to attack him and
his clan. A terrible mass slaughter ensues, with the Burgundians
trapped in a hall which on Attila's order is shot afire. The end is an
orgy of destruction : Kriemhild slays Gunther and Hagen, then she is
killed, and Attila with her corpse in his arms buries himself in the
burning hall.
7
6
Lang, "Worauf es beim Nibelungen-Film ankam," Die Nibelunyen, p. 15. See
also Vincent, Histoire de VArt Cin4matographiqu0t pp. 146-47; Willy Haas, "Pas
letzte Filmjahr," Das grosse Bilderbuch, p. 8.
7
Program to the film; "Inhaltsangabe flir die Nibehmgen . .
"
Die Nibelunaen.
p. 17 ff.
DESTINY 93
In an article on NIBELUNGEN, Thea von Harbou remarked of her
screen version that it was designed to stress "the inexorability with
which the first guilt entails the last atonement." 8
In DESTINY Pate
manifests itself through the actions of tyrants; in NIBELTJNGEN,
through the anarchical outbursts of ungovernable instincts and
passions. To mark as fateful the doom these impulses bring about,
the story closely interlinks causes and effects. From the moment when
the dying dragon with a movement of his tail makes the ominous
leaf drop on Siegfrieďs back down to the moment of Attila's selfchosen
death, nothing seems left to mere chance. An inherent necessity
predetermines the disastrous sequence of love, hatred, jealousy
and thirst for revenge. Fate's pace-maker is Hagen, whose sinister
presence suffices to prevent any good luck from slipping in and
altering the inevitable. On the surface, he is nothing but Gunther's
loyal vassal; but his whole behavior reveals that his loyalty is motivated
by a nihilistic lust for power. Foreshadowing a well-known type
of Nazi leader, this screen figure augments the mythic compactness
of the Nibelungen world a compactness impenetrable to enlightenment
or Christian truth. The cathedral of Worms, which in SIEGFRIED
appears rather frequently, forms a mute background without
significance.
This Fate-conditioned story materializes through scenes which
seem to be staged after decorative paintings of a bygone period. The
scene of Siegfried riding on horseback in studio-built, heroic woods
vividly recalls Bocklin's "Great Pan." It is amazing that despite
their too pronounced beauty and their somewhat outmoded taste a
taste already outmoded in 1924 these pictures are still effective.
The constructional austerity they breathe may account for it. Lang
knew why, instead of resorting to Wagner's picturesque opera style
or to some kind of psychological pantomime, he relied upon the spell
of such decorative compositions :
they symbolize Fate. The compulsion
Fate exerts is aesthetically mirrored by the rigorous incorporation
of all structural elements into a framework of lucid forms.
There are many elaborate scenic details, such as the marvelous
ground-mists in the Alberic episode, the flaming waves protecting
Brunhilďs castle, and the young birch trees surrounding the spring
at which Siegfried is murdered.9
But far from pretending to self-
8
Harbou, "Vom Nibelungen-Film und seinem Entstehen," Die Nibelwngen, p. 8.
Cf. Decla-Bioscop VerleVi-Programme, 1928, pp. 44-57.
Kalbus, Deutsche Ftimkunst, I, 67, 114. Cf. Balthasar, "Die Dekoration," Der
Film von Morgen, p. 80.
94 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
sufficiency, each of these details assumes its specific function only
within the composition as a whole. To heighten the impression of
pictorial unity, extensive use is made of simple, large and solemn
architectural structures dominating the scene. Before Siegfried and
his vassals enter Gunther's palace, they are seen, little figures, on a
bridge which appears at the upper margin of the screen, and it is the
relation of this bridge to the deep ravine beneath it that determines
the picture. Other compositions, too, reduce human beings to accessories
of primeval landscapes or vast buildings.
As if the inherent ornamental character of these compositions
were not sufficient, primitive ornaments cover the walls, curtains,
ceilings and costumes. Similar patterns appear everywhere. SIEGFRIED
includes Kriemhilďs "Dream of the Hawks," a short insert
made by Ruttmann: it is nothing but an animated heraldic design
involving two black hawks and a white dove in rhythmic
movements.10
Frequently the players themselves form ornamental
figures. One scene shows Gunther's hall, with the king and his retinue
sitting like statues in symmetrically arranged recesses. The camera
eagerly exploits every opportunity of capturing figures of this kind,
When Siegfried pays his first visit to Gunther, his entrance into the
hall is shot from an elevation, so as to reveal the ornamental aspect
of the ceremony.
11
These patterns collaborate in deepening the impression of Fate's
irresistible power. Certain specific human ornaments in the film
denote as well the omnipotence of dictatorship. These ornaments
are composed of vassals or slaves. Gunther's men support the landing-stage
on which Brunhild goes ashore; standing up to their
waists in the water, they' are living pillars of mathematical precision.
Particularly striking is the picture of the chained dwarfs serving as
a decorative pedestal of the giant urn which contains Alberic's treasures:
cursed by their master, the enslaved creatures are metamorphosed
into stone figures. It is the complete triumph of the ornamental
over the human [fflus. 10]. Absolute authority asserts itself
by arranging people under its domination in pleasing designs. This
can also be seen in the Nazi regime, which manifested strong ornamental
inclinations in organizing masses. Whenever Hitler ha-
10
Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 62.
11 A similar ornamental style had already asserted itself In HAMLET (1920), a
German film directed by Sven Gade and featuring Asta Nielsen in the title role. Cf.
Barry, Program Notes, Series III, program 2. "The interior scenes," Miss Barry says
of HASDUET, ". . . often predict the settings for Fritz Lang's Siegfriefc*
DESTINY 95
rangued the people, he surveyed not so much hundreds of thousands
of listeners as an enormous ornament consisting of hundreds of thousands
of particles.
12
TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, the official Nazi film of
the Nuremberg Party Convention in 1934, proves that in shaping
their mass-ornaments the Nazi decorators drew inspiration from
NIBELUNGEN. SIEGFRIEĎS theatrical trumpeters, showy steps and
authoritarian human patterns reappear, extremely magnified, in the
modern Nuremberg pageant [Illus. 11 and 12].
NIBELUNGEN unfolds in lingering scenes that have all the qualities
of stills.
18
Their slow procession, which characterizes the mythic
realm as a static one, is calculated to draw attention to the action
proper. This intrinsic action does not coincide with the succession of
treacheries and murders, but is to be found in the development of
smoldering instincts and imperceptibly growing passions. It is an
all but vegetative process through which Fate realizes itself.
Cf. p. 802 f.
" Jahier, "42 Ans de Cinema," Le Rdle intellectual du CinJma, p. 61.
8, MUTE CHAOS
THE third group of films emanating from CALIGARI emphasizes the
surge of disorderly lusts and impulses in a chaotic world. They may
be called instinct films, in contrast to the tyrant films. The most
significant achievements among them are based upon the scripts of
Carl Mayer scripts written with a view to specifically cinematic
means. Except for THE LAST LAUGH, the concluding film of the
series, Mayer's screen poems have met with little response outside
the circle of the intellectuals. However, the insistence with which they
all center round one and the same theme is sufficient proof of their
symptomatic value.
Immediately after CALIGARI, Robert Wiene, meaning to strike
while the iron was hot, engaged Carl Mayer and the painter Cesare
Klein for the production of another expressionist film: GENUINE
(1920). This fantasy, in which an exuberant decor competes with a
far-fetched, bizarre story, is of importance only in that it marks a
turning-point thematically. Genuine, a sanguinary priestess for sale
in an Oriental slave-market, is bought by a queer old man, who
jealously confines her in a sort of glass cage inaccessible to visitors.
But Genuine manages to lure a young barber into cutting the old
tyranťs throat, and then carries on as a supervamp, ruining all the
men available.
1
The narrative shows Mayer's interest shifting from
the tyrant to the instinct theme.
All instinct films Mayer made after GENUINE have one feature in
common: they are laid in a lower middle-class world which is the
meaningless remnant of a disintegrated society. The lower middle
class appears in Mayer's films as a breeding ground for stunned,
oppressed creatures who, reminiscent of Biichner's Wozzek figure,
are unable to sublimate their instincts. This was undoubtedly the
plight of the German petty bourgeoisie during those years. It is true
1
Kurtz, Expressionismus, pp. 70-78; Vincent, Histoire de I'Art CinJmatographique,
p. 145.
96
MUTE CHAOS 97
that in an era of anarchy the preponderance of instinctive life does
not confine itself to one single stratum of the population. But this
kind of life is nowhere as conspicuous and aggressive as in the lower
middle class where greed and jealousy are supplemented by deep
social resentments and inherited moral impulses that have lost any
vital function. Mayer conceives his lower middle-class characters
as instinct-possessed denizens of a shattered universe, and he seizes
upon them to reveal the destruction and self-destruction they necesarily
bring about. Their doom is laid to the workings of Fate. In
NIBELTJNGEN, Fate is symbolized by a strictly decorative style; in
Mayer's films, by extreme simplicity in psychological construction.
A few persons, each incarnating some particular instinct, are involved
in a rigidly composed action. While foreign observers criticized
this simplicity as artificial and poor, German connoisseurs,
tired of the screen pageants they had to endure, praised these films as
"chamber plays," exhibiting the very depths of the soul.
2
As late as
1924, when expressionism was definitely fading away, Professor Paul
Hildebrandt agreed with Carl Hauptmann in contending: "In the
sphere of the fantastic, the film . . . must represent what can be
represented only within this medium . . . : the primitive pas-
sions."
*
In 1921, Carl Mayer began his series with two films, one of which
was HINTERTREPPE (BACKSTAIRS). Staged by Leopold Jessner, this
film is a veritable excess of simplicity. It sets three characters in
motion : a hired girl absorbed in housekeeping activities ; her lover,
promising to send the girl letters from afar ; a partly paralyzed, subnormal
postman who out of morbid love for the girl intercepts these
letters. Believing herself abandoned, she is stirred by a sort of
maternal pity to call on the postman in his nearby basement. Her
visit there is interrupted by the returning lover. In the ensuing
quarrel between the two men the frantic postman slays his rival with
an ax ; whereupon the girl, in a state of complete bewilderment, walks
up to the roof and throws herself down to the cobblestones. The
public was rather annoyed by such an accumulation of violence and
misery.
4
3
Tannenbaum, "Der Grossfilm," Der Film von Morgen, pp. 71-72; Mollhausen,
Der Aufstieg des Films," Ufa-Blatter.
3
Hildebrandt, "Literatur und Film," Das Kulturfllmbuch, p. 85.
4
Weinberg, Scrapbooto, 1925-27; Vincent, JSistoire de VArt Cintmatographique,
p. 158; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, I, 73.
98 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
The other film released in 1921 was SCHERBEN (SHATTERED).
Lupu Pick directed it with an innate affinity for Mayer's intentions.
At the beginning, a railroad trackwalker (Werner Krauss), his wife
and his daughter are living in the solitude of snow-covered, wooded
hills a solitude accented by the man's ever-repeated walks along
the track, and the occasional passing of a train. The arrival of a railway
inspector controlling this section changes stagnant monotony
to ferment. It all starts with a love affair between the inspector
and the quickly yielding daughter. After surprising the two in tender
intimacy, the pious mother goes out into the cold night to pray
before a votive tablet, and there freezes to death. The daughter
implores the inspector to take her with him to town, meets with a
plain rebuff, and, humiliated, avenges herself on him by informing
her father of what has happened. Deep-rooted awe of the authorities
causes the trackwalker to knock at the inspector's door; moral
convention, having become instinct, makes him strangle the seducer
of his daughter. Then he patrols the track, swinging his signal lantern
to stop the express. (Here an ingenious color effect is used : the
lantern radiates a bright red, rendering the man's emotional turmoil
to perfection.) Although the travelers in the dining-car wonder at
the unexpected stop, they are not at all interested in a humble trackwalker's
affairs. By emphasizing their indifference, the film marks
the dissolution of society into incompatible social spheres. "I am a
murderer," the trackwalker says to the engine driver; it is the sole
caption in the entire film. From a rock above the track the daughter,
gone mad, watches the express with her father in it rush by,
5
After VANINA, his last tyrant film. Carl Mayer resumed his felicitous
collaboration with Lupu Pick in the domain of the instinct
films ; the result was SYLVESTER (NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1923) , A quotation
from the Tower-of-Babel story heads the script, which has since
been published as a book : "Go to, let us go down, and there confound
their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."
This motto clearly indicates Mayer's design to continue in NEWYEAR'S
EVE what he had begun in SHATTERED: the representation
of social chaos by two social spheres separated by an abysmal gulf.
One sphere materializes in a cheap cafe*, the meeting-place of lower
Kaltras, ibid., p. 78; Weinberg, 8crapbook, 1925-27,- "Shattered," Exceptional
Photoplay^ Jan^-Feb. 1922, pp. 4-5; Vincent, Histoire de VArt Ointmatoffraphiqut,
p. 149.
MUTE CHAOS 99
middle-class people; the other in the street, in a nearby elegant
restaurant and on the adjacent town square places populated with
merry crowds celebrating New Year's Eve. To these two spheres a
third one is added: nature. Pictures of a cemetery, the heath and the
sea emerge every now and then in the manner of a leitmotiv great
and silent landscapes which make human agitation seem still more
extreme. The story proper shows the cafe-owner suffering from the
discord between his wife and his mother. In her despotic love of the
son, the mother hates the wife with whom she has to share what she
considers her exclusive property; in the interest of peace at home,
the wife in turn wants the son to send his mother away.
As the conflict reaches its climax, something almost inconceivable
occurs : unable to make a decision, the man breaks down, and while
his mother caresses him as if he were a child, he rests his head helplessly
on her bosom. This gesture, followed (and corroborated) by
the suicide of the man [Illus. 13], betrays his intense desire to
return to the maternal womb. He has never attained maturity. It is
noteworthy that, far from being repudiated, his singular gesture of
capitulation reappeared, almost unchanged, in various German
films,
6
indicating that his instinctive reluctance to attempt emancipation
might be considered a typical German attitude. It is an attitude
which results from the prolonged dependence of the Germans upon a
feudal or half-feudal military regime not to mention the current
social and economic motives enforcing the perpetuation of this attitude
within the middle class. When the cafe-owner capitulates, he
overflows with a self-pity entirely to the point. Self-pity is the given
emotional outlet for undeveloped or repressed characters.
The film ends with a few scenes confronting part of the merry
crowd with the corpse of the ill-fated caf-owner; but the two social
spheres are made to overlap for the sole purpose of stressing their
utter estrangement. Indifferent to human affairs, the moon shines
over the sea.
7
The series culminates in DER LETZTE MANN (THE LAST LAUGH ;
released at the end of 1924) . This powerful film the outcome of
teamwork by Carl Mayer, F. W. Murnau and the cameraman Karl
Cf. pp. 112, 114, 122, 157 f., 171.
7 Cf. Pick, "Vorwort des Rcgisseurs," Sylvester, pp. 9-11; Mayer, "Sylvester,"
i&tU, pp. 17-96; Faure, *Cinma," Le R6le intellectuel fa Gintma, p. 209; BaWzs,
Der Geiat des Film*, p. 58; Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 204; Vincent, Histoire de
Cintmatographique, p. 149.
100 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
Ereund resumes the basic motif of its forerunners by contrasting
two buildings : a gloomy tenement house crowded with lower middleclass
people, and a palace hotel for the rich, who keep the revolving
door and the elevators in permanent motion. Yet THE LAST LAUGH
differs from the previous films in that it shows the two social spheres
united by strong ties. Wearing his sparkling uniform with an inimitable
dignity, Emil Jannings as the old hotel porter not only ushers
the guests through the revolving door, but also offers candies to the
children in the yard of the tenement house where he lives with some
relatives. All the tenants, in particular the female ones, are awed by
his uniform which, through its mere presence, seems to confer a
mystic glamour upon their modest existence. They revere it as a symbol
of supreme authority and are happy to be allowed to revere it.
Thus the film advances, however ironically, the authoritarian credo
that the magic spell of authority protects society from decomposi-
tion.
In the case of the porter, however, this spell is suddenly destroyed.
The hotel manager, watching him stagger under the burden
of a heavy trunk, orders the old man to exchange his uniform for
the white blouse of a lavatory attendant. This rather humane
administrative measure entails a catastrophe. Since the film implies
that authority, and authority alone, fuses the disparate social
spheres into a whole, the fall of the uniform representing authority
is bound to provoke anarchy. No sooner do the tenants learn about
the ignominious white blouse than they feel alienated from that upper
world with which they communed through the uniform. They resent
being socially abandoned and thrown back into the gloominess of
their flats and of their souls. All evil lower middle-class instincts are
unleashed against the porter. The gossiping housewives maliciously
ridicule him; his own relatives turn him out onto the street. The
porter's reactions resemble those of the caf -owner in NEW YEAR'S
EVE. He believes himself humiliated by the loss of his uniform, and
instead of maturely putting up with his plight, he falls into a selfpity
tantamount to complete self-renunciation [Illus. 14]. At the
end he is seen in the hoteľs dark lavatory, with the night-watchman
tenderly wrapping him in a cover. It is a moving gesture of solidarity
between two human wrecks a gesture, though, that does not alter
anything.
Here everyone would expect the film to come to a close. But
Mayer grafts upon this natural conclusion an ingenious second one,
MUTE CHAOS 101
prefaced by a few sentences which form the film's sole caption. They
tell the audience that the author, out of pity for the poor porter's
fate in real life, wants to guide him towards a better, if unreal,
future. What follows is a nice farce jeering at the happy ending
typical of the American film. One should not forget that in 1924
Hollywood had begun to exert its influence on the German screen.
The farce opens with the richly dressed porter dining in the grill
room of the hotel. While he tries to cope with intricate dishes, the
amused guests show each other a newspaper notice to the effect that
an American millionaire bequeathed his fortune to the last person
present at his death, and that this person happened to be the lavatory
attendant. The rest of the fairy tale exhibits the naive kindness
with which the old porter showers money on the worthy and unworthy
alike. After having enjoyed their triumph in the hotel, he
and his crony, the night-watchman, leave in a carriage drawn by
four horses : two bragging profiteers, in reality sweet angels.
8
The farcical character of this concluding sequence corroborates
its introductory caption in that it expresses the author's disbelief
in a happy ending involving such categories as chance and good luck.
If there should exist a way out for hotel porters degraded to lavatory
attendants, it is certainly not identical with any solution rooted in
the superficial concepts of Western civilization. Through its second
ending the film underscores the significance of its first one, and moreover
rejects the idea that the "decline of the West" could be remedied
by the blessings of the West.
Mayer's films reveal their remoteness from realism by the insistent
use made in them of a specifically expressionist device. No
character bears a name: the mother is "the Mother," the trackwalker
just "the Trackwalker." Instead of portraying individuals, all
these characters incarnate impulses and passions allegoric figures
required for the externalization of inner visions. This requirement
determines the whole staging. The de*cor of BACKSTAIRS would have
been impossible without CALIGARI; the snow-covered sceneries in
SHATTERED their insertion may have been due to the influence of
the Swedish film look exactly as if they were studio-built struc"Iťs
in the Script," World Film News, Sept. 1988, p. 205; Potamkin,
"The Rise and Fall of the German Film," Cintma, April 1980, p. 25, and "Kino and
Lichtspiel," Close Up, Nov. 1929, p. 887-88. For the rupture between Mayer and
Pick on the occasion of THE LAST LAUGH, see Vincent, Histoire de VArt Cintmatographique,
p. 149.
102 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
tures; the bizarre lower middle-class scenes in THE LAST LAUGH
counterbalance the film's concessions to the realistic current gaining
momentum in 1924L9
Because of its world success THE LAST LAUGH has usually been
considered the source of cinematic innovations which, in fact, are
peculiar to the whole series of instinct films. Among these innovations
they can all be traced to Carl Mayer's suggestions one struck the
public immediately: the lack of any captions. Except for the two
mentioned above, the stories are told exclusively through pictures.
10
Here again the interrelationship between the method of representation
and the content to be represented is striking. It is not so
much the technical ingenuity as the subject-matter of the instinct
films that causes the film-makers to introduce titleless narration. Instincts
and passions flourish beneath the dimension of discursive
reasoning, and therefore lend themselves to being pictured without
verbal explanations. This holds particularly true for Mayer's films,
with their purposefully simplified plot. They are displays of essentially
mute events. Captions in them would not only be superfluous,
but would interfere with pictorial continuity. That contemporaries
were aware of this structural necessity is shown by a review of NEW
YEAJR,'S EVE published in the German film magazine Licht Bild
Buhne after the film's premiere: "What counts is not so much the
actual omission of titles ... as the fact that, owing to its whole
structure, NEW YEAR'S EVE can and even must do without them." u
Mayer's films are also the first to seize upon the world of objects
until then explored only by slapstick comedy in the interest of
dramatic action. When BACKSTAIRS was released in New York, one
of the reviewers pointed to the important role of the hired girľs
alarm clock. She "is shown being awakened by her alarm clock at six
in the morning. She sets it back five minutes, and then the idea that
it is ringing again is depicted by the key in the back of the timepiece
slowly turning. . . ."
12
The alarm clock reappears in SHATTERED
9
Kurtz, ExprMsionismua, pp. 83-84. For the influence of the Swedish film, see
Mollhausen, "Der Aufstieg des Films," Ufa-Blotter ; BaJthasar, "Die Dekoration,"
Der Film von Morgen, pp. 78-79. That Murnau himself inclined towards realism is
proved by his film comedy DIE FINANZEN DES GROSSHERZOGS (THE GRAND Duxz's
FINANCES, winter 1928-4). The magazine Licht Bild Btihne (Jan. 8, 1924) acknowledged
this comedy with a sigh of relief: "At last a film without deeper significance I"
Quoted from Zaddach, Der literarisohe Film, p. 56.
10
Rotha, Fikn Till Now, p. 298.
11
Quoted from Zaddach, Der literarische Film, p. 54.
18 See Weinberg, Scrapbooks, 1925-27.
MUTE CHAOS 103
along with such significant objects as the miserable scarcecrow trembling
in the wind before the trackwalker's house, and the shining
boots of the inspector. While the daughter goes on her knees to clean
the staircase, these boots leisurely descend the steps, and almost
touch her the first view she has of her future lover. In addition,
SHATTERED offers details of locomotives, wheels, telegraph wires, signal
bells and other pertinent items destined to degenerate into
the standardized adornments of innumerable railway scenes to
come.
In NEW YEAR'S EVE, the motif of the clock acquires its full
meaning. Even more important than the clock on the town square is a
pendulum clock in the caf-owner's room. As with twelve strokes it
marks the beginning of the new year, the camera turns from it to the
corpse of the caf-owner, thus forcing upon us our simultaneous
existence in the outer and the inner world, the temps espace and the
temps dur6e. It is as if the objects watched attentively the spectacle
of raging human passions or even participated in it. The perambulator
in the room where the cafe-owner's mother and wife fight each
other assumes a restless life of its own, and the revolving door of the
elegant restaurant is both entrance-way and background for the
merry crowds on the street.
In THE LAST LAUGH this revolving door becomes an obsession.
18
The film opens with a magnificent traveling shot showing the hotel
guests streaming through the ever-turning door, a device employed
time and again until the very end something between a merry-goround
and a roulette wheel [Ulus. 15]. A piece de resistance like
the door, the porter's ubiquitous uniform seems endowed with the
power of luring scores of other objects out of their seclusion. The
trunks intervene energetically; the walls in the nocturnal hotel
seem to breathe. Even fragments of human bodies are dragged
into the realm of objects: owing to big close-ups, no one can tell
the open mouths of gossips from fuming craters. This irresistible
tendency to involve inanimate objects in the action springs from
the intrinsic nature of Mayer's instinct-possessed characters. Incapable
of sublimating their impulses, they inhabit a region determined
by physical sensations and material stimulants a region
in which objects loom high, taking on the function of stumblingblocks
or signal-posts, enemies or partners. These films are bound
to call upon alarm clocks and revolving doors: the clock obsesses
" Of. Lejeune, Cinema, pp. 122-28.
104 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
the mind of the hired girl, and in swinging the door, the porter, one
with his uniform, sways his scepter.
It is true that many an object seems to he exhibited merely for
the sake of cheap symbolism. The repeated close-ups of broken glass
in SHATTERED have no purpose other than to denote the fragility of
human design in the face of Fate; they mean nothing by themselves.
But these obvious failures arise from the same source as the solid
attainments from Mayer's passion for objects. By conquering the
domain of objects for the screen, he enriched its pictorial vocabulary
lastingly ; it was a conquest which, in harmony with his effort to cancel
all captions, paved the way for truly cinematic narration.
In his preface to the publication of NEW YEAR'S EVE, Lupu Pick
makes an elucidating remark about its subtitle, "Ein Lichtspiel"
("A Play of Light"). Carl Mayer, he states, "may well have intended
to disclose brightness and darkness . . . within the soul
itself, that eternal alternation of light and shadow characterizing
the psychological relations between human beings."
14
Pick's statement
reveals that in Mayer's series, no less than in the expressionist
film proper, the light is an unreal light, one that illuminates interior
landscapes. "The illumination seemed to emanate from the objects
themselves," the Belgian film writer Carl Vincent comments on BACKSTAIRS."
Creating not so much sharply contoured forms as fluctuating
complexes, this light helps emphasize the irrational events of
instinctive life. Such events draw near or dissolve like any elemental
phenomenon, and the light illustrates that agitation. In THE LAST
LAUGH impenetrable shadows transform the lavatory entrance into a
dark abyss, and the appearance of the night-watchman is forecast by
the circle of light his lantern projects on the walls.
All these achievements are topped by the mobilization of the
camera in Mayer's films. Owing to complete camera mobility, THE
LAST LAUGH strongly influenced Hollywooďs motion-picture tech-
nique.
10
Yet this film only brought to perfection what had already
announced itself in SHATTERED at a time when no one else thought
of moving a camera firmly fastened to its fixed tripod. In SHATTERED,
so-called pan shots shots ranging from one point of the scene to
another, so as to make the spectator survey a whole panorama
deliberately advance the narrative. For instance, the camera pans
M Pick, "Vorwort des Regisseurs," Sylvester, p. 9.
18
Vincent, Sistoire d* VArt CintmatogrwpUque, p. 158.
16
Rotba, Film Till Now, p. 177; Jacobs, American Film, p. 807; Potamkin, "Kino
and Lichtspiel," Close Up, Nov. 1929, pp. 890-01,
MUTE CHAOS 105
from the trembling scarecrow to a corner window, with the silhouettes
of the inspector and the daughter behind it, in a slow and steady
movement designed not only to divulge the starting love affair, but
also to relate its meaning to that of the desolate effigy in the wind.
By connecting successive visual elements in such a way that they are
forced to illuminate each other, the freed camera develops an activity
entirely consistent with the omission of titles and the promotion of
objects: it intensifies that pictorial continuity through which instinctive
life manifests itself. In the case of Mayer's films, camera
movements are the more needed as the instincts unfold in a chaotic
world. These movements serve to familiarize the spectator with
spheres and events irretrievably separated from each other. Guided
by the camera, he is in a position to survey the frantic whole without
going astray in the labyrinth.
Carl Mayer himself was quite conscious of what he achieved in
unchaining the camera. In his preface to NEW YEAR'S EVE, he first
defines the spheres of the merry crowds and the natural scenery as
the "surroundings" of the cafe-owner's rooms, and then states that
certain movements of the camera are calculated to express the idea
of a world including the "surroundings" as well as the scene of action
proper. "As the events progress, these movements are ... to encompass
depths and heights, so as to picture the frenzy shaking the
whole human world amidst nature." 1T
To realize Mayer's directives
for NEW YEAR'S EVE, Lupu Pick's cameraman, Guido Seeber, introduced
a tripod moving on rails.
18
When, a little later, Murnau staged THE LAST LAUGH, he had a
fully automatic camera at his disposal, an instrument capable of all
sorts of movements. Throughout this film it pans, travels and tilts
up and down with a perseverance which not only results in a pictorial
narrative of complete fluidity, but also enables the spectator to follow
the course of events from various viewpoints.
19
The roving camera
makes him experience the glory of the uniform as well as the misery
of the tenement house, metamorphoses him into the hotel porter, and
imbues him with the author's own feelings. He is psychologically
ubiquitous. However, despite its eagerness for ever-changing aspects,
the camera, at home in the dimension of instincts, refrains from penetrating
that of consciousness. Conscious acting is not allowed to
17
Mayer, "Technische Vorbemerkungen des Autors," Sylvester, pp. 16-16.
Kalbus, Deutsche FUmkunst, I, 111-12.
"Potarakin, "The Rise and Pall of the German Film," Cinema, April 1980,
p. 25: "Die Entfesselte Kamera," UfarMagazin, March 25-81, 1927.
106 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
prevail. The player is the passive subject of the camera. In a retrospective
article on F. W. Murnau, Kenneth White elaborates this
point by referring to a scene in which the porter gets drunk : "The
pantomime everyone had thought to be the derived art of the movies
was not discoverable in THE LAST LAUGH. The doorman got drunk,
but not in the way a pantomimic actor with subordinate properties
got drunk ; the camera did it for him." 20
During the whole postwar period the theme of Mayer's instinct
films proved so attractive that any literary work showing some
affinity for it was immediately transferred to the screen from
Strindberg's Lady Julia (FRATJLEIN JULIE, 1922) to Tolstoy's
Power of Darkness (DiE MACHT DER FINSTERNIS, 1924*), from Gerhart
Hauptmann's peasant drama Rose Bernd (Ross BERND, 1919)
to that of his brother Carl, Driven from Home (AUSTBEIBUNG,
1923) .
21
When ROSE BERND appeared in New York, the National
Board of Review Magazme commented on it in terms which somehow
cover the whole trend of kindred films, regardless of their different
aesthetic qualities. "It is a picture . . . with no moral other than
that which ... is implied by the fate of its characters, and by the
forces leading to that fate. It is also a picture ... in which one may
feel blind impulses welling from their springs of animal need and instinct."
**
The bulk of these adaptations was followed by a brilliant
straggler, CHRONIK VON GREESHUUS (CHRONICLES OF THE GRAY
HOUSE, 1925) ; made after Theodor Storm's story of the same title,
it breathed the atmosphere of a sinister medieval saga.
28
af>
White, "Film Chronicle i F. W. Murnau," Sound $ Horn, July-Sept. 1981,
p. 581.
31 For these films, see Zaddach, Der ttteraritohe Film, pp. 42-48, 58; Kalbus,
Deutsche FilmTcunst, I, 72-78; Decla-Bioscop Verleih-Prograirvme, 1928, pp. 64-67.
aa "Rose Bernd,** National Board of Review Magazine, Feb. 1927, p. 16.
83
Barrett, "Grey Magic," National Board of Review Magazine, Dec. 1926, pp. 4-6.
Films in a similar vein were SAPPHO (MA LOVB, 1921) see Ufa VerUih-Progranvme,
1928, p. 17 and Lupu Pick's WITDENTO (TEDE Wm> DUCK, 1925). For the latter film,
see Film Society Programme, NOT. 18, 1928.
9. CRUCIAL, DILEMMA
THE German soul, haunted by the alternative images of tyrannic
rule and instinct-governed chaos, threatened by doom on either side,
tossed about in gloomy space like the phantom ship in NOSFERATTT.
While tyrant and instinct films were still flourishing, the German
screen began to offer films manifesting an intense inner desire to find
a way out of the dilemma. It was a desire pervading the whole sphere
of consciousness. Whoever lived through those crucial years in Germany
will remember the craving for a spiritual shelter which possessed
the young, the intellectuals. The Church won over many, and
the enthusiasm these converts manifested over their newly acquired
security contrasted strangely with the attempt by a group of young
men born in the Catholic faith to influence ecclesiastic policy in favor
of leftist tendencies. There is also no doubt that the increase of
communist sympathizers was in part the result of the spell the
orthodox character of the Marxist doctrine cast over many mentally
unprotected who were in search of a solid refuge. In their dread of
being left in the open, scores of people rushed to mushroom prophets,
who were to sink into oblivion a few years later. The theosophist
Rudolf Steiner was a particular rage of the time; he resembled
Hitler in that he zealously advertised inflated visions in execrable,
petty-bourgeois German.
On the screen diverse efforts were being made to discover a modus
vivendi, a tenable pattern of inner existence. Two films by Lrudwig
Berger, both released in 1923, are typical of one of these attempts :
EIN GLAS WASSEB (A GLASS OF WATER), fashioned after Scribe's
comedy of that title, and DER VERLORENE SCHTTH (CKSTDERELLA),
which transferred the ancient fairy tale to the screen with many
arabesques and detours.1
To justify the choice of such bright subjects
in so dark a world, Berger cited the Romantics as a precedent.
1
Programs to these films. For CXKIXEXBXXA, see also Film Society Programme,
Nov. 22, 1925.
107
108 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
In the prospectus of A GLASS OF WATER he wrote: "In times of misery
and oppression even more than in times of security and wealth,
we long for serenity and light play. There has been much talk about
the 'flight of the Romantics.' But what outwardly appeared to be a
flight^ was in reality the deepest self-examination . . .
, was food
and strength during decades of external poverty, and at the same
time a bridge to a better future." 2
Berger's reference to the Romantics
only emphasizes the escapist character of his own products.
While inflation grew all-devouring and political passion was at
its height, these films provided the illusion of a never-never land in
which the poor salesgirl triumphs over the conniving queen, and the
kind fairy godmother helps Cinderella win Prince Charming. It was,
of course, enjoyable to forget harsh reality in tender daydreams,
and CINDERELLA in particular satisfied the longing for "serenity and
light play" by concocting, with the aid of special cinematic devices,
a sweet mixture of human affairs and supernatural miracles. However,
this never-never land was not beyond the range of politics.
Both films developed within settings staged by Rudolf Bamberger
in the warm and gay style of South German baroque settings
of a pronounced symmetry, to which Paul Rotha early drew
attention. "Doorways, windows, gateways, alley-ways, etc., were
always set in the centre of the screen, the remainder of the composition
moving about them." 8
This baroque dcor, with its stress on
symmetry, conveyed the spirit of patriarchal absolutism reigning in
the old Catholic principalities : the two films conceived the "better
future" as a return to the good old days. Berger was not wrong in
leaning on the Romantics; they, too, inclined to glorify the past,
and in consequence had strong affiliations with the traditional powers
flllus. 16]. These films were pleasant digressions. But their inherent
romanticism was unable to meet the wants of a collective mind definitely
expelled from that baroque paradise.
A second effort to establish an adequate psychological pattern
consisted in the suggestion that all suffering springing from tyranny
or chaos should be endured and overcome in the spirit of Christlike
love. This suggestion recommended itself by its implication that
inner metamorphosis counts more than any transformation of the
outer world an implication justifying the aversion of the middle
a
Program brochure to A GLASS or WATEB.
a
Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 199.
CRUCIAL DILEMMA 109
class to social and political changes. Here it becomes clear why, in
NOSFERATTT, Nina's love alone succeeds in defeating the vampire,
and why, in DESTINY, the girľs union with her lover in the hereafter
is made dependent upon her supreme self-sacrifice.
4
It was the solution
of Dostoievsky. His works edited by Moeller van den Bruck,
who supplied the Nazis with the basic concept of the "Third Reich"
were then so popular with the middle class that their red covers
adorned every drawing room. What James T. Farrell writes about
The Brothers Karamazov also applies to this emotional trend in postwar
Germany : "The revolution will only produce catastrophe. Man
must suffer. The noblest man is he who suffers not only for himself
but for all his fellow-men. Since the world cannot be changed, man
must be changed by love." 5
As early as 1920, a fragment of the
Karamazov novel was transferred to the screen.6
Robert Wiene
seized upon Crime and Punishment; his RASKOLNIKOW (CRIME AND
PUNISHMENT), released in 1928, was performed by a group of the
Moscow Art Players adapting themselves to stylized settings reminiscent
of CALIGARI. Conspicuous are the scenes in which Raskolnikow
indulges in self-accusing fantasies before the judge; a spider's
web ornamenting the corner of a wall actively participates in the
"physiognomic duel" between the oily judge and the delirious mur-
derer.
7
Other films, too, plunged into the depths of religious experience.
With the aid of Asta Nielsen, Henny Porten, Werner Krauss and
Gregori Chmara, Robert Wiene staged LN.R.L (1923), a passion
play that was framed by scenes showing a murderer sentenced to
death. Meditating on the story of Chrisťs Passion, the murderer he
has shot a minister to free his people from oppression comes to
abjure his revolutionary methods.8
The political significance of many
a religious conversion could not have been exhibited more directly.
In a similar vein were several balladlike films with a certain Dos*
Cf. pp. 79, 90.
8
Farrell, Dostoievsky and *The Brothers Karamazov' Revalued," New York
Times Book Review, Jan. 9, 1944, p. 28.
6 DIE BRUDER KARAMASOFF (THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV), directed by Carl Froelich.
Cf. Zaddach, Der Uterarische Film, pp. 38-39; Amiguet, Cinema! CintmaJ, p. 50.
7 "Crime and Punishment," National Board of Review Magazine, June 1927,
pp. 10-11; Film Society Programme, Dec. 20, 1925; Vincent, Histoire de VArt Gme
1
matographigwe,
p. 145; Kurtz, Expressionismus, pp. 75, 76, 78. A similar "physiognomic
duel" this phrase was coined by Balazs occurred in Joe May's DIE
TRAGODIE DER LTEBE (LovE TRAGEDY, 1928) ; cf. Balazs, Der sichtbare Mewch, p. 70,
and Kurtss, ibid., pp. 7&-79.
6 Film Society Programme, Jan. 8, 1928; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkuntt, I, 54.
110 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
toievsky touch; DEE HENKER VON ST.-MARIEN (THE HANGMAN OF
ST.-MAJUEN, 1920), DER GRAF VON CHAROLAIS (THE COUNT OF
CHAROLAIS, 1922, a screen version of Richard Beer-Hofmann's
play) and DER STEINERNE REITER (THE STONE RIDER, 1923).
They demonstrated that true love is capable of working miracles, or
that heavenly miracles may intervene in favor of true love. But notwithstanding
the relatively broad appeal of these films, the form of
inner existence they endorsed proved attainable only to a small, predisposed
minority. The way of Christlike love was for the Germans
a mirage rather than a solution.
A third attempt to cope with the existing plight manifested itself
through a film genre which was exclusively German: the mountain
films. Dr. Arnold Fanck, a native of Freiburg i. Br., discovered this
genre and all but monopolized it throughout the republican era. He
was originally a geologist infatuated with mountain climbing. In his
zeal for spreading the gospel of proud peaks and perilous ascents,
Fanck relied increasingly on actors and technicians who were, or
became, outstanding alpinists and skiers. Among his foremost collaborators
were Leni Riefenstahl, Luis Trenker and Sepp Allgeier.
Mountains had already been featured in HOMUNCULUS and
CALIGARI. Homunculus is seen standing on a mountain top when
lightning strikes him for blasphemy ; and when Dr. Caligari makes
his first appearance, it is as if he emerged from the conical mountain
towering over Holstenwall and the fair. However, these mountains
were primarily symbolic, and Fanck was interested in real
ones. He began with three films devoted to the joys and beauties
of mountain sport: WTTNDER DBS SCHNEESCHUHS (MARVELS OF
SKI, 1920), IM KAMPF MIT DEN BERGEN (STRUGGLE WITH THE
MOUNTAINS, 1921) and FTTCHSJAGD IM ENGADIN (Fox HUNT IN
THE ENGADINE, 1923), a film depicting a paper chase on skis.
10
These films were extraordinary in that they captured the most
grandiose aspects of nature at a time when the German screen in
general offered nothing but studio-made scenery. In subsequent
films, Fanck grew more and more keen on combining precipices and
passions, inaccessible steeps and insoluble human conflicts; every
year brought a new drama in the mountains. But the fictional ele-
9
For THE HANGMAMT OP ST.-MABIBS-, see Ittuatrterter Film-Kwier; for THE
COTOTT OF CHAHOLAM, program to this film; for THE STONE RIDER, Deela-Biosoop
VtrUih-Programane, 1928, p. 26. See also Kalbus, Deuttoh* Filmkunst, I, 64, 66.
*
Kalbus, ibid., p. 91. Cf. Fanck, Eampf mit dem Berge.
CRUCIAL DILEMMA 111
ment, rampant as it was, did not interfere with an abundance of
documentary shots of the silent world of high altitudes. As documents
these films were incomparable achievements. Whoever saw
them will remember the glittering white of glaciers against a sky
dark in contrast, the magnificent play of clouds forming mountains
above the mountains, the ice stalactites hanging down from roofs and
windowsills of some small chalet, and, inside crevasses, weird ice
structures awakened to iridescent life by the torchlights of a nocturnal
rescue party.
The message of the mountains Fanck endeavored to popularize
through such splendid shots was the credo of many Germans with
academic titles, and some without, including part of the university
youth. Long before the first World War, groups of Munich students
left the dull capital every weekend for the nearby Bavarian Alps,
and there indulged their passion. Nothing seemed sweeter to them
than the bare cold rock in the dim light of dawn. Full of Promethean
promptings, they would climb up some dangerous "chimney," then
quietly smoke their pipes on the summit, and with infinite pride look
down on what they called "valley-pigs" those plebeian crowds who
never made an effort to elevate themselves to lofty heights. Far from
being plain sportsmen or impetuous lovers of majestic panoramas,
these mountain climbers were devotees performing the rites of a cult
11
[Illus. 17]. Their attitude amounted to a kind of heroic idealism
which, through blindness to more substantial ideals, expended itself
in tourist exploits.
Fanck's dramas carried this attitude to such an extreme that the
uninitiated could not help feeling irritated at the mixture of sparkling
ice-axes and inflated sentiments. In BERG DES SCHICKSALS
(PEAK OF DESTINY, 1924), a fanatical mountain climber considers
it the mission of his life to conquer the impregnable Guglia del
Diavolo. He is killed in action. His son promises the mourning
mother never to approach that "peak of destiny." Unfortunately,
his sweetheart approaches it, and of course goes astray. As her
signals of distress are seen in the village, the mother releases the
son from his promise with the words: "If you succeed in rescuing
this human life, the death of your father had a meaning." The son
11 This strange cult never falls to puzzle outsiders. In James B. Ullman's pompous
mountain novel, The White Tower (p. 72), a Swiss guide says to an American pilot:
"We Swissyes, and the English and French and Americans, too we climb mountains
for sport. But the Germans, no. What it is they climb for I do not know. Only
it is not for sport.'*
112 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
succeeds and even heightens the meaning of his father's death by
setting his foot on the top of the devilish Guglia amidst a terrific
blizzard.
12
The conduct of another model mountaineer, featured in DER
HEILIGE BERG (THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, 1927), shows that Fanck's
fanciful heroes were sometimes able to master their fiery instincts.
During a stunt ascent made in the company of his young friend
Vigo, this alpinist learns that Vigo is wooing the very girl with
whom he himself is in love. In a fit of jealousy, he turns on Vigo, who
involuntarily moves backwards and loses his foothold. With his
companion hanging in mid-air on the rope that connects them, the
alpinist reconsiders and, obedient to the code of mountain climbers,
tries to rescue him at the expense of his own life.
ls
Although this
kind of heroism was too eccentric to serve as a pattern for the people
in the valleys, it was rooted in a mentality kindred to Nazi spirit.
Immaturity and mountain enthusiasm were one. When, in THE
HOLY MOUNTAIN, the girl tells Vigo that she is willing to gratify
any wish he might express, Vigo goes down on his knees and puts
his head in her lap. It is the gesture of the cafe-owner in NEW
YEAR'S EVE. In addition, the idolatry of glaciers and rocks was
symptomatic of an antirationalism on which the Nazis could capi-
talize.
Particularly memorable is a fourth attempt at inner adjustment
the only progressive one made during the immediate postwar
years. It aimed at endowing rational thinking with executive powers,
!> that it would be able to dispel the dark inhibitions and unchecked
impulses of which the collective soul was possessed. If this attempt
to enthrone reason had been successful, reason would have denounced
the phantom character of the torturing alternative of tyranny or
chaos, and eventually have done away with those traditional authoritarian
dispositions that obstructed true emancipation. But interest
in mobilizing reason was apparently so limited that it reached the
screen only in two isolated instances, one of which was nothing more
than an episode of Wegener's second GOLEM (1920).
Professor Polzig had devised the settings for this enlarged version
of the old prewar film. In it the Hapsburg emperor issues an
order that the Jews are to be expelled from their ghetto, a dream-
ia
Program to this film; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, I, 91.
1S
Program to this film.
CRUCIAL DILEMMA 113
like maze of crooked streets and stooped houses. To soothe the
emperor's mind, Rabbi Loew, by means of magic, conjures up a
procession of Biblical figures among them Ahasuerus, who proceeds
to trespass on the domain of reality, starting to destroy the
imperial palace. The emperor, panic-stricken, agrees to withdraw
his order of expulsion if the rabbi will avert the danger; thereupon
the latter directs the Golem, his servant, to prevent walls and ceilings
from falling down. The Golem obeys with the automatic promptness
of a robot [Illus. 18]. Here reason avails itself of brute force as a
tool to liberate the oppressed. But instead of following up this motif,
the film concentrates upon the Golem's emancipation from his master,
and becomes increasingly entangled in half-truths.
14
The other instance of concern with reason was SCHATTEN
(WARNING SHADOWS, 1922), which in its German version bore the
subtitle "A Nocturnal Hallucination" ("Erne nachtliche Hallazmar
tion"). This film, directed by Arthur Robison, resembled Carl
Mayer's screen poems in that it involved nameless characters in an
all but titleless narration. Similarities of style originate in a similarity
of theme. To a large extent, WARNING SHADOWS is nothing
but an instinct film, which accounts for the marked role assigned
in it to the display of lights and shadows. Their marvelous fluctuations
seem to engender this extraordinary drama.
Fashioned after an idea by Albin Grau, the film opens with a
few scenes showing a jealous count exasperated at the favors his
wife bestows on her four courtiers. One of them, called "the Lover,"
is on the point of passing beyond the stage of mere hope. While
the count and his wife entertain this amorous quartet, a strolling
juggler asks permission to present shadow-plays. The juggler soon
senses disaster in the air, and discontinues his performance to forestall
a tragedy arising out of the steady growth of conflicting passions.
A sagacious wizard, he removes the shadows cast by the party
alongside the table, and simultaneously hypnotizes all six persons,
so that they follow their shadows into the realm of the subconscious
[Ulus. 19]. In a state of trance, they anticipate the future
by doing exactly what they would do if their passions continued
to determine their actions. The drama develops into a Nocturnal
hallucination"; it reaches its climax when the count, mad with
14 "The Golem," Exceptional Photoplays, June 1921, pp. -4; Ufa Verltik-Programme,
1928, p. 14; Vincent, Histoire de I'Art Cintmatographique, p. 148; Rotha,
Film Till Now, p. 284; Barry, Program Notes, Series III, program 1.
114 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
jealousy, compels the courtiers to stab his fettered wife. Here
again the immaturity of instinct-possessed beings manifests itself in
the customary way : the count rests his head on the Lover's chest and
weeps bitterly over what has happened. The hallucination ends with
the furious courtiers throwing the count out of the window. Then
the scene shifts back to the hypnotized party alongside the table,
and the shadows are seen returning to their owners, who slowly
awaken from their collective nightmare. They are cured. White
magic has enabled them to grasp the hidden springs and terrible
issue of their present existence. Owing to this magical therapy it
recalls model cases of psychoanalytical treatment the count
changes from a puerile berserk into a composed adult, his coquettish
wife becomes his loving wife, and the Lover takes silent leave.
Their metamorphosis at the very end of the film coincides with the
beginning of a new day whose sober natural lighting splendidly
symbolizes the light of reason.15
Even though it belongs among the masterpieces of the German
screen, WARNING SHADOWS passed almost unnoticed. Contemporaries
may have felt that any acknowledgment of the healthy shock
effect of reason was bound to result in an adjustment to the ways
of democracy. In a retrospective comment on WARNING SHADOWS,
Fritz Arno Wagner, its cameraman, states :
* 6
It only found response
from the film aesthetes, making no impression on the general pub-
lic."
ie
" Rotha, Fffnt Till Nov>, p. 200; Potamkin, "The Rise and Fall of the German
Film," Cinema, April 1980, p. 25.
18
Wagner, "I Believe in the Sound Film," FUm Art, 1986, no. 8, p. 11.
10 FROM REBELLION TO SUBMISSION
STILL, another attempt to overcome the unbearable inner dilemma
was made during the postwar years. It advocated the resumption of
authoritarian behavior, presupposing a mentality that would prefer
even a tyrannical regime to chaos. Typical of the authoritarian
tendency were two films springing from almost opposite camps and
reflecting very different surroundings. Despite their discrepancies,
both promote the same psychological pattern.
One of the two films was FRIDERICTJS REX, an opulent, if cinematically
trivial, Ufa product, released in 1922. No one could
overlook its purpose: it was pure propaganda for a restoration of
the monarchy. Directed by Arz&n von Cserepy, the film depicted the
life of Frederick the Great in a succession of loosely connected episodes,
with little regard for historic truth. At the beginning, the
young crown prince is seen revolting against the rigorous discipline
his father enjoins on him; but instead of exhibiting the rebeľs unpatriotic
passion for French philosophy and literature, Ufa cunningly
emphasizes a neutral love affair to demonstrate his sense of
independence. Subsequent episodes record his attempt to run away,
his arrest and those terrible minutes during which, by order of his
father, Frederick witnesses the execution of his friend Katte. Much
footage is devoted to displaying the fortunate results of this barbarian
punishment: Frederick submits so completely to his father's
will that he even marries the unloved princess of Brunswick-Bevern,
whereupon the father closes his eyes with the certitude of leaving
behind a worthy successor. That certitude is not belied. No sooner
does he ascend the throne, than the former rebel continues the work
of his father [Illus. 20].
This screen Frederick is given two major virtues. He appears
as the father of his people a patriarchal ruler using his absolute
power to mitigate legal hardships, further general welfare and protect
the poor from exploitation by the rich. Simultaneously, he
appears as the national hero who, through several successful wars,
115
116 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
elevates little Prussia to the rank of a great power. The whole
construction overtly aims at convincing the audience that another
Frederick might not only prove an effective antidote against the
virus of socialism, but also realize Germany's national aspirations.
To strengthen the emotional ties hetween the audience and this
timely figure, Ufa elaborates upon his inner suffering. The episodes
of the Seven Years' War characterize Frederick as a tragic genius
involved in a seemingly hopeless fight and abandoned by his most
reliable followers. In addition, there is a continuous display of military
parades and victorious battles just the kind of spectacle that
would elate patriots in distress over the lost war, the disarmament
and that odious confusion called democracy.
1
FRIDERICT;S REX was met by heavy opposition in the press.
Vorwdrts and the communist Freiheit invited the masses to boycott
the film, while the democratic Berlmer Tageblatt called for police
intervention.2
It is also hardly believable that South Germany took a
liking to this piece of Prussian self-glorification. However, South
Germany was not the Reich, and political protests do not prove much
about psychological reactions. During the production of the film, two
thousand extras were assigned to cheer the newly crowned king in
the courtyard of the Berlin Old Palace (ALtes Schloss). When he
stepped out onto the balcony in his regalia, they manifested an
enthusiam that could not have been ordered by any director. "Here
the people act themselves," an eyewitness stated.
8
Even in workers'
quarters, the performances of the film are reported to have drawn
full houses.4
A sure sign of its success was the eagerness with
which Ufa as well as other film companies repeated the formula.
In the years to come, numerous similar films were launched, the last
ones under Hitler. Whether they featured Frederick as the rebellious
youth, the charming host of Sans Souci or the "Old Fritz," they
all more or less adopted the pattern of the first Fridericus film. And
in all but one of them Otto Gebuhr portrayed the king. Perhaps it
is more correct to say that he resurrected him. Whenever he played
the flute, fastened his great sparkling eyes on some ambassador, rode
on a white horse at the head of his troops, or, a stooped figure in a
1
Program to the film's first two parts; Ufa Verkih-Proffrommt, 1923, pp. 26-29
(also including synopsis of Parts 3 and 4) ; Tannenbaum, "Der Grossfthn," J>er Film
von Morgen, p. 67.
Kalbus, Devttche Fiknkuntt, I, 55; Vincent, Hittoire de VArt Cintmatographiqu*,
p. 142; Bardfeche and Brasillach, History of Motion Pictures, p, 189.
3
Birnbaum, "Massenscenen im Film," Ufa-BUitter.
Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, I, 55.
FROM REBELLION TO SUBMISSION 117
dirty uniform, moved about with his crutch among his generals, it
was as if Frederick himself passed across the screen at least, it was
so until 1930, when the actor's sonorous stage voice began to conflict
with his appearance.
Towards the end of the twenties, Werner Hegemann published
a book on Frederick the Great violently attacked by all nationalists
for debunking the current Frederick legend.
5
But even though many
intellectuals on the left took sides with Hegemann, the 'true"
Frederick he painstakingly excavated never succeeded in upsetting
the legendary one. Any legend immune to rational arguments can
be supposed to rest upon powerful collective desires. The spurious
Frederick obviously conformed to psychological dispositions widespread
among the people. This accounts for the symptomatic value
of the Fridericus films to be more precise, of the elaborate pattern
of inner existence implied by them.
Throughout the Fridericus series the psychological course leading
from the rebellion of the crown prince to his final submission is
strongly emphasized. It was a theme, or rather a complex of themes,
long familiar to the Germans. Kleisťs Prinz Friedrich von Hornburg
had dealt with the conflict between the individuaľs moral right
to unauthorized initiative and his moral duty to submit to the
authority of the state. Then, following the example of Wedekinďs
Frtihlings ErwacJien (The Awakening of Spring, 1891), several
early expressionist dramas had advocated the rebellion of the son
against the father, and at about the same time a whole generation
of young Germans had set out to practice this rebellion in the form
of the idealistic Youth Movement.6
In stressing the development
from rebellion to submission, the Fridericus films adapted themselves
to current circumstances. Owing to the postwar revolutionary situation,
the masses were not ready to believe unhesitatingly in the
necessity for authoritarian behavior. All Fridericus films therefore
resorted to a detour. They began by sanctioning rebellious, if not
revolutionary, conduct so as to captivate the minds in turmoil; but
they did so only to pass off this conduct as the first stage of an
evolution in the course of which it would have to be suppressed. The
son's rebellion, which in the expressionist dramas prepared the
5 Cf. English translation: Hegemann, Frederick the Great, London, 1929.
6 For the father-son conflict in early expressionism, see Hain, Studtin, pp. 88-86.
For the German Youth Movement, see Weniger, "Die Jugendbewegung," Geist der
Geffenwart, pp. 1-54. See also Enkson, "Hitler's Imagery . . ," Psychiatry, Nov.
1942, p. 4.78 ff.
118 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
ground for the "new man," was here to increase the father's sovereignty.
These films presented the rebel as the pupa of the dictator,
and approved of anarchy inasmuch as it made authority
desirable. They offered a way out of the dilemma between chaos and
tyranny by transforming the dilemma itself into an evolutionary
process a process including rebellion as a legitimate phase. This
legalization undoubtedly served to repress the old trauma of the
unsuccessful bourgeois revolution, which now more than ever before
was bound to haunt the collective mind. The reality of a rebellion incorporated
into the system of social life could not but overshadow
that trauma. What the screen postulated came true in life. In the
postwar period, the Youth Movement developed from a spontaneous
uprising into an officially confirmed institution, which rapidly disintegrated,
parts of it being absorbed by the existent political and
religious groups. As if to demonstrate their instinctive desire to do
away with the traumatic image of the revolution, many genuine
followers of the Movement were to join the marching Nazi columns.
The moral of the Fridericus films was to submit unconditionally
to absolute authority. Here a contradiction arises. On the one hand,
a majority of Germans in particular middle-class Germans tried
to fend off socialist notions by insisting upon the idealistic concept
of the autonomous individual. On the other hand, the same people
were keen on giving up individual autonomy in favor of total dependence
upon an autocratic ruler, provided, of course, that he prevent
any encroachments on private property. Provoked by interest in
safeguarding vital privileges, this paradox seemed unavoidable.
There remained only one way to preserve a semblance of selfdetermination
while actually relinquishing it : one could participate
in the ruler's glory and thus drown the consciousness of one's submission
to him. The halo of glamour surrounding the screen Frederick
lured the audience into acts of identification with this supergenius.
Since all those who, consciously or not, adopted the pattern of
the Fridericus films did so in a period in which they were offered a
unique chance of freedom, their renunciation of individual autonomy
was tantamount to a grave retrogression no doubt the gravest since
the unification of Germany. Even though it was by no means a
foregone conclusion that the price of a mature acceptance of democracy
would be the loss of their social status, they preferred to
fall back on a state of immaturity. The Fridericus films not only
played up the old king's solitude in a juvenile manner recalling
FROM REBELLION TO SUBMISSION 119
the mountain films' exaltation of some lonely mountaineer on a
lofty peak but also testified to the inferiority complex bound up
with retrogressive behavior. Feelings of inferiority expressed themselves
through the aggrandizement of Frederick's power politics
as well as through the depreciation of Voltaire's significance.
Episodes showing Voltaire in Frederick's company were inserted
in FREDERICUS REX and several other films of the series. Besides
distorting the facts, these episodes stressed his depravity rather
than his superiority; the Voltaire they set up seemed designed to
intimate the decay of French civilization and to justify the resentment
of an authoritarian-minded public against enlightening reason.
The other standard film suggesting authoritarian behavior was
Ufa's DIE STRASSE (THE STREET, 1923). That it was a nonpolitical
avant-garde product indicates that the moral implications of
FREDERICUS REX did not appeal merely to those who applauded its
political propositions. THE STREET sprang from the same deep psychological
layers as the films by Carl Mayer or the genuine expressionist
films. Karl Grune, a former Reinhardt disciple, who was its
script writer and director in one, has himself told how he happened
to discover the cinema. The vicissitudes of the war had forced him to
live for long years among foreign soldiers ; but, instead of learning
their language, he had simply watched their gestures and faces
so as to become familiar with their intentions. His experiences
aroused his desire to develop on the screen a pictorial language as
communicative as the spoken one.7
This may help explain why
THE STREET, made completely without titles, was particularly rich
in significant pictures. It ingratiated itself with a rather broad
public composed mainly of intellectuals.
Exactly like the first half of FRIDERICTTS REX, Grune's simple
story illustrates development from rebellion to submission. It starts
in a dim plush parlor sheltering a middle-class, middle-aged philistine,
who desperately longs for the sensations and splendors of the
nocturnal city. His wife enters with the soup tureen, and as if this
ritual action has impressed upon him the infinite monotony of his
existence, he suddenly runs away. The street engulfs the would-be
rebel. A prostitute lures him into a night-club, done in inflation style,
and there introduces him to two "friends" : her souteneur and his
chum. While they start gulling him, a provincial bourgeois naively
7
Vincent, Histoire de I'Art CinSmatographique, p. 150.
120 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
exhibiting his wallet swollen with banknotes joins the party. Both
he and the rebellious philistine are predestined to be plucked. The
subsequent episodes among them a game of cards with beautifully
lit close-ups of the assembled faces result in a terrible showdown :
the two criminals kill the provincial and, using the prostitute as bait,
contrive to make the man from the plush parlor appear the murderer.
At the police station, the man proves so helpless that he does
not even think of asserting his innocence ; he simply succumbs to his
despair and, left alone in a cell, tries to end his life. Owing to the
real murderer's confession, this second attempt to run away is frustrated.
Released, the man staggers along the street, which at dawn
is a vacuum, except for scraps of waste paper occasionally stirred
by the wind. When he reappears in the parlor, his wife silently puts
the warmed-up soup on the table. And the man now willingly submits
to the domestic regime, including all soups to come. The street
calls him no longer. It is as if he considered the ordeal he has
undergone a well-deserved punishment for his vain rebellion.
8
The staging is of interest in that it manifests two different intentions
of style.
9
In the conception of the philistine, for instance, expressionist
mentality still predominates. Eugen Klopfer moves about
in this part like a somnambulist, and whenever he expresses joy,
bewilderment or horror, his gestures seem to be determined by hallucinations
rather than by actual experiences. These gestures would
undoubtedly appear less exaggerated if, as in the case of CAUGABI,
the whole film were nothing but an outward projection of inner
events. However, realistic designs interfere with the expressionist
ones. Far from being a sheer fantasy or a- forthright psychological
construction, the plot is an episode of everyday life handled in an
almost realistic spirit. This spirit also animates the settings they
awkwardly endeavor to give the impression of normal surroundings
and moreover transforms the characters, except for the philistine,
into individuals who, notwithstanding their lack of names, might
well exist outside the picture frame. Here a realism breaks through
which has nothing in common with the cheap realism of conventional
productions; it is a militant realism challenging the penchant for
introspection. The rise of this realistic tendency in THE STREET
clearly indicates that the general retreat into a shell, symptomatic
8
Program brochure to the film; "The Street," National Board of Review Magazine,
June 1927, p. 9.
9
Kurtz, Eocpressionwnwfi, p. 128; Jahier, "42 Ans de Cinema," Le Rdle intellectuel
du Cinema, pp. 62-63.
FROM REBELLION TO SUBMISSION 121
of the postwar period, was about to be revoked. It was as if with
the acceptance of the formula "From rebellion to submission" that
retreat had attained its aim, and as if now that the process of inner
adjustment had come to a close the collective soul desired to resume
contact with outer reality.
Various pictorial devices help to characterize the street into
which the rebellious philistine ventures as a jungle swept by unaccountable
instincts. At the beginning, when the man still lingers
in his plush parlor, the ceiling becomes luminous with lights reflecting
those of the street outside the window; they herald the street,
and he nostalgically watches their display above him. In this famous
scene light assumes exactly the same function as in Carl Mayer's
instinct films : its iridescent fluctuations symbolize the irrational alternations
in the sphere of instinctive life. The excited man goes
to the window and, looking out, sees not the street itself, but a
hallucinated street. Shots of rushing cars, fireworks and crowds
form, along with shots taken from a speeding roller coaster, a confusing
whole, made still more confusing by the use of multiple
exposures and the insertion of transparent close-ups of a circus
clown, a woman and an organ-grinder.
10
Through this ingeniously
cut montage sequence the street is defined as a sort of fair, that is,
as the region of chaos. The circle usually serving as a symbol of
chaos has yielded to the straight line of a city street; since chaos
here is not so much an end in itself as a passage ending in the realm
of authority, this change of symbols is well-founded.
On the street itself, all kinds of objects take on life, awakened,
as in Carl Mayer's films, by the presence of instinct-possessed beings.
A wavy line on the pavement it carries the same meaning as the
oscillating light on the ceiling tempts the man to follow its course,
and the two intermittently glowing eyes of an optician's shop almost
frighten him into retreat, as if they were the eyes of an invisible
bogey [Dlus. 21], For the first time on the German screen windowdressings
participate in the action. The man gazes through an artshop
window at nudities that make him dream of ideal beauty, and
then, transported by his dreams, sails to faraway countries aboard
the ship model in a nearby travel agency.
Instead of acknowledging the values of anarchical life, the film
deprecates this life by marking the street as a region where the law
of the jungle rules and happiness is sought in gambling and in futile
10 Cf. Wessc, Grottmacht ^iZm, pp. 229-32.
122 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
sex affairs. This verdict on anarchy goes hand in hand with the
glorification of the police. One scene, destined to reappear in many
a film to come, is very significant. While ever-new waves of vehicles
hurl onwards, a little child, lost in the crowd, sets out to cross the
street. With an imperious gesture a policeman stops the waves and,
like Moses leading the Jews across the Red Sea, pilots the child
safely through the petrified traffic. Then hell breaks loose anew,
submerging the miraculous lane. Again it is the police who reveal
the terrified philistine's innocence and send him back home. What
a change of concepts since CALIGARI! Whereas CALIGARI scoffs at
the police to stigmatize official authority, here just and wise authority
realizes itself through police overpowering the sinister forces of
anarchy.
In exposing the psychological mechanisms involved in the wouldbe
rebeľs submission, THE STEEET corroborates the Fridericus films
to the full. Particularly conclusive is the final scene showing the man
back in his parlor. At this crucial moment, when the slightest reaction
is telling, the man anticipates the gesture of the caf -owner in
NEW YEAR'S EVE: he rests his head upon his wife's shoulder, and
she, in turn, caresses his arm as maternally as if he were her child
ll
[Illus. 22], The shot does not conceal that he experiences his frustration
with voluptuous masochism and a feeling of inferiority increased
by that of guilt. To these rather familiar traits a new one
is added: retrogression assumes the character of resignation. When,
before re-entering his room, the man hesitatingly walks upstairs,
scattered lights from the street play all over him, seem to say farewell.
The mood of resignation is so conspicuous that it induced an
American reviewer to formulate the film's moral as follows : "Better
stay where you are. Life in the haunts you are unused to, is dangerous.
Romance may always be around the corner, but the effort
to find it is hardly worth the candle you must burn to light the
way,"
12
This mood is about the opposite of the banal optimism pervading
THE OTHER, of 1913. In that old film, the lawyer, Dr. Hallers,
returns from his subconscious escapade involving him in criminal
actions with the pleasant sensation of regaining his normal middleclass
status; ten years later, in THE STREETS the return from a
similar escapade amounts to a sad renunciation of life. The contrast
between the two kindred films strikingly reveals the rapid decline of
I'Cf. p. w.
" "The Street/' National Board of Review Magazine, June 1927, p, 9.
FROM REBELLION TO SUBMISSION 123
the middle class and its determination to deny this decline at any
cost. Under the given circumstances, the philistine cannot help looking
out for a shining new Fridericus to chase away the sadness from
his plush parlor.
The philistine may easily turn into a sort of split personality.
Just before the war, THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE had mirrored the
duality of any liberal under the Kaiser; now THE STREET foreshadowed
a duality provoked by the retrogressive move from rebellion
to submission. Besides resulting in feelings of inferiority and
the like, this particular shift of balance upset the whole inner system
and, in consequence, favored mental dissociation. The surprising frequency
of dual roles in German films among them Murnau's
JANUS-FACED (1920) mentioned above, Lubitsch's KOHLHIESĽS
TOCHTER (KOHLHIESĽS DAUGHTERS, 1920) featuring Henny
Porten as both the fine lady and her blunt maid, Grune's DIE
BRUDER SCHELLENBERG (Two BROTHERS, 1926) and the worldfamous
DER KONGRESS TANZT (CONGRESS DANCES, 1931) would
suggest that cases of duality occurred then in real life on a rather
large scale.
18
And in fact, throughout the whole republican era no
unbiased observer was able to overlook a phenomenon bearing out
the screen's ample evidence: the widespread discrepancy between
theory and practice, thinking and living. Instead of being aware
of two Faustian souls in his breast, as in the past, the individual was
dragged in contradictory directions and did not know it. This dissociation
seemed to him only a new facet of the old inner abundance.
It is probable a hint of that kind has already been made that the
middle-class German's reluctance to emancipate himself originated
in the fear of losing not only his social privileges, but also those
multifaceted potentialities he thought he had discovered within
himself.
14
Derivative of the street theme are a number of aesthetically
valuable films which, notwithstanding substantial differences, have
one motif in common: in all of them the leading character breaks
away from the social conventions to grasp life, but the conventions
prove stronger than the rebel and force him into either submission
or suicide. However inconspicuous a role this motif may play in the
films under consideration, its frequency corroborates what can be
13 For JANUS-FACED, see p. 78 ; for CONGRESS DANCES, p. 208. Cf, Kalbus, Dentsche
Filmkunst, I, 115.
4 Cf. p. 60.
124 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
inferred from the figures of Frederick and the philistine : that powerful
collective dispositions urged the resumption of authoritarian
behavior.15
As early as 1920, the motif began its screen career in VON
MORGEKS BIS MlTTERNACHT (FROM MORN TO MlDNIGHT), an 6Xpressionist
experiment fashioned after Georg Kaiser's play of that
title and reportedly shown in no country other than Japan. In it,
the philistine of THE STREET is anticipated in the character of a
teller, who in his desire to exchange everyday life for something great
and beautiful wastes the money of his bank on prostitutes and in
night-clubs, and at the end, disappointed, kills himself to escape the
police.
16
Murnau, too, was infatuated with the motif. In his PHANTOM
(1922) a screen version of a novel by Gerhart Hauptmann
a humble town clerk longs to become a famous poet and marry
a charming girl he has seen driving past him in a pony-drawn
phaeton. Possessed by his longing, he sleeps with a prostitute resembling
the unattainable girl and sinks ever deeper, until in the
solitude of his prison cell he learns to renounce all phantoms. Murnau's
film reached its pictorial climax with a montage sequence that
fused street impressions into a vision of chaos.
17
15 These dispositions asserted themselves in places and on occasions where no
one would have suspected them. In 1919, Max Weber, who after the armistice had
joined the staff of Frankfurter Zeitwng to help prepare a German democracy, went to
Versailles and then paid a visit to General Ludendorff, trying to persuade him that
he must deliver himself up to the Allies. Ludendorff refused. Their subsequent
dialogue, quoted from Meyer Schapiro's article **A Note on Max Weber's Politics"
(Politics, Feb. 1945, p. 44), confirms the testimony of all these authoritarian-minded
films.
Ludendorff: "There's your fine democracy I You and the Frankfurter Zeitung
are responsible for it! What good has come of it?**
Weber: "Do you believe then that I consider the mess we are in now democracy?"
L.: "If thaťs how you talk; perhaps we can come to an understanding.'*
W.: "But the mess before was also no monarchy."
L.: "What do you understand then by democracy?"
W.: "In a democracy the people elects the leader (F&hrtr) whom it trusts. Then
the elected one says: 'Now shut up and obey. People and parties must no longer
butt in.'
"
L.: "Such 'democracy' is all right with me."
W.i "Afterwards the people can judge if the leader has made mistakes, to the
gallows with him!"
Max Weber was quite able to foresee that first the people would be sent to the
gallows by their leader. But his intrinsic urges apparently interfered with his
sociological judgment -See also Kurtz, Expressionismus, p. 12.
*
Kurtz, &<&, pp. 15-17, 69-70; Zaddach, Der literarifcfo Film, p. 89; Bersti,
ed., 85 Jahre Berliner Theater, p. 94. The motif under consideration also asserted
itself in Berthold Vierteľs fantastic film DIE PaimtcxjE (THE WIG, 1928?).
17
Program brochure to the film; Jahrbuoh der Filvnindustrie, 1922/8, p. 41; DeclaBioicop
Verleih-Programme, p. 18; Wesse, Grottmacht Film, pp. 182-85; Balazs, Der
sichtbare Mensch, p. 85.
FROM REBELLION TO SUBMISSION 125
In 1923, Lubitsch took over. He promoted the motif in DEE
FLAMME ( MONTHAKTRE), which, laid in last-century Paris, narrated
the love affair between a naive young composer and a cocotte
with a pure soul. The composer leaves his austere mother for the
cocotte, but since he fails to leave his bourgeois inhibitions behind,
his new life turns into a troublesome adventure from which he penitently
flees back to his loving mother. The original version ends with
the cocotte throwing herself out of the window with the words : "The
street calls me." One genuine "Lubitsch touch" was the scene in
which the cocotte prepared her brothel room for the composer's first
visit by shifting the furniture so that the room suddenly looked as
respectable as he then believed her to be.
18
The motif reappeared in NJU (HUSBANDS OR LOVERS? 1924),
a psychological study based upon a play by Ossip Dimov. It was
Paul Czinner's first film with Elisabeth Bergner, who played in it
a married woman hungry for love. The action begins with a stranger
(Conrad Vcidt) gazing up from the street to her window. Enticed
by him, she parts with husband and child, and moves into a furnished
room, which seems to her a paradise compared to her home ;
but after a while the stranger tires of the paradise and his mistress,
and bluntly advises her to return to her husband. In her desolation,
she prefers to drown herself. Finally, the stranger is seen standing
in her furnished room, while an old charwoman cleans it for the
subsequent lodger. The whole film breathed a sadness surpassing
that of THE STREET. It was as if hope had deserted the world of the
middle-class home as well as the middle-class rebeľs enchanted street
world : at home, Emil Jannings as the vulgar husband walked about
with his suspenders hanging down, and the street merely led from a
furnished room to the river.
19
The motif materialized yet again in VARI^T^ (VARIETY), released
toward the end of 1925 that year which marked the rise of a
realistic-minded era. Even though this world-renowned music-hall
film indulged in the new realism, it still radiated the spirit of bygone
days. VARIETY was a belated product of the postwar period, an end
rather than a beginning.
The film, made after a popular prewar novel by Felix Hollander,
18
Ufa Verleih-Programme, 1928/4, pp. 48-51; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst> I,
60; Bal&zs, Der sichtbare Mensch, p. 104; "Montmartre," Exceptional Photoplays,
Feb^March 1924, p. 5; Berstl, ed., $5 Jahre Berliner Theater, p. 98.
19
Publicity sheet to the film; Film Society Programme, Feb. 14, 1926; Weinberg,
Scrapbooka, 1927; Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 195; Leprobon, **Le Cinema AUemand,"
Le Rouge et le Noir, July 1928, p. 142.
126 THE POSTWAR PERIOD
opens with a sequence inside a penitentiary. Emil Jannings as "Boss"
Huller has been pardoned before the end of his prison term, and
now agrees to tell the prison director the story of his crime. This
prefacing sequence is significant in that it emphasizes Huller's ultimate
submission. At the outset of the story proper, Huller is running
a shabby show in an amusement park, but neither that nor his
faded wife can compensate for the sensations he had once experienced
as a trapeze artist. One day, a sailor brings Huller a girl from
a remote southern country. Huller hires her, and soon her sensuous
beauty stirs him to rebel against his humdrum existence. He runs
away with her. While they are working on the trapeze in a Berlin
fair, Artinelli, a music-hall artist of international reputation, approaches
the couple to engage them for the Berlin Wintergarten.
They act as his partners when he performs a triple somersault
blindfolded. Fatally, Artinelli and the girl extend their partnership
into leisure time between the performances. No sooner does Huller
learn of the girľs betrayal, than he turns into one of those instinctpossessed
characters who destroy each other so eagerly in the films
of Carl Mayer. A reincarnation of the trackwalker in SHATTERED,
20
he kills Artinelli and surrenders to the police. Here the flashback
ends. In the final scene, the prison gates open symbolically before
Huller; but nothing indicates that, in stepping out of them, he will
be freed from the prison of his self.
21
The plot confines itself to interweaving
the motif of rebellion and submission with the familiar
theme of the instinct dramas in a rather banal manner.
Nevertheless, VARIETY aroused a "white heat of enthusiasm"
among American moviegoers.
22
The film, as Harry Alan Potamkin
puts it, "burnt its way through these United States and came near
demoralizing the matter-of-fact technique of Hollywood."
23
Accustomed
to that matter-of-fact technique, the American public
may have been struck by the intensity everyday life assumed in
VARIETY. Such accustomed settings as a music hall, a caf6 and a
stuffy hotel corridor seemed to glow from within. It was as if one
had never before seen these commonplace surroundings.
E. A. Dupont had staged VARIETY under Erich Pommer's inao
Cf. p. 98.
31
Weinberg, Scrapbooks, 1925-27 , Moussinac, Panoramique du Cinema, pp. 49-50.
aa
Quoted from Jacobs, American Film, p. 807.
Potamkin, "The Rise and Fall of the German Film," Cinema, April 1980,
p. 24. For the influence of the German school in this country, see Jacobs, American
Film, pp. 831-82, and "Die entfesselte Kamera," Ufa-Maffc&in, March 25-31, 1927.
FROM REBELLION TO SUBMISSION 127
spiring supervision.
24
Dupont was not an innovator, but he was a
brilliant adaptor. Assisted by Karl Freund, the cameraman of THE
LAST LAUGH, he adapted the methods of the expressionist postwar
period to the exigencies of the realistic Dawes Plan period. (Traces
of expressionism can still be found in the framing prison scenes of
VARIETY.) Duponťs achievement lay in that, in shaping his musichall
film, he penetrated outer reality by means of devices used originally
in the outward projection of inner reality. This transplanting
of techniques had, of course, amazing results. It has been rightly observed
that in VARIETY the actors seem to be unaware of the presence
of the camera; Jannings' bulky back, for instance, plays as
conspicuous a part as any close-up of his face
25
[Illus. 23] . Such
truth to reality could hardly be achieved without the incessant
camera movements typical of this film; for they alone enable the
spectator to break into the magic circle of the action. Led by the
inquisitive camera, he rushes through space as if he were one of the
trapeze artists, sneaks about rooms full of tension, identifies himself
with Artinelli when he lies in wait for the girl, and spies on her
hasty endeavor to renew her make-up before rejoining Jannings
[Ulus. 24]. Unusual camera angles, multiple exposures and sagacious
transitions help transport the spectator to the heart of the
events.26
Thus Dupont superseded the conventional realism of the
past by a realism that captured along with visible phenomena the
psychological processes below their surface. However, nothing he
offered was essentially new. Psychological ubiquity as well as fluidity
of pictorial narration : all sprang from THE LAST LAUGH.27
VARIETY
was a derivative of this fundamental film ; it resumed in the realistic
sphere what THE LAST LAUGH had accomplished in the sphere of
introspection.
Numerous less important films of the postwar period have al24
For Dupont and his first film, DAS ALTE GESETZ (THE ANCIENT LAW, 1928),
see Vincent, Bistolre de I'Art Cintmatoffraphique, p. 157; Museum of Modern Art
Library, clipping files.
2S
Moussinac, Panoramiqut du Cin&ma, pp. 51-52; Arnheim, Film als Kunst,
pp. 58-59; Vincent, Histoire fa VArt Cindmatographique, pp. 157-58,- Leprohon, "Le
Cin&na Allemand," Le Rouge et le Noir, July 1928, pp. 188, 141.
96 Karl Freund himself comments on the camera angles: "In Variety, the unaccustomed
angle was stressed by necessity, owing to cramped quarters in the Berlin
Winter Palace, where the picture was made, and this film, curiously enough, was an
original source-book of the lying-on-the-stomach school of photography, which has
today reached the proportions of a national craze." Quoted from B. C. Crisler, 'The
Friendly Mr. Freund," New York Times, Nov. 21, 198T.
a7 Cf. p. 105 f.
128 THE POSTWAB PERIOD
ready been mentioned. It remains to complete their survey. The need
for adaptations was so urgent that even Hermann Bang's esoteric
novel Michael was made into a film perhaps because of its tinge
of homosexuality (MICHAEL, 1924).
28
Rather frequent were such
films as DIE LEEBESBREEPE DER BAUONIN S. (THE LOVE LETTERS
OF BARONESS S., 1924) and KOMODIE DES HERZENS (COMEDY OF
THE HEART, 1924s), which offered a convenient mixture of love life
and society life. Harry Piel thrillers, detective films with Ernst
Reicher as Stuart Webbs, Ossi Oswalda comedies and Henny Porten
dramas were institutions.
29
Outshining all these stars, Asta Nielsen
played characters ennobled by love, with an intensity that made one
ignore the affinity of her films with bad magazine stories. In the
concluding scenes of ABSTXTRZ (DOWNFALL, 1923), she was a wornout
old woman trying desperately to look young again for her lover
who was returning from a ten-year prison term ; no one who watched
her vain attempt will ever forget her acting.
80
At the end of the
inflation period, there was a new vogue of historical pageants and a
sudden mania for films centering round folk-songs just the right
thing for small-town people and salesgirls with warm hearts and
nothing else.
81
In a tiny realm of her own, Lotte Reiniger swung
her scissors diligently, preparing one sweet silhouette film after
another.82
38
Willy Haas, Skvszen zv, MichaeV* Welt, a publicity booklet for the film. In
this context, Berthold Vierteľs film, NORA (Winter, 1923/4), with Olga Tschechows
in her first film role, may be mentioned. Cf. Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkwnst, I, 72;
Arnheim, Film als Kunst, p. 109; Zaddach, Der Uterarische Film, p. 50.
29 For Harry Piel and Ernst Reicher films, see "Die Produktion des Jahres," Das
grose BUderbuch des Films, 1925, pp. 168-70. For Henny Porlen films of the time,
see Porten, "Mein Leben," Ufa-Magazin, April 22-28, 1927. Jannings was featured in
ALLES FUB. GfeLD (ALL FOE MONEY, 1928); cf. Ufa Verleih-Proyramme, 1923/4,
pp. 52-55.
80 Cf. Balazs, Der siohtbare Mensch, pp. 168, 165-67. For the Nielsen film DAS
FETCH (THE FIBE, 1924), see Moreck, Sittengeschiohte, pp. 165-68.
01
Among the historical pageants of the time were HELENA (1924), CAHLOH UND
ELISABETH (CABLOS AND ELISABETH, 1924), and DEE SxLAVEirKoxrxQnr (Mooar OF ISRAEL,
1924). Synopsis of the latter film in ZUustrierter Film-Kurier. For the foregoing films,
cf. Zaddach, Der Uteransche Film, pp. 55-56, and Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkwitt, I, 67.
Kalbus, ibid,, p. 59, lists a number of films featuring folk-song themes as a peculiarity
of the year 1924.
3a
Reiniger, "JLebende Schatten," Fitm-Photos, pp. 45-46; Film Society Programme,
Dec. 11, 1927; etc.
THE STABILIZED PERIOD
(1924-1929)
11 DECLINE
IN 1924, after the mark had been stabilized, Germany accepted the
Dawes Plan, which arranged for the payment of reparations and
effected Germany's incorporation into the financial system of the
Allies. Normal life began to reassert itself, and soon the inflation
seemed a remote nightmare. This stabilized or Dawes Plan period
lasted until 1929, when the crash put an end to false prosperity.
While it lasted, Stresemann embarked upon a clever policy of rehabilitation,
marked by such successes as the Treaty of Locarno and
Germany's entrance into the League of Nations. At home, things
did not look too bad either. Even though the Hitlerites and their
like tried hard to undermine the "system," as they called the Weimar
regime, no one would listen to them. The oblivion into which they
sank resulted not so much from any inner strength of the Republic
as from an abundance of foreign loans that helped reduce unemployment
by engendering feverish activity.
With the aid of these loans, which were granted to public corporations,
communities and businessmen alike, the German industrialists
modernized and expanded their plants systematically. Towards
the end of the stabilized period, Germany commanded an industrial
apparatus with a capacity far beyond her immediate needs.
Its creation was bound up with an enormous increase of administrative
functions. From 1924 to 1928, the number of the employees
was augmented fivefold, while that of the workers was scarcely
doubled. The white-collar class developed into an important social
stratum. Simultaneously, another change took place which contemporaries
spoke of as the streamlining of big business (RationaLisierung
der Wirtschaft) : the methods of the assembly line were
transferred to the workrooms of the administration buildings. This
meant that with regard to their occupational and economic plight
innumerable employees were no better off than the workers. Yet
instead of acknowledging their proletarian existence, they endeav-
181
132 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
ored to maintain their old middle-class status. Compared to the
workers with their firm beliefs and hopes, these three and a half
million employees were mentally shelterless; all the more so as the
middle class itself had begun to falter. They filled the cities and
belonged nowhere.1
Considering their crucial position within the
social structure, much depended upon their reactions. The films
would have to take notice of them.
From 1924 on, economic exigencies influenced the development
of the German film more directly than in the previous years. To
understand this a few retrospective remarks are indispensable. During
the inflation, the film industry managed to get along without
serious disturbances. It is true that the domestic market yielded only
10 per cent of the production costs. However, two circumstances
compensated for this ruinous situation. First, people eagerly spent
their money, which was lost anyway, on every pleasure available; in
consequence, movie theaters were crowded and even increased in
number. Secondly, the export of films, much furthered by "dumping,"
proved exceedingly lucrative. A Swiss license, which in normal
times would have amounted to nothing, represented a value
almost equivalent to the cost of an average film. Tempted by such
opportunities, numerous unpleasant profiteers squeezed into the film
business, and minor banks readily supported brand-new joint-stock
companies, whose supervisory boards usually included some Excellency
highly paid for the attractiveness of his title. Fritz Olimsky
states in his thesis on German film economics that at that time the
cultural standards in the film industry were lower than in all other
industries of similar size.
2
This testifies to the relative independence
of art from its environment; for amidst the weeds there blossomed
such films as THE STREET and NEW YEAR'S EVE.
No sooner was the mark stabilized than the film industry suffered
a severe setback, caused by the sudden discontinuance of all
exports. It was the so-called stabilization crisis. In 1924 and 1925,
many new joint-stock companies went bankrupt, and the Excellencies
retired, leaving behind ruined stockholders. The distributors
felt the blow more than anyone. With box-office receipts dwindling
*Cf. Rosenberg, Geschichte der Deutachen Republik, p. 181 if.; Schwarzschild,
World in Trance, pp. 227, 248, 247, 261-62; Samuel and Thomas, Expressionism in
German Life, p. 171; Kracauer, Die Angestellten.
*
Olimsky, Filnuoirtschaft, p. 28; see also pp. 26-27, 29. Jason, "Zahlen sehen uns
an . ," $6 Jahre Kiiwmatograph, p. 68.
DECLINE 133
and the banks demanding exorbitant rates of interest, the surviving
film companies hardly knew where to turn.3
But man's extremity
is Goďs opportunity. God in this case was Hollywood.
The big Hollywood industrialists recognized that after the reestablishment
of the gold standard in Germany the German market
would offer them pleasant possibilities. They were determined to step
in, and began flooding Germany with American pictures. In the
course of this large-scale invasion, they not only founded their own
distributing agencies there, but also purchased big German movie
theaters and even built several new ones. To stem the flood, the
German government decreed that for every foreign film released a
German film should be produced. But this decree had quite an unexpected
effect: it gave rise to the widespread species of "quota
films" (Contingentfilme). Many a quota film was never released, its
sole reason for existence being the acquisition of a "quota certificate"
(Kontingentscheiri) that would authorize its holder to import a foreign
picture. In the caf6s where the film agents met, these certificates
were traded like stocks. Of course, the Americans had a vital interest
in getting as many certificates as possible; they therefore produced
their own quota films in Germany, and in addition financed or bought
up a number of German film companies. No doubt, these methods of
infiltration were unscrupulous, but they did enable the native film
industry to surmount a perilous crisis.
4
The case of Ufa illustrates the whole situation. In 1925, Ufa
was in such a lamentable predicament that it would have failed without
the intervention of Paramount and Loew's Inc. (Metro-Goldwyn)
. The two Hollywood companies urged Ufa to sign the so-called
"Parufamet agreement," which provided that in return for a considerable
loan Ufa should put its quota certificates as well as its
numerous movie theaters at the disposal of the American creditors.
These terms proved the more disastrous as, with the millions it
acquired, Ufa had not only to fulfill its new obligations but also
to liquidate its old debt to the Deutsche Bank. In 1927, as a result
of both external pressure and internal mismanagement, Ufa was
again on the verge of ruin. Then Hugenberg came to its rescue
Hugenberg, the Prussian conservative and reactionary, who through
3
Olimsky, Fttmwirtschaft, p. 80.
4
Olimsky, ibid., pp. 43-45, 54-55; Jason, "Zahlen sehen uns an . . ," 25 Jdhre
Kinematoffraph, pp. 68-69; Neumann, Film-'Kunstf p. 60; Fawcett, Dfo Welt det
Films, p. 121; Berr, "Etat du Cin&na 1981: Etats-Unis et Allemagne," Revue du
Cinema, July 1981, p. 50.
134 THE STABILIZED PEBIOD
the newspapers in his possession controlled a vast domain of public
opinion. He wanted to extend his influence by swallowing the leading
German film company. After the ensuing revision of the Parufamet
agreement, Ufa was free to become a propaganda instrument in
Hugenberg's hands. Yet as long as the Republic seemed firmly
established, Hugenberg neither utilized this instrument to the full
nor even expected all Ufa executives to share his views.
5
He was
also a businessman, after all. This does not mean that the Hugenberg
Ufa took a liking to the democratic ways of life. It merely chose to
obstruct them under the mask of neutrality.
Occasionally, the mask covering reactionary behind-the-scenes
activities was lifted. In 192T, when Phoebus went bankrupt, the
public learned that this important film company had been financed,
and ruled, by a certain Captain Lohmann. And the republican and
leftist press revealed that his money had come from the secret
funds of the Reichswehr. The Phoebus affair turned into a Reichswehr
scandal, and for a moment the smoldering conspiracy of the
militarists seemed seriously compromised. It was not, of course.
Hindenburg fired the democrat Gessler, until then in charge of the
Reichswehr ministry, and appointed General Groener in his place.
And there the matter ended.
6
With the commencement of the Dawes Plan period the character
of the German film changed markedly. Now that life had resumed
normal aspects and social revolution was no longer impending, the
fantastic figures and unreal settings of the postwar screen dissolved
into thin air like the vampire in NOSFERATTJ. To be sure, studiominded
products persisted long after 1924.7
But on the whole the
films of the stabilized period turned towards the outer world, shifting
the emphasis from apparitions to actual appearances, from imaginary
landscapes to natural surroundings. They were essentially
realistic.
A change in aesthetic standards took place also. Compared to the
postwar films those of the stabilized period were aesthetically dubious.
"The true German film died quietly," Paul Rotha comments on
S
01imsky, Filmwirtachaft, pp. 29-80; Fawcett, Die Welt des Films, pp. 122-20;
Schwarzschild, World in Trance, p. 283; Schlesinger, "Das moderne deutsche Lichtspiel-theater,"
Das grosse Bilderbvch, 1925, p* 28.
*
Rosenberg, QeschicUe der Deutschm Republik, p. 212; see also New York
Times, from Berlin, Aug. 9, 1927 (clipping in Weinberg, Scrafbooks, 1927).
7 Cf. Potauakin, "The Rise and Fall of the German Film," Cinema,, April 1980,
p. 25.
DECLINE 135
the output after VARIETY.8
Observers were unanimous in remarking
this decline. The problem is how to explain it.
One explanation offered is the exodus of many prominent German
film artists and technicians about the middle of the twenties.
Hollywood bought them up, as it did other foreign talents. Among
the first to answer the call were Lubitsch, Pola Negri, Hans Kraly
and Buchowetski. In 1925 and 1926 they were joined by a whole
crowd, including the star directors E. A. Dupont, Ludwig Berger,
Lupu Pick, Paul Leni and Murnau, and such actors as Veidt and
Jannings. Erich Pommer, too, could not resist the temptation.
There is no doubt that Hollywood effected this wholesale importation
not solely to heighten its own standards ; the main idea was to
eliminate a competitor extremely dangerous at the time.9
But much
as the mass desertions added to the difficulties of the German screen,
they did not cause its decline. This can be evidenced by the fact that,
after the mark was stabilized, several brilliant directors of the postwar
period among them Murnau and Lang wasted their craftsmanship
on insignificant products. Murnau then left Germany, but
Lang stayed at home, and new talents also began to emerge. The
decline was not due to the lack of talent; rather, many a talent
declined for reasons still to be explored.
Another explanation has been found in the tendency, then widespread,
to "Americanize" the German film. This tendency flowed
from the need to export. Since Hollywood seemed to have discovered
the secret of pleasing all the world, the German producers dreamed
of imitating what they believed to be the genuine Hollywood manner.
The result was pitiful. And yet when G, W. Pabst, outstanding
figure among the film directors of the stabilized period, was obliged to
film his DEE LEBBE DER JEANNE NET (THE LOVE OF JEANNE NET)
in the American style, he succeeded in making it a fascinating pic-
ture.
10
The decline cannot be attributed to the penchant for films
after the current Hollywood manner. Even though this penchant
may well have accelerated the decline, it was nothing more than one
of its symptoms.
The attempt at Americanization went hand in hand with an effort
8
Rotha, Film Till Now, pp. 176, 181.
9
Rotha, ibid., pp. 80, 204; Jacobs, American Film, pp. 806-8; Vincent, Sistoire
de VArt Cintmatoffraphique, p. 161; Olimsky, Filmwirtschaft, p. 43; Barry, Program
Notes, Series III, program 2; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, II, 98.
10
MacPherson, "Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney," Clote Up, Dec. 192T, p. 18. See also
Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 208.
1S6 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
to internationalize the German film business. Franco-German and
Anglo-German alliances prospered during that period. They devoted
themselves to joint productions, which as a rule indulged in
a shallow cosmopolitanism. Most of them including such exceptions
as Renoir's NANA and Feyder's THRESE RAQ.TTIN were shot in the
German studios because of the superior technical resources there.
Neubabelsberg, Staaken and Geiselgasteig became the favorite meeting-places
of international teams.11
Since the German film industry
also admitted numerous foreigners among its personnel, several observers
have come to believe that the decline of the German screen
was caused by a process of "denationalization." In his Histoire du
Cwema, Robert Brasillach -the French collaborationist executed in
February 1945 denounces a "host of rascals of dubious nationality"
as the ultimate source of all evils. A certain Rene Jeanne is even
more precise ; he blames "the Jews and the aliens" for the preponderance
of German films that lost all "German character."
12
The
"German character" must have been exhausted, then, if it would
simply yield to a handful of parasites. But the whole argument is
unfounded, for in their concern with racial discrimination Brasillach
and his like have overlooked a few weighty facts. Without the
Austrian Jew Carl Mayer the German film would never have come
into its own. The Viennese Fritz Lang, no pure Aryan either, made
films so truly German that even Hitler admired them, and he was
a connoisseur. It has also been seen that during the inflation, when
a "host of rascals" meddled in all film matters, the German screen
was far from declining artistically.
Nor can the decline after 1924 be traced to those legal provisions
which called forth the multitude of cheap "quota films." These films
had characteristics in common with many an expensive superproduction.
And on the other hand, Ruttmann's BERLIN, one of the
most remarkable achievements of the period, was made as a quota
film for Fox Europe.
As Harry A. Potamkin puts it, "the real cause of the decline
is an interior one." lft
Modes of inner existence brought about the
grandeur of the German screen throughout the postwar era; they
also were responsible for its misery in subsequent years. As impor"Rotha,
ibid., p. 182; Fawcett, Die Welt des Films, pp. 128-29; Vincent, ffistoire
de ?Art Cintmatoffraphique, p. 162.
"Bardeche and Brasillach, History of Motion Pictures, pp. 258-69; Jeanne, "Le
Cinema Allemand," ĽArt Cine'matoffraphique, VIII, 46.
13
Potamkin, "The Rise and Fall of the German Film," Cinema, April 1980, p. 26.
DECLINE 137
tant postwar films testify, the outcome of the desperate struggle
for psychological adjustment was a general strengthening of the
old authoritarian tendencies. The masses, that is, were basically
authoritarian-minded when they entered the stabilized period. But
the republican regime of the period rested upon democratic principles
that repudiated those mass tendencies. Prevented from finding
an outlet and yet too persistent to yield, authoritarian dispositions
fell into a state of paralysis. This naturally affected the whole of
the collective mind. Instead of breathing life into the republican
institutions, the masses drained themselves of life. They preferred
the neutralization of their primary impulses to the transformation
of these impulses. The decline of the German screen is nothing but
the reflection of a widespread inner paralysis.
12 FROZEN GROUND
THE films of the stabilized period can be divided into three groups.
The first simply testifies to the existence of a state of paralysis. The
second group sheds light on the tendencies and notions that are
paralyzed. The third reveals the inner workings of the paralyzed
collective soul.
The innumerable films of the first group form the main bulk of
the whole output. Whether quota films or not, they never advanced
anything that could disturb the fragile peace of the republican
regime. Nor did they take sides with the regime emphatically. To
them the "system" was a matter of indifference, and even if they
went so far as to justify its capitalistic structure and the ways of the
rich, they did so in a superficial, lukewarm manner. This kind of
indifference is their chief characteristic. They avoid touching upon
any essentials, except in a few instances where they infallibly blur
the issues. Apart from such stray attempts at profundity, these
films appear to be concerned merely with doling out entertainment
in an atmosphere of neutrality. They seem cut off from all inner
roots. The emotional grounds are frozen.
Undeniably, most American and French films of the time were
in a similar vein. But in the wake of Locarno it was natural for
conditions in all countries involved to approximate each other. And
since the strange character of the German postwar screen and the
suddenness of its decline are symptoms of a unique development,
resemblances between German and foreign films should not be overrated.
They were surface resemblances, produced in the case of
Germany by the paralysis of primary impulses. Below the surface,
these impulses persisted. Under such peculiar circumstances many
German films preserved a character of their own even during these
years of international complacency.
Before discussing the films of the first group, several series of
little interest in this context but still part of the record may at least
138
FROZEN GROUND 139
be mentioned. The resumption, about 1924, of the immediate postwar
vogue of sex films and adventurous travel films indicates that after
the stabilization of the mark most people experienced the same
appetites as after the end of the war.1
Simultaneously, a host of
military films, rich in barracks humor, dull-witted privates and
dashing lieutenants, swept across the screen. Drawn from outdated
prewar novels and plays, they mirrored the average German's confidence
in the return of the normal, which to him was unimaginable
without a regular army and the sight of uniforms blossoming every-
where.2
While these film types as mere fashions were too short-lived
to characterize the period, others failed in the same respect because
of their perennial nature. The species of mystery films proved indestructible,
and now that times had changed attracted even a director
like Lupu Pick, who once had known how to arouse less
ephemeral shudders.8
Berlin local comedies featuring the good heart
and bright wit of the native population also flourished throughout
the stabilized period and longer; a fixed folk genre, they evolved
untouched by the course of events.
4
Many films of the group which evidenced society's state of
paralysis simply ignored social reality. The comedies among them
pretended to be comedies because they consisted of ingredients usually
found in comedies. Fred loves Lissy, but does not want to marry
her. To stir his jealousy, Lissy engages the gigolo Charley to court
her ostentatiously. Charley on his part hankers after the dancer
Kitty, and Kitty herself is coveted by the fickle Fred. A double
wedding uniting the right couples straightens out matters at the very
last moment. This intrigue, which ran under the title BLITZZTJG DEB
LIEBE (EXPRESS TRAIN OF LOVE, 1925), roughly illustrates what
the comedies were like.
5
They were located nowhere and void of
genuine life. When they reproduced a French boulevard comedy, the
framework remained and the spirit evaporated.
A change of ingredients, and the outcome was dramas as stillborn
as the comedies. To simulate liveliness, they often resorted to brisk
1
Of. "Ufa," Das grots* Bilderbuch, 1926, p. 186; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, I,
49; Ufa VerlMh-Programme, 1928/4, pp. 56-69.
a For the vogue of military films, see Kalbus, Deuttche Filmkunst, I, 77-78.
8 Besides Pick's DAS PASTZZHGEWOEIBZ (Tnz AEMOHED VAULT, 1926), Kalbus,
Ibid., pp. 87-88, lists a series of mystery films.
4 Cf. Potamkin, "Kino and Lichtspiel," Close Up, Nov. 1929, p. 896.
5
Synopsis of EXPEESS TRAIN OF LOVE in Illustrierter Fikn-Rurier. For other
comedies of the time, see, for instance,
a
Les Presentations de VAlliance Cinematographique
Europeenne," Ctnlo-Ctnl, April 1927, p. 14 ff.; Buchner, Im Banne des
Filma, p. 140; **Saucy Suzanne," Close Up, Nov. 1927, pp. 65-66.
140 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
and picturesque surroundings. A circus, for instance, offered dwertissement.
But no feat of horsemanship sufficed to make the circus
films breathe. Except, perhaps, for Max Reichmann's MANEGE
(1927) with its valid emotional content, they invariably handled the
stereotyped figures of the clown, the girl and the lover in pure
cliches.
6
The same cliches unfolded within music-hall settings, made
popular by Duponťs VABIETY. Dupont himself exploited his success
in MOULIN ROUGE (1928), which he tried to enliven by means of
daredevil driving in a racing car and documentary shots of Paris.
Russian milieus, too, were in vogue. In HEIMWEH (HOMESICKNESS,
1927), one saw Russian exiles gather in a Paris boardinghouse and
listen nostalgically to national folk-songs played on the piano. It
was an exhibition of sentiment fashioned after a commonplace
recipe.
7
All these dramas and comedies were manufactured mechani-
cally.
The escapist tendency to which they testified seems to have
been very strong during those years. A multitude of films owed their
very existence to outright escapism. The favorite method was to
metamorphose certain real towns or landscapes into imaginary
locales where all one's yearnings would be fulfilled. German popular
songs praised Heidelberg and the Rhine as the eternal playgrounds
of a youth immersed in love and the joys of life. These songs were
made into films which differed only with regard to the beverages
raising the spirits. DER FROHLICHE WEINBEBG (THE GAY VINEYARD,
1927), based upon Zuckmayer's play of the same title, was a
record accumulation of moistened throats and amorous hearts.
8
Paris, the city of light, appeared on the screen as a city of neon
lights and frivolous adventures. When in the Paris films a woman
feared to lose her inconstant husband, she just disguised herself,
went to the Moulin Rouge and there captivated the fugitive anew.
For MAireaE, see Kracauer, "Der heutige Film und sein Publikum," Frankfurter
Zeitung, Nov. 80, 1928. Other circus films were LOOPING THE Loo*, 1928 (cf. program
to the film, and Rotha, Film, Till Now, p. 201) j DIE D*EI CODONAS (cf. synopsis In
Ilfastrierter Film-Kiiner) j DIE ZniKtrswtiN^ESsiN (mentioned in Jahrbuch der JF*7mindustrie,
1928/25, p. 87) j etc.
'For Mouriir ROUGE, see Moussinac, Panoramique du Cintma, pp. 76-76; for
HOMESICXN-ESS, "Heimweh," Close Up, Dec. 1927, pp. 74-76. Other films featuring
Russian motifs: WoroA-WoixiA (1928), cf. program to the film; DER KURIEB DES ZAREN
(THE TSAR'S COURIER, 1926), cf.
"
*Mutterchen* Russland," Ufcb-Magazin, Aug. 27Sept.
2, 1926; HOCHVBBBA* (HIGH TREASON-, 1929), cf. "Hochverrat," Film-Maffozin,
Sept. 29 and Nov. 17, 1929.
8
Program to THI GAY VINEYARD. Kalbus, Deuttche Filmkunst, J, 78-79, lists
numerous films based upon popular songs.
FROZEN GROUND 141
These films had nothing in common with Rene* Glair's graceful
screen poems ; rather, they resembled those de luxe "Paris-at-night"
buses which in prewar times transported packets of sightseers from
one pleasure spot to another.9
The paradise of paradises was Vienna. Any obsolete Viennese
operetta was dragged to the screen as long as it offered the public
an opportunity of escaping from the prosaic republican world to
the days of the late Hapsburg monarchy. Trained in romanticizing
the past, Ludwig Berger staged EINT WALZERTRAUM (WALTZ
DREAM, 1925) after an operetta by Oscar Strauss one of the few
German films to become a hit in America. This model film operetta
not only satirized court life with a charm kindred to Lubitsch's, but
also established that enchanted Vienna which was to haunt the screen
from then on.10
Its components were gentle archdukes, tender flirtations,
baroque decors, Biedermeier rooms, people singing and drinking
in a suburban garden restaurant, Johann Strauss, Schubert and
the venerable old Emperor.
11
The persistent image of this retrospective
Utopia overshadowed the misery of twentieth century Vienna.
Incidentally, most Fridericus films included episodes with Austrian
officers who might well have appeared in those Vienna concoctions.
They were easygoing, music-loving fellows ; the patronizing benevolence
with which they were depicted implied that such effeminate
enemies would be a pushover.
Escapist needs determined as well the shape of the documentary
films the Kulturflme as they were called in Germany. From about
1924 on, when no other country yet cared much about films of this
kind, Ufa produced them with a zeal due mainly to economic factors.
The specific difficulties of the stabilization crisis entailed temporary
reduction of feature-length entertainment films. The surviving film
companies with Ufa in the lead therefore found it expedient to step
9 Paris films of this kind: LIEBE MACHT BLIND (LOVE MAKES OHE BLIND, 1925),
cf. synopsis in XUustrierter Fttm-Kwrter; DIE RATTE vox PABIS (THE RAT OF PABXS,
1925), cf. "Emdka-Ronzern," Das gross* B&derbuoh, 1926, p. 53; DAS MODEM, VON
MONTPARKASSE (THE MODEL OF MoOTPABXTASSE, 1929), cf. "Das Modell von Montparnasse,"
Fttm-Magazin, April 21, 1929 ; DEE DOMINOSPIELEE vox MONTMAETRE (THE
DOMINO PLATER OF MONTMAETOE, 1928), cf. "Comment and Review,*
1
Close Up, May
1928, pp. 80-82; PAITAME (1927), cf. Weyher, "Wir drehen in Paris," UforMagazin,
March 25-B1, 192T.
10
Synopsis in Ulustrierter FUm-Runer; Rotha, Film TUl Now, p. 199; Fawcett,
Die Welt fas Films, p. 126. Berger also made a Hans Sachs film, DEE MEISTER vox
NURNBERG (THE MASOJEB OF NTJBEMBERG, 1927) ; cf. program brochure to this film.
11 For film operettas, see Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, I, 82-88; Kracauer, "Der
heutige Film und sein Publlkum," Frankfurter Zettunff, Nor. 80, 1928; etc.
142 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
up the production of short subjects, and in the wake of this development
documentaries naturally gained in importance.
12
Perhaps they
also owed something to the curiosity ahout externals prevalent now
after years of introspection.
According to an Ufa brochure of the time, the KuLturfHtne included
the following items: "The heart at work . . . bundles of
palpitating nerves . . .
ghostly hissing snakes, iridescent beetles
. . . infusoria . . .
rutting deer, sluggishly staring frogs
Oriental cult rites . . .
fire-worshipers and Tibetan monasteries,
living Buddhas . . .
gigantic bridges . . .
powerful ships, railways,
sluices . . . machines . . . colossal mountains, glaciers luminous
with a bewitching alpenglow . . . Mexico's wild buffalo herds
. . . nimble-footed Chinese before palanquins, fanning and teadrinking
Japanese women lit by Chinese lanterns ... the Neva
Prospect > . . races in Auteuil . . . confusion of the time. . . ."
The adjective-laden prospectus ends with the assertion: "The world
is beautiful ; its mirror is the Kulturflm"
18
The first Kulturfilm to impress itself upon audiences abroad was
Ufa's WEGE ZTJ KRAFT UNB SCHONHEIT (WATS TO HEALTH AND
BEAUTY) a feature-length documentary, released in 1925 and reissued,
one year later, in a somewhat altered version. Made with the
financial support of the German government, this film circulated in
the schools because of what was considered its educational value. In
an Ufa publicity pamphlet devoted to its merits, a professional
eulogist states that WATS TO HEALTH AND BEAUTY promotes the
concept of the "regeneration of the human race."
14
As a matter of
fact, the film simply promoted calisthenics and sport. This was done
in an omnivorous manner: not content with recording actual achievements
in the fields of athletics, hygienic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics,
dancing, and so forth, Ufa resurrected the Roman thermae
and an antique Greek gymnasium crowded with adolescents posing
as the contemporaries of Pericles [Elus. 25]. The masquerade was
13
Jason, ''Zahlen sehen uns an . . ," #5 Jdhre KinematoffrapJi, p. 68.
i*
Quoted from "30 Kulturftlme," Ufa-Leih. For Kulturfllme of the time, see
Jahrbuch der FilntAnduttrte, 1028/25, pp. 24, 28, 84-87; Thomalla, "Der Kulturflim,"
DM grosie Bilderbuch, 1925 p. 24; Kaufmann, F&mtechnAk imd Kultwr, pp. 20-97;
Film Society Programmes, Dec. 1 and Dec. 14, 1980; "New Educational Films from
Ufa," Close Up, Sept. 1929, pp. 252-54 ; "Silberkondor fiber Feuerland," Close Up*
Dec. 1929, pp. 542-48; Weiss, "The Secret of the Egg-Shell," Close Up, May 1930,
pp. 421-22 ; etc. The Kulturfilme are commented upon by Kracauer, *T)er heutige Film
und sein Publikum," Frankfurter Zettwiff, Nov. 80, 1928.
14
Quotation from Hollander, "The Road to Beauty and Strength," Wege vu Kraft
wid Schbnheit, p. 50. See also Fib* Society Programme, NOT. 18, 1927.
FROZEN GROUND 143
easy inasmuch as many of the athletes performed stark naked. Of
course, this sight offended the prudish, but Ufa held that perfect
bodily beauty was bound to evoke joys of a purely aesthetic order,
and found its idealism rewarded by good box-office takes. Aesthetically
speaking, the reconstructions of antiquity were tasteless, the
sport pictures excellent, and the bodily beauties so massed together
that they affected one neither sensually nor aesthetically.
Owing to their scientific thoroughness and competent photography,
the Ufa Kulturfilme developed into a German specialty in great
demand on the international market,16
Yet their workmanship could
not compensate for their amazing indifference to human problems.
By passing off calisthenics as a means to regenerate mankind, WATS
TO HEALTH AND BEAUTY diverted contemporaries from the evils of
the time which no calisthenics would remedy. All these documentaries
excelled in evasiveness. They mirrored the beautiful world;
but their concern with the beauty of "nimble-footed Chinese before
palanquins" made them overlook the misery these beautiful coolies
endured. They mirrored "the confusion of the time" ; but instead
of penetrating the confusion, they gloated over it, thus leaving the
audience more confused than ever. They spread information on wild
buffalo herds and fire-worshipers; but their insistence upon exotic
matters of no use to the spectator enabled them to withhold from
him any essential information regarding his everyday life. Through
their escapist neutrality the Ufa KidturftLme revealed that their
submission to the rules of the republican "system" was by no means
tantamount to true acceptance.
Not all films refrained from facing social reality. The so-called
Zille films a species flourishing in 1925 and 1926 showed themselves
much concerned with real-life incidents. Heinrich Zille was a
Berlin draftsman who, driven by pity for the underdog, specialized
in portraying the human fauna crowding Berlin's proletarian quarters.
His drawings of undernourished children, workers, wretched
girls, organ-grinders in ugly backyards, destitute women and nondescripts
idling away their time enjoyed great popularity among
the Germans. Gerhart Lamprecht brought these drawings to life
in DIE VERRUFENEN (SLUMS or BERLIN, 1925), which he built
around personal observations retailed to him by Zille. An engineer
who has committed perjury to shield his fiancee finds himself an
outcast after leaving prison. Unable to get a job, he attempts sui-
15
Jason, **Zahlen schen uns an . . ," $6 John Cinematograph, p. 68.
144 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
cide, and is saved by a good-hearted girl who promptly falls in love
with him. She belongs to a Zille milieu characterized by such figures
as a kind photographer and a gang of minor criminals. The engineer
becomes attached to these people and begins to make his living as a
simple factory worker. Soon he rises again : the factory owner discovers
his talents and promotes him to a socially respectable position.
To complete the engineer's happiness the good-hearted girl conveniently
dies, so that he need feel no compunction about marrying
the socially respectable sister of the factory owner.16
The formula underlying this plot is compounded of two ingredients.
On the one hand, the film-makers pretend to tackle the social
problem by harping on the sufferings of the proletariat; on the
other, they evade the social problem by giving one particular
worker (who is not even really of that class) a lucky break. Their
design is obviously to trick the spectator into the illusion that he,
too, might be upwardbound, and thus make him stick to the "system."
Perhaps class differences are fluid after all, the plot suggests,
and its sham frankness in exposing the predicament of the
lower classes serves to invigorate that daydream of social redemp-
tion.
Films based upon this formula not only explored the picturesque
Zille world, but also penetrated the sphere of the white-collar
workers to promote a manicurist or switchboard operator among
them: one Lotte landing in the arms of a rich bridegroom would
reward the wishful thinking of all Lottes.
17
To be sure, such daydreams
were produced elsewhere as well; but the German specimens
advertised the existing regime in a particularly detached, if not
absent-minded, manner. They relied on the alluring effect of promotions
to a higher social level at a time when, because of the streamlining
of big business, promotions of that kind had become extremely
scarce. They presented upper-class people in such a way that choice
night-clubs and shining cars appeared as the ultimate goal of all
human endeavor. When Hollywood dealt with similar themes, events
and characters at least preserved a faint vestige of liveliness. These
"Program brochure to the film. Cf. Weinberg, /Scrapbook*, 1925-27; "Wissen Sie
schon?" Das grosse Bilderbuch, p. 145. Kalbus, Deutsche Fitmkunst, I, 59, lists a number
of such "Zille" films. Among them may be mentioned DIE GESTTNKENEIT (THE
STTNKEN, 1926) with Asta, Nielsen, and DAS EUWACHEN- DBS WEIBES (WOMAN'S
AWAKENING, 1927). Cf. programs to these films.
17 For critical comment on the whole trend, see Kracauer, "Der heutige Film und
sein Publikum," Frankfurter Zeitung, Nov. 0, 1928.
FROZEN GROUND 145
German films were artificial and oblique products. And yet they
found response. Spirits were barren.
Other films aimed at manipulating those who were too discontented
with the general social and political conditions to let themselves
be drugged by Zille films and the like. The recipe was primitive:
one tried to neutralize pent-up indignation by directing it against
evils of small importance. Several films of the time stigmatized rigors
of the penal code. KREUZZUG DES WEIBES (UNWELCOME CHILDREN,
1926) attacked the provisions against unlawful abortion, while the
Nero film GESCHLECHT IN FESSELN (SEX IN FETTERS, 1928) campaigned
for prison reform.18
Since both films, moreover, emphasized
sex matters, they were bound to arouse a mixture of indignation and
sensuality which could not but increase their value as safety valves.
If, as it happened, some film or other assumed a radical attitude,
that radicalism invariably turned against powers long since overthrown.
Two mediocre screen versions of Gerhart Hauptmann plays
DEE WEBER (THE WEAVERS, 1927) and DER BIBERPELZ (THE
BEAVER COAT, 1928) combated the early capitalists and the conceited
authorities under the Kaiser.19
Among these anachronistic
affairs was one of the best films of the period: Hans Behrendťs
DEE HOSE (ROYAL SCANDAL, 1927), fashioned after a prewar comedy
by Carl Sternheim. It concerned a romantic intrigue between
the sovereign of a small principality and the wife of a petty
official who, instead of objecting to being cuckolded, felt highly
elated over his fate because the wise sovereign did not forget to
promote and decorate him. Even though film experts held that
ROYAL SCANDAL was too high-brow to be good business, this **blend
of grand burlesque and satire," as Potamkin called it, ingratiated
itself with German moviegoers.
20
They relished the acting of Werner
Krauss, who endowed the petty official with all the traits of the German
philistine. When they laughed at him, they may have believed
that they laughed at a former, pretty ridiculous stage of their own
existence. But their laughter was mixed with emotional concern,
for they could not help secretly craving that lost era with its protective
sovereigns and sparkling medals.
18 For UNWELCOME CHJUDHEST, see Buchner, Im Bonne des Films, p. 142 ; for SEX
isr FETTERS, B., "Geschlecht la Fesseln," Olose Up, Dec. 1928, pp. 69-71.
19 Cf. Zaddach, Der Hteraarische Film, p. 71, and Kracauer, "Der heutige Film und
sein Publikum," Frankfurter Zeitung, Nov. 80, 1928.
ao
potamkln, "Kino and Lichtspiel." Close Up, Nov. 1929, p. 895. See also program
to ROYAL SCAXDAL, and FreedJey and Reeves, History of the Theatre, p. 514.
146 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
The testimony of film content was borne out by that of methods
of presentation: they, too, betrayed the paralysis of the collective
mind. It was as if, along with sensibility to essential content, the
whole film sense had weakened. Instead of narrating the story
through a display of adequate pictures, directors who should have
known better degraded the pictures to mere illustrations of the story.
Plot and imagery fell asunder, and the latter was confined to the
role of an accompaniment that added nothing. Many a film gave
the impression of having been drawn from a novel, even if that novel
did not exist.
The strange debilitation of the film sense affected cinematic techniques.
Devices that up to 1924* had been developed to express
definite meanings turned into meaningless routine matters from
1924 on. Having learned how to move a camera, the cameraman let
it run wild on every occasion.
21
Close-ups became a habit. Directors
would not even take the trouble to vary them, but would use standardized
sets of close-ups to render commonplace events that were
quite understandable without any such insertions. Whenever the
leading character of a film mounted a train, the audience could
count on being informed of his departure by fragments of the locomotive
and slowly revolving wheels. In SHATTERED, close shots of
that kind had had a structural function
22
; in these films, they were
ready-made ornaments products of an absent-mindedness that also
accounted for the negligent handling of many details. The sumptuous
screen lobbies of de luxe hotels recalled real lobbies but vaguely,
and when the whole of a building and one of its parts were shown,
that part seemed to belong to another building.
The mechanization of all editing procedures was conspicuous. In
the case of night-club episodes, no film-maker could resist the temptation
of illustrating ecstasy at its height through a cliche juxtaposition
of performing legs, giant saxophone tubes and staggering
torsos. Many films referred to the first World War: even the remotest
reference to it sufficed to provoke the sudden appearance of
barbed-wire fences, marching columns and shell-bursts stock material
cut in automatically. Fixed types of transitions predominated.
One of them connected two different objects by inserting details of
them in close-up. If, for instance, the scene was to shift from an
al
See, for instance, "Die entfesselte Kamera," UfarMaffovin, March 26-81, 1927.
For the run-of-the-mffl techniques of the period, see Kracauer, "Der heutige Film und
sein Publikum," Frankfurter Zeitung, Nov. 80, 1928.
a* Cf. p. 108.
FROZEN GROUND 147
elegant gentleman to a poor woman, the camera first focused upon
the gentleman, then tilted down to his shoes, stopped there until
the shoes had transformed themselves into those of the woman, and
finally tilted up again to make the woman appear. Most Ufa comedies
included picture units that paralleled the behavior of some
actor to that of a pet animal. When a glamour girl was all sunshine,
her Pekingese would be in high spirits as well ; when the Pekingese
became morose, one could be fairly sure that the subsequent shot
would show big tears gliding down the girľs cheeks.
There was no lack of grade-A films produced with all the craftsmanship
of which the German studios were capable, but most of them
dealt with unimportant subjects or drained important subjects of
their significance. What made these elite products seem different
from the standardized average output was mainly their technical
perfection that consummate grand-style manner in which they
handled nothing as if it were something. They simulated content. It
was through this very pretentiousness that they testified to the existing
paralysis.
Since THE LAST LAUGH had been a world success, Carl Mayer
and F. W. Murnau continued collaborating; the outcome was TARTUFFE
(1925), an Ufa superproduction, in which the two artists paid
tribute to the grand-style manner [Ulus. 26] . The paralysis was allpervading.
Mayer seemed aware of its contagious power, and, as if he
felt that the indifference around and in him would do away with
any immediacy of thought and emotion and thus engender a deep
and general hypocrisy, he tried in TARTUFFE to emphasize hypocrisy
as the basic vice of contemporary society. This he did by means
of a story framing his screen version of Moliere's comedy. The film
opens with a prologue showing a wealthy old gentleman in the
clutches of his housekeeper who, another Tartuffe, courts him
brazenly. To open the old fooľs eyes, his grandson invites him and
the housekeeper to a screening of Tartuffe he has been clever
enough to prearrange. Here the prologue ends, and Tartuffe commences.
Like the play in Hamlet, this film within a film fulfills an
enlightening mission: in the epilogue the female legacy-hunter is
ousted. But elaborate production snowed under what Mayer had to
impart. The critics dismissed the modern framing story as an unnecessary
addition. The rendering of Moliere culminated in moments
of accomplished acting and such decorative finesse as "the lace
148 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
in the final bedroom scene, the pattern of the bed covering,
the porcelain clock on the fireplace/' and so forth.
28
It was a
slick theatrical performance. Much as the camera hovered about, it
subordinated itself always to Jannings and the other players instead
of using them for purposes of its own.24
This TAKTUFFE, far from
bringing home hypocrisy to the audience, was itself Tartuffish, for
it flattered an audience anxious to leave things in the depths un-
touched,
Before going to Hollywood, Murnau staged another Ufa superproduction:
FAUST (1926). Ufa seemed determined to make this
film a cultural monument. Hans Kyser's script exploited Marlowe
and Goethe and German folk sagas, and Gerhart Hauptmann, Germany's
foremost poet, composed the film titles. Technical ingenuity
was lavished on angelic apparitions and devilish conjuring tricks.
Karl Freunďs camera rushed on a roller coaster of his own invention
through a vast, studio-built landscape filled with towns, woods
and villages, and the views thus obtained enabled the spectators to
participate in the aerial trip Mephistopheles undertook with the
rejuvenated Faust. Their flight was a celestial sensation. But
neither the roller coaster nor Gerhart Hauptmann could compensate
for the futility of a film which misrepresented, if not ignored, all
significant motifs inherent in its subject-matter.
25
The metaphysical
conflict between good and evil was thoroughly vulgarized, and the
drawn-out love story between Faust and Margarete induced the critic
of the National Board of Review Magazine to remark: e
*We find
ourselves descending from the masculine version of Marlowe and the
philosophical concept of Goethe to the level of the libretto which
inspired Gounod to write his opera."
2e
FAUST was not so much a
cultural monument as a monumental display of artifices capitalizing
on the prestige of national culture. The obsolete theatrical poses to
which the actors resorted betrayed the falsity of the whole. While
the film had considerable success abroad, it met with indifference in
Germany itself. The Germans of the time did not take to Faustian
as
Quoted from Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 198. Cf. Weinberg, Scrapbooks, 1927;
Zaddach, J>er UterartecTie Film, pp. 59-60; Film Society Programme, April 1, 1928.
*< Cf. "Tartuffe, the Hypocrite," National Board of Review Magazine, May 1928,
p. 6.
35
Program brochure to the film; Botha, FUm Till Now, p. 198; Vincent, Mistoire
dd VArt Cingmatographique, p. 152; "Die entfesselte Karaera," Ufa-Magazin. March
25-81, 1927; Cinta-Cint, March 15, 1927, pp. 19-20.
86
"Faust," National Board of Review Magazine, Nov. 1920, p, 10. See also
Potarakia, "The Rise and Fall of the German Film," Cinema, April 1980, p. 59.
FROZEN GROUND 149
problems, and moreover resented any interference with their traditional
notions of the classics.
27
Outstanding instances of grand-style manner were the three films
Fritz Lang produced during the stabilized period. They dealt with
thrilling adventures and technical fantasies symptomatic of the then
current machine cult. The first of them was METROPOLIS, an Ufa
production released at the beginning of 1927. Lang relates that he
conceived the idea of this internationally known film when from
shipboard he saw New York for the first time a nocturnal New
York glittering with myriad lights.
28
The city built in his film is a
sort of super New York, realized on the screen with the aid of the
so-called Shuftan process, an ingenious mirror device permitting
the substitution of little models for giant structures.
29
This screen
metropolis of the future consists of a lower and an upper city.
The latter a grandiose street of skyscrapers alive with an incessant
stream of air taxis and cars is the abode of big-business
owners, high-ranking employees and pleasure-hunting gilded youth.
In the lower city, shut off from daylight, the workers tend monstrous
machines. They are slaves rather than workers. The film elaborates
upon their rebellion against the master class in the upper world,
and ends with the reconciliation of the two classes.
However, what is important here is not so much the plot as the
preponderance of surface features in its development. In the brilliant
laboratory episode, the creation of a robot is detailed with a
technical exactitude that is not at all required to further the action.
The office of the big boss, the vision of the Tower of Babel, the
machinery and the arrangement of the masses: all illustrate Lang's
penchant for pompous ornamentation.80
In NIBELTTNGEN, his decorative
style was rich in meaning; in METROPOLIS, the decorative not
only appears as an end in itself, but even belies certain points made
through the plot. It makes sense that, on their way to and from the
machines, the workers form ornamental groups ; but it is nonsensical
to force them into such groups while they are listening to a comforting
speech from the girl Maria during their leisure time. In his
exclusive concern with ornamentation, Lang goes so far as to com-
27
Jacobs, American Film, p. 810; "Was is los?" Ufv-Magazin, Feb. 4-10, 1927;
"Erlauterungen," Ftim-Photot, p. 58.
38 Information offered by Mr. Lang.
89 Information offered by Mr. Shuftan*
3Cf. Rotha, CtlMoid, pp. 280-32; "Die entfesselte Kamera," Ufa-Maga&in,
March 25-81, 1927; Jahier, "42 Ans de Cin&na," Le B6le intellectual du Cintma, p. 62.
150 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
pose decorative patterns from the masses who are desperately trying
to escape the inundation of the lower city. Cinematically an incomparable
achievement, this inundation sequence is humanly a shocking
failure [Dlus. 28]. METBOPOUS impressed the German public. The
Americans relished its technical excellence; the English remained
aloof; the French were stirred by a film which seemed to them a
blend of Wagner and Rrupp, and on the whole an alarming sign
of Germany's vitality.
81
Lang's subsequent film, the mystery thriller SPIONE (THE SPY,
1928), shared two traits with his DR. MABTJSE. It featured a master
spy who, like Mabuse, led several different lives : besides the spy, he
was also the president of a bank and a music-hall clown. And exactly
like DR. MABUSE, this new film refrained from conferring moral
superiority upon the representatives of the law.32
Espionage and
counterespionage were on the same level two gangs fighting each
other in a chaotic world. Yet there was one important difference:
while Dr. Mabuse had incarnated the tyrant who takes advantage of
the chaos around him, the master spy indulged in the spy business
for the sole purpose, it seemed, of spying. He was a formalized
Mabuse devoted to meaningless activities. By emphasizing this
figure, the film reflected the neutrality prevalent during that period
a neutrality which also manifested itself in the absence of any
distinction between legal and illegal pursuits and in a prodigal
abundance of disguises. No character was what he appeared to be.
This constant change of identities was appropriate to denote a state
of mind in which the paralysis of the self interfered with any attempt
at self-identification. As if to fill the void, Lang piled up sensations
which conveyed no meaning. His imaginative virtuosity in shaping
them reached its climax with a train wreck in a tunnel. Since it
proved impossible to stage the catastrophe in life-size proportions,
he gave the impression of it through confused mental images of
the persons involved in this shock situation.
THE SPY would have been a true forerunner of the Hitchcock
thrillers if Lang had not fashioned it after the pompous manner
of METROPOLIS, so that empty sensations took on the air of substantial
revelations. Virtuosity alienated from content posed as art.
In accordance with this pretense, Ufa issued a volume that was a
31 While H. G. Wells damned METRQPOUS as "quite the silliest film" (Rotha, Film
Titt Now, p. 194), Conan Doyle was enthusiastic about it (cf. "Was is los?" UfaMagaxin,
April 15-21, 1927). For further comment on METROPOLIS, see p. 162 ff.
32 Cf. p. 88.
FROZEN GROUND 151
triumph of bookbinding though it contained nothing but the Thea
von Harbou novel from which THE SPY had been made.88
In his third film, DEE FRAU IM MOND (THE Gmi, m THE
MOON, 1929), Lang imagined a rocket projectile carrying passengers
to the moon. The cosmic enterprise was staged with a surprising
veracity of vision; the plot was pitiable for its emotional shortcomings.
These were so obvious that they discredited many an illusion
Lang tried to create by showy virtuosity. The lunar landscape
smelled distinctly of Ufa's Neubabelsberg studios.
84
Other films in grand-style manner masked their insignificance
by assuming the character of tragedies. It was easy: you had only
to introduce some unlucky incident and make it appear a fateful
event. In Ufa's Henny Porten film ZUFLTJCHT (REFUGE, 1928), a
young man who had once run away from his bourgeois parents to
join the proletariat returns to his native town, completely disillusioned.
A poor girl there takes care of the broken ex-revolutionary,
and his parents are finally willing to accept him and the pregnant
girl. Happiness seems close at hand, but Ufa, inexorable, frustrates
it. At the very last moment the young man dies a death designed
to impress tragedy upon the audience.35
Since he had been a revolutionary,
Ufa may also have considered his death morally justified*
In cases in which a tragic outcome was not held opportune, the films
in grand-style manner frequently relied on the spell of beautiful
settings to conceal their emptiness. Bergner in DONA JTTANA (1928)
was seen before the fountains of Granada and on the roads Don
Quixote had trodden. It was all trappings.
Even the documentaries inclined to be grandiloquent. The Ufa
Kulturflm NATTO UND LIEBE (NATURE AND LOVE) combined with
its scenes of sex life monumental visions of mankinďs birth and
83
Program brochure to the film; Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 193, and Celluloid,
p. 228; Herring, "Reasons of Rhyme," Close Up, Get 1929, pp. 280-81.
84
Rotha, Celluloid, pp. 282-8T; Dreyfus, "La Femme sur la Lune," La Revue fa
Cintma, May 1980, pp. 62-68,* "Frau fan Mond," Close Up, Nov. 1929, pp. 448^44;
Jahier, "48 Ans de Cinema," Le Bole wtellectuel fa Cw4mat p. 62; Arnheim, Film als
Kunft, p. 180.
85
Kracauer, "Der heutige Film und se!n Publikum," Frankfurter Zeitung, Dec.
1, 1928. See also "Zuflucht," Ufa-Leih.In this context, several costume films more or
less affected by the predominant grand-style manner should at least be mentioned:
MAKOS- LESCAUT, 1926 (cf. Rotha, Film Till Now, pp. 200-1, and lUustrierter FilmKurier)
; DER ROSENKAVALIER, 1926 (cf. Kalbus, Deutsche FUmkunst, I, 81) ; MAKHN
LUTHER, 1928 (cf. "Martin Luther," National Board of Review Magazine, Oct. 1928,
p. 4, and Blakeston, "Snap," Close Up, May 1929, pp. 41-42) ; ScniNDERHAsnsrES, 1928
(Rotha, ibid., p. 206, and Hellmund-Waldow, "Alraune and Schinderhannes," Close
Up, March 1928, pp. 46-48) ; NAPOUEOK AUF ST. HEUSITA, 1929 (program to this film).
152 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
rise.
36
Similarly, the KuLtwrfilm WUNDER DER SCHOPFUNG (MIRACLES
OP CREATION, 1925) not only pictured present-day miracles,
but foreshadowed astronomical events of the future, including the
wholesale death of our universe. According to the prospectus to
this latter film, Ufa was convinced that the sight of such astronomical
events would induce any thinking spectator to become aware of
the utter unimportance of his ephemeral existence.
37
In other words,
the tragic destiny of the cosmos was exhibited to deflect the spectator's
attention from the problems of everyday life. Grand-style
manner in such instances as this helped to stupefy social conscious-
ness.
36
Kracauer, "Der heutige Film und sein Publikum," Frankfurter Zeitung, Nov,
30, 1928.
37
Ufa Verleih-Programme, 1924/25, p. 102.
13,
THE PROSTITUTE AND THE
ADOLESCENT
THE second group of films that appeared during the stabilized era
allows one to specify the psychological contents then paralyzed.
Having no direct outlet, they made themselves known in a devious
and distorted way. A number of films of this group divulged their
messages after the manner of dreams ; it is as if they were the confessions
of someone talking in his sleep.
A few films, stragglers of a bygone era, reveal that the old
psychological unrest continued to smolder in the collective soul. In
1926, Henrik Galeen staged a second STUDENT VON PRAG (THE
STUDENT OF PRAGUE), which differed thematically from the first
only in that it put more emphasis on the psychological significance
of the plot. This beautiful, if in some respects questionable, version
of Wegener*s prewar film
deliberately interpreted Baldwin's fight
with his double as a fight with his other self.
1
The film was a big
success in Germany; it seemed to make the Germans realize their
own duality, which during the stabilized period was deepened by the
latent conflict between republican institutions and paralyzed authoritarian
dispositions. Galeen's picture, which was full of E. T. A.
Hoffmann reminiscences, sensitized these dispositions and all the
impulses and longings connected with them. It may have been the
story's inherent material that caused the Nazis to release another
STUDENT OP PRAGUE in 1936.
Expert in fantastic horror films, Galeen also made ALRAUNE
(UNHOLY LOVE, 1928), which was based upon a novel by H. H.
Ewers. A scientist (Paul Wegener), experimenting in artificial impregnation,
creates a human being: Alraune, daughter of a hanged
criminal and a prostitute. This creature, portrayed by Brigitte Helm
as a somnambulant vamp with seductive and empty features, ruins
1 "The Mem Who Cheated Life," National Board of Review Magazine, Feb. 1929,
pp., 10-11; H. D., "Conrad Veidt, The Student of Prague," Clots Up, Sept. 1927,
pp. 86-48; Blakeston, "An Epic Please I" ibid., p. 65; Rotha, FUm Till Now, pp. 202-8,
285; Ilkutrterter Fttm-Kwritr (synopsis of the film); Wesse, Grossmacht Film, pp.
127-28.
158
154 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
all those who are in love .with her, and at the end destroys herself.
2
Alraune's family resemblance to Homunculus is apparent. In her
case, too, abnormal origins are called upon to account for inner
frustration and its devastating consequences. The story aroused
sufficient interest to be made into a talkie a few years later. This
indicates that among the paralyzed psychological processes those
to which the film referred were of consequence.
Several films remotely akin to the instinct and peasant dramas
of the postwar years glorified nature to be more precise, the interrelationship
between human nature and external nature. Regardless
of whether they rendered storms or frosts, farmers or fishermen,
they placed the laws of nature an eternally unchanging nature
above the decrees of autonomous reason. Their sporadic appearance
testified to the existence of a romanticizing tendency which had been
strengthened by suffering resulting from the streamlining of all
working processes. This tendency, hostile to the intellect as such,
turned not only against a rationalism which ignored the friendly
forces of nature, but also against the ever-repeated attempts of
reason to defeat nature's destructive forces manifesting themselves
through tyranny. Widespread as such an anti-intellectualism was,
it expressed itself not so much on the screen as in philosophy and
literature which means that it was actually prevented from achieving
full expression in that period.
Among the films subordinating reason to nature, Fritz Wendhausen's
DER SOHN DER HAGAR (OUT OP THE MIST, 1927) ranked
high because of its magnificent pictures of snowy woods, spring
scenery and old-fashioned interiors. It was a romance elaborating
upon the return of a handsome young man to his native mountain
village. He arrives from faraway "large cities," and becomes involved
in passions springing up in a wayside inn and a sawmill.8
The ties between the villagers and their land are so indissoluble that
he appears as an intruder up to the end. In her review of the film,
Miss Lejeune states that "every achieved action, every enduring
motive springs from the life of the soil . . . while the foreign emotions
remain unfulfilled."
4
The affiliation of this cult of the soil with
a Cf. Hellmund-Waldow, "Alraune and Schinderhannes," Close Up, March 1928,
pp. 49-50; etc. In a similar vein was Wiene's OBLAC'S HANDE (THE HANDS OP OBLAC,
1925) ; cf. Film Society Programme, Oct. 24, 1926.
3 "Films of the Month: Out of the Mist," Close Up, Oct. 1927, p. 85.
4
Lejeune, Cinema, p. 284. See also Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 206. For other films
of this kind, see Martini, "Nature and Human Fate," Close Up, Nov. 1927, pp. 10-14;
Das grosse Bilderbuch, 1925, p. 875; etc.
THE PROSTITUTE AND THE ADOLESCENT 155
authoritarian behavior was to be revealed by the blood-and-soil literature
of the Nazis.
Dr. Arnold Fanck continued his series of mountain films with
the already-mentioned HOLT MOUNTAIN and a rather insignificant
comedy.
5
The yield was slight. Under the sun of Locarno, the heroic
idealism of the mountain climbers seemed to melt away like the snow
in the valleys. Yet it survived and, as prosperity drew to a close,
again attained the heights in DIE WEISSE HOI/LE VON Piz PAI.U
(THE WHITE HELL OP PITZ PALU, 1929), in which Ernst Udeťs
daredevil flights matched the stunt ascensions. Fanck made this
cinematically fascinating film with the aid of G. W. Pabst, who
probably did his best to cut down emotional exuberance.6
However,
sentimentality was inseparable from that variety of idealism.
The national films of the stabilized period were also affected by
the general apathy. In a number of them patriotic fervor seemed
suspended. A Bismarck film, released in 1926, was a purely matterof-fact
biography.
7
DEB, WELTKRIEG (WORLD WAR, 1927) an
Ufa documentary in three parts utilizing stock candid-camera work
resulted from the express design of "^presenting the historic facts
with incontestable objectivity."
8
This filnr? included an important
innovation: maps illustrating battle arrays and army evolutions
after the manner of animated cartoons. Sven Noldan, their creator,
called them a means of giving the illusion of phenomena not to be
found in camera reality.
9
He was also to make the maps for the
Nazi war films BAPTISM OF FIRE and VICTORY IN THE WEST, but in
these films their propaganda function of symbolizing Nazi Germany's
irresistible military might was to overshadow their character
as objective statements. (It is, by the way, not surprising that Le*on
Poirier's war documentary VERDUN, 1928, rivaled WORLD WAR in
neutrality: to some extent, the Treaty of Locarno determined the
outlook of both the French and the German partner.) THE EMDEN
5 Cf. p. 112. For THE How MOUNTAIN-, see Kalbus, Deutsche F&mkuiwt, I, 92;
Weinberg, Scrapbooka, 1927; for the comedy, DEB GEOSSE SPRUNG (THE BIG JTTMP,
1927), Kalbus, tWd., and Ilfastrierter Filmr-Kwrier. Fanck also wrote the script of
another mountain film, DEE KJLMPF TJMB MATXEEHOEXT (STRUGGLE FOE THE MATEEEHOEN,
1928).
Rotha, CelMoid, pp. 82-fl8; "The White Hell of Piz Pain," Close Up, Dec.
1929, p. 54*8.
7 For BISMARCK, see Kalbus, Devtsche FZmkunxt, I, 57.
8
Quoted from Krieger, "Wozu ein Weltkriegsfilm?" Ufctr-Magazin (Sondernummer:
Der Weltkrieg). See also IlJuttrierter FQmrKwrter.
9
Noldan, "Die Darstellung der Schlachten," Ufa-Magazin (Sondernummer: Der
Weltkrieg).
156 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
(1926) and U-9 WEDDIGEN (1927), two films of fiction extolling
w^ar feats o the German navy, were no less eager to seem impartial.
An American correspondent who attended the premiere of U-9 WEDDiGEtf
during a Berlin Stahlhelm convention praised it for avoiding
nationalistic coloring.
10
This reserve was not general. The Fridericus films of the period
and several Hndred films similarly exploiting top figures of Prussian
history indulged in an obtrusive patriotism.
11
However, their patriotism
had an outright cliche* character which, exactly like the neutrality
of WORLD WAB or EMDEN, suggested the existing paralysis
of nationalistic passions. As a matter of fact, the public of the Dawes
Plan era considered these patriotic cut-to-pattern films somewhat
antiquated reminiscences. Two of them KONIGIN LUISE ( QUEEN
LUISE, 1927) and WATERLOO (1929) were made by Karl Grune.
The direction Grune took after his memorable THE STREET is
revealing. He approached vital problems from different angles in a
cinematically interesting way. His ARABELLA (1925) was a melodramatic
survey of human life seen through the eyes of a horse ; his
EIFERSTTCHT (JEALOUSY, 1925) transferred the main motif of
WARNING SHADOWS into realistic surroundings
12
; his AM RANDE
DER WELT (AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, 1927) treated an "unconvincing
pacifist theme*' in the form of a saga set against an impressive
landscape.
18
Then, as if overwhelmed by disillusion, he renounced
any emotional directness, and fell back on the conventionalism of historical
costume films. WATERLOO, in which he adopted Abel Gance's
idea of projecting simultaneous events on three screens, concentrated
upon Bliicher's triumph over Napoleon; it was a Bliicher
played by Otto Gebiihr, alias Frederick the Great.14
As has been
stated in an earlier chapter, the appearance of some Frederick
would be needed to release the philistine in THE STREET from the
sadness of his plush parlor: Grune's development was logical. It
was also the outcome of inner exhaustion and as such once more
pointed to the paralysis behind these patriotic films.
10
Quoted from Weinberg, Scrapbook*, 1927. For THE EMDEK, see Bryher, "The
War from Three Angles," Close Up, July 1927, p. 20.
"Kallras, Deutsche Ftimkunyt, I, 56-57.
1J
*Por QtJiEar LUISE and AEABEIXA, see programs to these films; for JEALOUSY,
Vincent, Siitotr* de ?Art Qinmatographiguey p. 150, and IWwtrierter Ftim-Kurier.
13
Quoted from Rotha, Film Till Now, pp. 201-2. See also P. L. H., "Films in the
Provinces," Close Up, June 1929, p. 56$ "Wie ein Film entsteht," U
April 29_May 5, 1927. According to Rotha the script was by Carl Mayer.
14
Vincent, Sistoire dt VArt CinSmatoffraphique, p, 150.
THE PROSTITUTE AND THE ADOLESCENT 157
Much pertinent information can be derived from a series of
films which may be called "street" films, because they resumed the
theme Grune had introduced in THE STREET. Their concern with the
street was so intense that they rarely failed to include the word, or a
synonym, in their titles.
On the surface, these films were nothing but derivatives of
Grune's film :
they, too, featured a rebellious individual who would
break away from home and security, follow his passions on the
street and at the end again submit to the exigencies of conventional
life. However, what seemed a mere repetition of Grune's story in fact
differed from it essentially. The street in the street films was no
longer the dreadful jungle it appeared in THE STREET of 1923 ; it
was a region harboring virtues that had deserted bourgeois society.
To be sure, the outcast as the "keeper of the flame
5'
was not at all a
novelty on the stage, but on the German screen this figure became
an institution only during the stabilized period. In Pabsťs DIE
FREUDLOSE GASSE (THE JOYLESS STREET, 1925), which will be discussed
later,
15
the sole character manifesting true inner grandeur was
a girl with all the earmarks of a prostitute. Abandoned by her lover
for a wealthy match, she kills a socialite who might have thwarted
his marriage project, and then confesses her crime before the judge
to clear her lover from suspicion of being himself the murderer.
While this girl was only of episodic importance, a character of
similar magnanimity played the leading part in Bruno Rahn's impressive
and successful DIRNENTRAGODIE (TRAGEDY OF THE STREET,
1927) : she was an elderly, worn-out prostitute. Walking her beat,
she stumbles upon a drunken young man a bourgeois offspring
who, after a quarrel with his parents, has left home for the street.
She takes him to her room, and is foolish enough to believe him in
love with her. During her absence she goes out to invest her savings
in a confectionery shop, so as to become worthy of him her
souteneur introduces him to Clarissa, a pretty young streetwalker,
for whom he abandons the old prostitute. She is wounded deeply;
but what grieves this loving heart most is not so much her own misery
as the thought that life with Clarissa may spoil the boy's whole
future. In her despair, she incites her souteneur to kill the girl.
Detectives track down the murderer, and the prostitute herself commits
suicide. On the door of the shabby rooming-house a signboard
reads "Room to Let." Back home, the boy performs the well-known
15 Cf. p. 167 ff.
158 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
gesture: he sobs, his head sheltered in his mother's lap.
16
Asta Nielsen,
emerging from the spheres of Ibsen and Strindberg, portrayed
the prostitute incomparably: not a realistic one, but that imaginary
figure of an outcast who has discarded social conventions because
of her abundance of love, and now, through her mere existence,
defies the questionable laws of a hypocritical society
17
[Ulus. 29].
Joe May's ASPHALT (1929) one of the films Erich Pommer suggested
and supervised after his return from America surpassed
TRAGEDY OP THE STREET in explicitness. The boy who in ASPHALT
risks his professional honor in a love adventure with a thievish tart
is a traffic cop and moreover the son of a police sergeant Crown
Prince Frederick rebelling against, and finally submitting to, his
father. The act of submission itself acquires new meaning in this
film. When towards the end the traffic cop is indicted for having
murdered a man in the tarťs flat, the girl volunteers a confession
of her own complicity that exonerates him. She is marched off to
the prison. But the young crown prince of the police follows her
with his eyes, and his gaze implies a promise of loyalty and ensuing
marriage.
18
Here the street penetrates the bourgeois parlor a penetration
which also marks the end of DIE CARMEN VON ST.-PATTLI
(CARMEN OF ST. PAUL, 1928), another of this series.
19
In the street
films, two dimensions of life were interrelated which in Grune's
THE STREET had been incompatible with each other.
The imagery of the street films reveals that in the Germany of
the time the street exerted an irresistible attraction. Paul Rotha
remarks of Rahn's TRAGEDY or THE STREET: "Throughout, all
things led back to the street; its pavements with the hurrying,
soliciting feet; its dark corners and angles; its light under the
sentinel lamp-posts."
20>
The street in this film, Rotha adds, was
mainly characterized by the motif of "the feet that walk over its
stones" a motif traceable to that close shot which in the Grune
16
Herring, "La Trage"die de la Rue," Close Up, July 1928, pp. 31-40; Buchner,
Im Banne dea Films, pp. 12O-21; Bardeche and Brasfllach, History of Motion Picturea,
p. 254.
17 Asta Nielsen was also featured in HEDDA GABLEB. (1925) and LASTEE DEB
MEITSCHHEIT (LUSTS OF MAN-BUTO, 1927). For the latter film, see Blakeston, "Lusts of
Mankind," Close Up, Nov. 1928, pp. 88-4.1. Jahier speaks of "Papparition baudelairienne
ďAsta Nielsen" in THE JOYIESS STREET ("42 Ans de Cinema," Le R6le tntellectuel
du Cinjma, p. 68). See also Mungenast, Asta Nielsen.
18
Synopsis of film in Ittustrierter Film-Eurier. Cf. Grregor, Zeitalter dea Films,
pp. 209-10.
19
Synopsis of film in Illuttrierter FilntrKurier.
flo
Rotha, Film Till iVoio, p. 206.
THE PROSTITUTE AND THE ADOLESCENT 159
film showed the philistine's legs following a wavy line on the pavement.
Rahn's film opens with an incident photographed at the level
of a dog's eyes: the feet of a man follow those of a girl along a
sidewalk, then upstairs, and then into a room. It is as if the feet
were no less expressive than the faces. Clarissa's high heels are seen
moving uptown, and later the heavy feet of the souteneur pursue
her light ones like a threat. In ASPHALT, the pavement itself is a
central motif. The prologue to this film illustrates, after the manner
of a documentary, how asphalt is produced and how it voraciously
swallows the open land to pave the way for city traffic that thundering
chaos mastered, as in THE STREET, by the magic gestures
of the policeman. Shots featuring the union of asphalt and traffic
also form the epilogue of the action proper. The emphasis put on
the asphalt goes hand in hand with the insertion of street pictures
at every dramatic high point. They herald, for example, a significant
love scene between the traffic cop and the tart. Such street pictures
were essential components of all street films. In Grune's film, they
had helped objectify the horrors of anarchy; in the street films,
they denoted the hope of genuine love.
TRAGEDY OF THE STREET and ASPHALT radiated a warmth rarely
to be found during the stabilized period. This and their pictorial
sensitivity the petty-bourgeois home of the police family in ASPHALT,
for instance, is portrayed absorbingly
21
suggest that in
those street films the paralyzed inner attitudes rose to the surface. But
they were able to pierce the cover of neutrality only by manifesting
themselves in the form of dreams. TRAGEDY OP THE STREET and the
other street films are dreamlike complexes of images constituting a
sort of secret code. By glorifying what Potamkin calls
" 'die Strasse
9
of brothels," the street films figuratively express discontent with the
stabilized republican regime.
22
Life, they seem to say, is not worth
while within the boundaries of the "system" ; it comes into its own
only outside the rotten bourgeois world. That the center of life is
the street a quarter peopled not with proletarians, but with outcasts
indicates that the discontented are far from being socialistminded.
Love in the street stands for ideals averse to Locarno,
Weimar and Moscow.
During the postwar period, the Grune film emphasized the
Cf. Balifcs, Der Gebt des Films, p. 71.
aa
Potamkin, "Pabst and the Social Film," Mound $ Horn, Jan^March 1988,
p. 298.
160 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
philistine's return to his middle-class home a resumption of authoritarian
behavior. The street films emphasize desertion of the
home, but still in the interest of authoritarian behavior. The bourgeois
runaway whose rebellion was once nothing but a futile escapade
now is engaged in an escape that amounts to an antidemocratic,
antirevolutionary rebellion. (From 1933 on, such Nazi films as
HITLERJUNGE QuEX and UM DAS MENSCHENRECHT are to present
the communists and leftist intellectuals as libertines given to orgies
with loose girls. However, these girls have nothing in common with
the ideal prostitutes who under the Republic lured rebels predestined
to become Nazis.) In most street films, the rebellion against the
^system" is followed by a submission to it which, instead of putting
a definite end to the rebellion, marks it as an event of far-reaching
consequence. In fact, these films foreshadow the thorough change
of all values then prevalent by implying that the bonds between
the prostitute and her bourgeois lover will survive the latter's sub-
mission.
The street films were no isolated phenomenon. Like them, the
many youth films of the period films featuring children or adolescents
had the character of dreams arising from the paralyzed
layers of the collective mind. On the whole, Potamkin's statement
that <c
the German is interested in children, not in a child" proves
correct. DEB RAUBERBANDE (THE ROBBER BAND, 1928) dealt with
the play life of a boys' gang ; DER KAMPF DER TERTIA (1929) ,
with
a fine understanding of pre-adolescent emotions, pictured the Homeric
fight boys of a school community put up to prevent the seizure
and extermination of stray cats [ffius. 30] ?* It occasionally happened,
though, that the action centered around an individual youngster.
Ll DlE UXEHELICHEK (CHILDREN OF No IMPORTANCE, 1926),
for instance, two little children growing up in a true Zille milieu were
seen suffering under a ruthless father.24
Youth films devoted to the inner difficulties of the eighteen-yearold
predominated. Descending from the expressionist son-father
dramas, they paralleled the street films in that they stressed the
right to rebel. These films sided with juvenile insurgence against the
33
Quoted from Potamkin, "The Rise and Fall of the German Film," Cinema,
April 1980, p. 57. For the two films, see Potamkin, "Kino and Lichtspiel," Close Up,
Nov. 1929, p. 894j for DEB KAMPF BEE TBIOTA, Bryher, "A German School A-ilm,"
Close Up, Feb. 1980, pp. 129-82.
fl4
Kalbus, Veuteche Filmbuntt, I, 181; Weinberg, Scrapbookt, 1928.
THE PROSTITUTE AND THE ADOLESCENT 161
rule of insensate adults. Most of them were loose variations of
Wedekinďs The Awakening of Spring (Fruhlwig's Erwachen),
which itself was made into a film by Richard Oswald (1929). Robert
Lanďs PRIMANERLEEBE (1927) stood out among these studies in
adolescence. In it, a youthful college boy is so terrorized by the
severity of his guardian and his teachers that only one escape seems
open to him : suicide. When he calls on the girl he loves to bid her
farewell, he finds her on the point of falling prey to an unscrupulous
seducer. He shoots the man with the bullet designed to kill himself.
During the court proceedings, all his hidden motives and intentions
come to the fore, and it dawns upon the guardian and the teachers
that their rigorous discipline has been a grave mistake. They will
undoubtedly try to mitigate it.
25
Ufa's DEE KAMPP BES DONALD
WESTHOF (THE TRIAL OF DONALD WESTHOF, 1928) echoed this film
without matching it.
26
In DER GEIGER VON FLORENZ (THE VIOLINIST OF FLORENCE,
1926), another film of adolescence, Elisabeth Bergner plays a halfgrown
girl jealous of the love with which her father surrounds her
young stepmother. Close shots render her smallest gestures and
actions, so as to impress them upon the spectator as symptoms of
her emotions. It is an all but psychoanalytical affair, made still more
interesting by Bergner's boyish appearance. Strolling along Italian
roads in boy's clothing, she looks half lad, half girl.
27
The androgynous
character she created found a response in Germany which may
have been intensified by the existing inner paralysis. Psychological
frustration and sexual ambiguity reinforce each other. Bergner in
her subsequent films was to turn from the girlish boy to the similarly
complex child-woman & figure of limited range, brought to perfection
in such films of hers as FRATTLEIN ELSE (1929) and ARIANE
(1931).
28
The youth films begin to emerge immediately after the stabilization
of the mark, and from then on remain popular throughout the
as p or THE AWAXENINO OP SPUING, see lUwtriertw FUm-Kwiert for PBIMAXEBLIEBE,
Weinberg, 8crapbook*t 1928.
ae Cf. Weinberg, ibid. Another youth film was JTOTGES BLOT, 1928 (French title:
pHxaccEB AKOUB. PHEMXEB DOTTLBTTO) ; cf. "Les Presentations de PAlliance Cinematographique
Europeene, Cmrfa-Otn^, April 1, 192T, p. 15.
37
Program to the film; Rotha, Film Till Now, pp. 196-96; Film Society Programme,
March 8, 1931; "Comment and Review," Olofe Up, Feb. 1928, pp. 66-71;
Gregor, Zeitalter des Films, pp. 212-16.
** For FBAULEIN ELSE, see program brochure to the film. Rotha, JPtZm Titt Now,
p. 196, briefly appraises the Bergner films, including LXEBE (French title, ĽHisroniE
DBS TBMZE, 1927) and DONA JTTANA (1928). For comment on ABIANE, see p. 255 f.
162 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
republican era. It therefore seems justifiable to trace them to the
paralysis of the retrogressive tendencies during that period. Since
these tendencies are prevented from asserting themselves within the
"system," they try to find an outlet by forcing imagination back
to the time of premanhood when immaturity is still legitimate.
The Germans under the Republic are homesick for youth which
accounts for the genuine tenderness with which their youth films
dwell upon the inherent conflicts of adolescence. (Even though
the retrogressive tendencies are released under Hitler, the Nazi films
continue to feature juvenile life ; however, they do so not to symbolize
the desire for retrogression, but to advertise youth as a pillar of the
Nazi world.)
In their concern with the aims of rebellion, the youth films go
beyond the street films. They do not confine themselves to sympathizing
with the rebellious adolescents; they overtly turn against the
adult tyrants and their authoritative discipline. Authority declaring
itself omnipotent is here attacked with a directness never before
attempted. This repudiation of absolute authority has two distinct
meanings. First, notwithstanding the democratic constitution of the
existing regime, the autocratic adults are made to appear its representatives.
This is, for instance, the way they affect the youth in
PBIMANBRLEEBE. By stigmatizing them and simultaneously holding
out the prospect of their inner change, the youth films assume the
function of the street films :
they express discontent with the regime
and forecast its decomposition. Second, the repudiation of absolute
authority means just that and nothing more. But the youth films
have the character of dreams, and in dreams apposition to an attitude
is often tantamount to its acceptance. Not unlike the old
expressionist tyrant films, which themselves were dreamlike projections
of an agitated soul, the youth films affirm fixation to authoritarian
behavior precisely by stressing rebellion against it. Young
rebels frequently develop into old tyrants who, the more fanatical
they were as rebels, the more relentless they are as tyrants. Significantly,
none of the films offers a definition of freedom that would
annul the paradoxical interrelationship between tyrant and rebel.
One film was more explicit "than all others: METROPOUS. In it,
the paralyzed collective mind seemed to be talking with unusual
clarity in its sleep. This is more than a metaphor: owing to a fortunate
combination of receptivity and confusion, Lang's scriptwriter,
Thea von Harbou, was not only sensitive to all undercurrents of the
time, but indiscriminately passed on whatever happened to haunt her
THE PROSTITUTE AND THE ADOLESCENT 163
imagination.
29
METROPOLIS was rich in subterranean content that,
like contraband, had crossed the borders of consciousness without
being questioned.
Freder, son of the mammoth industrialist who controls the whole
of Metropolis, is true to type: he rebels against his father and joins
the workers in the lower city. There he immediately becomes a
devotee of Maria, the great comforter of the oppressed. A saint
rather than a socialist agitator, this young girl delivers a speech
to the workers in which she declares that they can be redeemed only
if the heart mediates between hand and brain. And she exhorts her
listeners to be patient : soon the mediator will come. The industrialist,
having secretly attended this meeting, deems the interference of the
heart so dangerous that he entrusts an inventor with the creation
of a robot looking exactly like Maria. This robot-Maria is to incite
riots and furnish the industrialist with a pretext to crush the
workers' rebellious spirit. He is not the first German screen tyrant
to use such methods; Homunculus had introduced them much
earlier.
80
Stirred by the robot, the workers destroy their torturers,
the machines, and release flood waters which then threaten to drown
their own children. If it were not for Freder and the genuine Maria,
who intervene at the last moment, all would be doomed. Of course,
this elemental outburst has by far surpassed the petty little uprising
for which the industrialist arranged. In the final scene, he is
shown standing between Freder and Maria, and the workers approach,
led by their foreman. Upon Freder's suggestion, his father
shakes hands with the foreman, and Maria happily consecrates this
symbolic alliance between labor and capital [Dlus. 27].
On the surface, it seems that Freder has converted his father;
in reality, the industrialist has outwitted his son. The concession
he makes amounts to a policy of appeasement that not only prevents
the workers from winning their cause, but enables hiim to tighten
his grip on them. His robot stratagem was a blunder inasmuch as
it rested upon insufficient knowledge of the mentality of the masses.
By yielding to Freder, the industrialist achieves intimate contact
with the workers, and thus is in a position to influence their mentality.
He allows the heart to speak a heart accessible to his in-
sinuations.
In fact, Maria's demand that the heart mediate between hand
29 For the mixture of story ingredients in METROPOLIS, see article by Willy Haas
on this film (Kinematograph, Jan. 11, 1927), quoted by Zaddach, Der literarische Film,
p. 62.
a
Cf.p.82.
164 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
and brain could well have been formulated by Goebbels. He, too,
appealed to the heart in the interest of totalitarian propaganda.
At the Nuremberg Party Convention of 1934, he praised the "art"
of propaganda as follows :
"May the shining flame of our enthusiasm
never be extinguished. This flame alone gives light and warmth to
the creative art of modern political propaganda. Rising from the
depths of the people, this art must always descend back to it and find
its power there. Power based on guns may be a good thing; it is,
however, better and more gratifying to win the heart of a people
and to keep it."
31
The pictorial structure of the final scene confirms
the analogy between the industrialist and Goebbels. If in this scene
the heart really triumphed over tyrannical power, its triumph would
dispose of the all-devouring decorative scheme that in the rest of
METROPOLIS marks the industrialisťs claim to omnipotence. Artist
that he was, Lang could not possibly overlook the antagonism between
the breakthrough of intrinsic human emotions and his ornamental
patterns. Nevertheless, he maintains these patterns up to the
very end: the workers advance in the form of a wedge-shaped,
strictly symmetrical procession which points towards the industrialist
standing on the portal steps of the cathedral. The whole composition
denotes that the industrialist acknowledges the heart for the purpose
of manipulating it; that he does not give up his power, but will
expand it over a realm not yet annexed the realm of the collective
soul. Freder's rebellion results in the establishment of totalitarian
authority, and he considers this result a victory.
Freder's pertinent reaction corroborates what has been said
about the way in which the street films as well as the youth films
anticipate the change of the "system." Now it can no longer be
doubted that the "new order" both series foreshadow is expected
to feed upon that love with which Asta Nielsen's prostitute overflows,
and to substitute totalitarian discipline for the obsolete mechanical
one. In the case of METEOPOLIS, Goebbels' own words bear
out the conclusions drawn from this film. Lang relates that immediately
after Hitler's rise to power Goebbels sent for him: ". . . he
told me that, many years before, he and the Fiihrer had seen my
picture Metropolis in a small town, and Hitler had said at that time
that he wanted me to make the Nazi pictures."
82
31 Cf. p. 299 f.
33 "Fritz Lang," New York World Telegram, June H, 1941.
14 THE NEW REALISM
DURING the stabilized era, along with those two groups of films which
testify to the state of paralysis and shed light on the paralyzed
psychological content, appears a third group still more characteristic.
The films of this group reveal the workings of the paralyzed
collective soul. They elucidate the ways in which the collective soul
reacted to the existing situation.
The most important films of this group were animated by the
spirit of "New Objectivity" (Neue SacMichkeit) which during the
stabilized period manifested itself in the sphere of real life as well
as in the sphere of art. This spirit also materialized in other countries,
but it was in Germany that "the neue SacMichkeit first became
self-conscious, and ... is strongest relatively and intrinsically."
*
In 1924*, Gustav Hartlaub, director of the Mannheim Museum,
coined the term "Neue SacMichkeit" to define the new realism in
painting. "It was related," he says of this realism, "to the general
contemporary feeling in Germany of resignation and cynicism after
a period of exuberant hopes (which had found an outlet in expressionism)
.
Cynicism and resignation are the negative side of the Neue
SacMichkeit; the positive side expresses itself in the enthusiasm for
the immediate reality as a result of the desire to take things entirely
objectively on a material basis without immediately investing them
with ideal implications."
2
Hartlaub and, somewhat later, Fritz
Schmalenbach both emphasize disillusionment as an emotional source
of the new current.
8
In other words, New Objectivity marks a state of paralysis.
Cynicism, resignation, disillusionment: these tendencies point to a
mentality disinclined to commit itself in any direction. The main
1
Barr, "Otto Dix," The Art, Jan. 1981, p. 287.
a Letter from Hartlaub, quoted by Barr, ibid., p. 286, footnote*
a
Schmalenbach, "The Term New Sachlichkeit," Art Bulletin, Sept. 1940, pp. 161,
168-64; Hartlaub, "Zur Einfuhrung," Die neue SacMichkeit . . , Sachsischer Kunstverein
Dresden, 18 Oct.-22 Nov. 1925, pp. 8-4.
165
166 THJK STABILIZED PERIOD
feature of the new realism is its reluctance to ask questions, to take
sides. Reality is portrayed not so as to make facts yield their implications,
but to drown all implications in an ocean of facts, as in
the Ufa Kulturfilme. "We have lost the power of faith," August
Ruegg confesses in 1926, "and, since the wheels of the world-mechanism
seem to continue to move on their own impetus, we accustom
ourselves to living on without trust or a feeling of responsibility.
. . . One slides along either elegantly or wearily and lets the others
slide along in a similar manner." 4
This is the language of a paralyzed
mind.
A position of complete disillusionment is extremely difficult to
maintain. Hartlaub himself differentiates between two wings of New
Objectivity: a romanticizing right wing and a left wing "bearing a
socialist flavor." 5
This socialist flavor was found in many paintings,
architectural structures, and so forth, which showed themselves
infatuated with technological concepts and forms ; their whole appearance
revealed them to be inspired by a belief in the social mission
of modern technology. They breathed, or seemed to breathe, socialist
optimism. Meyer Schapiro is doubtless right in identifying this
optimism as "the reformist illusion, which was especially widespread
in the brief period of post-war prosperity . .
, that the technological
advance, in raising the living standards of the people, in lowering
the costs of housing and other necessities, would resolve the conflict
of classes, or at any rate form in the technicians habits of
efficient, economic planning, conducive to a peaceful transition to
socialism." 6
The illusion consisted in attributing to technological
advance the power of bringing about changes that can be attained
only by organized political effort. Technical progress may serve any
master. This accounts for the ambiguity inherent in the socialistflavored
products of New Objectivity. The architecture of this style
was echoed throughout fascist Italy; in Germany itself it often
seemed strangely hollow, thus disavowing its socialist implications.
Since the German screen adopted this equivocal realism, one is
safe in assuming that from a psychological point of view the socialist
attitudes of the time had by no means the character of primary
impulses. They were much weaker than the authoritarian dispositions
had ever been; in fact, they could develop only because these
4
Ruegg, "Vom grossen Unbehagen unserer Zeit," quoted by Samuel and Thomas,
Expressionism in German Life, p. 174.
5
Hartlaub, "Zur Einftihrung," ibid., and letter from Hartlaub, quoted by Barr,
"Otto Dix," The Arts, Jan. 1981, p. 236, footnote.
6
Schapiro, "Nature of Abstract Art," Marxist Quarterly, Jan-March 1987, p. 97.
THE NEW REALISM 167
authoritarian dispositions were actually paralyzed. Resting upon
frozen ground, they were surface excitements and as such incapable
of upsetting the essential indifference of the Neue jSachlichkeit.
(The "reformist illusion
5'
reflected the state of inner paralysis inasmuch
as it completely overlooked the part passions and decisions
play in any social evolution.) This psychological situation was of
course open to changes. The authoritarian dispositions might awaken
from their paralysis and then do away with all liberal and socialist
tendencies; or the latter might gain momentum and increasingly
absorb those paralyzed dispositions.
The Austrian G. W. Pabst was prominent among the directors
cultivating the new realism. He came to the cinema from the theater,
which he had left because of his doubts as to its artistic future. He
was a late arrival in the studios ; it was only at the end of the postwar
period that he made his first film, DEB SCHATZ (THE TREASURE,
1924), a legend of love and greed clumsily unfolding within medieval
decors. This dull and impersonal product demonstrated that
Pabst felt himself a stranger in a period bent on externalizing inner
conflicts and longings without any regard for the given facts. Pabst
was a realist. He once said in a conversation: "What need is there
for romantic treatment? Real life is too romantic, too ghastly."
T
Real life was his true concern. He began to penetrate it in DIE
FREITOLOSE GASSE (THE JOYLESS STREET, 1925), an adaptation
of a novel by Hugo Bettauer which had been serialized in Vienna's
leading newspaper, Neue Freie Presse. The film, which soon won
fame in Germany and abroad, pictured Vienna during the inflation,
with special emphasis on the pauperization of the middle class.
Pabsťs unhesitating realism in rendering this decline shocked his
contemporaries. England prohibited public showings of the film.
The versions released in Italy, France, Austria, and elsewhere were
considerably mutilated.8
THE JOYLESS STREET contrasts tough profiteers and destitute
middle-class people ; expensive restaurants sparkling with light and
dim-lit homes visited by hunger ; noisy effervescence and silent withdrawal
into sadness. Surrounded by sadness, the elderly councillor
Rumfort sees his savings vanish and finally faces starvation. He
would be lost if it were not for his daughter Garbo in her first
important role who succeeds in getting a dubious job as a night-
7
Quoted from Bryher, "G. W. Pabst. A Survey," Close Up, Dec. 192T, p. 60.
s Cf. Rotha, Film Tin Now, p. 37.
168 THE STABILIZED
club dancer. The ruin of this bourgeois family is portrayed with a
social consciousness that transforms it into a typical case. One series
of episodes shows the profiteers and their parasites trading stocks,
making love to spectacular women and snatching all the joys that
money can buy. Another series details the lot of those on the losing
side. In their fight for survival a few of them are tragically hampered
by inherited decency. Rumfort suffers for the stubbornness
with which he shrinks from the slightest concession. Asta Nielsen as
the kept woman demonstrates that uncompromising love is likely to
perish in a society in which marketable goods supplant the essen-
tials.
9
However, she is an outsider, emotionally and socially. Most
middle-class characters proper try to compromise, or simply yield
to the powers of corruption. Pabsťs film of the inflation elaborates
upon the interrelationship between the enforced economic decay of
the middle class and the selling-out of its moral values. What he
exhibits for the first time from the angle of a realistic observer
is the feverish finale of that postwar world which, while it still existed,
expressed its inmost preoccupations through screen fantasies
wavering between the images of tyranny and chaos.
The ghastliness of this world is displayed in scenes that seem
to record unstaged events. Everyday life of the time unveils itself
in the episode of the "joyless street": a crowd on the verge of despair
queues up before the butcher's shop, and, accompanied by his grim
white dog, Werner Krauss as the brutal butcher walks off to fetch
a policeman [Ulus. 31]. In this effective scene nothing is stylized;
rather, it springs from the desire to watch the course events take
of their own accord. Pabst *1et his characters unfold their plight
without the inquisitional rack." 10
A convincing proof of his innate
realism is the short scene in which Garbo hangs the new fur coat
given her in some questionable shop close to her threadbare old coat.
For a moment the two coats are seen hanging side by side. In any of
Carl Mayer's postwar films, this shot would have had to symbolize
the change of Garbo's condition; in the Pabst film, it just shows the
two coats in a chance combination which may, or may not, convey a
symbolic meaning [Ulns. 32] . Instead of arranging significant pictorial
compositions, Pabst arranges real-life material with veracity
as his sole object. His is the spirit of a photographer. What Iris
6 Of. p. 157. For the film in general, see also Rotha, Film Till Now, esp. p. 185;
Film Society Programme, Jan. 16, 1927.
*Potamk!n, "Pabst and the Social Film," Hound $ Horn, Jan^March 1988,
p. 294.
THE NEW REALISM 169
Barry says about his LOVE OP JEANNE NET also applies to THE
JoTiiESs STREET : "Pabsťs work here is in no sense picturesque, it is
photographic. His settings and his individual scenes are quite as
carefully composed as those of the more obviously artistic German
films, but the craftsmanship is less apparent, the spectator is led
to feel 'how true' rather than 'how beautiful.'
" u
Compared to the
open universe into which THE JOYLESS STREET embarks, the world
of VARIETY is rather an indoor affair.
It was a strange coincidence that, shortly before the Pabst film,
an American film about the German inflation appeared: D. W.
Griffith's ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL? Griffith, the great pioneer of the
cinema, had been eager for genuine local color; he had shot the
exteriors in Germany, and entrusted several native actors with important
roles. His plot differed from Pabsťs in that it featured,
instead of a German middle-class family, a group of Polish refugees,
the Poles being more popular with the American public than the
Germans. Nevertheless, the two films had traits in common. Particularly
striking was the similarity in their treatment of everyday
life under the inflation: like THE JOYLESS STREET,, the American
film focused upon a queue of despondent people besieging a butcher's
shop. Pabst may well have been influenced by the emphasis Griffith
put on this sequence, and also by the realism with which he handled
the backgrounds and all the fleeting moments of life. Griffith's realism
was as naive as the message it served to impart. The pacifist
credo inherent in his film manifested itself plainly through the
reasoning of one of the leading characters a German worker
grieved over his wife's suffering under the famine. This worker,
having knocked down a man to rob hi'rn of his potatoes, emphatically
harangues the audience: "Yes, beasts we are; beasts they have made
us. Years of war beasts they have made us." In addition, Griffith
preached "the triumph of love over hardship," answering the
question "Isn't life wonderful?" in the affirmative. The young Polish
couple whom he makes the standard-bearers of his invincible optimism
pass through the horrors of the German postwar world
without being seriously afflicted, and at the end find happiness in
a tiny wooden cottage.
12
While Griffith in his ill-founded reformist zeal does not confine
11
Barry, Program Notes, Series III, program 8.
12 Cf. Jacobs, American Film, p. 898; "Isn't Life Wonderful?" Exceptional Photoplays,
Dec^Jan. 1925, p. 5.
170 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
himself to presenting life as it is, Pabst seems to have no other ambition.
With a profound sense of fact he exhibits the predicament
of the middle class and the moral confusion of the time. But although
his pictorial statements never go so far as to suggest a line of conduct,
a solution after the manner of Griffith, they undeniably point
to the relation between individual suffering and social injustice. At
any rate, this was the impression they made upon many intellectuals ;
to them, Pabsťs realism appeared a moral protest, if not a socialist
manifestation.
On the other hand, THE JOYLESS STREET inclines toward melo-
drama.18
Theoretically, Pabst could have yielded to this tendency
for the purpose of making his realism acceptable. But his marked
interest in melodramatic motifs indicates that their insertion is not
due merely to such practical considerations. The longish episode
featuring Asta Nielsen disavows his realistic designs and radiates
his infatuation with this improbable figure. As Stroheim's famous
GREED (1924) proves, melodrama need not drain realism of its
inner weight. But in THE JOYLESS STREET it tends to do precisely
this. At the very moment when, according to Pabsťs own premises,
Rumfort and his daughter are bound to become full-fledged victims
of the inflation, a beautiful lieutenant of the American Red Cross
emerges as deus ex machina, and instantly makes these two people
happy. Pabst is sufficiently courageous to detail the ghastliness of
social misery, but he does not mind cutting short the conclusions
that might be drawn from his report. His weakness for melodrama
counterbalances those implications of his realism which a generation
not yet accustomed to the free display of camera reality too readily
took for granted.
After an unimportant film, HAN SPIELT NICHT MIT DER LIEBE
(DON'T PLAY WITH LOVE, 1926), Pabst staged GEHEIMNISSE EINER
SEELE (SECRETS OP A SOUL, 1926) a neat account of a psychoanalytical
case drawn up with the assistance of two collaborators of
Freud, Dr. Hanns Sachs and the late Dr. Karl Abraham. A professor
of chemistry (Werner Krauss) learns that his wife's cousin,
a handsome fellow, has announced his return from India. The three
were playmates in their childhood. Under the impact of this news
and certain other occurrences, the professor is anguished by a dream
"Potainkin, "Pabst and the Social Film," Howid $ Horn, Jan^-March 1988,
p. 294; Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 1ST.
THE NEW EEALISM 171
in which reminiscences involving the cousin mingle with confused
scenes denoting his longing for a child. The dream culminates in
his attempt to stab his wife with a dagger. Next day, he is possessed
by an inexplicable fear of touching knives, and this phobia makes
him act in such a strange manner that his wife and the cousin are
deeply disquieted. His own despair reaches its climax when, alone
with his wife, he can hardly resist the compulsion to commit the
murder anticipated in his dream. He flees from his home to his
mother's place, and then consults a psychoanalyst who asks him to
stay with his mother for the duration of the treatment.
Now the film summarizes a series of sessions dominated by the
professor's narrative :
Fragments of his dream alternate with various
recollections, and from time to time the psychoanalyst is seen listening
to the narrator or contributing explanations. Under his guidance,
the elements of the jigsaw puzzle gradually arrange themselves
into a comprehensible whole. In his childhood days the professor
was jealous of his future wife's outspoken interest in her
cousin; his jealousy engendered strong feelings of inferiority which
after his marriage made him fall prey to a sort of psychological
impotence; and the impotence on its part produced a guilty conscience
that some day or other was bound to manifest itself in an
irresponsible action. The treatment ends with the salutary shock he
experiences in recognizing the subconscious forces that have held his
mind in their grip. Freed from his inhibitions, a happy man, he
returns home.14
The similarities between this film and Robison's WARNING
SHADOWS, of 1922, are conspicuous.
18
Both are concerned with a
mentally unbalanced character cured by means of psychoanalytical,
or quasi-psychoanalytical, methods; both emphasize the fact that,
prior to his recovery, this character acts in an immature way. Like
the exuberant count in WARNING SHADOWS, Pabsťs sober professor
performs the gesture through which most males of the German screen
express their immaturity : no sooner does he awaken from his nightmarish
dream than he puts his head into his wife's protective lap.
Another scene illustrates his retrogressive conduct even more strikingly.
Having cut his meat into small pieces, his mother watches him
ladle it with the spoon she has substituted for the dreadful knife
14 Of. Botha, ibid., p. 186; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, I, 95-96; etc.
15 See pp. 118 f. Films in a similar vein were Grime's JEALOUSY (cf. p. 156) and
the Ufa film LCEBEBTETCB, both of 1925.
172 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
watches Jinn as tenderly as if he were still her helpless little child.
Yet what makes SECRETS OF A SOUL essentially different from
WARNING SHADOWS is its unconcern for the significance of this retrogression.
While Robison's expressive screen fantasy quivers with an
excitement indicating the vital importance of the issues involved,
Pabsťs film maintains the coolness of an expert report on some
psychoanalytical case. SECRETS OF A SOUL has rightly been called a
"clever blend of a film of fiction and a documentary film.
5 ' 16
In his
zeal for documentary objectivity, Pabst adheres anxiously to matterof-fact
statements : no shot assumes a symbolic function, no passage
implies that the professor's frustration may well mirror that of a
multitude of Germans.
Two circumstances confirm the suspicion that this film which
demonstrates how an individual can be relieved of his complexes is
itself the product of a state of paralysis. First, at the film's very
end the scene shifts to a mountain landscape, with the professor
holding a brand-new baby in his arms. It is an epilogue which drags
the whole plot into the sphere of melodrama, thus definitely nullifying
its broader implications. Second, technical skill grows rampant.
Pabst seems to have been interested not so much in his theme proper
as in the opportunity it offers for testing certain cinematic devices
in particular those fit to externalize psychological processes [Illus.
33] . As a piece of artistry his film is remarkable. When, for instance,
the professor in the course of his treatment remembers bits of his
previous dream, these are no longer shown within their original surroundings,
but are set against a white background so as to characterize
them as stray recollections.
17
No doubt, Pabst is a consummate
psychologist ; however, his psychological finesse is grafted upon
indifference to the primary events of inner life. Potamkin in his
comment on SECRETS OF A SOUL is justified in saying of its director:
"Psychologism became his preoccupation."
18
Pabsťs subsequent film was DIE LIEBE DER JEANNE NET (THE
LOVE OF JEANNE NET, 1927) , an Ufa production in which he turned
from the secrets of the individual soul to those of a world in turmoil.
He now resumed on a larger scale what he had begun in THE JOYLESS
ie
Quoted from Kalbus, Deutsche Fitmkwwt, I, 96.
Cf. Rotha, Film, Till Now, p. 186.
"Potamkin, Tabst and the Social Film," Hound $ Horn, Jan^March 1938,
p. 295.
THE NEW REALISM 173
STREET. This time, the plot, instead of involving a single European
capital, encompassed virtually the whole of European postwar society,
including Soviet Russia. That Ufa should acknowledge the existence
of Bolsheviks and even treat them as human beings was not a miracle.
Ufa simply thought it good business to capitalize on the Russian
fashion inaugurated by Eisenstein's POTEMKIK and Pudovkin's
MOTHER films that had been the rage all over Germany. Naturally,
many Germans praised them not so much for their revolutionary content
as for their artistic novelty and national vigor.
19
THE LOVE OF JEANNE NET was based upon Ilya Ehrenburg's
novel of the same title. At that time, Ehrenburg had not yet gained
official prestige. A unique combination of Soviet journalist and European
bohemian, he wrote books that fused brilliant, if superficial,
satire with sentimental romance. His headquarters were in
Paris, and he seemed emotionally attached to that Western civilization
which he nevertheless accused of being utterly morbid. Ufa
probably took to his novel because of its colorful plot and its tinge
of melodrama. It is concerned with the love between Jeanne Ney,
a French bourgeois girl, and the young Russian communist Andreas
a love that asserts itself in the Crimea during the civil war, and
then develops into a great passion in Paris, the center of declining
democracy. But wherever the two lovers meet, an unscrupulous
adventurer, Khalibiev, intervenes and like a demon thwarts their
fragile hopes. Khalibiev is a true incarnation of those evil forces
which have their heyday in a period of transition, when all values
are confused. Such a period is favorable both to horrible crimes
and to heroic sacrifices. This may have encouraged Ehrenburg to
indulge in black-and-white contrasts. In the Crimea, Andreas kills
Jeanne's father for political reasons, but she immediately forgives
him. In Paris, Jeanne finds employment in the detective agency of
her uncle, a stingy bourgeois, whose blind daughter has all the traits
of an angel devised by Victor Hugo or a naive author in some
pulp magazine. The relentless Khalibiev proposes to her, and
simultaneously tries to lay hands on Jeanne a Jeanne glowing with
joy over her rendezvous with Andreas. Ehrenburg has contrived to
make the communist party send Andreas on a mission to Paris. Now
19 The Berlin premiere of POTEMKTN- was on April 29, 1926. The film was selected
as the best film of 1926 in Germany; see Welnberg, Scrapbooks, 1925-27. Grime
praised POTBMKIX for being a truly national film; cf. Grune, ""Was Karl Grune . . ,
w
Flint-Photo*, p. 15.
17* THE STABILIZED PERIOD
the ultimate catastrophe sets in, with Khalibiev as its perpetrator.
He breaks into the detective agency to steal a precious diamond;
and when confronted by Jeanne's uncle, he murders him, and succeeds
in turning all suspicions against her lover. Andreas is done for, and
Jeanne is lost.
Of course, Ufa radically removed the moral and political poison
this story contained.
20
In the film, Jeanne is spared the disgrace
of loving the murderer of her father; it is Andreas' companion who
kills him. In her attempt to rescue Andreas the Jeanne of the novel
becomes Khalibiev's mistress ; the screen Jeanne manages at the very
last moment to shun his odious embraces. The scrupulous Ufa version
does not allow her to sleep with Andreas in the cheap hotel room
they share for a night, but forces the lovers to spend the night on
separate chairs. This shameless bowdlerizing goes hand in hand
with irresponsible optimism. Ehrenburg's terrible finale is superseded
by a happy ending which assumes much the same structural
function as the endings of the previous Pabst films. To make Andreas,
the communist, acceptable, Ufa arbitrarily portrays him as
a potential convert; upon Jeanne's suggestion he follows her into a
Paris church where he kneels beside her before the altar. On the
other hand, the film unhesitatingly goes beyond the novel in detailing
communist agitation in France. The clandestine Paris press which
prints subversive leaflets is a pure Ufa invention. Ufa may have
taken pleasure in elaborating upon the embarrassments of a democ-
racy.
Pabst was told to stage his picture "in the American style."
21
He tried to do so in the scenes that show Jeanne's uncle and his
detectives recovering a diamond lost by an American millionaire
the very diamond which is to arouse Khalibiev's murderous instincts.
However, these scenes with their insistence upon comic "gags" are
nothing more than clever imitations and as such inferior to the rest
of the film. In a remark to an interviewer, Pabst himself indicated
the impossibility of Americanizing German pictures, "for the whole
of our mentality is different. . . ."
22
While he felt uneasy about
concessions to Hollywood, he readily yielded to the spirit of the Russian
films. His scenes of the civil war are strongly influenced by
Eisenstein and Pudovkin; he even repeats that typically Russian
20 See Ehrenburg, ^Protest gegen. die Ufa," Frankfurter Zeitung, Feb. 29, 1928,
Cf. p. 185. Botha, Film Till Now, p. 186.
afl
MacPherson, "Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney," Oloe Up, Dec. 1927, p. 185 Pabst,
"Servitude et Grandeur ďHollywood," L0 R6le intellectuel du Cinema, pp. 251-55.
THE NEW REALISM 175
shot of a character taken from below eye-level so as to symbolize his
arrogance or his lust for power.
Yet all this does not invalidate the originality of Pabsťs achievement.
His LOVE OF JEANNE NET exceeds his JOYUESS STREET not
only in scope of vision, but in the determination with which it records
reality. In rendering it, Pabst proves as inventive as insatiable. The
sequence of the Crimean civil war includes an orgy of anti-Bolshevist
soldiery. "Eor this scene," Kenneth MacPherson reports in Close Up9
"one hundred and twenty Russian officers . . . came in their own
uniforms, working for twelve marks a day. Pabst supplied vodka
and women, waited, and then calmly photographed"
M [fflus. 34],
Similarly, Jeanne and Andreas are seen traversing a real Paris
square two passers-by lost in a chance crowd. Whenever Pabst
cannot resort to quasi-documentary shots but he relies on them as
much as possible he stages his scenes in such a manner that they
nevertheless give the impression of being elicited from life itself.
As in THE JOTLESS STREET, bits of reality seem to be picked up at
random even in cases in which they serve to symbolize inner events.
It appears a mere coincidence that, when in the Crimea Jeanne takes
leave of Andreas, rain pours down and a throng of poor people separates
the two lovers.
Pabst urged his cameraman, Fritz Arno Wagner, to stick to
natural light values and make the camera rove about. "At Pabsťs
will," Paul Rotha comments on THE LOVE OF JEANNE NET,"
Wagner's camera nosed into the corners and ran with the players.
. . .
Every curve, every angle, every approach of the lens was controlled
by the material that it photographed for the expression of
mood." 24
Rotha's remarks imply that in this film the traditional
camera mobility of the German postwar screen changes its function.
Carl Mayer unchained the camera to picture an imaginary universe
swept by instincts, and even though E. A. Dupont in his VARIETY
adopted the ubiquitous camera with a realistic design, he set up a
world that was a stylized image of reality rather than its objective
reflection. Unlike his predecessors, Pabst mobilizes the camera to
photograph the casual configurations of real life. THE LOVE OF
JEANNE NET opens with a scene characterizing the scoundrel Khalibiev
: from the tips of his shoes the camera glides along his legs to
scattered newspapers, records cigarette stubs on the table, follows
23
MacPherson, "Die Llebe der Jeanne Ney," Cloa* Up, Dec. 1927, p. 21.
" Rotha, F&m Titt Now, p. 188.
176 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
his hand as it selects one stub, scrutinizes his face, and finally encompasses
part of the dirty hotel room with Khalibiev lying on the
sofa [Bins. 86].
A personal editing style supplements the camera movement.
Pabst arranges the manifold shots in such a way that their very
order reinforces the realistic illusion. Characteristically, even the
smallest scene consists of a number of shots. Iris Barry remarks of
that scene in which Khalibiev sells the list of Bolshevist agents to
Jeanne's father: "It lasts about three minutes. . . .
Though one is
scarcely aware of a single shot, there are forty in this short scene
needless to say, the director cut and edited the film himself."
2C
In
combining these atomlike picture frames, Pabst goes the limit. Was
he influenced by the emphasis Eisenstein and Pudovkin put on "montage"?
The cuts in such screen epics as POTEMKIN and MOTHER
have throughout the character of shocks calculated to transform the
narrative into a dialectic process which ends with the triumph of the
proletariat. But nothing of that kind holds true of THE LOVE^
oir
JEANNE NET; this film is far from spreading the Marxist doctrine,
and moreover conceals rather than stresses its cuts. Nor was Pabsťs
editing technique the organic outcome of German screen traditions.
Much as they cultivated the moving camera, Carl Mayer and Dupont
were not yet in a position to realize all the effects that can be produced
through cutting devices. For good reasons :
they did not have
to depend on such devices to render the self-sufficient world of their
imagination. Pabst departs from them technically, because he ventures
into the indefinite world of facts. His insistence upon cutting
results from his keen concern with given reality. He utilizes tiny
pictorial particles to capture the slightest impressions, and he fuses
these particles into a finespun texture to mirror reality as a con-
tinuity.
This reality is postwar Europe in full disintegration. Its ghastliness
unfolds in scenes which are unique not so much for their unhesitating
frankness as for their insight into the symptoms of social
morbidity. Such a symptom is, for instance, the mixture of cruelty
and obscenity in Khalibiev. Surveying various strata of the population,
the film sometimes assumes the character of a report on the
diseases of European society. It is an infallible sign of Pabsťs connoisseurship
that this report time and again refers to the testimony
of inanimate objects. He assigns to them about the same role as did
ae
Barry, Program Note*, Series III, program 8.
THE NEW REALISM 177
Carl Mayer in his instinct films, but while Mayer emphasized them
as the landmarks of that mute region inhabited by his instinctpossessed
characters, Pabst features objects because they help make
up the kind of reality he wants to explore. In a decaying or transitional
world, whose elements fall asunder, the objects rush out of
their hiding-places and take on a life of their own. Behind Jeanne,
who is detained by the victorious Bolsheviks, a broken mirror emerges
and like a witness tells of glamour and destruction [Blus. 35]. The
iron washbasin in the room that shelters Jeanne and Andreas for
a few nocturnal hours testifies to the tristesse emanating from this
background for futile sex adventures. Through their mere existence
the objects corroborate what can be inferred from the events: that
the world presented is a jungle peopled with beasts of prey. The
film is a tacit accusation. It implies that all human values are
doomed unless we change society radically.
But, as in THE JOYLESS STREET, Pabst permanently discredits
his daring attitude. The imaginative way he satisfies Ufa's craving
for melodrama confirms the strength of his own tendencies in this
direction. He continues the tradition of the noble-minded prostitutes
by making a Paris night-club girl bend her knees before the nobleminded
blind angel; he dramatizes the first Paris meeting between
Andreas and Jeanne by means of an extended traveling shot which
transforms the lovers into a sort of Tristan and Isolde, and in other
scenes pictures them as a pair of innocent children whom a malicious
fairy wants to destroy. These evasive interludes neutralize the accusation
inherent in his realism. Pabst, the neutral observer, obstructs
Pabst, the moralist. It is noteworthy that his LOVE OF JEANNE NET
abounds in precise statements on ephemeral facts. If it holds true
that only the minďs unconcern for definite meanings enables the
innumerable phenomena of which reality consists to come to the fore,
Pabst is an incomparable observer of these phenomena because he
tends to shun essential questions. The veracity of his pictures
veracity should not be mistaken for truth rests upon his neutrality.
This unwillingness to follow up vital issues also manifests itself
through another quality of Pabsťs cutting procedures: the accelerated
succession of his picture elements. Whereas the Ukrainian film
directpr Dovzhenko occasionally converts an important shot into a
still so as to impress its meaning upon the mind, Pabst never allows
the audience to watch any single phenomenon closely. "Every cut,"
he himself states, "is made on some movement. At the end of one
178 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
cut somebody is moving, at the beginning of the adjoining one the
movement is continued. The eye is thus so occupied in following
these movements that it misses the cuts."
2e
His interest in reality
as a steady flow is symptomatic of his desire to withdraw from his
advanced position.
In the last three films he made during the stabilized period,
Pabst returned from the social scene to the "secrets of a soul." Thus
he would no longer have to meddle in politics. This change of theme
was a retreat; but it may also have been motivated by Pabsťs genuine
interest in psychology. All three films deal with the interrelationship
between social and psychological processes to be more
precise, between social disintegration and sexual excesses. In ABWEGE
(Cmsis, 1928), Brigitte Helm enacts a wealthy middle-class woman
bored by everyday life with her husband. She establishes headquarters
in a fashionable night-club and there joins a clique of
people who like herself try to drown their disillusionment in debaucheries.
The film, would be negligible if it were not for the nightclub
scenes in which Pabst manages to evoke the impression that
his characters are as they are because of the emptiness of the world
they inhabit.
27
There is also the unforgettable figure of a big doll
representing an ugly, worn-out roue. When early in the morning
the clique invades Helm's bedroom to continue the nocturnal orgy
in her company, the roue is seen lying on the floor, watching the
exchange of stale caresses with the air of a cynical connoisseur. This
doll incarnates the spirit of decomposition.
Pabsťs subsequent film was DIE BUCHSE DEB PANDORA (PANDORA'S
Box, 1929), fashioned after Frank Wedekinďs play about
Lulu, a woman driven by insatiable sex lusts, who destroys all lives
around her, and her own. In the pursuit of his basic designs, Pabst
could not but feel attracted by the way in which Wedekind related
the exuberance of instinctive life to the deterioration of our society.
Contemporaries considered PANDORA'S Box a failure. A failure it
was, but not for the reason most critics advanced. They held that
Pabst was fundamentally wrong in making a silent film from a liter-
a
Quoted from MacPherson, "Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney," Close Up, Dec. 1927,
p. 26. For camera techniques in this Pabst film, see Baldzs, Der Oeist des Films,
pp, 70, 78.
27 Cf. Rotha, Film Till Now, pp. 188-89, 295; "Abwege (Crisis)," Close Up,
Sept 1928, pp. 72-75; Potamkin, "Pabst and the Social Film," Hound # Horn,
Jan^March 1938, p. 295.
THE NEW REALISM 179
ary play whose meaning depended mainly upon the fine points of its
dialogue. However, the film's weakness resulted not so much from the
impossibility of translating this dialogue into cinematic terms as
from the abstract nature of the whole Wedekind play. It was a texture
of arguments; its characters, instead of living on their own,
served to illustrate principles. Pabst blundered in choosing a play
that because of its expressive mood belonged to the fantastic
postwar era rather than to the realistic stabilized period. The outcome
of his misplaced endeavors was a film which, as Potamkin puts
it, "is 'atmosphere
5
without content." 28
Having founded his own film
company it turned out to be a
very short-lived enterprise Pabst produced TAGE&CCJL EIKEE VERLORENEN
(DIARY OF A LOST ONE, 1929), an adaptation of Margarete
Bohme's well-known novel, the popularity of which among the
philistines of the past generation rested upon the slightly pornographic
frankness with which it recounted the private life of some
prostitutes from a morally elevated point of view. The film transfers
the Wedekind theme from the literary sphere to commonplace
surroundings more in harmony with Pabsťs realistic manner: the
Lulu of PANDORA'S Box becomes Thymian, a weak-minded pharmacisťs
easy-going daughter. Seduced by her father's assistant, a
villain whom Fritz Rasp endows with all the traits of his Khalibiev,
Thymian embarks upon a career which leads her straight into a
brothel. Pabst harps on the immorality of her middle-class environment,
so that the brothel almost appears to be a health resort. This
twist, after the fashion of Mrs. Warren's Profession, makes the film
resemble the street filths a resemblance increased by the emphasis
on Thymian's melodramatic generosity. Here, as in the street films,
the prostitute with the heart of gold testifies against bourgeois decadence.
But to what end? Seemingly unconcerned about the possible
implications of his criticism, Pabst elaborates upon the decadence
itself. That he is well aware of its affinity to sadism follows from the
extraordinary episode of the reformatory to which Thymian is sent.
In this episode, a sadistic governess gets a thrill from striking out
the rhythm in which the girls have to eat their soup or move about.29
28
Potamkin, ibid., p. 297. See also Kraszna-Krausz, "G. W. Pabsťs lAilu,'
" Close
Up, April 1929, pp. 26-29; Rotha, FUm Titt Now, pp. 189-91; synopsis of the film in
Illuttrierter FtimrKurier.
29
Arnheim, Film als Kunst, p. 103. See also Arnheim, ibid^ p. 73; Chavance,
"Trois Pages ďun Journal," La Revue d*t Ctotma, June 1, 1930, pp. 58-54; synopsis
of the film in lUustnerter Film-Kurier.
180 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
But Pabst, not content with merely describing her symbolic action,
also indicates the particular kind of pleasure she derives from it.
While upon her order the scantily clad girls perform exercises, this
terrible female marks the tempo and simultaneously swings her head,
until her whole body is involved in an oscillating movement that
grows ever faster and then suddenly comes to a stop. Her conduct
recalls that of the Tsarist officer in THE END OF ST. PETERSBURG
who voluptuously watches his underling beat a captured revolutionary.
Like Pudovkin, Pabst acknowledges the role sex plays
within definite social contexts.
15, MONTAGE
IN the grip of the existing paralysis, the German film-makers cultivated
a species of films presenting a cross section of some sphere of
reality. These films were even more characteristic of the stabilized
period than the Pabst films, for their neutrality was the logical result
of the cross-section principle itself. They would have upset their own
rules if they had sided with any of the pros and cons they surveyed.
They were the purest expression of New Objectivity on the screen.
Their such-is-life mood overwhelmed whatever socialist sentiments
played about in them.
The first German film of that kind was DIE ABENTETTER EINES
ZEHNMARKSCHEINS (THE ADVENTURES OF A TEN-MARK NOTE,
1926), produced by Karl Freund for Fox Europe. Bela Balazs
wrote the original script ; he himself called the film a "cross section." 1
This picture of Berlin during the inflation consists of a number of
episodes which record the capricious travels of a ten-mark note continually
changing hands. Guided by it, the film meanders through
the maze of those years, picking up otherwise unrelated characters,
and glancing over such locales as a factory, a night cafe, a pawnshop,
the music room of a profiteer, an employment agency, a ragpicker's
den and a hospital. According to Balazs, it is as if the plot
"followed a thread that, connecting the dramatic junctions of the
ways of Fate, leads across the texture of life."
2
However, Bal&zs was not yet sufficiently bold, or indifferent, to
substantiate his idea to the full. The documentary character of the
cross-section pattern is blurred by its combination with a sentimental
Berlin local drama concerning a worker and a factory girl. Like the
Polish lovers in Griffith's ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL?, these two finally
achieve one of those wooden cabins that spread all over the outskirts
of Berlin, and, to complete their happiness, the ten-mark note re-
1
Balzs, "Der Film sucht semen Stoff," Die Abenteuer eines Zehnmarkscheins,
and Bal&s, Der Geitt des Films, p. 86.
a
Baltfzs, "Der Film sucht seinen Stoff," Die Abenteiw eines Zehnmarkschein*.
181
182 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
turns to them. Its vagabondage not only serves to familiarize the
audience with the infinite "texture of life/' but also assumes the
function of rounding out the local drama. That is, the succession
of episodes results from two divergent tendencies, only one of which
conforms to the cross-section principle, while the other obstructs it.
This ambiguity of meaning explains why the allegedly purposeless
adventures of the ten-mark note often give the impression of being
concocted artificially. As if to reinforce the cross-section tendency,
Berthold ViertePs staging imbues street life with especial significance.
"There is a fascinating shot of the villain sitting in the
window of a cafe. Trams, buses and passers-by are reflected in the
plate-glass. The city is intent on doing something."
3
The thread
intersecting various regions of social life is bound to lead through
the street.
Street scenes predominate in the prototype of all true German
cross-section films: BEEIJN, DIE STMPHOKIE EINER GROSSSTADT
(BERLIN, THE SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY, 1927). This most important
film, a quota production of Fox Europe, was devised by
Carl Mayer. About the time he stigmatized hypocrisy in his TABTUFFE,
Mayer recognized that the moment had come for him to
turn from the externalization of inner processes to the rendering of
externals, from freely constructed plots to plots discovered in the
given material. Paul Rotha, a close friend of Mayer until the
latter's death, reports on this symptomatic change of attitude:
"Mayer was tiring of the restriction and artificiality of the studios.
All these films had been wholly studio-made. Mayer lost interest
in 'fictional invention* and wanted his stories to 'grow from reality.'
In 1925, standing amid the whirling traflic of the Ufa Palast am
Zoo, he conceived the idea of a City Symphony. He saw c
a melody
of pictures' and began to write the treatment of Berlin."
*
It does
not lessen Mayer's profound originality that under the influence of
the spirit of Locarno this idea asserted itself in France as well.
Cavalcanti's documentary film of Paris, HIEN QUE LES HEURES, was
released a few months before BsRUN.5
Like Mayer, the cameraman Karl Freund was tired of the studio
3
Quoted from Blakeston, "The Adventures of a Ten-Mark Note," Close Up,
Nov. 1928, pp. 59^60.
*
Botha, "Iťs in the Script," World Film New, Sept. 1938, p. 205.
8 Cf. Rotha, Documentary FUm, pp. 87-88$ Film Society Programme, March 4,
1928.
MONTAGE 183
and its artifices, so he enthusiastically espoused Mayer's project and
set out to shoot Berlin scenes with the voracious appetite of a man
starved for reality. "I wanted to show everything," he himself relates
in a revealing interview in 1939. "Men getting up to go to work,
eating breakfast, boarding trams or walking. My characters were
drawn from all the walks of life. From the lowest laborer to the bank
president."
6
Freund knew that to such ends he would have to rely
on candid-camera work. Craftsman that he was, he hypersensitized
the stock film which was then on the market, so as to cope with poor
lighting conditions, and moreover invented several contrivances to
hide the camera while shooting.
7
He would drive in a half-enclosed
truck with slots in the sides for the lens or he would walk about with
the camera in a box that looked like an innocent suitcase. No one
ever suspected that he was taking pictures. Asked at the end of the
above-mentioned interview whether he considered candid photography
an art, Freund answered, glowing with zeal: "It is the only type
of photography that is really art. Why? Because with it one is able
to portray life. These big negatives, now, where people smirk and
grimace and pose, . . . Bah! Thaťs not photography. But a very
fast lens. Shooting life. Realism. Ah, that is photography in its
purest form. . . ."
8
Walter Ruttmann, who up to then had excelled in abstract films,
edited the immense amount of material assembled by Freund and
several other photographers. His sense of optical music made Ruttmann
seem the right man to produce "a melody of pictures." He
worked in close collaboration with the young composer Edmund
Meisel, known for his interesting score for POTEMKIN. Meisel
dreamed of synchronizing Ruttmann's visual symphony with a
symphonic composition which might even be performed independently
of the film. The role he reserved for the music was bound to
strengthen the formal tendency of the editing.
9
Ruttmann's BERLIN is a cross section of a Berlin working day
in late spring. Its opening sequence pictures the city at dawn: a
night express arrives, and streets still void of human life seem the
e
Evans, "Karl Freund, Candid Cinematographer," Popular Photographyt Feb.
1989, p. 51.
T
Evans, ibid., pp. 51, 88-89; Blakeston, "Interview with Carl Freund," Close Up,
Jan. 1929, pp. 60-61.
8
Evans, 6tU, p. 89.
9 FUm Society Programme, March 4, 1928; Meisel, "Wie schreibt man Filmnmsik,"
Ufa-Magazm, April 1-7, 1927. For Ruttmann's other films during that period, see
Film Society Programme, May 8, 1927.
184 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
very counterpart of that limbo which the mind traverses between
sleep and consciousness. Then the city awakens and stirs. Scores of
workers set out for their factories ; wheels begin to turn ; telephone
receivers are lifted off. The passage devoted to the morning hours
is filled with glimpses of window-dressings and typical street incidents.
Noon : the poor, the wealthy and the animals in the zoo are
seen eating their lunch and enjoying a short respite. Work is resumed,
and a bright afternoon sun shines over crowded caf terraces,
newspaper vendors, a woman drowning herself. Life resembles a roller
coaster. As the day fades, the machine wheels stop, and the business
of relaxation begins. A kaleidoscopic arrangement of shots surveys
all kinds of sports, a fashion show, and a few instances of boys
meeting girls or trying to meet them. The last sequence amounts
to a pleasure drive through nocturnal Berlin, luminous with ruthless
neon lights. An orchestra plays Beethoven ; the legs of girl dancers
perform; Chaplin's legs stumble across a screen; two lovers, or
rather two pairs of legs, make for the nearest hotel; and finally a
true pandemonium of legs breaks loose: the six-day race going on
and on without interruption.
"The film as Ruttmann made it," Rotha reports, *Vas far from
Mayer's conception. Its surface approach was what Mayer had tried
to avoid. He and Ruttmann agreed to differ."
10
This accounts for
Mayer's early withdrawal from the production of BERLIN. (His next
enterprise years before the appearance of river films in America
and France was a script narrating the story of the Danube. But
this script was never produced.)
When Mayer criticized BERUK for its "surface approach," he
may well have had in mind Ruttmann's method of editing. This
method is tantamount to a "surface approach," inasmuch as it relies
on the formal qualities of the objects rather than on their meanings.
Ruttmann emphasizes pure patterns of movement.11
Machine parts
in motion are shot and cut in such a manner that they turn into
dynamic displays of an almost abstract character. These may symbolize
what has been called the "tempo" of Berlin ; but they are no
longer related to machines and their functions. The editing also
resorts to striking analogies between movements or forms.12
Human
legs walking on the pavement are followed by the legs of cows ; a
10
Rotha, "Iťs in the Script," World Film News, Sept. 1988, p. 205.
11 Cf. Film Society Programme, Jan. 18, 1929.
ia
Balazs, Der Geiat des Film*, p. 59. For other devices in BEBIIN, see Arnheim,
Film a,k Kunst, p. 98, and Rotha, Film Till tfoto, p. 295.
MONTAGE 185
sleeping man on a bench is associated with a sleeping elephant
[Ulus. 37]. In those cases in which Ruttmann furthers the pictorial
development through specific content, he inclines to feature
social contrasts. One picture unit connects a cavalcade in the Tiergarten
with a group of women beating carpets ; another juxtaposes
hungry children in the street and opulent dishes in some restaurant.
Yet these contrasts are not so much social protests as formal expedients.
Like visual analogies, they serve to build up the cross
section, and their structural function overshadows whatever significance
they may convey.
In his use of "montage," Ruttmann seems to have been influenced
by the Russians to be more precise, by the Russian film director
Dziga Vertov and his "Kino-eye" group.
18
Vertov, infatuated with
every expression of real life, produced weekly newsreels of a special
kind from the close of the Civil War on, and in about 1926 began to
make feature-length films which still preserved a definite newsreel
character. His intentions and Ruttmann's are much the same. Like
Ruttmann, Vertov deems it essential to surprise life with the movie
camera the "Kino-eye." Like Ruttmann, he cuts his candid shots
on the rhythmic movements inherent in them. Like Ruttmann, he is
interested not in divulging news items, but in composing "optical
music." His MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA (1929) can be considered
a lyric documentary.
14
Notwithstanding such an identity of artistic intentions, Ruttmann's
BERI/EKT carries a meaning that differs basically from the
message Vertov's productions impart. This difference originates in
a difference of given conditions: the two artists apply similar aesthetic
principles to the rendering of dissimilar worlds. Vertov endeavors
to live up to Lenin's early demand that "the production of
new films, permeated with communist ideas, reflecting Soviet actuality,
must begin with newsreels." 15
He is the son of a victorious revolution,
and the life his camera surprises is Soviet life a reality
quivering with revolutionary energies that penetrate its every element.
This reality has a significant shape of its own. Ruttmann, on
13
Rotha, Documentary Film, p. 89; Potamkin, "The Rise and Fall of the German
Film," Cinema, April I960, p. 25.
14
Vertov, 'TDziga Vertov on Film Technique," prefaced by Moussinac, "Introduction,"
FUmfront, Jan. 28, 198$, pp. 7-9. For Vertov and '*montage" in Russian films
and in BEBUN, see Pudovkm, Film Technique, pp. 188-89; Richter, "Ur-Kino," Neue
Zurcher Zeitunff, April 2, 1940; BaMzs, Der Geist des Films, pp. 57-58, 89, 94-95;
Brody, "Paris hears Eisenstein," Close Up, April 1980, pp. 288-89.
15
Quoted from Leyda, Program Note*, Series VII, program 2.
186 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
his part, focuses upon a society which has managed to evade revolution
and now, under the stabilized Republic, is nothing but an
unsubstantial conglomeration of parties and ideals. It is a shapeless
reality, one that seems to be abandoned by all vital energies.
Ruttmann's film reflects this reality. The innumerable streets of
BEKLIN resemble the studio-built thoroughfare of Grune's THE
STREET in yielding an impression of chaos. Symbols of chaos that
first emerged in the postwar films are here resumed and supplemented
by other pertinent symbols. Conspicuous in this respect is a unit of
successive shots combining a roller coaster, a rotating spiral in a
shop window and a revolving door [Illus. 38]. The many prostitutes
among the passers-by also indicate that society has lost its balance.
But no one any longer reacts vigorously against its chaotic condition.
Another old motif called upon betrays the same lack of concern : the
policeman who stops the traffic to guide a child safely across the
street. Like the shots denoting chaos, this motif, which in earlier films
served to emphasize authority as a redemption, is now simply part of
the record a fact among facts.
The excitement has gone. Indifference remains. That everybody
is indifferent to his fellow men can be inferred from the formalization
of social contrasts as well as from the repeated insertion of
window-dressings with their monotonous rows of dolls and dummies.
It is not as if these dummies were humanized; rather, human
beings are forced into the sphere of the inanimate. They seem
molecules in a stream of matter. In the Ufa brochure on contemporary
Kuiturfline, one finds the following description of industrial
documentaries: "Blast furnaces . . . emit ... fire vapors, . . .
white-hot iron pours into molds, material is torn, material is compressed,
material is milled, material is polished, material becomes an
expression of our time." 16
People in BERLIN assume the character
of material not even polished. Used-up material is thrown away. To
impress this sort of doom upon the audience, gutters and garbage
cans appear in close-up, and a? in THE STREET waste paper is seen
littering the pavement. The life of society is a harsh, mechanical
process [Dlus. 39].
Only here can the difference between Ruttmann and Vertov be
fully grasped : it is a difference of attitude. Vertov's continued survey
of everyday life rests upon his unqualified acceptance of Soviet
actuality. He himself is part of a revolutionary process which
18 Cf.
p. 142, and also "80 Kulturfilme/
MONTAGE IM
arouses passions and hopes. In his lyric enthusiasm, Vertov stresses
formal rhythms but without seeming indifferent to content. His
cross sections are "permeated with communist ideas" even when
they picture only the beauty of abstract movements.
Had Ruttmann been prompted by Vertov's revolutionary convictions,
he would have had to indict the inherent anarchy of Berlin
life. He would have been forced to emphasize content rather than
rhythm. His penchant for rhythmic ''montage" reveals that he
actually tends to avoid any critical comment on the reality with
which he is faced. Vertov implies content ; Ruttmann shuns it. This
reluctance to appraise content is entirely consistent with his obvious
delight in the "tempo" of Berlin and the marche des machines.17
Tempo is a formal quality, and the socialist optimism that may
manifest itself in the machine cult is nothing more than a vague
"reformist illusion." Here is why Mayer called BERLIN a "surface
approach." He did not object to formal editing as such; what
he condemned was Ruttmann's formal attitude towards a reality that
cried out for criticism, for interpretation. To be sure, Mayer was
no revolutionary like Vertov ; but he had a pronounced sense of the
humane. It is hardly imaginable that he would have misused social
contrasts as pictorial transitions, or recorded increasing mechanization
without objectifying his horror of it.
Ruttmann's rhythmic "montage" is symptomatic of a withdrawal
from basic decisions into ambiguous neutrality. This explains
the difference between BERLIN and the street films. Whereas BERLIN
refrains from idealizing the street, such films as ASPHALT and
TRAGEDY op THE STREET praise it as the refuge of true love and
justified rebellion. These films are like dreams called forth by the
paralyzed authoritarian dispositions for which no direct outlet is
left. BERLIN is the product of the paralysis itself.
A few contemporary critics identified it as such. In 1928, I
stated in Frankfurter Zevttmgi "Ruttmann, instead of penetrating
his immense subject-matter with a true understanding of its social,
economic and political structure . .
, records thousands of details
without connecting them, or at best connects them through fictitious
transitions which are void of content. His film may be based upon
the idea of Berlin as the city of tempo and work ; but this is a formal
idea which does not imply content either and perhaps for that very
reason intoxicates the German petty bourgeoisie in real life and
" Rotha, Film Till Now, p. 288.
188 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
literature. This symphony fails to point out anything, because it
does not uncover a single significant context." 18
BERLIN inaugurated the vogue of cross-section, or "montage,"
films.
19
They could be produced at low cost; and they offered a
gratifying opportunity of showing much and revealing nothing.
Several films of that kind utilized stock material. One of them summarized
the career of Henny Porten (1928) ; a second, similarly
produced by Ufa, extracted love episodes from old movies (RuND
UM DEE LTEBE, 1929) ; a third was the KuLturfLm DEB WUNDER DER
WELT (MIRACLES OF THE UNIVERSE, 1929), a patchwork of various
explorer films.
20
Of greater interest were two cross-section films which, after the
manner of BERLIN, reported actual life through an assemblage of
documentary shots. In MARKT AM WITTENBERGPLATZ (STREET
MARKETS IN BERLIN, 1929), Wilfried Basse used the stop-motion
camera to condense the lengthy procedure of erecting tents and
stands to a few seconds. It was neat and unpretentious pictorial
reportage, a pleasing succession of such characteristic details as bargaining
housewives, stout market women, glittering grapes, flower
displays, horses, lazy onlookers and scattered debris. The whole
amounted to a pointless statement on colorful surface phenomena.
Its inherent neutrality is corroborated by Basse's indifference to
the change of political atmosphere under Hitler. In 1934, as if
nothing had happened, he released DETTTSCHLAND VON GESTERN
UND HEUTE, a cross-section film of German cultural life which also
refused "ix> penetrate beneath the skin." 21
Shortly after this market film, another more important bit of reportage
appeared: MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG (PEOPLE ON SUNDAY)
.
Eugen Shuftan, Robert Siodmak, Edgar Ulhner, Billy Wilder,
Fred Zinnemann and Moritz Seeler collaborated in the production
of this late silent film. Its success may have been due to the con,-
18
Kracauer, "Der heutige Film und sein PubEkum," Frankfurter Zeitung, Dec. 1,
1928, Rotha, Documentary FtZm, p. 161, comments on BERLIN in about the same way.
"Cf. Potamkin, 'The Rise and Fall of the German Film," Cinema, Aprfl 1980,
p. 25.
80 Cf. Kraszna-Krausz, "The Querschnittfilm," Close Up, Nov. 1928, p. 2T; Rund
um die Liebe," FQm-Magazin, Jan. 27, 1929; Stenhouse, "The World on Film," Close
Up, May 1980, pp. 4.17-18.
ai
Quoted from Rotha, Documentary Film, p. 121. For STBEET MARKETS IN
BERUIT, see Film Society Programme, May 4r, 1980; Arnhelm, Ftim als Kunft, p. 128;
Balazs, Der Geiat des Films, pp. 106-7.
MONTAGE 189
vincing way it pictured a province of life rarely noticed until then.
A salesgirl, a traveling salesman, an extra and a chauffeur are the
film's main characters. On Sunday, they leave their dreary homes
for one of the lakes near Berlin, and there are seen bathing, cooking,
lying about on the beach, making futile contacts with each other
and people like them. This is about all. But it is significant inasmuch
as all the characters involved are lesser employees. At that time,
the white-collar workers had turned into a political factor. They
were wooed by the Nazis as well as the Social Democrats, and the
whole domestic situation depended upon whether they would cling
to their middle-class prejudices or acknowledge their common interests
with the working class.
PEOPLE ON SUNDAY is one of the first films to draw attention
to the plight of the "little man." In one sequence, a beach photographer
is busy taking pictures which then appear within the 61m
itself. They are inserted in such a way that it is as if the individuals
photographed suddenly became motionless in the middle of an ac-
tion.
22
As long as they move they are just average individuals;
having come to a standstill, they appear to be ludicrous products of
mere chance. While the stills in Dovzhenko's films serve to disclose
the significance of some face or inanimate object, these snapshots
seem designed to demonstrate how little substance is left to lower
middle-class people. Along with shots of deserted Berlin streets and
houses, they corroborate what has been said above of the spiritual
vacuum in which the mass of employees actually lived,
23
However,
this is the sole revelation to be elicited from a film which on the whole
proves as noncommittal as the other cross-section films. KrasznaKrausz
states of it : "Melancholic observation. Not less, not more." 24
And Bela Baldzs points out the "fanaticism for facts" animating
PEOPLE ON SUNDAY and its like, and then comes to the conclusion :
"They bury their meaning in an abundance of facts." 25
aa
Arnheim, Film ala Kunst, p. 140.
33 Cf. p. 181 f.
24
Kraszna-Krausz, "Production, Construction, Hobby," Close Up, April 1980,
p. 818.
a5
Baldzs, Der Geist des Films, p. 202.
16 BRIEF REVEILLE
THE year 1928 marked a change. Politically, it was characterized
by the Reichstag elections that resulted in an overwhelming victory
for the so-called Marxist parties. Compared with the more than nine
million votes for the Social Democrats, the number of Nazi votes was
negligible. The republican regime seemed firmly established.
1
This
political development was accompanied by an intellectual evolution :
in the field of literature democratic, if not socialist, tendencies began
to break through the crust of New Objectivity. People scrutinized
their environment critically and regained the faculty of recollection.
1928 was a year of war novels which, headed by Remarque's All
Quiet on the Western Front, expressed hatred of the war and concern
for international rapprochement and similar desiderata.2
At about
the same time, leftist writers went in for books which disclosed social
abuses and reactionary maneuvers. This kind of literature sold well.
The public enjoyed social criticism. To all appearances a process of
reorientation was under way.
At the end of the stabilized period, the screen tends to confirm
this impression. Under the influence of Erich Pommer, even Ufa
somewhat relinquished its grand-style manner and cut-to-pattern
technique. Pommer, who had returned home from America, suggested
and supervised the production of several films which he obviously
intended to make into a synthesis of Hollywood and Neu-
babelsberg.
3
One of them was the street film ASPHALT ; another was
Hanns Schwarz's DIE WTTNDERBARE LUGE DEB NINA PETBOWNA
(THE WONDERFUL LIE OP NINA PETROVNA, 1929), which vaguely
recalled Hollywooďs silent version of ANNA KARENINA. Nina, mistress
of a Russian colonel, leaves him for one of his lieutenants, and
finally kills herself to prevent the ruin of her lover's career. Laid
1
Rosenberg, GeaohicUe dor Deutschen Republik, pp. 217-18.
a Cf. Samuel and Thomas, Expressionism in German JAfe, p. 180. Significantly,
it was in 1928 that the cameraman Guldo Seeber suggested the foundation of a
national film library. See his article "Bine Staats-Kinothek," Berliner Tayeblatt,
Feb. 8, 1928, quoted by Ackerknecbt, Lichttpielfragen, pp. 151-52.
8
Rotha, Film TUl Now, p. 182.
190
BRIEF REVEILLE 191
in a Russian garrison town, the film opens with a scene showing
Brigitte Helm as Nina on a balcony; below her, the lieutenant
(Francis Lederer) is passing by on horseback ahead of his men, and
while he passes both gaze at each other for an endless moment. At
the end, that balcony scene is repeated; but now Nina has already
taken poison and the lieutenant is lost to her. The film involved a
range of deep emotions genuinely motivated. It was an achievement
which at least indicated that the existing paralysis was on the point
of being broken up.
4
This becomes the more obvious since Ufa, completely paralyzed
under the "system," had excelled in misrepresenting emotions. In
Joe May's HEIMKEHR (HOMECOMING, 1928) , also a grade-A Pommer
production, it continued to do so. The film is based upon Leonhard
Frank's war novel Karl und Anna, which describes the flight of
two German prisoners of war from a Siberian lead mine. Karl succeeds
in reaching Germany before his friend Richard and is sheltered
by Richarďs wife Anna. Karl and Anna become intoxicated with each
other. To picture their growing excitement, one scene of the film
shows them restlessly turning about on beds separated only by a thin
partition. What can be said in words is not always fit to be presented
in pictures, for pictures, palpable as they are, sometimes fail to catch
the implications of the words they illustrate. This grotesque scene is
a misleading translation of the novel a translation which under
the pretense of rendering irresistible love exhibits mere sensuality.
HOMECOMING is interesting, though, for emphasizing the motif
of the "feet that walk." It is not Karl who wanders home from the
studio-built Siberian lead mine; it is his feet. Marching soldier
boots change into slippers which in turn give way to foot-bandages
that are finally superseded by the naked and dusty feet themselves.
5
The use made of this motif reveals the affinity between HOMECOMING
and the dreamlike street films. With the paralysis drawing
to its close, these dreams, stirred by the authoritarian dispositions,
throbbed more and more distinctly below the surface.
6
*Cf. Botha, "Plastic Design," Close Up, Sept. 1929, pp. 228-80; etc. Under
Pommer's supervision, Schwarz also made USTOABISCHB RHAPSODIE (HUXGJLUXAS- RHAPSODY,
1928).
Motif mentioned by Balazs, Der Geist des Film*, pp. 64-65.
For HOMECOMING in general, see program to this film; "Homecoming," National
Board of Review Magazine, Dec. 1928, pp. 7, 10; Kalbus, Dewttche Filmkunst, I, 75.
In a similar vein was DR. BESSZĽS VZKWAVDLUXG (DR. BESSEĽS METAMORPHOSIS,
1927) ; cf. Zaddach, Der literarische Film, p. 72. -NARXOSE (NARCOSIS, 1929), based
on a script by Baldzs after a Stefan Zweig story, may also be mentioned in this
context; cf. synopsis of film in Illustrierter Film-Kurier, and Bal&s, Der Geist des
Films, pp. 67, 74.
192 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
Simultaneously with THE WONDERFUL LEE OF NINA PETROVNA,
a limited number of socialist-minded films appeared. That they could
appear at all testifies to the relative strength of the intellectual
leftist tendencies. To a certain extent these tendencies seemed to be
enforced by favorable inner attitudes which profited by the paralysis
of primary authoritarian impulses. The question was whether they
were more than transitory moods.
The first leftist films did not run in movie theaters, but formed
an integral part of Piscator's stage productions. During the stabilized
period, the Berlin Piscator Theater served with its revolutionary
plays as a sort of Grand Guignol for the rich, who enjoyed
letting themselves be frightened by communism as long as they had
no real fear of it. Since these plays were impregnated with belief
in the dependence of the individual upon economic processes and
class struggles, it was logical that Piscator should resort to bits of
films, for they alone proved capable of evoking the social backgrounds
from which the action proper was supposed to emerge. His
mise en scene of Ernst Toller's play Hoppla! Wir leben (1927)
included two film episodes which he had composed with the aid of
Ruttmann. "The first episode is a War-time prologue to the play,
which opens with the revolutionaries in prison. The prisoner-hero
goes mad, and the progress of the external world during his sevenyears'
insanity (1920-1927) is seen in the second reel."
7
Assembled
from stock material, these reels were projected onto a screen of
transparent fabric, so that the actors could reappear immediately
after the screening was over.
In 1928, the Popular Association for Film Art (Volksverband
fur FUmhwst) was founded "to fight reactionary trash on the one
hand and, on the other, to develop artistically progressive films."
8
The sweeping success of the great Russian films made it seem a
matter of course that true film art would have to be leftist-minded.
Sponsored by Heinrich Mann, Pabst, Karl Freund, Piscator and
others, this noncommercial association counting democrats as well
as communists among its ranks organized groups of congenial
moviegoers on a nation-wide scale and set out to familiarize them
T
Quoted from Film Society Programme Jan. 26, 1980. See also Freedley and
Reeves, History of the Theatre, pp. 526, 581; Hellmund-Waldow, "Combinaison* Le
FUm et la Scene," Close Up, April 1928, pp. 24-37; Gregor, Zeitalter det Films,
pp. 141^42.
8
Quoted from Schwartzkopf, "VoUnrerband fiir Filmkunst," Clote Up, May
1928, p. 71.
BRIEF REVEILLE 198
with superior films full of social criticism. The Association's opening
performance provoked scandal by showing a cleverly cut newsreel:
shots and scenes which had all been contained in old Ufa newsreels
were here combined in such a manner that they suddenly lost their
political innocence and assumed an inflammatory character. The
police prohibited this devilish juggler's trick in utter disregard of
the defendants' objection that the incriminating newsreel was nothing
but an assemblage of unchanged Ufa material.8
One will remember the Ufa prospectus which defines the KuLturflm
as the mirror of a beautiful world, and in a survey of its beauties
does not forget to mention "nimble-footed Chinese before palan-
quins."
10
The Popular Association antagonized Ufa by distributing
SHANGHAI DOCUMENT, a Russian Kidturfilm in which those
"nimble-footed Chinese" appeared as the victimized coolies they
really were. However, in contrasting them with bathing and dancing
whites characterized in a subtitle as the representatives of "European
and American civilization," the film turned from truthful statement
to biased accusations. An English admirer of Russian film art
therefore calls SHANGHAI DOCUMENT "definitely propagandists
in the wrong sense of the term." n Yet the leading members of the
Popular Association included the film in their program. A further
sign of their lack of insight was their choice of DEE WUNDBR DES
FILMS (MIRACLES OF THE FILM), a neutral cross-section film overflowing
with technological optimism.
12
The surface radicalism of this
short-lived Volksverband did not testify to a serious change of the
psychological situation.
In 1929, another progressive association cropped up: the German
League for the Independent Film (Deutsche Uga> -fur undbhangigen
Film) which groposed to fight against the glorification of war
and the encroachments of censorship. This League, a member of the
Geneva International Film League, arranged showings of vanguard
films and Russian films followed by discussions.
13
The soul of the
enterprise was Hans Richter, one of the few truly incorruptible film
artists of the left. In 1926, following the general tendency toward
realism,'he began to include eyes, faces, penguins, among his abstract
9
Balazs, Der Geist des Films, p. 212. Of. p. 297.
10 Cf. p. 14S.
11
Quoted from Bryher, Film Problem* of Soviet Russia, p. 125. Cf. program to
SHANGHAI DOCUMENT; MacPherson,
tt
A Document of Shanghai," Close Up, Dec. 1928,
pp. 6G-69; Balazs, Der Geist des Films, p. 97.
12 Cf. Stenhouse, *T)ie Wunder des Films," Close Up> May 1929, pp. 89-91.
13
Prospectus of the League, and information offered by Mr. Hans Richter.
194 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
lines and planes. His VORMITTAGSSPTJK (GHOSTS BEFORE BREAKFAST,
1928), a charming short ohviously influenced by Rene Clair
and Fernand L%er, showed inanimate objects in full revolt against
the conventional use we make of them. Bowlers mocking their possessors
fly through the air, while a number of persons completely
disappear behind a thin lamp post.
14
At the time of this short, the film industry took a certain interest
in vanguard productions: Ruttmann's BERLIN had been a success,
and the desire for reorientation was widespread. So Richter made a
few reels for insertion in commercial films in need of embellishment.
One of these reels it served as prologue for an insignificant Ufa
film was a cross section of life during the inflation.
15
Even though
Richter came from abstract painting like Ruttmann, he repudiated
the latter's formal transitions in favor of cutting procedures designed
to bring about a true understanding of what inflation really
meant. His ideal was to compose "film essays" sagacious pictorial
comments on socially interesting topics. But as for his League, it
neither exerted noticeable influence nor did it long survive the
Volksverband.
The existing vogue of social criticism may have stimulated the
well-known film architect Erno Metzner to compete with Richter in
the field of unconventional nonfiction films. FREIE FAHRT (FREE
TRIP, 1928), a propaganda film he made for the Social Democratic
Party, was divided into two dissimilar parts. The first was a retrospect
picturing the predicament of the workers under the Kaiser
in splendid scenes shaped after the Russian manner; the second,
devoted to current party activities, was hardly more than a pictorial
manifesto which inevitably reflected the failings and inhibitions of
the Social Democrats.16
Subsequent to this official screen eulogy, which was shown only
at closed Party meetings, Metzner produced, staged and shot the
experimental short IJBERFALL (ACCIDENT, 1929), one of the most
radical of German films despite its nonpolitical theme. It reports a
minor street accident hardly worth a line in the local press. A petty
bourgeois finds a coin on the street and stakes it in a dice game
" Balazs, Der Geist de FUma, p. 124.
13
Richter's INFLATION preluded DIE DAME anr KEB MASKE (THE LADY WITH THE
MASK, 1928) ; cf. "Die Dame mit der Maske," UfOr-Iaih. Other fUms by Richter are
listed Sn his unpublished manuscript, "Avantgarde, History and Dates of the Only
Independent Artistic Pflm Movement, 1921-1981."
""Freie Fahrt," Glo* Up, Feb. 1929, pp. 97-59.
BRIEF REVEILLE 195
in an obscure tavern. He wins and leaves, followed by a thug who
pursues him through a dark underpass and past ugly house facades.
A prostitute pulls the frightened bourgeois inside a house and takes
him up to her room. The man believes himself safe, but in reality he
has only fallen into another trap. While he is all set to enjoy an
amorous hour, the girPs souteneur appears, robs the visitor of his
wallet and throws him out of the house. No sooner does the unfortunate
collect himself, than he is knocked down by the thug from
the tavern. In the last scene, his head bandaged, he is seen lying in
a hospital bed, haunted by a feverish dream in which a circling coin
is the leitmotiv.
17
Unusual angles, distorting mirrors and other cinematic devices
are used in rendering this sordid accident.18
The result is a pictorial
grotesque tending to color and deform objects and faces. This
sabotage of the norm helps to mark Metzner's film as a protest
against deep-rooted conventions [Illus. 40] . In ACCIDENT, all the
characters and motifs of TRAGEDY OF THE STREET and ASPHALT
reappear, but with basically changed meanings. ACCIDENT is a street
film debunking those street films of the stabilized period. Unlike
them, it neither glorifies the petty bourgeois as a rebel nor transforms
the chaotic street into a haven for genuine love. The prostitute
in this short remains a hard-boiled creature up to the very end.
Ruttmann's BERLIN also pictures street figures realistically; but
while Ruttmann retreats into the colorless neutrality of Neue SackUchJceit,
Metzner draws radical conclusions from his premises.
ACCIDENT goes beyond BERLIN or any other film of the period in
that it rebuffs the police, that reassuring symbol of authority on the
German screen. When in the final scene the bedridden petty bourgeois
is requested by a detective to identify his assailant, he silently
shuts his eyes and again falls prey to his hallucination of the circling
coin. The image of the coin is the answer to the policeman's request.
ACCIDENT, that is, shows chaos without accepting submission to
authority as the way out of it. Authoritarian dispositions are
here repudiated emphatically. The truly heretic character of this
film is confirmed by the censor's harsh reaction to it. Even though
ACCIDENT deals with events far less crude than those of any Pabst
"MacPherson, "ttberfall (Accident)," CZow Up, April 1929, pp. 71-72. For
Metzner's ACHTUNG, LIEBELEBENSGBFAHR (WHEBE'S LOVE THEBE'S DANGER, 1929),
see "Achtung, Uebe Lebensgefahr," Close Up, Nov. 1929, pp. 44,1^*2.
18
Rotha, Film Till Now, pp. 27&-76. See also Hoffman, "Camera Problems,"
Close Up, July 1929, pp. 29-31.
196 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
film, it was prohibited for its allegedly "brutalizing and demoralizing
effect."
19
The same dissenting spirit manifested itself in the field of fictional
films proper. Among them was an outright product of Red
ideology: REVOLTS rw: EBZEEHUKGSHATTS (REVOLT IN THE REFORMATORY,
January, 1930), a screen version of Peter Martin
LampePs theatrical play of fchat title. It was an isolated attempt to
make the screen as radical as the contemporary stage. The censor
nipped this attempt in the bud, reducing to a tame drama of manners
what was originally a violent attack against the sadistic regime of
terror in German reformatories.
20
For the rest, leftist inclinations materialized in three films, all
of which appeared in 1929 and showed themselves strongly influenced
by the Soviet cinema.21
These films had an interesting trait in common
:
they were bathed in a dense atmosphere of sadness. One of them
was Carl Junghans
5
So IST DAS LEBEN ( STICK Is LIFE), an extraordinary
piece of work achieved in Berlin and Prague under enormous
financial difficulties. It featured a washerwoman portrayed by Vera
Baranovskaia, the star of Pudovkin's MOTHER. Junghans (a Czech
of German extraction) revealed the miserable life and death of this
plain woman in a succession of episodes noteworthy for their realism
as well as their social awareness. The banquet where the child falls
asleep and the cobbler brings out his old gramophone is no less
memorable than the funeral repast in a cafe resounding with the
noise of a mechanical pianoforte. Although Junghans occasionally
borrowed from Eisenstein the gesticulating statue of a saint recalls
Eisenstein's moving stone lion his filn? was imbued with a mood of
resignation not to be found in any Soviet production. Commenting
on SUCH Is LIFE, Carl Vincent speaks of its "touching and smiling
tristesse" in the face of human pain and decay.
22
19
Quoted from Metzner, "German Censor's Incomprehensible Ban," Close Up,
May 1929, pp. 14-15.
ao
Berstl, ed., 5 Jdhre Berliner Theater, p. 99; Boehmer and Reitz, Film in Wirtschaft
und Recht, p. 50; Petzet, Verbotene Fthne, pp. 124-35; Stenhouse, "A Contemporary,"
Close Up, May 1980, p. 419. Lampeľs theatrical play Giflgas <Uber Berlin
was also made into a film (GurroAs, 1929).
21
MacPherson, "Times Is Not "What They WasP Close Up, Feb. 1929, p. 86,
reports from Berlin: "The crowds during the first weeks of Storm over Asia were
so dense that it was necessary to call out a special police control for those endeavoring
to buy tickets." For the vogue of Soviet films, see also MacPherson, **As Is,"
Close Up, Aug. 1928, pp. 5-11.
M Vincent, Mistoire de VArt Cin4matogra<pUque9 p. 208. See also Bardeche and
Brasillach, History of Motion Pictures, pp. 261-62; Arnheim, Film als Kunst, p. 122.
BRIEF REVEILLE 197
Leo Mittler's JENSEITS DER STEASSE (HARBOR DREFT), which
included beautiful Hamburg exteriors, was one of the first films to
touch on the problem of unemployment. Crowds of unemployed fill
the picture as background to the action proper. Apart from this
timely thematic innovation, HARBOR DRIFT is a street film animated
by much the same spirit as ACCIDENT. In it, a pearl necklace functions
as did the coin in Metzner's short. A girl depraved by long
unemployment watches an old beggar pick up the necklace on the
street, and then lures the beggar's friend, a young unemployed
worker, into stealing it for her. He fails and returns empty-handed ;
whereupon the girl leaves him for a well-to-do elderly gentleman.
Haunted by the image of the glittering necklace, the demoralized
worker sneaks back to the abandoned boat which serves his one-time
friend as a shelter. There he and the beggar come to blows, and
since the beggar reads murder in his assailanťs mind, he flees with
the pearls flees in such panic that he falls in the water and drow^is.
Bubbles in the form of pearls appear and disappear on the surface
of the water. At the end, we lose the worker in a crowd of unemployed.
Contemporary German reviewers emphasized the Russian
style of this film. Its variance with TRAGEDY OP THE STREET is as
obvious as its gloominess.
23
MUTTER KRAUSEN'S FAHRT INS GLUCK (MOTHER KRAUSEN'S
JOURNEY TO HAPPINESS), the most successful film of this group,
was made by the former cameraman Piel Jutzi after a script Hemrich
Zille wrote shortly before his death. Even though Zille's imagination
as usual centered round his beloved Berlin slums and their
human flotsam, the film differed considerably from the Zille films
of 1925 and 1926. In them, studio-built proletarian surroundings
had been the scene of developments that fed the social illusions of
lower middle-class people; in this new and last authentic Zille film
no such illusions were allowed to invalidate the veracity of its North
Berlin milieu, brought to life with the help of numerous documentary
shots.
This is a milieu characterized by abominable housing conditions.
To augment her income as a news vendor, Mother Krausen has let
her one room to a dubious tenant, while she herself, along with her
grown-up children Paul and Erna, is camping in the kitchen. The
tenant on his part keeps a prostitute and her child in his room. Since
33
Prospectus to the film and synopsis (Museum of Modern Art Library, clipping
files).
198 THE STABILIZED PERIOD
the young Krausens cannot avoid stumbling upon him, they are exposed
to his evil influence. He seduces Erna and persuades Paul,
who has wantonly dissipated his mother's earnings, to make up for
this loss by participating in a burglary. Paul and the tenant break
into a pawnshop, but the police interfere and come to fetch Paul
at his mother's place. Her son led away as a criminal, Mother
Krausen's whole universe goes to pieces. Taking the prostitute's child
along "What could life give to that child?" she opens the gas
pipe and departs on her journey to happiness.
The atmosphere of self-pity surrounding Mother Krausen's
escape into death recalls the suicide of the cafe-owner in Carl Mayer's
NEW YEAR'S EvE.24
In fact, this last Zille film would be nothing
but a modernized instinct drama did it not include a motif never
before introduced on the German screen. The motif asserts itself in
those parts of the film which elaborate upon the relation between
Max and Erna. Max, a class-conscious young worker in love with
Erna, furiously deserts her when he happens to find out about her
liaison with the tenant. But, later on, his enlightened worker-friend
succeeds in convincing him that all has been the seducer's rather
than Erna's fault, and that he, Max, is behaving in a typically
bourgeois way. Max, converted to socialist sex morals, repentantly
returns to the girl. His conversion tends to reveal Mother Krausen
as the petty-bourgeois heroine of a pseudo-tragedy. Two other episodes
which also pierce her illusory world enhance the significance
of this love affair. One of them satirizes the wedding party on the
occasion of the tenanťs marriage to the prostitute ; the other pictures
a workers' demonstration after the impressive manner of Pudovkin.
The problem is whether or not Max's concept of happiness outbalances
that of Mother Krausen. From the emphasis placed on her
suicide only one conclusion can be drawn: that the film is intended
not so much to play up socialist claims and hopes as to acknowledge
them with melancholy. To be sure, Mother Krausen's notions are recognized
as illusions; but even so they retain sufficient strength to
overshadow the aspirations of the opposite camp.
25
The sadness of these three films indicates that their underlying
revolutionary inclinations are secondary attitudes rather than primary
impulses. All three films seem to originate in a mind not too
seriously concerned with emancipation. It is as if this mind were
*< Cf. p. 99.
ac
Weiss, "Mutter Krausen's Fahrt ins GlUck," Close Up, April 1980, pp. 818-31 j
Vincent, Histoire de I'Art Cintmatographigue, p. 168; Arnhelm, Film alt Kun*t,
p. 168.
BRIEF REVEILLE 199
ready at any moment to retreat from its vanguard position into
noncommittal neutrality.
Even during 1928-1929 that short heyday of social criticism
immediately preceding the break-up of the stabilized period films
typical of the existing paralysis predominated. They sometimes
amounted to patterns of abysmal confusion. REFUGE, an Ufa film
of 1928 already mentioned in other contexts,
26
included shots of proletarian
quarters that seemed to be drawn from films by Pudovkin
or Eisenstein, but although imbued with an revolutionary spirit,
these shots in the Russian style served as background to an antirevolutionary
action that, of course, strictly contradicted their inherent
meaning. The merely decorative use made of them must be
traced to complete aloofness from content.
Not all contemporaries were insensitive to the persisting paralysis
of the German screen. Potamkin spoke of "the German director's
disregard of the subject-matter in films involving human experience."
2T
At the end of 1928, surveying the current German screen
output, I drew the following conclusions: **Lack of essence is the
main characteristic of the entire stabilized production. ... If the
emptiness of our films, their shrinking from any human action, does
not originate in a waning of substance, it can be explained only by
obduracy \VersiockiheiH\ that strange obduracy which from the
end of the inflation on has prevailed in Germany and determined
many public activities. It is as if during the years in which, along
with the streamlining of big business, a social regrouping has taken
place, German life has become heavily paralyzed. One is almost permitted
to speak of its disease. . . . Is there a prescription for this?
There is no prescription. Sincerity, the gift of observation, humanity
such things cannot be taught."
M
Given certain conditions, a state of collective inner paralysis
may occur anywhere. Prior to the outbreak of World War n, for
instance, France had fallen into an apathy of that kind. Wherever
the paralysis materializes, it gives rise to the same nondescript
neutrality. But the meaning of this neutrality depends on the nature
of the content paralyzed. It is not everywhere the same.
26 Cf. p. 151.
*7
Quoted from Potamkin, "The Rise and Fall of the German Mm," Cinema,
April 1930, p. 57. See also Potamkin, "Kino and Lichtspiel," Close Up, Nov. 1929.
p. 892.
28
Kracauer, "Der heutige Film und sein Publikum," Frankfurter Zeitvng,
Nov. 80 and Dec. 1, 1928.
THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
(1930-1933)
17, SONGS AND ILLUSIONS
WITH the New York stock market crash in the fall of 1929, the
stabilized period came to a definite close. All loans to Germany were
abruptly suspended. The ensuing shrinkage of German industry
resulted in a sharp increase of unemployment, already widespread.
Towards the end of the pre-Hitler period, as the last three years
of the Republic may be called, Berlin resounded with demonstrations,
and there rose to the surface sinister individuals reminiscent of
medieval figures. Weeks before the Christmas of 1932, peddlers and
beggars formed a compact lane on the sidewalks of Tauentzienstrasse.
They offered toys and cleaning rags for sale, played harmoniums
and drew strident tones from saw blades.
The economic crisis led to the collapse of the coalition between
Social Democrats and bourgeois parties in the Reich. Bruning,
appointed chancellor in March 1930, headed a purely bourgeois
cabinet, though in Prussia the Social Democrats continued to hold
office. Maintaining itself through reactionary emergency decrees
(Notverordnwngeri), the Bruning regime was highly unpopular with
the dejected masses, who resented it as the stronghold of capitalism
and corruption. Hitler stole a march on the communists by captivating
millions of unemployed, and at the same time successfully courted
big business. The Reichstag elections of September 1930 brought a
veritable landslide in favor of the Nazis. S. A. uniforms became
ubiquitous ; the noises of street assaults mingled with the dissonances
of the musical saws.
Yet in spite of general discontent with the "system," the majority
refused to vote for Hitler. Many of those who may have been
stirred by his promises nevertheless preferred to stick to the traditional
parties. In the Reichstag of 1930, the 150 Hitler and Hugenberg
deputies were confronted with 220 Marxists and 200 Briining
followers. Shortly before his ultimate triumph, Hitler suffered a
serious setback, and it is doubtful whether he would have won power
at all if the Social Democrats had not been struck with apathy.
1
1
For the whole period, see Rosenberg, Oetchichte dor DeuUchen Repvblik,
pp. 222-38; Schwarzschild, World in Tranct, esp. p. 819.
208
204 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
This strong ideological opposition to Hitler tends to suggest
that a handful of fanatics and gangsters succeeded in subjugating
the majority of the German people. Such a conclusion falls short
of the facts. Instead of proving immune to Nazi indoctrination, the
bulk of the Germans adjusted themselves to totalitarian rule with a
readiness that could not be merely the outcome of propaganda and
terror. Whereas Italian fascism was a sort of theatrical display,
Hitlerism assumed aspects of a religion.
It is a puzzling spectacle: on the one hand, the Germans were
reluctant to give Hitler the reins; on the other, they were quite
willing to accept him. Such contradictory attitudes frequently
spring from a conflict between the demands of reason and emotional
urges. Since the Germans opposed Hitler on the political plane,
their strange preparedness for the Nazi creed must have originated
in psychological dispositions stronger than any ideological scruples.
The films of the pre-Hitler period shed no small light on the psychological
situation.
Before discussing them, some preliminary remarks are indispensable.
First there was the transition from the silent to the talking
films. In 1929, after having waged a fierce patent war, the two
German companies in possession of all important sound-film patents
fused into the Tobis-Klangfilm syndicate, which immediately began
to fight competing American groups. A year later, representatives
of the belligerents met in Paris and there reached an agreement
fixing the distribution of international markets. During this transition
period, the trade suffered somewhat. Thousands of musicians
were fired ; many small movie theaters disappeared because they were
unable to finance conversion to sound. But the depression did not
prevent the German sound-film industry from satisfying its export
needs very effectively. It had the lead in Europe, and in other
markets was surpassed only by Hollywood. In Germany itself, new
Contingent regulations, along with the centralization of all pertinent
patents, stemmed the flood of American pictures. "The German
sound film was left to its own development."
2
When the first full-fledged talkies appeared among them AT-
a
Quoted from Kraszna-Krausz, "A Season's Retrospect," Close Up, Sept. 1931,
p. 227. See also Olhnsky, FUmvfirtschaft, pp. 63-66; Rotba, Film Till Now, p. 183;
Boehraer and Reitz, Film in Wirtechaft und Recht, pp. 7-8; Jason, "Zahlen sehen uns
an . . ," 6 Jakre Kinematograph, pp. 67, 69-70; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, II,
10-11, 98-99.
SONGS AND ILLUSIONS 205
LANTIC, made by E. A. Dupont in England, DIE NACHT GEHORT
TINS, and MELODIE DES HERZENS (MELODY OF THE HEART), a
Pommer production after the manner of his last silents noted critics
and film artists lived in fear that the introduction of sound might
endanger the highly developed arts of camera movement and edit-
ing.
3
The cameraman Karl Hoffmann lamented in 1929, the year of
the release of these films: "Poor camera! Alas! no more of your
graceful movements, no more of your happy-go-lucky shifts? Are
you again condemned to the same bondage and chains which you commenced
breaking ten years ago?"
4
Even though Hoffmann proved
to be too pessimistic after a while, the camera began again to
ramble about those early apprehensions were by no means unfounded.
Film-makers all over the world soon emphasized dialogue
to such an extent that the visual track tended to degenerate into a
mere accompaniment. To be sure, the new sphere of articulate reasoning
enriched the screen; but this gain hardly compensated for the
reduced significance of the visuals. While verbal statements more
often than not express intentions, camera shots are likely to penetrate
the unintentional. This is precisely what the mature silent
films had done. They came upon levels below the dimension of consciousness,
and since the spoken word had not yet assumed control,
unconventional or even subversive images were allowed to slip in.
But when dialogue took over, unfathomable imagery withered and
intentional meanings prevailed. Need it be said that despite such
changes the medium of the screen preserved its social significance?
Talkies are as symptomatic of mass attitudes as silent films, although
analysis of these attitudes is hampered rather than facilitated by the
addition of spoken words.
On the whole, the Germans indulged less than the Americans in
pure dialogue films. Both Pabst and Lang developed ingenious devices
to perpetuate the leading role of the visuals.
5
This emphasis on
pictorial values persisted throughout the Nazi era, as can best be
exemplified by the striking contrast between German and American
war newsreels: while the Nazis inserted long pictorial sequences
3
Kalbus, ibid., pp. 11-13, 88; synopsis of MELODY OF THE HEAB.T in Illustrierter
Film-Kwrier.
*
Hoffman, "Camera Problems," Close Up, July 1929, p. 81.
5 The late Valerio Jahier, a distinguished French film writer, remarks of the
German cinema: "This cinema has preserved its characteristics since the invention of
sound, as may be seen in the films of Pabst and Fritz Lang, whether produced in Germany
or abroad." Of. Jahier, "42 ans de Cinema,'
1
Le R6U \ntellectuel du Cin6ma,
p. 71.
206 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
without any verbal comment, the Americans degraded the shots exhibited
to scattered illustrations of some commentator's exuberant
eloquence.
And finally, before examining the films themselves, the tightening
of the censorship under Bruning must be mentioned. Pretending
to strict neutrality, the Bnining administration more often than not
yielded to Nazi claims and reactionary pressure groups. INS DRITTE
REICH (1931), an electoral campaign film of the left, was banned
for stigmatizing German business interests, the German judiciary
and the National Socialist Party. The notorious Nazi demonstrations
against Aix QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT in December 1930
induced the censors, who had originally admitted this film, to suspend
its further screening under the rather tenuous pretext that it would
endanger German prestige abroad. Thereupon leftist throngs disrupted
the performances of the Fridericus film DAS FLOTENKONZERT
VON SANSSOUCI ; but this time the censors remained unmoved.6
A multitude of German films gave no evidence of having been
affected at all by the outbreak of the economic crisis. Along with the
eternal mystery thrillers, Berlin local melodramas and military
farces, several film types cultivated during the years of stabilization
continued to flourish.
7
Among them were adaptations of French
boulevard comedies as void of genuine life as their predecessors, and
many Kvlturfilme popularizing exotic countries and scientific mat-
ters.
8
Following the example of such anemic documentaries as Bise
Cf. Olimsky, FflmwirUchaft, p. 80; Boehmer and Reitz, Film in Wirtschaft und
Recht, pp. 48, 52-54; Kraszna-Krausz, "A Letter on Censorship," Close Up, Feb.
1929, pp. 56-62,- Altman, "La Censure contre le Cinema," La Revue du Cinema,
Feb. 1, 1981, pp. 89-4,0. Much pertinent material in Petzet, Verbotene Fttme.
7 For mystery thrillers, see Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, II, 55-56, 85-86; Petzet,
Verbotene FUme, pp. 14-16, 21-22; "Geheimdienst," Filmwelt, June 21, 1981; Ilfastrierter
Film-Kurier (synopses of PANIK IN CHICAGO, 1931, and SCHUSS IM MOROEKGRAUES-,
1982). DAS EKEL (1981) with Max Adalbert, the brilliant Berlin comedian,
may be mentioned as an instance of local melodrama; synopsis in Illvstrierter FilmJCttrter.
Kalbus, ibid.f pp. 91-92, lists a number of military farces. Particularly successful
was DREI TAGE MITIELARREST (THREB DATS IN THE GUARDHOUSE, 1980) ; cf.
Kraszna-Krausz, "A Season's Retrospect," Close Up, Sept. 1981, p. 227, and Kalbus,
ibid., p. 92.
8
Film comedies in French boulevard style were, for instance, NEB WXEDEB Lrera,
1981 (Kalbus, t&tU, p. 46, and Kracauer, "Courrier de Berlin," LA REVUE DU CINEMA,
Oct. 1, 1981, pp. 54-55) ; KOPPUBER INS GTLUCK, 1931 (synopsis in Illustrierter Film&rter);
DER FRECHDACHS, 1982 (synopsis in Illustrierter Ftimr-Kurier) . For Kulturfilme
of the time, see Ufa, Kultur-Filme, 1929-1988; Film Society Programmes,
April 12, 1981, Jan. 81 and May 8, 1982; Weiss, "Achtung Australien !
Achtung Asien 1"
Close Up, June 1981, p. 149; Bryher, "Notes on some Films," ibid., June, 1982, pp.
198-99; Weiss, "Das keimende Leben," ibid., Sept. 1982, pp. 207-8.
SONGS AND ILLUSIONS 207
MARCK and WORLD WAR, Oswalďs much-censored "1914" (1931)
treated the causes of World War I with completely sham objec-
tivity.
9
The tradition of diverting resentments which might threaten
the existing regime to politically neutral issues was also kept alive.
Outlets were easily found in cases of inhuman judicial procedures.
One product of that kind was the Ufa film VOBUNTERSUCHTTNG
(1931), in which Robert Siodmak cleverly dramatized the insufficiency
of circumstantial evidence.10
The operetta profited more than any other escapist genre from
the possibilities offered by sound. Now that music could be included,
scores of musicals overflowing with songs cropped up. As early as
1930, Ufa helped to start the vogue by releasing DEE DREI VON DER
TANKSTELLE (THE THREE OF THE FILLING STATION), a new type
of operetta, which, it is true, failed to convince the New York public,
but was a hit in most European countries. Staged by the Viennese
Wilhelm Thiele under the supervision of Pommer, this film was a
playful daydream woven of the materials of everyday life [Dlus. 41] .
Three careless young friends suddenly gone bankrupt buy a filling
station with the proceeds of their car ; there they devote themselves
to flirting with a pretty girl who time and again turns up in her
roadster a dalliance which after some emotional confusion logically
ends with one of the three rivals winning out. The refreshing idea
of shifting the operetta paradise from its traditional locales to the
open road was supported by the eccentric use made of music. Full
of whims, the score constantly interfered with the half-rational plot,
stirring characters and even objects to behave in a frolicsome manner.
An unmotivated waltz invited workers clearing out the friends'
unpaid-for furniture to transform themselves into dancers, and
whenever the amorous roadster approached, its horn would emit a
few bars which threaded the fil with the stubbornness of a genuine
leitmotiv.
11
Most operettas followed the old recipes ; from ZWEI HERZEN IM
DREIVTERTELTAKT (Two HEARTS IN WALTZ TIME, 1930) to Ludwig
Berger's charming WALZERKREEG (WAR OF THE WALTZES,
1933), they continued to sell the public standardized dreams of an
9 Cf. Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, II, 79-80.
10
Bryher, "Berlin, April 1931," Close Up, June 1981, pp. 180-81; Araheim, Film
als Kunstj pp. 288-89. The film TATER GESUCHT (1981) was in a similar vein; cf. "Das
Netz der Indizien," Filmtcelt, March 22, 1981.
11
Vincent, Histoire de I'Art Cintmatographique, p. 164; Bardeche and Brasillach,
History of Motion Pictures, p. 846; Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, II, 25-26.
208 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
idyllic Vienna.12
This lucrative speculation in romantic nostalgia
reached its climax with Eric Charrelľs BER KONGBESS TANZT (CONGRESS
DANCES, 1931) ,
a Pommer production which set the flirtations
of a sweet Viennese girl against the stately background of the Viennese
Congress of 1814.13
Spectacular mass displays alternated with
intimate tete-k-tetes involving the Tsar in person, and Metternich's
diplomatic intrigues added a pleasing touch of high politics. Elaborate
rather than light-winged, this superoperetta with its agreeable
melodies and intelligent structural twists amounted to a compendium
of all imaginable operetta motifs* Some of them set a fashion.
Particularly frequent were imitations of that sequence of CONGRESS
DANCES in which Lilian Harvey on her drive through the countryside
passes various kinds of people who all take up the song she sings
from her carriage.
The operetta was not the only film species which assigned a
major role to music. No sooner did sound come true than the filmmakers
hurried to capitalize on the popularity of famous singers.
And even though the results could not have been worse, the public
surrendered wholeheartedly. Elms canning Tauber*s glamorous
voice were the vogue, and when Kiepura performed in a fishing boat
with the panorama of Naples behind him, everybody was forcibly
overwhelmed by such a blend of beauties.
14
Unlike the KuLtwrf&me and operettas, cross-section films changed
their character during the pre-Hitler years. They became vehicles
of an over-all optimism alien to their previous moods. This new
optimism vigorously asserted itself in Ruttmann's early sound experiment,
DIE MELODEE DER WELT (WoitLi> MBLODT, 1930), a
cross-section film he made from materials put at his disposal by the
Hamburg-Amerika Line. Cinematically, the film was an interesting
piece of pioneering, for its rhythmic Montage" included not only
variegated visual impressions but all kinds of sounds and musical
strains. Thematically, this "montage" encompassed nothing less than
the sum total of human activities and achievements : architectural
ia For Two HEAKES isr WAMZ TIME, see Baldzs, Der Geist d*9 'Films, p, ITS; for
WAS. OF THE WALTZES, Kalbus, Deutsche Ftlmkunst, II, 88. Other operetta films of the
time were LJEBESWALSEB, 1930 (cf. Kalbus, ibid., p. 25, and Arnheim, Film al JZvn&t,
pp. 295-96) j WALZEttPARADiEs, 1581 (synopsis in lllwttrierter FilmrEurter) ; etc. See
also Kalbus, ibid., p. 26 if.
13
Kalbus, ibid., pp. 35-36.
14
Kalbus, ibid., pp. 29-80, 82; Weiss, "The First Opera-Film," Close Up, Dec.
1982, pp. 24&-45.
SONGS AND ILLUSIONS 209
structures, typical modes of love, means of transportation, religious
cults, the armies of the world, aspects of warfare, sports, entertainments
and so on. According to Ruttmann's own comment on his film,
the religious section "culminates in sumptuous mass demonstrations
paying homage to diverse divinities. But the variety of personages
worshiped by these devotees, who are addressing themselves now to
Buddha, now to Jesus or Confucius, is a potential source of conflict,
and as such leads to the subsequent part, 'The Army.
5
A martial
bugle interrupts the sacred music, and soldiers of the whole world
begin to file by," etc.
15
Besides naively emphasizing the banality of thought in WORUD
MELODY, this comment reveals the film's underlying principles.
While BERLIN, neutral as it was, still dwelt upon the harshness of
mechanized human relations, WORLD MELODY manifests a neutrality
that is completely indiscriminating and implies wholesale acceptance
of the universe. It is two different things to embrace the
world in a spirit aware of the miracle of simple Leaves of Grass,
and to embrace a world in which it does not matter whether "Jesus
or Confucius" is adored, provided the crowds of the faithful are
sumptuous. A French critic said of WORLD MELODY: "In my
opinion, it would have been more valuable to deal only with one or
another of the subjects presented."
16
This remark points at the basic
weakness of Ruttmann's cosmic hymn. His "world melody" is void
of content, because his concern with the whole of the world leads him
to disregard the specific content of each of the assembled melodies.
DAS LIED VOM LEBEN (SONG OF LIFE, 1931), which was released
only after embittered fights with the board of censors, followed a
similar pattern. It was a typical cross-section film. Made by the
Russian theater director Alexis Granovsky, who had moved from
Moscow to Berlin, this Tobis production grew out of a daring documentary
of a Caesarian operation. The film consists of loosely connected
episodes which, with the aid of Walter Mehring's pleasing
songs, elaborate upon such generalities as love, marriage and birth.
In the opening sequence, a young girl attends a dinner in honor of
18
Quoted from Ruttmann, "La Symphonic du Monde," La Revue du Cintma,
March 1, 1930, p. 44. Cf. Vincent, Histoire de I'Art Cintmatographique, p. 169;
JTahier, "42 Ans de Cin&na," Le R6le intellectuel du Om6ma, p. 65.
16
Quoted from Chevalley, "Mickey VirtuoseLa M&odie du Monde," Close Up,
Jan. 1080, p. 72. Film Society Programme, Dec. 14, 1930, expresses a more positive
opinion.
210 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
her engagement to an elderly roue*, who wants to introduce her to his
friends. Veritable fireworks of cinematic devices transform the betrothal
party into a macabre gathering designed to symbolize the
depraved generation of yesterday. In her dread of this company the
girl runs away. She makes an attempt to drown herself in the sea,
and then falls in love with her rescuer, a young marine engineer.
The passage picturing her rekindled desire for life and the couple's
honeymoon on a southern coast is an ambitious piece of film poetry.
Now the Caesarian operation takes place. This remarkable episode
emphasizes the contrast between the surgeons' white coats and their
black rubber gloves a contrast which effectively intimates that the
girl hovers between life and death. A son is born, and his arrival gives
rise to scenes idealizing the mother-child relationship. At the very
end, the grown-up boy is seen going away to the sea from which his
father came and to which his mother tried to escape.
The emphasis this film puts on images of the sea is symptomatic
of an attitude which finds its verbal expression in the following
scene: after having rescued the girl, the marine engineer takes her
up in a crane, and as they float through the sky, "the man and the
girl and a third person, who might be a doctor or a philosopher or
a prophet, look down upon life while a voice sings of the glory of
work and the doctor proclaims the gospel of vitality: the will to
live, to produce, to progress"
1T
[Illus. 42] .
Symbolic scenes of this
kind recur. An aftermath of popular postwar thought, the film does
not differentiate between various forms of life, but extols life in
every form. This accounts for the omnipresence of the sea : it is as
grandiose and inarticulate as the film's underlying conception of life.
SONG OF LIFE parallels WORLD MELODY in the vagueness of its
enthusiasm.18
"Quoted from Hamilton, "Das Lied vom Leben," National Board of Review
Magazine, Nov. 1931, p. 8. See also synopsis in Illustrierter Ftlm-Kurter; Bryher,
"Berlin, April 1931," Close Up, June 1931, p. 132 j Araheim, Film ah Kunst, pp. 91,
254-56, 288, 290, 298. For Granovsky's DIE KOFFER DBS HEBRN O. F. (THE LTTOOAGE OP
ME. 0. F., 1931), see Kraszna-Krausz, "Four Films from Germany," Close Up, March,
1982, p. 45.
18 That this was the same vague enthusiasm that manifested Itself in the abstract
films of the time seems the more probable as Ruttmann, the creator of WOELD MELODY,
went on to cultivate the field of objectless art His WEEK END (1930) was nothing
but a short sound track recording the manifold noises of a working day and a Sunday
in the countryside; his IN DEE NACHT (1981) translated Schumann's music of that
title into terms of abstract visual configurations. Oskar Fischinger, a disciple of
Ruttmann, specialized in similar illustrations of musical scores and in addition made
advertising films from abstract patterns. It may also be mentioned that during those
years Hans Richter maintained his standing as a vanguard artist and Lotte Reiniger
SONGS AND ILLUSIONS 211
The turn of cross-section films from New Objectivity to hymnic
optimism indicates an important change. During the years of stabilization
the reluctant neutrality of these films had testified to inner
discontent with the well-established "system" ; one is therefore safe
in assuming that their overflowing cheerfulness during the years of
crisis reflected a reverse attitude: the desire to believe that all was
well. It was as if, now that economic depression threatened to upset
the existing order of things, people were possessed by the fear of a
catastrophe and in consequence cherished all kinds of illusions about
the survival of their world.
Scores of films mostly comedies interspersed with songs fed
such hopes. Animated by the very optimism which enlivened WORLD
MELODY and SONG OF LIFE, they maintained neutrality in the interest
of the status quo. Their surprising preponderance was an
infallible sign of widespread despair.
Many of these products were calculated to put the unemployed
at ease. Lupu Pick's GASSENHATJER (1931), for instance, featured a
band of jobless musicians who successfully defy misery by playing
in somber backyards a street song which eventually becomes popular.
The film with its familiar Zille figures recalled Rene* Glair's Sous
LES TOITS DE PARIS as well as Balazs' ADVENTURES OF A TEN-MARK
NOTE. It was, incidentally, Pick's first and last talkie; he died shortly
after its completion.
19
Another film gaily invited the hard-pressed
unemployed to place confidence in a mirage of resettlement schemes,
tent colonies and the like.
20
The title of the film, DEE DREI VON DER
went on issuing her familiar type of silhouette films. For Ruttmann films of the
period, see Hamson, "Une Nouvelle OEuvre de Ruttmann," La Revue du Cinema,
July 1, 1980, pp. 70-71; Film Society Programme, Dec. 6, 1981; Film Index, p. 642a;
Kracauer, "Courrier de Berlin," La Revue du Gvnema, Aug. 1, 1931, pp. 64-65. For
Fischinger films, see "Weinberg, "Complete List of Films by Oskar Fischinger, typewritten
note, Museum of Modern Art Library, clipping files; Vincent, Histoire de
VArt Cin4matoffraphique, p. 160; Film Society Programme, Jan. 10, 1982. Richter's
first sound film was a burlesque of a fair, ALLES DBEHT SICK, ALLES BEWEGT SIGH
(EvEBYTHiNG REVOLVES, 1929). Wcinberg, An Index to . . . Hans Richter, pp. 9-15,
takes stock of Richter's creative work. For Lotte Reiniger, see Bryher, "Notes on
Some Films," Gl&se Up, Sept. 1982, p. 198; Film Society Programmes, Oct. 19 and
Dec. 14, 1980, March 8, 1981, Oct. 80, 1982. The Film Society, London, also showed,
and briefly commented on, Moholy-Nagy's abstract film SCHWABTZ WEISS GRATJ,
1982 (Film Society Programme, Nov. 20, 1932). Mr. Richter's unpublished manuscript
"Avantgarde ..." is rich in pertinent information.
Arnheim, Film als Kvmst, pp. 208, 249; "Gassenhauer," Filmwelt, Aprfl 5, 1981.
A sort of Zille film was also MIETEB. SCHXTLZE GEGEN AT.T.K (1982). Kalbus, Deutsche
Filmkunst, II, 88-89, emphasizes the optimism underlying this film.
ao Cf. Kracauer,
"
'Kuhle Wampe' verbotenl" Frankfurter Zettung, April 5, 1982.
212 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
STEMPELSTELLE (ly*KJ), wets an outright plagiarism of Thiele's
earlier DIE DREI VON DEB TANKSTELLE.
A favored expedient consisted in pretending that the underprivileged
themselves were fully satisfied with their lot. In the Ufa
comedy EIN BLONBER TRAUM (BLOND DREAM, 1932), poverty
forces two window washers and a girl acting as a living projectile
in a tent show to seek shelter in old railway cars on a meadow. Do
they complain of their predicament? The song expressing the feelings
of these enviable creatures includes the following words : "We
are paying rent no longer, we have made our home in the heart of
nature, and even if our nest were smaller, it really would not
matter."
21
Since most people prefer bigger nests, a series of films devoted
themselves to success stories. An interesting contribution was made
by Ufa with MENSCH OHNE NAMEBT (THE MAN WITHOUT A
NAME, 1932 ).
22
In it, Werner Krauss portrays a German industrialist
who contracts amnesia while a prisoner of war in Russia.
Years after the war, he regains his memory, returns to Berlin, and
there learns that the authorities have proclaimed him dead. The
scene in which a clerk climbs a giant ladder between rows of file cases
and from its top shouts down to him that he no longer exists impressively
illustrates the nightmarish workings of bureaucracy
[Illus. 43]. To complete the ex-industrialisťs misfortune, both his
wife and his friend fail to recognize him. His downfall unintentionally
mirrors that of the middle class during these years of crisis.
The film now develops in a direction strangely reminiscent of the
Zille film SLUMS OF BERLIN.23
The man, who of course plans to
commit the customary suicide, is taken care of by an obscure sales
agent and a jobless stenographer, and with their help re-embarks
upon a promising career. He assumes a new name after having been
refused the right to his old one, successfully promotes an invention
of his, and in his upward flight differs from the engineer in SLUMS
OF BERLIN only in that he marries the poor stenographer instead
of an upper middle-class girl. Times were bad for stenographers,
and something had to be done in their favor.
Times were indeed so bad that even qualified specialists could
not count on re-employment once they had been dismissed. Most
ai
Synopsis -with song texts in Illustrterter FilmrKurier. Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkwnst,
II, 46.
flfl
Synopsis in lllustrierter Fttm-Evrter. Kalbus, ibid* p. 86.
23
Cf.p. 148 f.
SONGS AND ILLUSIONS 213
success films therefore emphasized luck rather than capability as the
true source of brilliant careers. Characteristically, such film titles
as DAS GELD LIEG-T AUF DER STRASSE (MONEY LIES ON THE STREET) ,
MORGEN GEHŤS TINS GUT (TOMORROW WE'LL BE FINE), and
Es WIRD SCHON WEEDER BESSER (THINGS WlLL BE BETTER AGAIN)
were then quite common. And no matter how improbable the films
themselves proved to be, the audience readily swallowed them provided
that they lived up to their titles. Luck as the vehicle of success :
the Germans must have been on the verge of hopelessness to accept
a notion so utterly alien to their traditions.
Lesser employees and lower middle-class people were the declared
favorites of Fortuna in all these films. Representative of the whole
trend, which reached its artistic climax with Erich Engeľs witty
comedies, was DIE PRIVATSEKRETARIN (THE PRIVATE SECRETARY,
1931), an easy-going film whose tremendous popularity established
Wilhelm Thiele's mastership of attractive concoctions. A sprightly
small-town girl (Renate Miiller) manages to get a job in a Berlin
bank, and while working overtime one evening is approached by her
big boss, whom she imagines to be just another office worker. They
go out for the evening together, and the predictable result is her
promotion to the position of banker's wife.
24
In the Ufa film DIE GRAFIN VON MONTE CHRISTO (COTTNTESS OF
MONTE CRISTO, 1932), this sort of daydreaming developed into a
veritable fairy tale drawn from everyday life. Brigitte Helm as a
film extra is cast in the role of a lady traveling in a fashionable car.
Night-shooting begins ; but instead of pulling up by the entrance of
the studio-built hotel front, Helm and her girl friend drive ahead
until they land in a real de luxe hotel, where the pseudo-lady is
received as a guest of distinction because of the name "Countess of
Monte Cristo" on her empty trunks. An amusing intrigue involving
an unpleasant hotel thief and a noble gentleman crook enables
her for a short time to keep up appearances and lead the life she
has craved a life considerably enriched by the gentleman crook's
infatuation with her. One fine day, the police enter the scene; they
arrest the loving crook and would doubtless have put an end to the
false countess' shenanigans if it were not for Ufa's desire to kindle
hopes in the hearts of poor film extras. Helm's escapade becomes a
front-page story, and with their flair for publicity the studio execu-
34
Kalbus, Deutsche FUmfam*t, II, 64. For a similar film, DOLLY MACOT
KABBIERE (DOLLY'S CAEEEE, 1980), see Weiss, **A Starring Vehicle," Close Up, Nov.
1980, pp. 884-35.
214 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
tives not only refrain from persecuting her, but have her sign an
advantageous contract; proving conclusively what all these screen
opiates tended to demonstrate: that everyday life itself is a fairy
tale.
But how to endear oneself to a benevolent fairy? Here Hans
Albers came in. This film actor, who once had portrayed adulterers
and well-dressed rogues, suddenly turned into Germany's No. 1
screen favorite, the incarnation of Prince Charming. Pommer starred
him in four Ufa films, and except for the last one, F. P. 1 ANTWORTET
NIGHT (F. P. 1 DOES NOT ANSWER, 1932), in which sentimental
resignation prevailed, Albers invariably was a glorious victor
whether he played the crazy captain of an operetta cruiser in BOMBEN
AOT MONTE CARLO (MONTE CARLO MADNESS, 1931), an
amorous clown in QUICK (1932), or a simple telegraphist in DER
SIEGER (THE VICTOR, 1932) ,
25
He quivered with radiant vitality,
was extremely aggressive and like a born buccaneer seized any opportunity
within his reach. But whatever his undertaking, whether
attacking enemies or courting girls, it all was done in an unpremeditated
way as if he were driven by changing moods and circumstances
rather than by the steadfast will to realize a project. In
fact, he was the reverse of a schemer. And since he did not even care
too much about luck, Fortuna on her part pursued him with the
persistence of a loving woman and lent him a helping hand whenever
he stumbled into one of the many pitfalls prepared for him. Of
course, he took the hand she offered and then rushed on, as heedless
as ever. Each Albers film filled the houses in proletarian quarters
as well as on Kurfurstendamm. This human dynamo with the heart
of gold embodied on the screen what everyone wished to be in life
[Ulus. 44s],
as For flJms featuring Albers, see Kalbus, Deutsohe Fitoitomst, II, 88, 68, 59. Cf.
synopses in Ittvstrierter F&m-Kurier; program to MONTE CABK> MADNESS.
18. MURDERER AMONG US
DESPITE all efforts to maintain neutrality for the sake of the status
quo, the faade of New Objectivity began to crumble after 1930.
This is corroborated by the disappearance of those street and youth
films which during the stabilized period had served the paralyzed
authoritarian dispositions as a dreamlike outlet. Such screen dreams
were no longer needed, for now that the paralysis had subsided,
all kinds of leanings, authoritarian or otherwise, were at liberty to
manifest themselves. As in the postwar period, the German screen
became a battleground of conflicting inner tendencies.
In 1930, Potamkin wrote: "There are indications in Germany
that the serious-minded will force the German cinema out of its
lethargy and studio-impasse to a treatment of important subjectmatter.
Germany is approaching a political crisis, and with it an
intellectual and aesthetic crisis. . . .**
*
He who undergoes a crisis
is bound to weigh all pros and cons before determining his line of
conduct. This was precisely what the Germans did judging by two
important films, THE BLUE ANGEI/ and M, which can be considered
statements on the psychological situation of the time. Both pictures
penetrated depths of the collective soul which in such films as SONG
or LIFE and PRIVATE SECRETARY were completely ignored. It is true
that during the years of stabilization Pabst and Ruttmann, too, had
attempted to uncover subterranean layers of contemporary reality.
But while they had eluded the significance of their films by means
of melodrama or sustained detachment, THE BLUE ANGEL as well
as M breathed a strong sense of responsibility for all that was exposed
in them. They were products of a mind freed from that
"lethargy" to which Potamkin alludes.
DER BLAUE ENGEL (THE BLUE ANGEL, 1930) was an Ufa film
based upon Heinrich Mann's prewar novel Professor Unratfi, which
along with other novels by the same author stigmatized the peculiar
vices of German bourgeois society. Any nation depends upon critical
1
Potamkin, "The Rise and Fall of the German Filmy" Cinema, April 1980, p. 59.
215
216 THK PRE-HITLER PERIOD
introspection as a means of self-preservation, and it is the lasting
merit of Heinrich Mann that he tried to develop a German variety
of thai; social-minded literature which flourished in England and
France for many decades. Had a strange acrimony not narrowed his
views, he might have exerted more influence than he actually
did.
Emil Jannings enacts the film's main character, a bearded highschool
professor in a small seaport town. This middle-aged bachelor
violently antagonizes his pupils, who are quick to sense the many
inhibitions behind his petty-tyrannical manner [Illus. 45], When
he learns that the boys frequent the dressing room of Lola Lola,
star of a little company of artists performing in the tavern The
Blue Angel, he decides to settle accounts with that vicious siren.
Driven by moral indignation and ill-concealed sex jealousy, the foolish
professor ventures into her den ; but instead of putting an end
to the juvenile excesses, he himself succumbs to the charms of Lola
Lola, alias Marlene Dietrich so much so that he shares her bedroom
and then proposes to her. The consequence is that he has to
leave the school. What does it matter? During his wedding party,
having fallen into a state of euphoria, he succeeds in impressing the
artists with a wonderful imitation of cockcrowing. But this high
point of his career as a free man is also the beginning of his downfall.
While the troop travels from town to town, Lola Lola not only
makes him drudge for her, but agrees to the manager's suggestion
that her husband produce his funny cockcrowing on the stage. Has
humiliation reaches its climax when the artists return to The Blue
Angel in the hope of stirring up a sensation with the ex-professor.
Their hope proves justified: the whole town rushes in, eager to
listen to their fellow-citizen's cock-a-doodle-doo. Asked to perform,
he launches into a terrific crowing, walks off the stage and, incessantly
roaring, begins to strangle Lola Lola. The personnel overpower
the raging madman and eventually leave him to himself. Then
he seems to awaken from the nightmare of his recent existence. Like
a mortally wounded animal seeking shelter in its lair, he sneaks back
to the old school, enters his classroom, and there passes away.
Pommer, bent on promoting artistic German talkies, engaged
Joseph von Stemberg to direct the film. A native of Austria, this
brilliant Hollywood director had proved in UNDERWORLD and THE
LAST COMMAND that he was master of the art of rendering milieus
so that they amplified imperceptible emotions. In THE BLUE ANGEL,
MURDERER AMONG US 217
faraway foghorns sound from the harhor as Jannings walks through
nocturnal streets to the tavern. When, on the point of leaving school
for good, he sits, lonely, at his desk, a traveling shot encompasses
the empty classroom with the tender slowness of a last embrace. This
shot re-emerges at the film's very end, and now serves as an obituary
impressively summarizing the story of the dead man whose head has
sunk on the desk. The narrow interiors of The Blue Angel are
endowed with a power of expression rarely even aspired to during
the stabilized period. There is a promiscuous mingling of architectural
fragments, characters and nondescript objects. Lola Lola sings
her famous song on a miniature stage so overstuffed with props that
she herself seems part of the decor. Jannings fights his way to the
dressing room through a maze of fishing nets, and somewhat later
appears in the company of a wooden caryatid, which supports the
tiny gallery from which he glares at his idol. As in Carl Mayer's
postwar films, the persistent interference of mute objects reveals
the whole milieu as a scene of loosened instincts. Perfect conductors,
these objects transmit Jannings' delayed passion as well as the waves
of sexual excitement emanating from Lola Lola.
The film's international success soon after its release, a Paris
night-club opened under the name "The Blue Angel" can be traced
to two major reasons, the first of which was decidedly Marlene
Dietrich. Her Lola Lola was a new incarnation of sex. This petty
bourgeois Berlin tart, with her provocative legs and easy manners,
showed an impassivity which incited one to grope for the
secret behind her callous egoism and cool insolence [Illus. 46] . That
such a secret existed was also intimated by her veiled voice which,
when she sang about her interest in love-making and nothing else,
vibrated with nostalgic reminiscences and smoldering hopes. Of
course, the impassivity never subsided, and perhaps there was no
secret at all. The other reason for the film's success was its outright
sadism. The masses are irresistibly attracted by the spectacle of torture
and humiliation, and Sternberg deepened this sadistic tendency
by making Lola Lola destroy not only Jannings himself but his entire
environment. A running motif in the film is the old church-clock
which chimes a popular German tune devoted to the praise of loyalty
and honesty (Ub* immer Treu iwd RedlichJceit . .
.) a tune
expressive of Jannings' inherited beliefs. In the concluding passage,
immediately after Lola Lola's song has faded away, this tune is
heard for the last time as the camera shows the dead Jannings. Lola
218 THE PBE-HITLER PERIOD
Lola lias killed him, and in addition her sang has defeated the
chimes.3
Besides being a sex story or a study in sadism, Sternberg's film
vigorously resumes postwar traditions, marking the definite end of
the paralysis, THE BLUE ANGEL can be considered a variation on
Karl Grime's THE STREET. Like the philistine from the plush parlor,
Jannings' professor is representative of the middle class ; like the
philistine, he rebels against the conventions by exchanging school
for The Blue Angel, counterpart of the street; and exactly like
the philistine, this would-be rebel again submits not, it is true, to
the old middle-class standards, but to powers far worse than those
from which he escaped. It is significant that he increasingly appears
to be the victim of the manager rather than Lola Lola's personal
slave. Love has gone, indiscriminate surrender remains. The philistine
in THE STREET, the caf4-owner in NEW YEAR'S EVE, the hotel
porter in THE LAST LAUGH and the professor in Sternberg's film
all seem shaped after one and the same model. This archetypal character,
instead of becoming adult, engages in a process of retrogression
effected with ostentatious self-pity. THE BLUE ANGEL poses
anew the problem of German immaturity and moreover elaborates
its consequences as manifested in the conduct of the boys and artists,
who like the professor are middle-class offspring. Their sadistic
cruelty results from the very immaturity which forces their victim
into submission. It is as if the film implied a warning, for these
screen figures anticipate what will happen in real life a few years
later. The boys are born Hitler youths, and the cockcrowing device
is a modest contribution to a group of similar, if more ingenious,
contrivances much used in Nazi concentration camps.
Two characters stand off from these events: the clown of the
artists' company, a mute figure constantly observing his temporary
colleague, and the school beadle who is present at the professor's
death and somehow recalls the night-watchman in THE LAST LAUGH.
He does not talk either. These two witness, but do not participate.
Whatever they may feel, they refrain from interference. Their silent
resignation foreshadows the passivity of many people under totalitarian
rule.
Fritz Lang told me that in 1930, before M went into production,
a short notice appeared in the press, announcing the tentative title
*Cf. Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, II, 16,' Vincent, Htetoire de I'Art OinSmatographigue,
p. 168.
MURDERER AMONG US 219
of his new film, Morder wvter wns {Murderer Among Us). Soon
he received numerous threatening letters and, still worse, was bluntly
refused permission to use the Staaken studio for his film. "But why
this incomprehensible conspiracy against a film about the Dusseldorf
child-murderer Kiirten?" he asked the studio manager in despair.
66
Achy I see," the manager said. He beamed with relief and immediately
surrendered the keys of Staaken. Lang, too, understood;
while arguing with the man, he had seized his lapel and caught a
glimpse of the Nazi insignia on its reverse. "Murderer among us" :
the Party feared to be compromised. On that day, Lang added, he
came of age politically.
M opens with the case of Elsie, a schoolgirl who disappears and
after a while is found slain in the woods. Since her murder is preceded
and followed by similar crimes, the city lives through a veritable
nightmare. The police work feverishly to track down the childmurderer,
but succeed only in disturbing the underworld. The city's
leading criminals therefore decide to ferret out the monster themselves.
For once, their interests coincide with those of the law. Here
Thea von Harbou borrows a motif from Brechťs Dreigroschen-
oper
3
: the gang of criminals enlists the help of a beggars' union, converting
its membership into a network of unobtrusive scouts. Even
though the police meanwhile identify the murderer as a former inmate
of a lunatic asylum, the criminals with the aid of a blind beggar steal
a march on the detectives. At night, they break into the office building
in which the fugitive has taken refuge, pull him out of a lumber
room beneath the roof, and then drag him to a deserted factory,
where they improvise a cc
kangaroo court," which eventually pronounces
his death sentence. The police appear in time to hand him
over to the authorities.
Released in 1931, this Nero production found enthusiastic response
everywhere. It was not only Lang's first talkie, but his first
important film after the pretentious duds he had made during the
stabilized period. M again reaches the level of his earlier films,
DESTINY and NIBELTJNGEN, and moreover surpasses them in virtuosity.
To increase the film's documentary value, pictorial reports on
current police procedures are inserted in such a skillful way that
they appear to be part of the action. Ingenious cutting interweaves
the milieus of the police and the underworld: while the gang leaders
discuss their plans, police experts, too, sit in conference, and these
3 Cf. p. 236.
220 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
two meetings are paralleled by constant shifts of scene which hinge
on subtle association. The comic touch inherent in the cooperation
between the lawless and the law materializes on various occasions.
Witnesses refuse to agree upon the simplest facts ; innocent citizens
indict each other fiercely. Set against these gay interludes, the episodes
concentrating upon the murders seem even more horrifying.
Lang's imaginative use of sound to intensify dread and terror
is unparalleled in the history of the talkies. Elsie's mother, after
having waited for hours, steps out of her flat and desperately shouts
the chilďs name. While her "Elsie 1" sounds, the following pictures
pass across the screen: the empty stairwell [Ulus. 47] ; the empty
attic; Elsie's unused plate on the kitchen table; a remote patch of
grass with her ball lying on it; a balloon catching in telegraph wires
the very balloon which the murderer had bought from the blind
beggar to win her confidence. Like a pedal point, the cry "Elsie!"
underlies these otherwise unconnected shots, fusing them into a sinister
narrative. Whenever the murderer is possessed by the lust for
killing, he whistles a few bars of a melody by Grieg. His whistling
threads the film, an ominous foreboding of his appearance. A little
girl is seen walking along : as she stops in front of a shop window,
the weird Grieg melody approaches her, and suddenly the bright
.afternoon street seems clouded by threatening shadows. Later on, the
whistling reaches the ears of the blind beggar for a second time and
thus brings about the murderer's own doom. Another fatal sound is
produced by his vain effort to remove, with his jackknife, the lock
of the door which has slammed behind him after his flight into the
lumber room. When the criminals pass along the top floor of the
office building, this jarring noise reminiscent of the prolonged gnawing
of a rat, betrays his presence.
4
The film's true center is the murderer himself. Peter Lorre portrays
him incomparably as a somewhat infantile petty bourgeois who
cats apples on the street and could not possibly be suspected of
killing a fly. His landlady, when questioned by the police, describes
this tenant of hers as a quiet and proper person. He is fat and looks
effeminate rather than resolute. A brilliant pictorial device serves
to characterize his morbid propensities. On three different occasions,
scores of inanimate objects, much more obtrusive than in THE BLUE
ANGEL, surround the murderer; they seem on the point of engulfing
4
Araheim, Film als Kunst, pp. 280, 252, 800, comments on several devices in M.
Cf. Hamilton, "M," National Board of Review Magazine, March 1988, pp. 8-11.
MURDERER AMONG US 221
him. Standing before a cutlery shop, he is
photographed in such a
way that his face appears within a rhomboid reflection of sparkling
knives [Illus. 48]. Sitting on a cafe terrace behind an ivy-covered
trellis, with only his cheeks gleaming through the foliage, he suggests
a beast of prey lurking in the jungle. Finally, trapped in the
lumber room, he is hardly distinguishable from the tangled debris
in which he tries to evade his captors. Since in many German films
the predominance of mute objects symbolizes the ascendancy of
irrational powers, these three shots can be assumed to define the
murderer as a prisoner of uncontrollable instincts. Evil urges overwhelm
him in exactly the same manner in which multiple objects
close in on his screen image.
This is corroborated by his own testimony before the "kangaroo
court," an episode opening with a couple of shots which render
perfectly the shock he experiences at that moment. Three criminals,
insensitive to the murderer's frantic protests, push, drag and kick
him forward. He lands on the floor. As he begins to look about, the
close-up of his face a face distorted with rage and fear abruptly
gives way to a long shot surveying the group of criminals, beggars
and street women in front of him [Ulus. 49]. The impression of
shock results from the terrifying contrast between the wretched
creature on the floor and this immovable group which, arranged in
Lang's best monumental style, watches him in stony silence. It is as
if the murderer has unexpectedly collided with a human wall. Then,
in an attempt to justify himself, he accounts for his crimes in this
way : I am always forced to move along the streets, and always someone
is behind me. It is I. I sometimes feel I am myself behind me,
and yet I cannot escape. ... I want to run away I must run
away. The specters are always pursuing me unless I do it. And
afterwards, standing before a poster, I read what I have done. Have
I done this? But I don't know anything about it. I loathe it I must
loathe it must I can no longer . . .
Along with the implications of the pictorial texture, this confession
makes it clear that the murderer belongs to an old family of
German screen characters. He resembles Baldwin in THE STUDENT
OP PRAGUE, who also succumbs to the spell of his devilish other self ;
and he is a direct offspring of the somnambulist Cesare. Like Cesare,
he lives under the compulsion to kill. But while the somnambulist
unconsciously surrenders to Dr. Caligari's superior will power, the
child-murderer submits to his own pathological impulses and in addi-
222 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
tion is fully aware of this enforced submission. The way he acknowledges
it reveals his affinity with all those characters whose ancestor
is the philistine in THE STREET. The murderer is the link between
two screen families; in him, the tendencies embodied by the
philistine and the somnambulist finally fuse with each other. He is
not simply a fortuitous compound of the habitual killer and the submissive
petty bourgeois ; according to his confession, this modernized
Cesare is a killer because of his submission to the imaginary Caligari
within him. His physical appearance sustains the impression of his
complete immaturity an immaturity which also accounts for the
rampant growth of his murderous instincts.
In its exploration of this character, who is not so much a retrogressive
rebel as a product of retrogression, M confirms the moral
of THE ELITE ANGEL: that in the wake of retrogression terrible
outbursts of sadism are inevitable. Both films bear upon the psychological
situation of those crucial years and both anticipate what was
to happen on a large scale unless people could free themselves from
the specters pursuing them. The pattern had not yet become set.
In the street scenes of M, such familiar symbols as the rotating spiral
in an optician's shop and the policeman guiding a child across the
street are resuscitated.
5
The combination of these motifs with that of
a puppet incessantly hopping up and down reveals the film's wavering
between the notions of anarchy and authority.
s
Cf. comment on the imagery of BERLHT, p. 186.
19. TIMID HERESIES
A BATTLEGROUND of conflicting inner tendencies, the German screen
of the pre-Hitler period was dominated by two major groups of
films. One of them testified to the existence of antiauthoritarian dispositions.
It included films concerned with humanization and peaceful
progress ; they sometimes went so far as to manifest outspoken
leftist leanings.
Among the films of this first group two were conspicuous for
implying that the retrogressive processes emphasized in THE BLTTE
ANGEL and M might well be averted under the status quo. BERIJNAXEXANDERPLATZ
(1931), made by Piel Jutzi after Alfred Doblin's
famous novel of that title, tacitly opposed the pessimistic outlook
of Sternberg and Lang. It was an underworld drama with many
documentary shots in the manner of Ruttmann's BERLIN, which
occasionally developed into a pictorial thicket arresting the action.
The film's main character is Franz Biberkopf, a true Zille figure
splendidly enacted by Heinrich George. After serving a prison term
for manslaughter, he turns to peddling on Alexanderplatz and is
perfectly happy with his girl until Reinhold, the boss of a gang of
criminals, appears. This anemic-looking rogue talks the somewhat
slow-witted Biberkopf into joining the gang. But soon the new
member's innate honesty interferes so seriously with the activities
of the criminals that they throw hi out of a car going at full
speed. There he lies. Months later, his right arm amputated, he
returns to Reinhold not to take revenge, but to offer full cooperation.
Biberkopf has become an embittered cripple who despairs
of making an honest living. His share from well-planned burglaries
allows him to enjoy a comfortable existence in the company of his
new girl, Mieze. But his luck does not last long. Reinhold, intent on
possessing Mieze, lures her into the woods, and when she does not
yield to his desire, he murders her in a fit of cold rage. A sample of
genuine film-making is the scene in which singing boy-scouts pass
along the highway immediately before the murderer re-emerges from
223
aa* THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
the bushes and speeds away in his car. The police capture Reinhold
in time to prevent Biberkopf from killing him; whereupon Biberkopf,
left to himself, again takes to honesty and peddling.
1
At the
film's very end, he is seen on Alexanderplatz, hawking a sort of
tumbler puppet with the words : This puppet always bobs up again.
Why does it always bob up again? Because it has metal in the right
place.
The moral is obvious: he whose heart is in the right place surmounts
any crisis without being corrupted. This is exemplified by
Biberkopf's own development. When profound resentment prompts
him to make common cause with Reinhold, he seems on the point of
following the pattern set by the child-murderer and his predecessors.
But unlike them, he succeeds in exorcising the evil spirits. Biberkopf
himself is a tumbler figure. Vaguely reminiscent of the count in
WARNING SHADOWS, he tends to prove that during the pre-Hitler
period the image of submission was by no means sacrosanct.
The problem is whether or not his metamorphosis goes far enough
to turn the audience against this image. The first time Biberkopf
peddles on Alexanderplatz, he asks several S.A. men in the crowd
around him to come nearer asks them as kindly as if they were
nondescript bystanders. This incident, unimportant in itself, illustrates
strikingly the narrow scope of his tumbler attitude. To be
sure, his heart is in the right place; but where other people have
theirs does not concern him. Let social conditions be what they will,
if only he can carry on, a decent peddler. Biberkopf has turned adult
in a limited personal sense; his main characteristic is a blend of
private honesty and political indifference. It would be inconceivable
for any such Biberkopf to stem the mounting flood of retrogression,
even if he has overcome retrogression within himself.
Although Biberkopf's change from a potential child-murderer
into a half-mature character proves of little consequence, it discounts
the leader principle proclaimed by the Nazis. To some extent,
BERUN-AXEXANDERPLATZ fostered belief in a positive evolution
of the existing republican regime. Another faint suggestion of democratic
mentality was Gerhart Lamprechťs charming and very successful
child-film EMEL TJND DIE DETEKTIVE (1931), fashioned after
a popular novel by Erich Kastner; at least, this Ufa production in*A
kindred film was STUBME DEB LEnwsrscHApT (1982?) with Jannings as a
criminal betrayed by his girl and his chums. Cf. "StUrme der Leidenschaft,"
Dec. 27, 1981.
TIMID HERESIES 225
eluded nothing that would have justified the sinister forebodings in
M and THE BLUE ANGEL. Emil is a small-town boy whose mother
sends him to Berlin on an important mission : he is to deliver money
to his grandmother. On the train, a thief robs the boy of his precious
envelope. No sooner do they arrive than Emil starts pursuing the
thief a pursuit which, owing to the cooperation of a gang of
Berlin urchins, develops into a veritable children's crusade. Passionate
detectives, the children establish headquarters in a vacant lot
opposite the criminaľs hotel and, with a truly German gift for organization,
even think of assigning one of their number to take charge
of telephone messages. Their activities assume proportions which
cause the police to intervene, and since the thief turns out to be a
long-sought bank robber, the youths receive the 1000-mark reward
offered for his capture. When Emil returns home in the company of
his new friends, the whole town assembles on the airfield to hail the
conquering heroes.
The literary figure of the detective is closely related to democratic
institutions.
2
Through its praise of juvenile sleuthing EMIL
UND DIE DETEKTIVE therefore suggests a certain democratization of
German everyday life. This inference is bolstered by the independent
and self-disciplined conduct of the boys as well as by the use made of
candid-camera work. Neat and unpretentious documentary shots of
Berlin street scenes portray the German capital as a city in which
civil liberties flourish. The bright atmosphere pervading these passages
contrasts with the darkness which invariably surrounds Fritz
Rasp as the thief. He wears a black coat and has all the traits of the
bogey in nursery tales. When he falls asleep in his hotel room, Emil
in the uniform of a bellboy emerges from under the bed and looks
around for the stolen money a courageous youngster engulfed by
menacing shadows. Light once for all defeats darkness in that magnificent
sequence in which the thief is eventually cornered. Under a
radiant morning sun, which seems to scoff at his eerie blackness, this
Pied Piper in reverse tries in vain to escape the ever-increasing crowd
of children who pursue and besiege him [Illus. 50],
No doubt the triumph of clarity helps to express what can be
considered the film's democratic spirit. Yet this spirit evades definition.
Instead of crystallizing in some tangible conviction, it remains
a mood, just strong enough to neutralize the patriarchal tendencies
which try to assert themselves in sundry scenes of the film. Since this
2 Cf.
p. 19 f.
226 THE PRE-HITLER, PERIOD
mood is rather indistinct it also results from the tender concern
with politically ambiguous childhood events the conclusion that the
democratic attitudes behind the film lack vitality seems unavoidable.
Other films of the first pre-Hitler group were more explicit.
Overtly they tackled the basic problem of authority. Unlike the youth
films of the stabilized period screen dreams in which sympathy for
authority had been disguised as protest against authority these
films were quite candid in criticizing authoritarian behavior.
Outstanding among them was MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (1931),
produced by Deutsche Film Gemeinschaft, an independent cooperative.
It was drawn from Christa Winsloe's play Gestern und
Heute. Leontine Sagan directed the film under the guidance of Carl
Froelich, one of the most experienced directors of the German cinema.
MADCHEN IN UNIFORM, with an exclusively female cast, pictures
life in a Potsdam boarding-school for the daughters of poor officers,
who belong nevertheless to the aristocracy. In rendering this milieu,
the film exposes the devastating effects of Prussianism upon a sensitive
young girl. The headmistress of the school is the "spirit of Potsdam"
incarnate. Another Frederick the Great, she moves along with
a cane and proclaims orders of the day which recall the glorious
times of the Seven Years' War [Illus. 51]. For instance, when
annoyed by complaints of scarce food, she decrees :
"Through discipline
and hunger, hunger and discipline, we shall rise again." While
the girls on the whole manage to put up with the hardship inflicted
upon them, Manuela, a newcomer, suffers intensely under a rule alien
to her tender and imaginative nature. She craves helpful understanding
and finds ruthless efficiency. Only one teacher is sympathetic:
Fraulein von Bemburg. This woman, whose beauty has begun to fade
under the strain of resignation, is not yet resigned enough to give up
advocating a more considerate education. "I cannot stand the way
you transform the children into frightened creatures," she says to
the headmistress in a fit of insubordination which enrages the latter.
Manuela senses Fraulein von Bernburg's unavowed affection for her
and responds to it with a passion involving her suppressed desire for
love. After a theatrical performance in honor of the headmistress'
anniversary a day of harmless saturnalia and light spirits this
pent-up passion explodes. The girl is overjoyed with her success as
an actress, and watered punch does the rest. In a state of frenzy, she
blurts out her inmost feelings for the beloved teacher and then swoons.
TIMID HERESIES 227
The consequences are terrible: by order of the scandalized headmistress
no one is allowed to speak to the culprit. Fraulein von Bernburg
disregards this interdict, but succeeds only in increasing the
girľs anguish. Manuela believes herself deserted by the woman she
idolizes and attempts to commit suicide. She is on the point of throwing
herself from the top of the staircase, when the girls arrive and
pull her back from outside the railing. Attracted by the unusual
tumult, the headmistress approaches energetically every inch a
Fridericus ready to crush a revolt. They tell her what has happened,
and it is as if she were suddenly stripped of her authority. An old,
stooped woman, she retreats under the accusing stares of the girls
and silently disappears in the dark corridor.
The film owes part of its fame to the acting. Hertha Thiele's
Manuela is a unique compound of sweet innocence, illusory fears and
confused emotions. While she embodies youth in its utter vulnerability,
Dorothea Wieck as Fraulein von Bernburg still glows with a
youth that is irretrievably departing. Each gesture of hers tells of
lost battles, buried hopes and sublimated desires. The mise en scene,
mellow rather than daring, excels in delicate shades. Potsdam is masterfully
characterized through such simple leitmotivs as the statue
of a soldier, the soldierlike steeple of the parish church and the remote
blare of the garrison bugles. Towards the end of the film, a
stately princess crowned by an enormous plumed hat reviews the
girls ; the irony in the rendering of her shallow benevolence could not
be subtler. Perhaps the most perfect sample of effective unobtrusiveness
is the repeated insertion of the schooľs beautiful old staircase
hall. The first views serve to familiarize us with it. When it re-emerges
in the middle of the film, the girls amuse themselves by throwing
objects from the top of the stairs, and then, shuddering, express their
horror of the abyss beneath them. These two series of shots enable
the audience to grasp the significance of the final staircase scene in
which Manuela, her mind bent on suicide, walks upstairs : her appearance
at the top immediately evokes the image of the shuddering girls
[Illus. 52]. To round out Manuela's own image, the symbolic power
of light is explored in much the same manner as in EMEL UND DIE
DETEKTIVE. Throughout the film, her luminous face appears against
bright backgrounds, so that it seems all but one with them. This
transparence makes Manuela particularly touching.
MADCHEN IN UNIFORM enjoyed immense popularity. In Germany,
it was considered the best film of the year; in America, the
228 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
reviewers were enthusiastic.8
The National Board praised the picture
as "one of the most human films that has been made anywhere
5* 4
; the
New York Herald Tribune called it "the drama of the need for
tenderness and sympathy as opposed to the harshness of a tyrannical
system of boarding school domination." 5
It was again Potamkin who
went beyond such easy generalizations. He identified the film as a
specifically German document and criticized it for its timidity.
"Madchen m Uniform ... is sincere but cautious, does not venture
upon its own terrain, but preserves a respectable distance from its
own social implications."
6
This criticism holds. What on the surface appears to be a wholesale
attack against rigid Prussian discipline is in the final analysis
nothing but a plea for its humanization. It is true that the headmistress
indicts Fraulein von Bernburg for fomenting unrest among
the girls and terms her a rebel. But this strange rebel is so loyal to
the system which has broken her that in her last talk with Manuela
she makes an effort to convince the trembling girl of the headmistress'
good intentions. She does not want to do away with the "spirit of
Potsdam" ; she merely fights its excesses. One is tempted to suspect
that her understanding, if not motherly, attitude toward the girls
originates in patriarchal notions inseparable from the authoritarian
regime. Fraulein von Bernburg is a heretic who never dreams of exchanging
the traditions she shares with the headmistress for a "new
order."
In the whole film, there is no hint of the possibility that authoritarian
behavior might be superseded by democratic behavior. This
accounts for Potamkin's conjecture: "The film does not fail to leave
a sense of faith in the princess, the benefactress, who had she but
known would have changed all that oppression of arbitrary discipline
there is still a nostalgia for the nobility."
7
The final scene, it
is true, elaborates upon the symbolic defeat of the headmistress:
Prussianism seems definitely done for when she moves back through
the dark corridor, leaving the bright foreground to Fraulein von
Bernburg and the girls. Yet at its end this very scene invalidates
8
Kraszna-Krausz, "Four Films from Germany," Close Up, March 1982, p. 89. See
also Jahier, "42 Ans de Cinema," Le Role intellectuel du CinJma, pp. 67-68.
4 "MSdcben in Uniform," National Board of Review Maffazine, Sept^-Oct. 1982,
p. 10.
c
Watts, "Madchen in Uniform," New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 21, 1932.
Potamkin, "Pabst and the Social Film," Hound $ Horn, Jan^March 1938,
p. 805.
7
Potamkin, ibid., p. 805.
TIMID HERESIES 229
the impression that the headmistress has abdicated. As the shadows
envelop her, the garrison bugles blare again. They have the last
word in the film. The resumption of this motif at such an important
moment unmistakably reveals that the principle of authority
has not been shaken. The headmistress will continue to wield the
scepter. And any possible softening of authoritarian discipline would
only be in the interest of its preservation.
8
Simultaneously with MADCHEN IN UNIFORM appeared another
film raising similar issues : DER HAUPTMANN VON KOPENICK (THE
CAPTAIN OP KOPENICK, 1931). It was fashioned by Richard Oswald
after Carl Zuckmayer's 1928 play of the same title a play built
around the true story of the famous cobbler Wilhelm Voigt, who
made the world of 1906 realize the absurdities of Prussian militarism.
On the screen, the actor Max Adalbert portrayed this character with
a vernacular authenticity that undoubtedly contributed to the film's
success in Germany and abroad.
Following the play closely, the film goes far in its criticism of
Prussian police methods under the Kaiser. The police, not content
with refusing a passport to the old jailbird Voigt, expel him from
every town as an undesirable unemployed. It is a vicious circle,
as he himself recognizes: if he had a job, the authorities would give
him a passport, but since he has none, he cannot get a job. The passport
becomes his obsession (an obsession millions of Europeans persecuted
under Hitler would find quite understandable) . In his despair,
the ingenious cobbler finally decides to capitalize on the spell any
officer's uniform casts over German soldiers and civilians alike. He
buys a worn-out uniform and dons it in a men's room from which he
emerges as a demigod. His disguise is more than transparent; but
who would dare to scrutinize a magic phenomenon? The selfappointed
captain marches two squads of soldiers whom he meets
on the street to the town hall of Kopenick, arrests the dazed top
officials "by order of his Majesty," without encountering the slightest
doubt of his right to do so, and then asks for the passport office, the
real objective of his military expedition. Alas, there is no passport
office in Kopenick. Voigt throws in the sponge and slips away. But
the story of his exploit leaks out, and the whole world laughs at the
8 Hertha Thiele and Dorothea Wieck again co-starred in Wysbar's ANNA mro
ELISABETH (1988); cf. Film Society Programme, Nov. 19, 1938. Leontine Sagan
directed, in England, MEN OF TOMORROW (1982), but this film about Oxford students
was only a weak aftermath of her MADCHEN IN UNIFORM.
2SO THE PHE-HITLEB PERIOD
"captain of Kopenick." The film
emphasizes particularly the authentic
fact that the Kaiser, too, had a good laugh. At the end, the
cobbler surrenders to the police. He is soon pardoned and granted
the coveted passport by order of his Majesty.
An uncertain blend of satire and comedy, this film is even more
ambiguous than MADCHEN IN UNIFORM. It ridicules German awe of
the uniform and at the same time justifies Prussian militarism as
such. For the Kaiser's laughter as well as his indulgent pardon reduces
the whole chain of absurdities to minor shortcomings of a sound
and strong regime, which can well afford to tolerate them. One
sequence, moreover, suggests that these shortcomings spring from
the very Weltanschauung which is also the source of Prussia's power.
Voigt, shocked by a new order of expulsion, shows it to his warmhearted
brother-in-law Friedrich, who has tried hard to rehabilitate
him. Friedrich is a town clerk imbued with pride of the fatherland,
the army, the Kaiser. He considers ill luck what the other resents as
a flagrant injustice. Their discussion develops into a clash of two
concepts of authority, and as Voigt freely voices his exasperation,
Friedrich retorts: I refuse, and I am not even allowed to listen to
you. We are governed by justice. And when you are crushed, you
just have to submit to it. You have to keep quiet. Then you will still
belong to us.
This outburst of a born authoritarian is recorded without a
shadow of irony. In addition, the film tends to prove that Voigt
lives up to Friedrich's tenets. Towards the end, when examined by
the police, he declares that his desire to be buried in native soil
kept him from crossing the borders to safety. This unwilling rebel
still ardently wants to "belong." That in the core of his soul he is
as militaristic-minded as his brother-in-law follows conclusively from
the very last scene, which resumes the motif of the film's opening
shots : a column of soldiers moving along to the sound of a military
band. Voigt, now a free man with a passport, comes upon the soldiers
and, his feet electrified, marches off in their company. The Friedrichs
win out.
One more film dealing with the problem of militarism was KADETTEN
(CADETS, 1931), a military-academy romance laid in Lichterfelde,
the cradle of the Prussian officers' corps. While MADCHEN IN
UNIFORM honestly exposed the deficiencies of authoritarian discipline,
CADETS carefully concealed them. In this spineless grade-B
production, the German West Point is passed off as a privileged
boarding-school, whose director has all the traits of a soft-pedaling
TIMID HERESIES 231
humanitarian at least, the headmistress of MADCHEN IN UNIFORM
would have despised him as such. It was all idle whitewash. But, as
has been remarked earlier, many people wished to believe that in
spite of the crisis all was going well.
9
Of course, their escapism only
benefited the authoritarian-minded.
Strong antimilitaristic feelings manifested themselves in Max
Ophuls* delightful LIEBELEI, a Viennese film drawn from the famous
Schnitzler play of that title, which had been several times transferred
to the screen. This last version was released in Berlin as late as March
16, 1933. It contrasts in a very touching way the tenderness of a
love story with the severity of the military code of honor. A young
lieutenant in love with a sweet Viennese girl is called to account by a
baron who believes him to be the lover of the baroness. In reality,
the lieutenant has broken off this liaison some time before. Nevertheless
the code requires a duel. The lieutenant is killed in it and his
girl throws herself out of the window in a fit of despair.
In rendering this terrible triumph of conventional prejudices,
the film persistently points at their obsolescence and moral inadequacy.
When the lieutenanťs friend, himself an officer, refuses to
second in a duel provoked by a dead affair, his colonel tells him
bluntly that he will have to leave the army; whereupon the officer
expresses his readiness to start a new life on a Brazilian coffee plantation.
The significance of this showdown is enhanced by the splendor
of the love episodes proper. They glow with genuine emotion. In the
middle of the film, the lieutenant and the girl drive in a horse-drawn
sled through snowy woods, each assuring the other: "I swear that I
love you." At the end, after the girl has committed suicide, their love
survives in an epilogue formed by two shots : the first pans through
the girľs familiar room, while her voice whispers: "I swear . . .";
the second, evoking the image of the snowy woods, is accompanied
by the words : ". . . that I love you." The code of honor appears the
more odious as it is instrumental in destroying a love of such in-
tensity.
Considering the implications of LIEBELEI, its release at the hour
of Hitler's ultimate triumph may seem to have been ill-timed. But
the public enjoyed the film solely as a love story bathed in the
enchanting atmosphere of Imperial Vienna, which would have been
unimaginable without its lieutenants. From this angle, the duel was
nothing but a remote event designed to add the touch of tragedy
which many Germans consider an infallible sign of emotional depth.
Cf. p. 211.
20 FOR A BETTER WORLD
IT is noteworthy that those films of the first pre-Hitler group which
overtly indulged in social criticism belonged among the top-ranking
artistic achievements of the time. Aesthetic quality and leftist sympathies
seemed to coincide.
Pabst again took the lead. In the three important films he made
during the pre-Hitler years, his preoccupation with social problems
outweighed the melodramatic inclinations characteristic of his New
Objectivity period. Potamkin traces this change of Pabsťs impressionable
mind to the change of external conditions: "The sharpening
conflict in Germany, the polarization of the forces, would naturally
touch a man like Pabst. It would intensify and direct his social suspicions
and tend to dissipate from his concern the shallow complacencies
of the ladies and gentlemen of euphemy."
*
The first of those three films was WESTS-ROOT 1918 (1930), a
Nero production which appeared almost simultaneously with the
Remarque film AI/L QITEET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. Fashioned after
Ernst Johannsen's war novel, Four of the Infantry (Vier von der
Iwfawterie) , it dealt with trench warfare in the last stages of World
War I. On a stagnant front, a German lieutenant and his men try to
hold their position against French attacks, and that is all. The battle
flares up and subsides; hours of desperate action alternate with
periods of complete lull. One day, a crowded dugout is hit by a shell,
and but for the efforts of the rest of the group the men buried in it
would have died of suffocation. In another sequence, a student-soldier
volunteers to slip back to headquarters and on this occasion spends
the first love night of his life with a French girl. Returning to the
front, he meets his friend ETarl going off on leave. But the war is
inescapable: back home, Karl sees the queues before food shops and
surprises his young wife in the company of a butcher boy, who has
1
Potamkin, "Pabst and the Social Film," Hound $ Horn, Jan-March 1988,
p. 2d6.
232
FOR A BETTER WORLD 233
bought her favors with extra rations of meat. "One should not leave
a wife alone for so long," Karľs mother says to her son. He dimly
realizes that the war is behind it all the war which goes on and on.
When he rejoins his comrades, they tell him that the student has been
slain by a French colonial soldier who, himself wounded, is heard
screaming from no-man's land. Karl, seeking death, engages in a
reconnoitering mission which takes him past the studenťs corpse; a
cramped hand juts out from a muddy pool. Then the French make a
tank attack in overwhelming strength. The treacherous calm following
the attack is suddenly interrupted by a horrible roar. The German
lieutenant shouts: "Hurrah, hurrah i" He has gone mad; his
head resembles a death's-head. They drag him to a ruined church
hastily converted into a field hospital. The dark nave is filled with
moans and agonized cries [Ulus. 53]. A French and a German soldier,
lying side by side, grope for each other's hands and murmur
something like forgiveness or "Never again war." There is no chloroform
left for amputations. Karl dies, enraptured by a vision of his
wife.
In its analysis of WESTFBONT 1918 the London Film Society
mentions the film's "striking similarities to the doctrine of tibe New
Objectivity."
2
This remark points at one of Pabsťs basic intentions :
in his new war picture as well as in his previous films he endeavors to
render the commonplace in real life with photographic veracity.
Many shots betray the unconscious cruelty of the candid camera.
Helmets and fragments of corpses form a weird still life ; somewhere
behind the front lines, several privates carry scores of wooden crosses
destined to adorn soldier graves. As always, Pabst manages to avoid
cheap symbolism. The undamaged statue of Christ in the ruined
church is made to appear a casual fact which only incidentally conveys
a symbolic meaning. Throughout the film war seems experienced
rather than staged.
To deepen this experience much use is made of traveling shots.
They are produced by a camera which may travel long distances to
capture the whole of some scenery or action. Pabst, eager to preserve
the essential virtues of the silent film, now relied frequently on shots
of this kind. He had to, for early sound technique did not yet allow
him to resume his favorite method of swift cutting. One traveling
shot follows the student on his way to headquarters ; he falls down,
rises again and then runs past the battered trunk of a lone tree which
stands erect in the void. Similarly, the camera roams through the
2 Film Society Programme, Dec. 6, 1981.
234 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
church, catching glimpses of the delirious Karl and a singing soldier
who in his mental confusion keeps one of his arms hanging in mid-
air.
8
This 'least showman-like of war-films" is neither picturesque nor
rich in suspense.
4
A drab gray predominates and certain motifs
reassert themselves insistently. Through such devices Pabst succeeds
in impressing the dreary monotony of trench warfare upon the audience.
One of the often-repeated pictures is the barren stretch of land
before the German front lines. Its vegetation consists of torn barbedwire
fences, cut off from the sky by clouds of smoke or impenetrable
fog. When for once the fog dissolves, rows of tanks emerge from the
vacuum and successively fill the picture frame. The barren field is the
landscape of death, and its permanent appearance only reflects what
those caught in the gray limbo endure. The pandemonium of battle
noises joins in, deepening these impressions. Inarticulate outbursts
of panic and madness mingle with the ack-ack of machine guns and
the whizz of bombs a terrible cacophony which at intervals is
drowned out by the long-lasting, deafening sound of an artillery
barrage.
5
The film's international prestige success resulted no less from its
message than from its artistic merit. In an article comparing Pabst
with Dovzhenko, John C. Moore comments on the hospital sequence:
"In his final scenes Pabst makes one last desperate effort to convey to
us not only the horror of war, but its futility and its gross stupidity
as well. . . ."
e
WESTFRONT 1918 is an outright pacifist document
and as such goes beyond the scope of New Objectivity. Its fundamental
weakness consists in not transgressing the limits of pacifism
itself. The film tends to demonstrate that war is intrinsically monstrous
and senseless ; but this indictment of war is not supported by
the slightest hint of its causes, let alone any insight into them. Silence
spreads where it would be natural to ask questions. While Dovzhenko
in his grandiose AUSENTAI, (1929) reveals the Ukrainian Civil War to
be an inevitable explosion of pent-up class hatred, Pabst in his World
War film confines himself to expressing his abhorrence of war in
general.
Potamkin, seduced by Pabst, the artist, tries to justify Pabst, the
Cf. Spottiswoode, A Grammar of the Film, p. 241.
*
Quoted from Potamktn, "Pabst and the Social Film," Hound Horn, Jan,March
1988, p. 298.
s
Spottiswoode, A Grammar of the Film, p. 80.
6
Moore, "Pabst Dovjenko A Comparison," Clote Up, Sept 1982, p. 180.
FOR A BETTER WORLD 235
humanitarian, by contending that the pacifism of WEST-FRONT 1918
"is on its way to an acute attack upon the warmakers." But this
appraisal sounds somewhat optimistic ;
in fact, Pabsťs artistic brilliance,
instead of compensating for the absence of pertinent arguments,
makes his lack of reasoning all the more obvious. Except for
stray pacifist remarks in the hospital sequence, the whole of WESTFRONT
1918 amounts to a noncommittal survey of war horrors. Their
exhibition is a favorite weapon of the many pacifists who indulge in
the belief that the mere sight of such horrors suffices to deter people
from war.
The Nazis were quick in discrediting this pacifist "argument.
55
Hans Zoberlein's STOSSTRTJPP 1917 (SHOCK TROOP 1917), a World
War film produced soon after Hitler's rise to power, seems to have
been a deliberate answer to WESTFRONT 1918 ; at least, the two films
resemble each other strikingly. Zoberlein renders the horrors of
trench warfare with a realistic objectivity equaling, if not exceeding,
Pabsťs and, exactly like Pabst, elaborates upon the despondency of
the soldiers. There is not a single note of exceptional bravery or
heroism in his film. Nevertheless he manages to exclude any pacifist
implications by interpreting the last stages of World War I as a
struggle for Germany's survival. In other words, the display of war
horrors, Pabsťs main "argument," is not an effective instrument
against war. The Nazi film points up the unreliable vagueness of tJ*e
Pabst film.
Pre-Hitler pacifism found another outlet in Victor Trivas' NnsMANDSLAND
(Hsi/L ON EARTH, 1931), a fantastic war film based
upon an idea by Leonhard Frank. Five soldiers of different nations
a German carpenter, a Frenchman, a British officer, a Jewish tailor
and a Negro singer get lost between the front lines and geek shelter
in an abandoned trench under a ruined building. While the war
around them draws ever closer, they change from "enemies" into comrades
who learn to understand and respect each other. A fraternal
spirit animates this human oasis in no-man's land. The whole film is
an attempt to defame war by contrasting it with a community which
has all the traits of the lamasery of Shangri-La. The attempt is
thoroughly abortive, for HELL ON EARTH disregards the different
causes of wars in much the same way as WESTFRONT 1918, and in
addition blurs the image of peace conveyed by the community of the
five soldiers. Since this community results from the acute pressure of
236 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
catastrophic events, it is nothing but an emergency brotherhood.
Many European refugees, experienced in such temporary fraternities,
know about the quick transition from brotherliness to loneliness.
This aesthetically interesting film opposes the inadequate dream
of a terrestrial paradise to a shadowy notion of **hell on earth."
Particularly evasive is the symbolic concluding scene in which the
five are forced out of their refuge by the approaching battle. "The
last we see of them," Shelley Hamilton writes, "is five figures side by
side against the sky, tramping down the wire entanglements that
block their way, stepping forward together."
7
From no-man's
land they move towards never-never land, and the war continues.
Tlie German militarists did not have to fear the German
pacifists.
After a silly provincial comedy, SKANDAL UM EVA (THE EVA
SCANDAL, 1930),
8
Pabst made DIE DREIGROSCHENOPER (THE BEGGAR'S
OPERA, 1931), a Warner-Tobis picture drawn from BrechtWeilľs
successful play of that title, which itself was based upon John
Gay's old Beggar's Opera. The film version, originally influenced by
Brecht, differed much from the play, but on the whole preserved its
social satire, genuine lyricism and revolutionary coloring. Kurt
Weill adjusted his songs to the exigencies of the screen.
The plot, laid in an imaginary London of the end of the nineteenth
century, features three rogues : Mackie Messer, the leader of a
gang of criminals, Peachum, the king of the beggars, and Tiger
Brown, the police commissioner.9
Mackie, upon leaving the brothel
which harbors his mistress Jenny, meets Peachum's daughter Polly
on the street. After a few dances in a caf he decides to marry her and
orders his underlings to make proper arrangements for the wedding.
Many London shops are plundered that night. The sumptuous wedding
party takes place in a deserted underground warehouse, with
the corrupt police commissioner as the guest of honor. Tiger Brown
benevolently overlooks the crimes of his old friend Mackie. Peachum
on his part is so infuriated over Polly's marriage that he threatens
7
Hamilton, "Hell on Earth," National Board of Review Magazine, April 1988,
p. 9. Cf. Kraszna-Krausz, "Four Films from Germany," Close Up, March 1982,
pp. 44-45.
8 Cf. Potamkin, "Pabst and the Social Film," Hound $ Horn, Jan^March 1933,
p. 298. Potamkin decidedly overestimated this film. For a more critical comment, see
"Skandal um Eva," Close Up, Sept. 1980, pp. 221-22.
9
Cf. ftotha, Celluloid, p. 109. Barry, "The Beggar's Opera," National Board of
Review Magazine, June 1981, pp. 11-18.
FOR A BETTER WORLD 237
to disturb the imminent coronation of the Queen by a beggars*
demonstration unless the police commissioner sends Mackie to the
gallows. Unfortunately, the police commissioner cannot risk imperiling
the coronation. Mackie hides in the brothel. It does not help him
much, for his jealous mistress, Jenny, turns informer. Even though
Mackie is captured, Peachum in his distrust of Tiger Brown's promises
mobilizes the beggars. Meanwhile Polly embarks upon an amazing
career. With the gang members as her associates, she opens a
bank, arguing that lawful robberies pay better than illegal activities.
This whole banking farce has been added in the film. No sooner does
Peachum learn of his daughter's prosperous enterprise than he wants
to have a share in it. He implores the beggars not to interrupt the
royal procession, but they refuse to listen to him. While they march
on, Mackie escapes from prison with the aid of Jenny, whose love
surpasses her jealousy she is a late descendant of the German stage
and screen prostitutes. The beggars' demonstration causes the downfall
of both Peachum and Tiger Brown. Yet Mackie cares sufficiently
for the two to admit them as partners in Polly's bank. A new financial
empire is in the making, and the three rogues become pillars of
society.
Since this essentially theatrical plot could not well be made into a
realistic film, Pabst reversed his usual method of approach : instead
of penetrating our existing world, he built up an unreal universe.
The whole film is bathed in a "queer, fantastic atmosphere," greatly
intensified by Andrej AndreJew's settings.
10
In discussing them,
Rotha mentions the "incredibly steep and very long flight of narrow
wooden steps" in the underground warehouse and also praises
<c
the
late-Victorian brothel with its paper-patterned windows and antimacassars,
its multitude of useless ornaments and its giant negress
statues standing about the room." u To enhance the bizarre character
of these interiors, the illusionary possibilities of glass are thoroughly
utilized. The numerous screens of glass in the cafe* which
serves as background to Mackie's short courtship apparently have
no function other than to transform the crowded and smoky room
into a confusing maze [Illus. 54] , Later Mackie is seen entering the
brothel behind a glass partition which surrounds him with a furtive
halo.
The characters of this film appear as true products of their
10
Quoted from Rotha, Celluloid, p. 111.
Ibid., pp. 111-12.
238 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
milieu. On his way to the docks, where a ballad singer is performing,
Mackie walks past a row of prostitutes and pimps who lean motionless
against the houses ; it is as if the houses exuded them. The ballad
singer emerges at regular intervals, and since his songs comment on
the action, the action itself assumes the air of a ballad. All seems to be
dreamed. This impression is also strengthened by F. A. Wagner's
camera work. Owing to an uninterrupted succession of pan and
traveling shots, the scenery never comes to a standstill. The movements
of the brothel room resemble those of a ship's cabin. Normal
stability is upset and a hovering phantom world arises.
12
Although Pabst establishes this world with undeniable mastery,
his rendering of DREIGBOSCHENOPEB is less adequate than the Berlin
stage production of 1928. While the theatrical mise en scdne isolated
the episodes of the play, so as to stress its wanton, kaleidoscopic character,
the screen treatment eliminates all caesuras in the interest of a
coherent whole. Motifs originally intended to produce effects of light
improvisation are woven into an elaborate texture, as compact and
decorative as tapestry. Its heavy beauty muffles the clang of satire.
The film is the tour de force of an artist not too familiar with spheres
beyond the realm of what he himself once called "real life,"
In contending that this Pabst film "is a further step in his progress
towards social collusiveness," Potamkin thinks in particular of
the beggars' demonstration.18
It is the one sequence of the film in
which deadly earnestness disperses all jests. For once, reality breaks
through. And as if the touch of it restored Pabsťs artistic freedom,
he is able in this brief sequence to mirror the irresistible impact of
revolutionized masses. The beggars, marching through narrow, dim
streets, not only ignore their own leader's attempt to force them
back, but continue to advance when they reach the bright thoroughfare
in expectation of the royal cortege. The police cannot stop their
forward thrust; the horse guards try in vain to keep them away
from the carriage of the Queen. For a memorable moment, all life is
arrested. Fully exposed to the light which increases their ugliness, the
beggars stare at the white-clad Queen, who makes an effort to endure
the threatening gaze of these sinister figures. Then she surrenders.
She hides her face behind her bouquet, and the magic spell fades
away. The royal procession moves on, and the beggars return to the
p. 300.
12 Cf. Arnheim, Film ala Eunst, pp. 125-30.
18
Potamkin, "Pabst and the Social Film," Bound $ Horn, Jan^March 1988,
00k
FOR A BETTER WORLD 239
darkness from which they came. Potamkin defines this passage as
"a very stirring approximation of the revolutionary march." 14
Except for the beggars' demonstration, the film mingled sincere
enlightenment and frivolous bluff after the manner of the play. It
was an iridescent spectacle which both antagonized and amused bourgeois
audiences. Its fair success indicates not so much a turn towards
the left as an unbalanced wavering of viewpoints and attitudes during
those years of crisis.
Pabst himself seemed unwavering. At about this time, he assumed
social responsibilities, succeeding the late Lupu Pick as president of
Dacho, the top organization of German film workers.15
His "progress
towards social conclusiveness" culminated in KAMERADSCHAPT (COMRADESHIP,
1931) , a Nero picture suggested by the leftist writer Karl
Otten. It is based upon an actual French mining disaster that occurred
more than a decade before World War I in Courrieres, near
the German border. The event was interesting for a particular
reason : German miners had come to the aid of their French comrades.
In the film, Pabst heightened the significance of the story by making
it take place shortly after Versailles.
16
The film's introductory section exposes economic and political
conditions in the mining district. Under the pressure of unemployment
scores of German miners try their luck across the border, but
since the nearby French mine has no jobs to offer, they return home
empty-handed. Occasional outbursts of French chauvinism increase
the tension. In a restaurant of the French coal town, Franfoise, a
native girl, offends three German miners by flatly refusing to dance
with one of them. The catastrophe in the French mine and the ensuing
panic of the town are rendered in episodes reminiscent of Zola's
Germinal.
News of the disaster quickly reaches a gang of German miners
busily scrubbing themselves in an enormous washroom. This sequence
is the turning point of the film, for, after a heated discussion in which
much pent-up resentment against the French explodes, the miners
decide to volunteer in the rescue action. The director of the mine
reluctantly grants them permission, and off they go. Deep down in
the pit, the three miners who have been offended by Fransoise head
"Ibid.
**Ibid., p. 304.
ae
I&tU, p. 801.
240 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
in the same direction. They remove the iron fence which since Versailles
has marked the boundary between the French and German
shafts, and then join the rescuers [Illus* 55] .
Nightmarish scenes of anguish and heroism unfold amidst splintered
wooden supports, pools of water and overhanging rock. As
masses of stone crash with the thundering noise of a bombardment, a
young French miner on the verge of being suffocated believes himself
back in the war. Protected by a gas mask, one of the Germans
approaches the raving Frenchman, who summons up his last strength
to fend off this imaginary enemy. His hallucination materializes in a
very short scene in which the two transform themselves into soldiers
desperately trying to kill each other. Only after knocking the
Frenchman down is the German able to drag him to safety. The
wounded German miners are taken care of in a French hospital.
When they depart, the whole town escorts them back to the border.
There a brief stop is made, and words of farewell seal the bonds of
mutual sympathy. Spokesmen of the two miner groups spontaneously
condemn the war, extol the fraternity of all workers and
insist upon unity between Germany and France. In the concluding
scene, an acid epilogue, the miners' outlook is contrasted with the
actual situation. One French and one German official, separated by
a new iron fence in the shafts, exchange protocols ratifying the
re-establishment of the frontier. Versailles wins out. The strictly
symmetrical gestures of both officials satirize this victory of bureaucratic
wisdom.
With COMRADESHIP, Pabst again came into his own. His innate
sense of reality strikingly reasserts itself in the washroom episode.
An all-pervading spray envelops the naked miners as well as the rows
of clothes which hang down from a distant ceiling ; it is as if a weird
mass of animal carcasses loomed high above the faintly gleaming
group of lathered human bodies.
17
Nothing seems staged in this episode
; rather, the audience is let into one of the arcana of everyday
life [Ulus. 56]. The studio-built mine gives a complete illusion of
subterranean rock. Erno Metzner, who made the settings, remarked
that candid shots of a real mining disaster would scarcely have produced
a convincing impression of it. "In this instance nature could
not be used as a model for the studio."
" Dreadful reality is insepa17
Grime's miner film, EXPLOSION (1928), seems to have included a simUar scene;
cf. Bate, Der richtbare Mensch, pp. 101-2.
18
Metzner, "A Mining Film," Close Up, March 1982, p. 4.
FOR A BETTER WORLD 241
rable from the halo with which our imagination surrounds it. One of
the traveling shots exploring the mine glides from a conglomerate of
broken beams and uprights to a somber stretch of stone suddenly
illuminated by an inexplicable light.
19
Even minor details carry special weight in the film. After the explosion,
the panic-stricken townspeople hurry towards the mine,
except for an isolated tailor who is
standing indifferently before his
shop window containing only a single male dummy. A close shot
reveals the similarity of both figures, intimating that the tailor is
equally void of life. To shape proletarian mass scenes without borrowing
from the Russians was apparently impossible in those days.
When a frantic crowd attempts to storm the gate of the French
mine, the watchman's frightened face is seen encircled by the bare
arms of his fanatic assailants. This close-up might well have figured
in any Pudovkin film.
20
Pabsťs mining film marks a progress in theoretical thought; for
he now tries to make his pacifism invulnerable by endorsing the
socialist doctrine. COMRADESHIP advocates the international solidarity
of the workers, characterizing them as the pioneers of a society
in which national egoism, this eternal source of wars, will be abolished.
It is the German miners, not their superiors, who conceive the
idea of the rescue action. The scene in which they urge the director to
consent is the more revealing as it illustrates the omnipotence of
authoritarian rule in the German mine. Throughout the interview,
which is laid in the decorative staircase hall of the administration
building, the miners remain on the ground floor, while the director
talks to them from the height of a landing. It is as if he stood on a
balcony, and in addition the camera angles are chosen in such a way
that they accentuate his position. Not content with stigmatizing the
phenomenon of nationalism, Pabst interprets it in a socialist sense.
The passages dealing with the management of the French and the
German mine subtly imply the alliance between capitalists and
nationalists. This is also the meaning of the symbolic epilogue, which,
however, was frequently mistaken for a German protest against
Versailles. Perhaps, Pabst failed to make himself clear because of his
unfamiliarity with symbolic language.
That the socialist pacifism of COMRADESHIP was better founded
19 Cf. Spottiswoode, A Grammar of the Film, pp. 240-41.
20 Cf. Potamkin, "Pabst and the Social Film," Hound Horn, Jan_March 1988,
p. 801.
24,2 THE PKE-HITLER PERIOD
than the humanitarian pacifism of WESTFRONT 1918 does not justify
the assumption that it was more substantial. Under the Republic, the
German socialists, especially the Social Democrats, proved increasingly
unable to grasp the significance of what happened around
them. Misguided by conventionalized Marxist concepts, they overlooked
the importance of the middle class as well as the ramified
mental roots of the existing national aspirations. They had no
psychological insight ; it never occurred to them that their simplistic
frame of reference was inadequate to explain the turn of the pettybourgeoisie
towards the right or the attraction the Nazi creed exerted
on German youth. Pabst adopted the socialist ideas of class solidarity
and pacifism at a time when these ideas had degenerated into anemic
abstractions and as a consequence the Social Democrats could not be
expected to cope with the actual situation. In fact, as if the dead
weight of an outworn ideology had exhausted them, the Social Democrats
watched the Nazi movement grow and grow without stirring
from their apathy. COMRADESHIP reflects this exhaustion. Exceptional
though it is, the film does not include a single motif which
would have challenged the traditional notions of life in the radical
manner of Metzner's ACCIDENT or Jutzi's MOTHER KRAUSEN'S JOURNET
TO HAPPINESS. Pabst penetrates reality visually, but leaves its
intellectual core shrouded.
The film was praised by the reviewers and shunned by the public.
In Neukolln, one of Berlin's proletarian quarters, it ran before
empty seats, while some dull comedy in the immediate neighborhood
attracted huge crowds.21
Nothing could be more symptomatic of the
workers' inertia. Pabst himself abandoned the cause he had advocated
so ardently. ATLANTDDE (ATLANTIS, 1932), his last German preHitler
film, was an outright retrogression from "social conclusiveness"
into pure escapism. The English film critic Bryher comments
on this screen version of Pierre Benoiťs fantastic desert novel in an
article devoted to several films she saw in Berlin in the summer of
1932: "It is never done in a Hollywood manner, and the atmosphere
of the desert is
absolutely authentic. But I could not read a Victorian
novel at this time of crisis. . . ."
22
During the following years, Pabst established headquarters in
21 Information offered by Mr. Jean Oser, New York. See also Kraszna-Krausz,
"Four Films from Germany," Close Up, March 1982, p. 42.
22
Bryher, "Notes on Some Films," Close Up, Sept. 1982, p. 199. Cf. Jahier, "42
Ans de Cinema," L& R62e intelleetuel du CmSma, p. 70,
FOR A BETTER WORLD 243
Paris. There he started with DON QUIXOTE (1933) , which was beautifully
photographed, very boring and perhaps halfway sincere, and
then directed or supervised one melodrama after another. At the outbreak
of World War II he returned to Nazi Germany. And that
was that.
"Berlin is too unsettled, too fearful of the coming winter, to care
much for cinema," Bryher notes in her above-mentioned article.
"The atmosphere in the streets is only to be compared with that of
any large city in 1914-1918. After two or three days, the visitor
wonders why revolution does not happen, not that there is any
specific thing to provoke it apparent to the eyes, but outbreak
against this odd insecure heaviness is to be preferred than waiting for
a storm that has sometime got to burst." And she adds : "The film
that interests Berlin most at this moment is Kuhle Wampe."
2S
KTJHLE WAMPE (1932), shown in America under the title
WHITHER GERMANY?, was the first, and last, German film which
overtly expressed a communist viewpoint. Bert Brecht and Ottwalt
did the script ; the music was by Hanns Eisler. Thousands of members
of such leftist organizations as the Labor Sports Union, a
Workers' Theatre Unit and the Workers* Chorus of Greater Berlin
volunteered for the mass scenes.
24
It was a true free-lance film, produced
under the greatest of difficulties. "About half way through the
film the company whose sound installation was being used objected
on political grounds. They could not begin the picture over again
from the beginning and therefore much of the money . . . went
. . . into lawsuits."
25
The first section of this film about the unemployed details a typical
situation in a worker's family wrecked by the economic crisis.
The father, long jobless, is discouraged and embittered; the backward-minded
mother stubbornly quotes the saying that any able
individual is bound to make headway in life. Their daughter Anni
(Hertha Thiele), the only working member of the family, braces
herself against the morbid atmosphere at home, while the son finally
succumbs to it. Unemployed, he lives on his dole. After one of his
fruitless job hunts he learns from his father that the dole will be
cut by a new "emergency decree." The father goes off to his tavern;
23
Bryher, "Notes on Some Films," Close Up, Sept. 1982, p. 196.
24 Film Forum, Program 3, March 19, 1988.
a
Bryher, "Notes on Some Films," Close Up, Sept 1982, p. 198.
2*4 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
whereupon the son, in a state of utter despondency, throws himself
out of the window. "One less unemployed," comments a woman on
the street. Since the family can no longer pay rent, they are ordered
to move out. Anni implores the authorities to revoke this order, but
they insist upon the eviction.
The second section is laid in "Kuhle Wampe," a tent colony of
the unemployed on the outskirts of Berlin. The family has been taken
to this shelter by Fritz, a young mechanic and Anni's lover. When
Anni tells him that she is going to have a child, Fritz in his desire
to shun responsibilities tries to persuade her of the necessity of an
abortion. Here Brecht borrows the motif of conversion from MOTHER
KRATTSEN'S JOURNEY TO HAPPINESS: impressed by the arguments
of a class-conscious worker-friend, Fritz reluctantly decides to face
the music.
26
His proposal to Anni results in a betrothal party which,
considering the scanty living standards of the tent colonists, is surprisingly
opulent. Anni's parents and other elder people empty
plates and bowls with gluttonous greed, show their feelings in hilarious
shouting and singing, and at the end get hopelessly drunk. The
idea is obviously to characterize the old generation of workers as a
lot of philistines who have no more fight in them and drown their
resignation in mean excesses. Anni is determined not to sink into the
swamp that threatens to engulf her. As Fritz admits that he feels
he is being victimized by their engagement, she immediately breaks it
off and also parts with her parents to live a life of her own in
Berlin.
In the third and last section, a mood of hope supersedes the
gloominess. Having joined the workers' sports movement, Anni attends
a sport festival held by the radical labor unions. There she
again meets Fritz, who meanwhile has lost his job. Even though the
two avoid talking about themselves, it is made unmistakably clear
that they still love each other and will become reconciled on a
sounder basis. But this private idyll is overshadowed by the display
of collective life. Candid-camera work zealously records an uninterrupted
succession of athletic contests, speaking choruses and openair
theatrical performances [Illus. 57]. The whole festival breathes
a youthful optimism which expresses itself in the words of the concluding
song: "Forward, never relax . . . don't be resigned, but
determine to alter and better the world." The film ends in a commuters'
train crowded with middle-class people and returning young
26 Cf. p. ids.
FOR A BETTER WORLD 245
athletes. English reviewers have praised this final episode for its
cinematic rendition of such abstract subject-matter as a discussion
on economics. One traveler, a shopkeeper or the like, starts arguing
about a newspaper item reporting the burning of several
million pounds of coffee in Brazil, and the ensuing controversy
develops into a clash of opinions intended to reveal the antagonism
between proletarian and bourgeois mentality. Whenever the workers
draw revolutionary inferences from economic facts, their opponents
turn nationalistic or take refuge in nebulous generalities. At the
station, the young disperse, singing "Forward, never relax. . . ."
27
Of course, the board of censors banned the film, on the pretext
that it vilified (1) the President of the Reich, (2) the administration
of justice, and (3) religion. The first charge referred to the passage
in which an "emergency decree" issued by Hindenburg appears as
the cause of the son's suicide; the second bore on the attack against
current methods of eviction and Fritz's indifference to the illegality
of abortion ; the third was exacted from some shots of naked youths
who plunge into the water while the church bells ring. Along with
other critics, I opposed an interdict based upon such questionable
arguments.
28
Finally the film was admitted, with a number of cuts
tending to neutralize its political significance.
The young Bulgarian S. Th. Dudow who directed KUHLE
WAMPE had learned from the Russians to characterize social situations
through well-chosen faces and suggestive camera angles. A
convincing proof of his talent is the opening sequence which pictures
a group of unemployed, among them the son, in search of jobs.
Near a triangular vacant lot, whose sadness reflects theirs, the
young workers linger with their bicycles waiting for the newsboy
with the latest papers. Then, after an expert glance through the
ads, the group starts moving. They bicycle past "No help wanted"
signboards, enter a factory gateway without alighting and reemerge
instantly, repeat this vain attempt several times, and wheel
on and on, never separating and always increasing in speed. It is
rare that the intangible spirit of a whole epoch is crystallized in such
clear-cut images. This sequence with its telling details of rotating
wheels and noncommittal house fayades gives a concise idea of what
German life was like during the crucial pre-Hitler days. In other
27 Film Society Programme, Dec. 11, 1982. Kracauer,
* 'Kuhle Wampe' verbotenl"
Frankfurter Zeituno, April 5, 1982.
28
Kracauer, ibid. Cf. also Boehmer and Reitz, Film in Wirtshaft und Recht,
pp. 51, 58, 59-60.
246 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
places, Dudow's lack of experience becomes obvious. The pictorial
report of the sport festival is unnecessarily long, and the introductory
shots of each section are assembled in too absent-minded a
fashion to set the tone effectively.
The film's underlying radicalism manifests itself in the unusual
construction of the plot. That the son kills himself in the first section
practically defies all German screen traditions. Dudow once told me
that, while preparing KUHLE WAMPE, he was urged by his producer
and several advisers to shift this suicide episode to the film's
finale so as to re-establish the natural order of things. In fact, since
the early days of the German cinema nearly all important films have
ended with an act of submission, and the suicide so frequent in them
is nothing but the most extreme and dramatic form of this act. In
displacing the suicide motif, KXJHLE WAMPE disavows psychological
retrogression. This is confirmed by the relation between the son's
suicide and the song which exhorts youth: "Don't be resigned, but
determine to alter and better the world." Significantly, the song is
reiterated at the very end, the normal place for suicides. Through
these words as well as their position the film explicitly repudiates
the submissive impulses which drive the son to his death.
The same revolutionary attitude is apparent in the love affair
between Anni and Fritz. Perhaps misled by the many cuts, an
American reviewer remarked of it: "It is one of the chief defects
of the picture that its author . . . has been unable to show the
proper connection between the amorous difficulties of his heroine and
the problems of the despairing unemployed. . . ."
29
But even in
the mutilated version the development of the love story has a distinct
bearing on the situation of the worker class. Anni precedes Fritz
in liberating herself, and Fritz finds his way back to her as soon as
he, too, becomes sufficiently adult that is, class-conscious in this
context to suppress his bourgeois inclinations. What holds true of
the two lovers, the film suggests, also applies to the workers in general:
their freedom is the result of self-emancipation, their happiness
depends on their maturity.
Although undeniably genuine, this radical attitude lacks flair
and experience on the political plane. It is an intellectual radicalism,
unable to cope with reality. The gravest blunder committed in
KUHLE WAMPE is its gross attack against the petty-bourgeois mentality
of the old workers an attack obviously designed to stigmatize
Watts, "Kuble Wampe," New York Herald Tribune, AprU 25, 1988.
FOR A BETTER WORLD 247
social democratic behavior. At a time when the menace of Nazi domination
was felt throughout Germany, it would have been better
strategy to emphasize the solidarity of the worker masses instead
of criticizing a large portion of them. In addition, this criticism
is spiteful rather than solicitous. Like any reactionary film, KTTHUE
WAMPE in its depiction of the betrothal party goes so far as to
ridicule the bad table manners of the older generation. Such a
petty insinuation was bound to increase retrogressive obduracy on
the part of the offended unemployed; that is, it counteracted the
film's own effort to break up retrogression. In the last section, communistic
youth is introduced as the vanguard of revolution, the true
antagonist of the powers of darkness. And what are these pioneers
doing? They indulge in athletic games and sing songs full of a
militant spirit and grandiose promise. But since sport festivals are
held by people of all colors, this one does not prove the particular
strength of the Reds. Nor do the songs carry enough weight to
warrant the belief in a redemption of the unemployed, whose misery
is so impressively pictured in the first section. Compared with the
display of their hardships, the "Forward, never relax . . ." sounds
merely rhetorical.
Nevertheless, hope might have outbalanced suffering, had the
demoralized old workers been contrasted not only with youth groups
but also with groups of their own age. The film invalidates its
cause by expressing differences of attitude through differences between
generations. The optimism typical of radical youth is in
itself no guarantee for the future. It is true that during the discussion
on economics the young athletes live up to the standards of
Marxian propagandists of any age. But their line of argument is
the party line, and after asserting it they immediately resume the
song which marks them as youths. KTTHXE WAMPE is not free from
glorifying youth as such, and to some extent its young revolutionaries
resemble those youthful rebels who in numerous German films
of the opposite camp are finally ready to submit or to enforce submission.
This resemblance is by no means accidental. Towards the
end of the pre-Hitler period many anguished young unemployed
were so unbalanced that one evening they would be swayed by a
communistic spokesman and the next succumb to a Nazi agitator's
harangue.
80
30 Most of this analysis is drawn from my article "'Kuhle Wampe' verbotenP
Frankfurter Zeitwng, April 5, 1932.
248 THE PBE-HITLER PERIOD
When what remained of the German Republic was about to
collapse, Fritz Lang made DAS TESTAMENT DES DR. MABTJSE (THE
LAST WILL OF DR. MABTTSE) , a sort of last-ditch stand against impending
disaster. But the curtain fell before this Nero production
could be released, and no sooner did the Nazis take over than Dr.
Goebbels banned it. In his subsequent talk with Lang he expressed
his delight in METROPOLIS, without so much as mentioning his disapproval
of the new Mabuse film ; whereupon Lang deemed it wise
to leave Germany.
81
An uncut print of the film's French version,
made simultaneously with the German original, was smuggled across
the border and edited in France.
In 1943, when the film reached New York audiences, Lang wrote
a "Screen Foreword," expounding his original intentions: "This
film was made as an allegory to show Hitler's processes of terrorism.
Slogans and doctrines of the Third Reich have been put into the
mouths of criminals in the film. Thus I hoped to expose the masked
Nazi theory of the necessity to deliberately destroy everything which
is precious to a people. . . .
Then, when everything collapsed and
they were thrown into utter despair, they would try to find help in
the 'new order.'
" 82
Even though this self-interpretation smacks of hindsight, it is
nevertheless true that the film foreshadows Nazi practices. The
noted psychiatrist Baum, its main character, is under the hypnotic
influence of Dr. Mabuse, who, it will be remembered, went mad at
the end of Lang's first Mabuse film, of 1922.88
In the sequel, this
early screen tyrant reappears as an inmate of Baum's lunatic
asylum, covering innumerable sheets of paper with detailed instructions
for attacks on railways, chemical factories, the currency system
and so on. His writings form a manual of crime and destruction,
governed by a maxim which strikes a familiar note: "Mankind must
be thrown into an abyss of terror." Baum, possessed by what he calls
the genius of Mabuse, leads a double life like Dr. Caligari: while
playing the role of the psychiatrist, he also heads an underworld
organization through which he painstakingly carries out the madman's
scrawled instructions. From murder to forgery his gang covers
31 "Fritz Lang," New York World Telegram, June 11, 1941. Cf. Film Society
Programme, May 6, 1934. See also p. 164. Lang left Germany for France, where he
made LHJOM (1935). For Lang's whole development, see Weinberg, An Index to . . .
Fritz Lang.
sa
Lang, "Screen Forward," program to the film, World Theatre, New York,
March 19, 1948.
33 Cf. p. 82,
FOR A BETTEE WORLD 249
the whole field of criminal activities. After Mabuse's death, this
paranoiac aspirant to world domination believes himself a reincarnation
of his idol. He is tracked down by Chief Inspector Lohmann,
the same screen sleuth who established the identity of the childmurderer
in M. A systematic-minded and shrewd police officer,
Lohmann represents the German version of the Anglo-Saxon detective.
When he finally solves the case, Baum flees into the former cell
of Mabuse, where his own madness becomes manifest.
The film is inferior to M. In it, Lang accumulates mere thrills,
elaborating upon them zealously. Whenever Baum feels swayed by
Mabuse, the tatter's ghostly apparition emerges with clocklike punctuality.
Since repetitious shock effects tend to neutralize each other,
the result is monotony rather than an increase of suspense. Nevertheless
the film includes two brilliant episodes which testify to Lang's
"uncanny genius for invoking terror out of the simplest things."
34
The first is the opening sequence. It shows a man cautiously moving
about in an abandoned workshop that seems to be shaken by a perpetual,
roaring drone. His apparent fear and this nerve-racking
noise are bound to torment an audience which does not yet realize
that the man is spying on Baum's counterfeiters and that the noise
itself originates in their nearby printing press. Life under a terror
regime could not be rendered more impressively, for throughout the
sequence the imminence of doom is sensed and no one knows when and
where the ax will fall. The other episode also features the spying man,
who is one of Lohmann's detectives. After his capture by the gang
this victim of Baum's sadistic cruelty, now insane, spends his days
in a cell of the lunatic asylum. He imagines himself as living in a
vacuum, and as Lohmann approaches him he shrinks back panicstricken
and sings with an animal voice, "Gloria gloria!" Lang
succeeds in making the vacuum seem real. Transparent walls of glass
surround the mad detective, and the luminous immateriality breeds
horrors more shattering than those of a shadow world.
Dr. Goebbels undoubtedly knew why he banned the film. However,
it is hard to believe that average German audiences would have
grasped the analogy between the gang of screen criminals and the
Hitler gang. And had they even been aware of it, they would not
have felt particularly encouraged to stand up against the Nazis, for
Lang is so exclusively concerned with liighlighting the magic spell
of Mabuse and Baum that his film mirrors their demoniac irresisti-
34
Weinberg, "Fritz Lang," program to the film, ibid.
250 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
bility rather than the inner superiority of their opponents. To be
sure, Lohmann defeats Baum ; but Lohmann himself is left without
any halo. Like his predecessor. Dr. Wenk, who defeated the criminals
in Lang's first Mabuse film, he is a colorless official and as such
unfit to represent a cause involving political issues. His victory lacks
broad moral significance. As so often with Lang, the law triumphs
and the lawless glitters. This anti-Nazi film betrays the power of
Nazi spirit over minds insufficiently equipped to counter its peculiar
fascination.
21 NATIONAL EPIC
THE second major group of pre-Hitler films served as an outlet
for the existing authoritarian tendencies. These films ignored the
suffering masses and of course shunned any solution that recalled
humanization, progress and democracy. Their sole concern was the
individual. They usually glorified some potential or full-fledged
rebel, without, however, neglecting the figures of the war hero and
the omnipotent leader. Sometimes their main character amounted
to a blend of all three.
A subterranean affinity for the rebel theme shows even in films
which, judging by their milieus or surface designs, seem remote from
it. One of them was DEB, MORDEB DIMITRI KARAMASOFF (KABAMAzov,
1931), staged by the former Soviet film director Fedor Ozep.
1
Indifferent to the pseudo-religious moods which had engendered
the KARAMAZOV of 1920, this pre-Hitler film exploited the Dostoievsky
novel for the sole purpose of dramatizing the story of Dimitri
Karamazov. Fritz Kortner*s impetuous young Dimitri abruptly
leaves his well-to-do bride to make love to Grushenka, a kept girl
who plays with the idea of marrying his father. This senile old fool
is so infatuated with Grushenka that he promises her a fortune if
she complies. Dimitri in a fury sets out to kill him, but eventually
shrinks from the murder. While he rushes in a troika back to Grushenka,
the old Karamazov is murdered by his servant Smerdjakov
(Fritz Rasp), a weird epileptic possessed with greed for the treasure
his master hides behind an icon. No one yet knows about the crime
when Grushenka decides to accept Dimitri as her permanent lover.
After a turbulent night the happy hotspur spends with her and a
Hcentious crowd in a sort of brothel, he is arrested on suspicion
of having committed parricide. Even though Smerdjakov hangs
himself, the court doubts Dimitri's innocence. They sentence him
to Siberia. Grushenka, admirably portrayed by Anna Sten, accompanies
him.
1 FUm Society Programme, April 17, 1980. Cf. p. 109.
261
252 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
It was a story which had little in common with Dostoievsky or
with Soviet mentality. Ozep seemed to sense it; for he refrained
from using Russian "montage" methods, except, perhaps, for the
magnificent troika episode in which he juxtaposed treetops and
horse's hoofs in fast cutting so as to increase the impression of speed.
But this had been done on the European screen before. On the whole,
KARAMAZOV is patterned after the German silent films. Inanimate
objects assert -themselves imperiously whenever human passions boil
over. A shining clock with four revolving pendulums is the chief
witness of that scene in which Dimitri reviles Grushenka for luring
his father and somewhat later leaves her as her lover. The clock
appears while he is still alone in the room, watches the two raging
against each other and re-emerges at the moment of their first
embrace.
Made in the early days of sound, the film suffers from the stage
habits of its actors who continually fall into declamation. But the
visual part is not yet reduced to a mere accompaniment of the dialogue,
and at least in one instance Ozep combines sounds and pictures
in a truly cinematic way. As Grushenka assures Dimitri of her love,
both laugh and laugh in a fit of happiness and their laughter is so
contagious that soon the whole brothel joins in. Before this uproar
has completely died away, the close-up of a big chandelier fills the
screen a sea of whirling candle flames, anticipating the subsequent
revelry with its shooting, dancing and singing.
Stripped of its Russian apparel, KARAMAZOV has all the traits of
those street films which during the stabilized period reflected, after
the manner of dreams, the longing for authoritarian rule. Dimitri
is the rebellious son who, driven by his instincts, exchanges bourgeois
security for life on the street. And Grushenka represents the prostitute
who is a well of love in a world grown cold. The film would be
nothing but a late street film if it were not for its finale which marks
an important change of pattern. Although ASPHALT and other old
street films concluded with the promise of continued rebellion, their
middle-class runaways eventually returned to the plush parlors from
which they had sprung.
2
At the end of KARAMAZOV, rebellion not
only remains a hope, but is symbolized as a fact. Unlike his wavering
predecessors, Dimitri, this bourgeois lover, goes on living with Grushenka,
the prostitute, and his submission to an unjust sentence is
so far from being an act of resigned retreat that, conversely, it
2 Cf. p. 159 f.
NATIONAL EPIC 253
indicates his determination once for all to turn his back upon the
paternal world. He is a rebel for good. Since he is not the sole diehard
rebel to appear on the contemporary German screen, this variation
of the street films tends the more to show that the atmosphere
of the pre-Hitler era was pregnant with the idea of rebellion. Characteristically,
the spirit of violence which sweeps through the film
materializes in Dimitri himself.
DANTON (1931 ) , a historical film by Hans Behrendt, also revived
a theme of the early postwar years. This picture resembled ALL FOE A
WOMAN, Buchowetski's Danton film of 1921, in its indifference to
the French Revolution and its emphasis on the private life of the
revolutionary leaders.
8
The pre-Hitler Robespierre is an arid, Jesuitical
schemer who envies Danton's immense popularity and the broad
scope of his uninhibited nature. Danton on his part has a sanguine
temperament and is open-minded rather than doctrinaire. He liberates
an imprisoned aristocrat and marries her; he overtly expresses
his disgust of Robespierre's terror regime. His careless conduct
offers his archenemy a welcome opportunity to arraign him for high
treason. In the convention episode Kortner as Danton is at his best.
With the skill of a born demagogue he turns the tables on Robespierre,
accusing him and Saint-Just of procedures bound to choke
the Revolution in blood. Since the masses, first hostile to Danton,
fiercely acclaim him at the end of his speech, Robespierre resorts to
the expedient of having them removed by force of arms. "Long live
liberty I" Danton shouts before his execution.
In the course of the film this character undergoes an interesting
metamorphosis. He begins as a genuine Jacobin who calls for, and
obtains, the death of Louis XVI. Later, when France is invaded by
the enemy, Danton turns patriot ; in his successful negotiations with
the Duke of Koburg he promises to spare the life of Marie Antoinette
if the invasion armies under the Duke's command effect a retreat.
It is
1
not his fault that Robespierre thwarts this agreement
by sending the Queen to the guillotine. In addition, Danton, the
patriot, reveals himself as a champion of humanity concerned not
so much with the further pursuit of the Revolution as with freedom
from any kind of oppression. His ardent opposition to Robespierre's
dictatorship makes him appear the counterpart of Schiller's libertyloving
heroes. The revolutionary Jacobin grows into a noble rebel.
*Cf.p. 50 f.
254 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
As such Danton, it is true, sides with democracy against tyranny.
But at the same time he is so patriotic and emotional that he strongly
recalls those rebellious German idealists who, loathing Versailles and
the Weimar Republic, were predestined to become Nazi sympathizers.
This screen rebel is a paradoxical blend of a potential Hitlerite and
a democratic fighter. Such a blend seemed to prove attractive;
DANTON is said to have been enthusiastically received on the occasion
of its Berlin premiere.
4
The rebel theme also loomed in Kurt Bernhardťs DER MANN
DER DEN MORD BEGING (THE MAN WHO MURDERED, 1931). Made
after a novel by Claude Farrere, this Terra-United Artists production
dealt with a scandal in the diplomatic circles of Constantinople.
The exotic scenery was beautiful, the treatment subtle, the action
slow. A French attache Conrad Veidt in one of his seducer roles
falls in love with Mary, the wife of an English lord, and after a
while discovers that she is mistreated by her husband and his cousin,
a domineering woman. In a tete-&-tete he suggests a divorce. Mary
shrinks from the mere thought of it, for then she would have to give
up her little boy. After this exposition of her plight the drama takes
its course: no sooner does the lord find out about Mary's love affair
with a charming and decadent Russian prince (Gregory Chmara)
than he forces her to agree to the divorce she dreads so much. She
screams in her despair and is overheard by the Frenchman who,
as Mary's protector, has secretly followed her. Later the lord is
found murdered. At the end, the French attache, conversing with
the Turkish police minister, casually mentions that he himself is the
man who did it. The Turk, too, is a man of the world. Intent on
hushing up the unpleasant affair, he intimates that his visitor should
return to Paris at his earliest convenience, and dismisses him with an
understanding handshake.
Despite its aloofness, this upper-crust story had a bearing on
current attitudes. The "man who murdered" commits his crime in
the conviction of righting a wrong brought about by the existing
laws. They destroy the woman he loves and he cannot stand such an
injustice. To be sure, as a diplomat this desperate lover is surrounded
with a halo of extraterritoriality; but in taking the law into his
own hands he nevertheless assumes the character of a rebel. The
so-called "Ferns-murderers" also deemed it their holy duty to rid
4
According to Magnus, "Danton," Variety, Feb. 1981 (?).
NATIONAL EPIC 255
themselves of their opponents by killing them. This analogy is not
as far-fetched as it seems, for, like the German judges who never
punished any of those murderous rebels, the Turkish police minister
absolves the Frenchman and moreover expresses his sympathy for
him.
Here, as in other cases, the objection suggests itself that undoubtedly
neither the film-makers nor the German audiences were
aware of such parallels. Yet these parallels exist, and that they
passed unnoticed increases rather than invalidates their significance.
The less an individual knows why he prefers one subject to another,
the more one is safe in assuming that his choice has been determined
by powerful tendencies below the dimension of consciousness. Any
tendency of that kind asserts itself in the most remote ideas and
perceptions, so that these necessarily reflect it, no matter what is
dealt with or what on the surface appears to be said. Although Bernhardťs
film is exclusively concerned with love and crime among highranking
dignitaries, it betrays a state of mind which favors rebels
and conniving authorities,
In the film credits for THE MAN WHO MURDERED, Carl Mayer
is listed as the dramaturgic supervisor. Since his script for SUNRISE
(1927), Murnau's first Hollywood film, Mayer had on the whole
confined himself to advisory work, as if unable, or unwilling, to cope
with a period which ran against his inmost experiences and sensibilities.
Mechanization had leveled all deep emotions, collective interests
had weakened the sense of individual values, and with the
rising Nazi tide petty-bourgeois mentality more and more pervaded
the atmosphere. Something like resignation may have driven him to
collaborate in films which fell short of his own standards.
Mayer joined Czinner and, first in Berlin, then in Paris, helped
to prepare two films starring Bergner. In ARIANE (1931), she portrays
a young Russian student who, posing as an experienced
woman, captivates a man about town with a penchant for casual
liaisons.
8
In DER TRAUMENDE MUND (THE DREAMING MOUTH,
1932), a picture reminiscent of her first film, HUSBANDS OR LOVERS?,
she wavers between passion for a famous violinist and devotion to
her husband, and after having wavered long enough, evades the
dilemma by the old stratagem of drowning herself.6
It was all love
"Bryher, "Berlin, April 1981," Close Up, June 1931, p. 181; synopsis in IZZtwtrierter
Film-Ewrier.
6 Film Society Programme, Jan. 22, 1983; Weiss, "Elizabeth Bergner Again,"
Close Up, Dec. 1982, pp. 264-65.
256 THE PHE-HITLER PERIOD
and psychology, and to make it seem still more so, music was called
upon. Ariane listens to the Don Giovanni overture, and the famous
violinist contributes part of Beethoven's violin concerto.
That Mayer realized the questionable social implications of these
films is highly improbable. In 1932, he went to London where he
continued to serve as an adviser in documentary and theatrical films.
A much-cherished project of his own was another city film, this time
about London; but no one would produce his script. He died of
cancer, in 1944.
Paul Rotha, Mayer's intimate friend, who more than anyone
else understood and appreciated his unique merits, wrote to me
about him: "To look at, he was like Beethoven, but with a more
sensitive, a more fragile face. In comparison with his small body (he
was about 5 ft. 2 ins.) his head seemed unnaturally big. He would
stroll along almost meandering as if blown here and there by the
wind. You never knew where you would meet him next. In little
cafes in Soho, . . on a park bench, in a book shop. ... He endeared
all people to him; his nurses during his illness, barmen in
pubs, caretakers. He had a habit rare in cities of saying 'Good
morning' to everyone, whether he knew them or not," 7
This devotee
of the big cities, who "first made the camera move for inherent script
purposes,"
8
was animated by Dickens' love of aimless vagabondage,
his sympathetic concern with cobblestones and stray souls alike
the very impulses which prompt the camera itself into action.
In Erich Waschneck's ACHT MABELS IM BOOT (EIGHT GIRLS IN
A BOAT, 1932), a film in the wake of MADCHEN IN UNIFORM, the
rebel motif asserted itself openly. Christa, a college girl, lives
through a veritable nightmare because she is expecting a child. Her
student lover's medical friend agrees to give her an abortion, but
she is so appalled by the surgical atmosphere in his room that she
runs away before he can even start. Since she dreads her unsuspecting
father no less than the doctor, she escapes to the rowing club
of which she is a member. There Hanna, a vigorous blonde, is coaching
the girls under her command for a boat race. When after a
heroic attempt to conceal her condition Christa finally confesses, the
wjiole team glows with desire to shield the girl from her father.
7 Mr. Rotha's letter to me, of Sept. 8, 1944. See also Rotha, "Carl Mayer, 1894^1944,"
Documentary Nev>8 Letter, no. 8, 1944, p. 89; Rotha, "If& in the Script," World
Film News, Sept. 1988, p. 205.
8 Mr. Rotha's letter to me, Sept. 8, 1944.
NATIONAL EPIC 257
Hanna calls on him, and there is a violent clash between the two
generations. For the sake of a happy ending, the father straightens
matters out. Informed by Hanna of his daughter's predicament, he
appears at the club along with the student lover to fetch Christa
home, and all the girls enjoy the prospect of a wedding.
9
The film, an average product ornamented by nice landscape
shots, features not so much Christa as the militant Hanna. She is an
outright rebel figure. When the father refuses to adopt her view of
the case, she bluntly tells him that his stubbornness will force the
club to take care of Christa and her future child. It is as if the club
were a stronghold of the young in the hostile territory of the adults.
Furious at Hanna's provocations, the father threatens her with the
police ; whereupon she calls all fathers brutal tyrants. An offspring
of the earlier Youth Movement, Hanna illustrates its affinity with
Nazi spirit [Ulus. 58]. Her idea of the club as Christa's guardian
anticipates the repudiation of family bonds under Hitler; moreover,
her arrogance and sadism mark her as the prototype of an S.S.
leader. To punish Christa for continually lagging behind, she
orders her to jump off the diving board ten times; observing the
girľs difficulties, she still insists that the order be carried out to the
full. It is only after she has collapsed that the tortured Christa reveals
her secret to this redoubtable female. The implied marital
solution obviously serves as a compromise with traditional ethics.
The surge of pro-Nazi tendencies during the pre-Hitler period
could not better be confirmed than by the increase and specific evolution
of the mountain films. Dr. Arnold Fanck, the uncontested
father of this species, continued along the lines he himself had developed.
Besides a pleasing comedy, DEB WEISSE RATTSCH (THE
WHITE FRENZY, 1931), in which Leni Riefenstahl is initiated into
the secrets of skiing, he made STURME USER DEM MONTBILANC (AVALANCHE,
1930), one of those half-monumental, half-sentimental concoctions
of which he was master.10
The film again pictures the
horrors and beauties of the high mountains, this time with particular
emphasis on majestic cloud displays. (That in the opening sequence
9
Jahier, "42 Ans de Cinema," Le Rdle intellectual du Cw4ma> p. 70; Kalbus,
Deutsche Ftimkunzt, II, 57-58; etc.
10 For WHITE FKEKZY, see "Der Weisse Rausch," Filmwelt, Dec. 20, 1931, and
Weiss, "Sonne fiber dem Arlberg," Close Up, March 1982, pp. 59-60. For AVALANCHE,
see Fanck, Sturm tiber dem Montblanc, and Der Kampf mit dem Serge; Kalbus,
Deutsche Filmkunat, II, 86-88; synopsis in Ittustrierter Ftim-Kwrier. Significantly, the
film's original title was VBEE DEK WOLEBN ("Above the Clouds'*) .
208 THE PRE-HITLER PEEIOD
of the Nazi documentary TBHTMPH OF THE WILL, of 1936, similar
cloud masses surround Hitler's airplane on its flight to Nuremberg,
reveals the ultimate fusion of the mountain cult and the Hitler cult
11
[Illus. 59 and 60].) Impressive sound effects supplement the magnificent
photography: fragments of Bach and Beethoven from an
abandoned radio on Mont Blanc intermittently penetrate the roaring
storm, making the dark altitudes seem more aloof and inhuman.
For the rest, AVALANCHE duplicates THE WHITE HELL OF Prrz
PALU in reiterating Ernst Udeťs stunt flights, diverse elemental
catastrophes and the inevitable rescue party. The man to be rescued
in this case is a young Mont Blanc meteorologist threatened with
freezing to death in his storm-wrecked observatory on the peak. But
why, then, does he stay up there over Easter instead of joining the
girl he secretly loves in the valleys? Because his best friend, a Berlin
musician, has sent him a letter which clearly indicates that he, too>
adores this girl. The letter suffices to make the meteorologist give up
his love. He does not think of asking the girl how she herself feels
about him ; full of self-pity and noble sentiments, he leaves her to his
friend. May they be happy ! His own lot is to remain above the clouds
and all mortals. And there he would have died were it not for the
girl, alias Leni Riefenstahl, who, mountain-possessed as ever, loves
this hero on Mont Blanc and braves all dangers to save him. An
American reviewer called the plot 'Voefully inadequate."
12
As a
matter of fact, it follows a typically German pattern, its main character
being the perpetual adolescent well-known from many previous
films. The psychological consequences of such retrogressive behavior
need no further elaboration.
In the course of the pre-Hitler years, Leni Riefenstahl embarked
upon a career of her own. She directed DAS BLATJE LIGHT (THE
BLUE LIOHT, 1982) , cooperatively produced by her, Bela Balizs,
and the photographer Hans Schneeberger. The film is based on an
old legend of the Italian Dolomites. On nights when the moon is
full, the peak of Mount Cristallo radiates a marvelous blue light that
lures all the young villagers to it. Even though their parents try to
keep them home behind closed window shutters, they are drawn away
like somnambulists and fall to death among the rocks. Only Junta
(Leni Riefenstahl) ,
a sort of gypsy girl, is said to reach the light
safely and is therefore considered a witch [Illus. 62], The super"
Cf. p. 290.
" Boehnel, "Avalanche," IV^ic York World Telegram March 20, 1982,
NATIONAL EPIC 259
stitious village people insult the girl and throw stones at her whenever
she comes down from her cabin high in the mountains. A young
Viennese painter staying for a day or so in the village witnesses
such a scene and feels so attracted by Junta that he goes to live
with her in her mountain refuge. One night, she leaves him and
climbs the moon-lit cliffs of Mount Cristallo, Secretly following her
to the peak, the painter discovers that the mysterious blue light
emanates from a stretch of precious crystals. He enlightens the
villagers, who under his guidance remove the treasure, now turned
from a source of fright into a promise of wealth. Next full moon,
Junta, unsuspecting, resumes her ascent ; but since the blue light is
gone, she misses her way and falls down a precipice. The painter,
too late to rescue her, bends over the shining face of the dead girl.
13
Beautiful outdoor shots stress the insoluble ties between primitive
people and their natural surroundings. The statues of saints are
carved in a rock by the road; the mute Dolomites partake of the
life in the village. Close-ups of genuine peasant faces thread through
the whole of the film; these faces resemble landscapes molded by
nature itself, and in rendering them, the camera achieves a fascinating
study in facial folklore. While the peasants are merely
related to the soil, Junta is a true incarnation of elemental powers,
strikingly confirmed as such by the circumstances of her death. She
dies when sober reasoning has explained, and thus destroyed, the
legend of the blue light. With the glow of the crystals her very soul
is taken away. Like the meteorologist in AVALANCHE, this mountain
girl conforms to a political regime which relies on intuition, worships
nature and cultivates myths. To be sure, at the end the village rejoices
in its fortune and the myth seems defeated, but this rational
solution is treated in such a summary way that it enhances rather
than reduces Junta's significance. What remains is nostalgia for her
realm and sadness over a disenchanted world in which the miraculous
becomes merchandise.
Luis Trenker, the model mountaineer of THE HOLY MOUNTAIN,
also emancipated himself from Fanck. He enacted the main characters
of two films made from his own scripts and staged by him in
collaboration with experienced directors. These pictures are particularly
important: they mark the junction of the mountain films and
13
Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, II, 66-66; Weiss, "The Blue Light," Close Up,
June 1932, pp. 119-22.
260 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
the national films. In them, the political implications of AVALANCHE
and THE BLUE LIGHT appear as overt themes.
The first of the two was BERGE IN FLAMMEN (THE DOOMED
BATTALION, 1931), much praised for Sepp Allgeier's brilliant camerawork.
It dealt with an isolated combat episode of World War I
set against the snow peaks of the Austrian Tyrol. A mountain top
is held by an Austrian battalion, and since it proves inaccessible to
direct attacks, the Italians below start drilling a tunnel into the
rocks so as to dynamite this position. While the Austrians, unable
to forestall the enemy action, listen helplessly to the ominous tapping
in the mountain, one of their officers (Trenker) goes on a daredevil
ski patrol down to his native village, which serves the Italians as
headquarters. There he learns the date set for the explosion and
returns in time to warn his comrades. His exploit enables the
"doomed battalion" to evacuate the position just before it is blown
into the air.
14
Whereas Pabsťs WESTFRONT 1918 accumulates war horrors to
advance pacifism, the Trenker war film devotes itself to the praise
of martial virtues. War in THE DOOMED BATTALION is nothing but
a background for a mountain climber who seems to fulfill his natural
destiny by turning war hero. Both the pacifist and the heroic film
disregard the causes of World War I; but, unlike Pabst, Trenker is
justified in ignoring them, for he glorifies the ideal soldier, and
soldiers are not supposed to encroach upon politics. The image of
the war hero is completed by two sequences framing the combat
episode proper. In the opening sequence, the Austrian officer and the
Italian commander, his future antagonist, are seen together on a
mountain excursion immediately before the outbreak of hostilities
two friends elevated above nationalistic prejudices; in the finale,
the ex-enemies resume their old friendship a few years after the war.
In emphasizing this survival of personal bonds, the Trenker film
defies chauvinism even more energetically than did such films as THE
EMDEN and U-9 WEDDIGEN.IS
Yet while they were affected by the
paralysis of minds during the stabilized period, THE DOOMED BATTALION
reflects the surge of national passions bound to result in war.
How is its antichauvinistic attitude compatible with its inherent
nationalism? This attitude makes wars appear as superindividual
14 Cf. reviews in New York Herald Tribune and New York Post, both of June 11,
1982, Museum of Modern Art Library, clipping files. See also Kalbus, Deutsche
kunst, II, 88, and Arnheim, Film also Kwist, p, 278.
15 Cf. p. 155 f.
NATIONAL EPIC 261
events which have to be accepted, whether we sanction or condemn
them. Considered thus as products of inscrutable fate, there is no
danger that emotional fervor in their interest may yield to doubt.
Friendship between soldiers of different countries in the lulls of peace
does not weaken the friends' determination to fight each other in
wartime ; rather, it ennobles this fight, transforming it into a tragic
duty, a superior sacrifice. Trenker's mountain climber is the type of
man on whom regimes in need of war can rely.
The second Trenker film was DER RESELL (THE REBEL), a
German-made Universal production released as late as January 17,
1933. It again was concerned with a war episode, this time drawn
from the Tyroľs revolt against the Napoleonic occupation army. A
Tyrolese student (Trenker) returning home finds his native village
plundered and his mother and sister killed. After killing a French
officer in retaliation/ he goes underground and helps to organize the
resistance. Simultaneously, he continues his romance with a Bavarian
girl (Vilma Banky) who shields him from the occupation authorities
and even does a bit of spying for him. The student profits by her
information. Disguised as a Bavarian officer, he attends a ball given
by the French at Innsbruck and there gathers sufficient intelligence
to prepare a gigantic trap for Napoleon's legions. While this indoor
episode and the amorous interlude are not particularly stirring, the
sequence which shows how the trap is sprung can hardly be surpassed
in violent realism. The Tyrolese peasants, hidden high in the
mountains, let loose masses of rocks and tree trunks on the French
troops pas.sing along the road below. It is an elaborate, roaring
wholesale slaughter, with the mountains as the allies of the rebels.
Of course, at the end the French win out and the student is shot.
18
With Trenker, the rebel enters upon the final stage of a screen
career inseparable from the evolution of the German cinema [Elus.
61]. A definite historic role is assigned to him: he leads, or takes
part in, the people's rebellion against an enemy that subjugates the
nation. This reveals him to be a nationalist rather than a revolutionary.
The analogy between the Tyroľs revolt and the Nazi movement
is obvious ; Trenker in his film only reflects what the Nazis
themselves called a national uprising. Napoleon stands for the hated
"system" and the student hAs the traits of a Hitlerite. Here it becomes
clear why during the pre-Hitler years the German film rebel
"Kalbus, Deutsche FUmkuntt, II, 66-67; review in New York Post, July 28,
1988.
262 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
no longer conformed to the old pattern which had invariably led
him from rebellion to submission. Now that the Nazis prepared for
the ultimate assault upon the crumbling Republic, he, too, was bound
to embody the idea of rebellion. This idea excludes surrender, even
though it does not preclude defeat. Such pre-Hitler figures as
Dimitri Karamazov and Danton therefore fight it out to the last. It
was the hour of decision, and the plush parlors of the past lay far
behind.
17
There is pictorial evidence that the Trenker film was nothing
but a thinly masked pro-Nazi film. Photographed by Sepp AUgeier,
18
it introduced symbols which were to play a prominent part on the
early Hitler screen. To enhance national passion, elaborate use is
made of close-ups of flags, a device common with the Nazis. In the
visionary concluding sequence, the resurrected student, who along
with two other rebel leaders has been executed by the French, moves
onwards, a flag in his hands. "The squad fired, and the rebels . . .
were seen, fallen sprawling in the dust. But now the sound of a patriotic
song was faintly heard, ghostly figures of the three men rose
from their prostrate bodies and, valiantly singing their song,
marched at the head of the peasant forces, ascending along the
rim of a distant cloud, until finally, as the song swelled to its conclusion,
they disappeared into the skies."
19
This apotheosis of rebellious ardor is all but duplicated in HITiiEEJUNGE
QUEX (September 1933; camera: Konstantin Tschet),
a Nazi propaganda film which features the Nazis' eleventh-hour
struggle for power, resounding with their
;<
Youth Song": "Our flag
billows before us 1 . . ." In the film's finale, the militant Hitler boy
Heini, surnamed Quex, distributes leaflets in one of Berlin's proletarian
quarters and there is stabbed by a communist. Abandoned,
he lies on a dark street. "The Nazis come and find Heini dying. His
last words are, 'Our flag billows before . . .' The sound track takes
up the Youth Song and the flag appears on the screen, giving place
to marching columns of Hitler Youth." 20
Through similar images
17 Cf. Erikson, "Hitler's Imagery," Psychiatry, Nov. 194.2, p. 480.
18 A few years later, AUgeier collaborated as chief cameraman in TRIUMPH OP
THE Wnx, which, as has been pointed out above, reverted to the cloud effects of his
AVALANCHE. According to Leni Riefenstahl, this collaboration meant "more than
only an artistic task" to him. Cf. Riefenstahl, Sinter den KuUssen des Reichsparteitag-Films,
p. 16.
19
Quoted from Spottiswoode, A Grammar of the Film, pp. 228-29. See also Iros,
Wesen und Dramaturgic des Films, p. 848.
ao
Quoted from Bateson, "Cultural and Thematic Analysis of Fictional Films,"
Transactions of the New York Academy of Science*, Feb. 1948, p. 76.
1NA1JUJ1NA.L,
both the Trenker film and the Nazi film point at the imminent triumph
of national rebellions a coincidence which strikingly confirms
the identical nature of the rebellions themselves.
The national films of the pre-Hitler period surpassed those of
the stabilized period in number and significance. Like THE REBEL,
the bulk of them drew upon the Napoleonic era to substantiate the
idea of a national uprising, Prussia vs. Napoleon was their central
theme, and Prussia invariably appeared as the protagonist of the
united German nation. On the whole, these films constituted a sort
of national epic, fabricated for domestic mass consumption.
The epic dwelt upon Prussia's humiliation, with a view to her
future redemption. Kurt Bernhardt, Trenker's collaborator in THE
REBEL, made DIE LETZTE KOMPAGNEE (THE LAST COMPANT, 1930),
an Ufa film detailing a combat episode of Napoleon's Prussian campaign.
A captain and twelve men engage in a hopeless rear-guard
action against the advancing French so as to cover the retreat of the
defeated Prussian army across the river Saale. They all are killed.
After conquering the position, the French salute their dead enemies,
whose bravery has succeeded in relieving the rest of the Prussians.
The film breathed the same spirit as THE DOOMED BATTALION.
Rudolf Meinerťs DIE ELF SCHILĽSCHEN OFFIZEERE (1932), a sound
version of his silent film of 1926, depicted the doom of Prussian
officers shot by order of the French for having participated in
Schilľs premature revolt. Gerhard Lamprecht in his DEE SCHWABZE
HUSAR (BLACK HUSSAR, 1932; Ufa) chose to render the rebellious
mood of French-occupied Prussia in the form of a comedy. For
reasons of state Napoleon orders a princess of Baden to marry a
Polish prince. But Veidt as an officer of the Black Hussars, an outlawed
Prussian regiment, plays a trick on the Emperor: he kidnaps
the princess as she travels eastward, saving her from the unwanted
husband.21
Representative of the whole series was Carl Froelich's LmsE,
KONIGIN VON PREUSSEN (LuisE, QUEEN OF PRUSSIA, 1931), produced
by Henny Porten, who also enacted the unhappy Queen. This
decorative historical panorama, which culminated in the famous
meeting of Luise and Napoleon, abounded with allusions to Verai
por THE LAST COMPANY, see synopsis in IlfastrterUr Film-Kurier and Kalbus,
Deuteche Filmkwnst, II, 15; for BLACK HTJSSAB, Kalbus, ibid., p. 44; for DIE ELF
SCHILĽSCHEN OITIZIEBE, Kalbus, ibid., p. 77, See also diverse New York reviews of
the first two films.
264 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
sailles and the actual German situation. Two reviews in the New
York Herald Tribwne not only mentioned the film's "grim frown in
the direction of the Third French Republic" and its "insistence on
the brotherhood of all Germans," but went so far as to advance an
outright suspicion: "The Emperor, the film reminds you with particular
pointedness, once robbed Germany of the Baltic port of
Danzig and set it up as a free city, and when you recall how the
Polish corridor rankles at the moment, it is difficult to believe that
the photoplay . . .
only recalls the historical precedent by accident."
22
Whether accidentally or not, the film popularized the political
claims of the Hitler-Hugenberg front and, by implication, foretold
a victorious rebellion.
Concentrating upon the theme of rebellion itself, Gustav Ucicky's
Ufa production YORK (1931) featured a personal union of war hero
and rebel. While Napoleon is engaged in his Russian campaign, King
Frederick Wilhelm III of Prussia, in strict observance of his treaty
with the Emperor, puts a Prussian army corps at the disposal of the
French high command. He orders General von York (Werner
Krauss), the preceptor of Prussia's new citizens' army, to take
charge of this corps. York is the prototype of a Prussian soldier,
imbued with a sense of duty and utterly devoted to his King. He
obeys and joins the French in Kurland, even though his restive young
officers implore him to turn the tables on their allies. The crisis in the
Prussian camp reaches its climax as soon as the news of Napoleon's
Russian defeat leaks out. But York still refuses to break his allegiance
to the King. Only when this weakling proves deaf to his
patriotic arguments does he cross the Rubicon. York, the rebel, signs
the Convention of Tauroggen with the Russians. The War of Liberation
against Napoleon commences.
This film about the Prussian military caste discriminates between
two types of soldier rebels. The emotional young officers are
of much the same kind as those "demi-soldes" who after World War I
filled the cadres of the notorious Freikorps and somewhat later
formed the nucleus of the Nazi movement. But during the pre-Hitler
period topical interest lay not so much in their well-known affiliations
as in possible reactions of the army High Command. York is
symptomatic of this clique. He turns rebel when it becomes apparent
that Napoleon is on the decline and that therefore any further loy-
28
Quoted from Watts, "Lulse, Queen of Prussia," New YorTc Herald Tribune,
Oct 5, 1982. In Grime's silent Luige film, of 1927, Mady Christians had played the
Queen.
NATIONAL EPIC 265
alty to him might prove disastrous to Prussia. His decision, unhampered
by sentimental impulses, springs from his exclusive concern
with Prussia's grandeur. "York was a soldier," as the program to the
film puts it, "who rebelled against his King for the sake of his
King."
23
Nothing could be more to the point; for in the eyes of the
military tribe national power politics served the true interests of the
King. There is no doubt that the case of this illustrious soldier was
intended to demonstrate the historic legitimacy of an alliance between
the Reichswehr and the rebellious forces represented by Hitler
and Hugenberg. In idealizing York of all generals, Hugenberg's
Ufa clearly suggested that such an alliance would be for the sake of
the "King," the King now being Hindenburg as the symbol of
Germany.
24
In YORK and other pre-Hitler films, unyielding rebels defy the
submissive conduct of their numerous screen predecessors so resolutely
that they might almost be mistaken for champions of individual
freedom. TRENCK, a Phoebus production of 1932, nips this
misconception in the bud. Made after a novel by the late German
refugee-writer Bruno Frank, the film belonged to the Fridericus
series. For even though Frederick the Great remained too much in
the background to be played by his usual impersonator, Otto Gebiihr,
he was the true center of the action, which concerns the abortive love
affair between his sister Amalie and Trenck, his aide-de-camp. Both
dare oppose him. When Frederick tells Amalie that he wishes her to
marry the Swedish Crown Prince, she retorts with the question: "And
my happiness?" Frederick answers that as the daughter of a King
of Prussia she has to suppress such thoughts. Angry at Amalie's
insubordination, he once and for all forestalls her aspirations to happiness
by making her the abbess of a provincial convent.
Trenck on his part is portrayed as an unruly character who,
violating the King's express orders, goes on a dangerous patrol
during the war. Later, he escapes from the fortress in which he has
been put for his disobedience, and after sundry adventures in Austria
settles down at the Russian court as the declared favorite of the
Empress. The film emphasizes that he never commits any treacherous
33
Quoted from Watts, "York," New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 4, 1982.
34 The War of Liberation itself, which seemed rather remote at a time still preoccupied
with Hitler's ascent, was treated in THEODOE KORXER (1932), a mediocre
screen biography of this patriotic soldier-poet, who joined Luetzow's corps of volunteers
and died in action at the age of 22.
266 THE PKE-HITLER PERIOD
action against his King. Yet the King considers him a deserter, and
as Trenck is careless enough to pay a visit to Danzig, he is arrested
there by Frederick's henchmen. They bring their captive back to
Prussia, imprisoning him in the dungeon of Magdeburg. In vain
Amalie entreats the King to show mercy. Only after endless years is
Trenck released; but he has to leave Prussia forever. Time passes
and the King dies. His successor permits the old, broken exile to
return home.25
A few changes in the distribution of lights and shadows, and the
steadfast Amalie as well as Trenck, so hungry for freedom, might
have transformed themselves into heroic rebels engaged in breaking
Frederick's ruthless tyranny. In fact, they are potential rebels. But
far from acknowledging these unhappy lovers as such, the film strips
them of their moral significance, bestowing all glamour on the King.
Amalie is stigmatized for preferring her private happiness to her
sacred duty, and Trenck is made to appear an erratic soldier of
fortune. Authoritarian mentality, eager to glorify the rebel when he
fights for national liberation, thus distorts and soils his image when
he offends the sovereignty of the "King" in the interest of individual
liberty.
The ideal rebel has to submit to authoritarian rule. Trenck himself
is shown surrendering, although he is never recognized as a true
rebel. Back in Prussia, he goes to see Amalie a late and sad tete-atete
after a separation of thirty years. Since the King has destroyed
their love and happiness, one might expect Trenck to answer in the
affirmative Amalie's question as to whether he hates Frederick. His
answer consists in handing to her the manuscript of his memoirs. A
close-up, marking the end of the film, impresses upon the audience
Trenck's dedication. The words read: "To the Spirit of Frederick
the Unique, King of Prussia, my Life." This unfathomable surrender
corroborates the meaning of York's rebellion and moreover intimates
that the other rebels of the pre-Hitler screen are also intrinsically
authoritarian-minded. In the last analysis, the philistine of THE
STREET is the archetype of all German film rebels. Reincarnated in
Trenck, he finally meets the Frederick of his dreams, who redeems
him from the horrors of the plush parlor.
An elaborate image of the inspired leader supplemented that of
the rebel. Besides TRENCZ, three full-fledged Fridericus films, all of
35
Kalbus, DeutscJw Ftimkunst, II, 74; synopsis In Illwtrierttr JFm-Jwri*r; etc.
NATIONAL EPIC 267
them starring Otto Gebiihr, featured Frederick as such a leader:
Gustav Ucicky's DAS FLOTENKONZERT VON SANSSOUCI (THE FLUTE
CONCERT AT SANS SOTJCI, 1930) ; Friedrich Zelnik's BARBERINA, DIE
TANZERIN VON SANSSOUCI (THE KING'S DANCER, 1932) ; and DER
CHORAL VON LEUTHEN (THE ANTHEM OF LEUTHEN, March 7,
1933), produced and staged by Carl Froelich in collaboration with
A. von Cser&py, the creator of the first Fridericus film. The series
continued under Hitler. FRIDERICUS, drawn from a novel by Walter
von Molo and released in the early days of the Nazi regime, focused
upon the King of the Seven Years' War a King who, if possible,
surpassed all previous Fredericks in his resemblance to Hitler. Artistically
on an average level, these pictures with their propagandists
implications found little understanding abroad. An American reviewer
called THE KING'S DANCER a "fine German costume piece"
in an obvious attempt at indulgence.
26
On the whole, the new Fridericus films harped on the motifs of
the old ones and, like them, overflowed with rationalizations of retrogressive
behavior. But what once were unsubstantiated desires developed
into topical allusions. Frederick's aggressive power politics,
itself a compensation for retrogression, appears as a sustained defense
action against an overwhelming enemy conspiracy. Interesting
in this respect is the introductory caption of FRIDERICUS, which
anticipates the official language of such Nazi war films as BAPTISM
OF FIRE and VICTORY IN THE WEST all down the line: "Encircled by
the hereditary Great Powers of Europe, rising Prussia has aspired
for decades to her right to live. The whole world is amazed at the
King of Prussia who, first ridiculed, then feared, has maintained
himself against forces many times superior to his own. Now they
seem to crush him. Prussia's fateful hour has come." After such
apologetic remarks, found in every Fridericus film, the expected victories
and parades pour down with a rapidity certain to delight the
immature.
The endeavor to rationalize feelings of inferiority was particularly
strong. All Fridericus films confront Prussia's poverty and
rudeness with the wealth and polished manners of her enemies, and
in doing so persistently deprecate the latter. The Austrians continue
*8
Quoted from "Barberina," Fortefy, Nov. 1, 1982. For THE FLUTE CONCERT AT
SANS Sotrci, see Kalbus, Deutsche Fiknkunst, II, 72-78, and program to the film; for
THE KINO'S DANCES, Kalbus, ibid., p. 74, and program to the film; for THE ANTHEM
OF LEXJTHEN, Kalbus, ibid., p. 75, and Ittuttrierter Fibfr-Kwrier; for FBIDEBICUS,
Ittwtrierter FUm-Kurier. See also the New York reviews of these films.
268 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
in their role of effeminate operetta figures ; one of them, a colonel,
excels in pleasing love songs (ANTHEM OP LEUTHEN). The French,
in turn, are represented as born courtiers, fond of intrigues and
puns. Who could envy these people? It is the case of Prussia-Germany
against the Western Powers ; of the "have-nots" against the
plutocracies ; of what in Germany is called culture against a rotten
civilization. Compared with their enemies, these films imply, the
Germans have all the traits of a master race entitled to take over
Europe and tomorrow the world.
The whole series was a thorough attempt to familiarize the masses
with the idea of a Fiihrer. None other than Voltaire is called upon to
recommend him. When, in TRENCK, Frederick advocates sovereignty
of the law, Voltaire replies that good sovereigns are preferable to
good laws enlightened reason paying homage to the absolute ruler.
The King justifies this flattering opinion by playing, as before, the
part of the people's father. His patriarchal regime is a mixture of
old-Prussian feudalism and Nazi sham socialism. He promises oppressed
farmers to punish the Governor of their province for partially
favoring the big-estate owners (TRENCK) ; he cancels all victory
celebrations, urging that the money provided for them be given
to the war victims (KING'S DANCER) ; he thinks of allotting funds
for cultural purposes on the eve of a decisive battle (ANTHEM or
LEUTHEN). Everybody will have to admit that the security Frederick's
subjects enjoy is inaccessible to the citizens of a democracy,
for in his protective zeal the King generously helps lovers (KING'S
DANCER) and even goes so far as to prevent the wife of an absent
major from committing adultery (FLUTE CONCERT) .
This model King is a veritable genius. As such he succeeds in
thwarting conspiracies, outwitting slick diplomats, and winning
battles where all the chances are against him. In THE FLUTE CONCERT
AT SANS Souci, he secretly issues mobilization orders to his
generals during a flute concert attended by the unsuspecting ambassadors
of Austria, France and Russia, thus stealing a march on
these three powers which, he knows, are all set to attack Prussia.
In THE KING'S DANCER, he invites Barberina to Berlin, so as to make
his enemies believe that he whiles his time away with a flirtation. THE
ANTHEM OP LEUTHEN reveals the relations between this genius and
plain mortals. When the King decides to venture upon a battle near
Leuthen, his devoted old generals fiercely advise against it in view of
their desperate situation. Of course the battle is won, and the moral
NATIONAL EPIC 269
is that the "intuitions" of a genuine Fiihrer prove superior to normal
reasoning a moral well established in German hearts until Stalingrad.
Always right in the end, the inspired King is surrounded with
a dense aura. Both THE KING'S DANCER and THE ANTHEM OF
LEUTHEN capitalize on the authenticated episode of his sudden appearance
at Austrian headquarters on the occasion of one of his
dashing reconnoitering rides: the Austrians are so spellbound by
their legendary enemy that they forget to capture him, and when
they come to their senses, relief arrives in the form of a Prussian
detachment.
The reverse of the leader's grandeur is his tragic solitude, played
up in all Fridericus films [Ulus. 63]. No one is able to understand
Frederick, and amidst cheering crowds he misses the sense of warmth
and nearness which any lover enjoys. At the end of THE KING'S
DANCER, "you see the great king, who has graciously turned Barberina
over to her lover, walk to the window of his palace to greet
his people, and you leave him, standing there, a lonely, unhappy old
man." 27
It has been pointed out in earlier contexts that this insistence
upon the Fiihrer
9
s loneliness meets the needs of a juvenile
mind.
On February 2, 1933, one day after Hitler had been appointed
Chancellor of the Reich, Ufa released MORGENROT (DAWN), a film
about a submarine during World War I. Gustav Ucicky, a specialist
in nationalistic productions, directed this film from a script by
Gerhard Menzel, winner of a high literary award (Kleistpreis) . The
composer was Herbert Windt, who in the years to come did the scores
of many important Nazi films. "At the Berlin first night," Variety's
Berlin correspondent reported on the premiere of MORGENROT, "the
new Cabinet with Hitler, Dr. Hugenberg and Papen, were present.
. . . The picture was received with tremendous applause. . . ."
28
The film is a mingling of war exploits and sentimental conflicts.
Liers, the sub commander (Rudolf Forster) , and his first lieutenant,
Fredericks, are on home leave in their small native town, and as they
depart it becomes apparent that both have fallen in love with the
same girl. Then the submarine is seen in action, torpedoing and sinking
a British cruiser. After this victory, Liers for the first time opens
aT
Quoted from Watts, "The King's Dancer," New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 2T,
1982.
fl*
"Morgenrot," Variety, Feb. 28, 1988.
270 THE PEE-HITLER PERIOD
his heart to Fredericks who, without showing how much he suffers,
tacitly realizes that the girl he loves feels more attached to Liers than
to himself. In pursuit of its mission, the submarine challenges a
seemingly neutral vessel which, however, reveals itself as a British
decoy boat. Signaled by the decoy, a British destroyer rams the sub.
A crucial problem arises, for in the sinking hull ten men are left alive
with only eight divers' suits available. Two shots solve the problem:
Fredericks and another crew member, grieved for reasons of his own,
commit suicide to save their comrades. The final sequence resumes
the theme of home leave. Liers again departs from his native town,
and the war goes on.
The American reviews not only praised this film for its briUiant
acting and its abundance of realistic battle details, but showed themselves
very impressed by its absence of any hatred.
29
In fact, Liers'
mother, who has already lost two sons in the war, is singularly lacking
in patriotic ardor, and the submarine crew reacts to the British
ruse of a decoy without the slightest animosity. DAWN is no Nazi
film. Rather, it belongs to the series of such war films as THE
LAST COMPANY and THE DOOMED BATTALION which precisely
through their impartiality elevate war to the rank of an unquestionable
institution.
80
That Hitler saw DAWN at the dawn of his own regime is a strange
coincidence. He might have enjoyed this film with its smell of real
war as a lucky omen, a providential sanction of what he himself
planned to bring about [Dlus. 64]. Moreover, it told him unmistakably
that Liers and his kind, even should they fail to become his
partisans, were predestined to become his tools. Liers, a conservativeminded
professional soldier, says to his mother: "Perhaps we Germans
do not know how to live, but how to die, this we know incredibly
well."
S1
His words frankly acknowledge the process of retrogression
reflected by the German screen throughout its whole development.
The desire to mature, they admit in a scarcely veiled manner, has
faded away, and the nostalgia for the womb is so definite that it
stiffens to pride in dying a good death. People such as Liers were
indeed bound to submit to the Ftihrer.
*Cf. Barrett, "Morgenrot," National Board of Review Mayazine, June 1988,
pp. 10-12, 15; Tazelaar, "Morgenrot," New York Herald Tribune, May 19, 1988;
Boehnel, "Jforgenrot," N*v> York World TtUgram, May 17, 1988.
30 IE a similar vein was Emelka's KRETJZER EMDEST (Cfiuiszn EKDEST, 1982),
a sound version of THE EMDEK of 1926.
81
Quoted by Kalbus, Deutsche Filmkunst, II, 82.
NATIONAL EPIC 271
Comparison of the two major groups of pre-Hitler films reveals
that in the conflict of antiauthoritarian and authoritarian dispositions,
the odds are against the former. To be sure, the films of the
first group are, in part, on a high artistic level, and no matter
whether they indulge in pacifism or socialism, they all turn against
the tyranny of authoritarian rule. But these films are only loosely
connected with each other and, much more important, they fail to
carry power of conviction. In MADCHEN IN UNIFORM, Fraulein von
Bernburg does not succeed in radically defeating the disciplinarian
headmistress ; HELL ON EARTH with its emphasis on international
fraternization is thoroughly evasive; COMRADESHIP spreads Social
Democratic ideals in a way that testifies to their actual exhaustion.
Unlike this first major group, the second consists of films which,
except for a few scattered products, are closely interrelated. They
belong together ; they concur in establishing a national epic which
centers round the rebel and is dominated by the figure of an inspired
Fiihrer. In addition, the story these films tell resists criticism from
within. While the pacifist message of Pabsťs WESTFRONT 1918
sounds unconvincing because of its complete disregard of the diverse
causes of war, the war heroism in Trenker's DOOMED BATTALION is
not a credo that has to be substantiated but an attitude that simply
exists. One may condemn it for well-founded external reasons, but
one cannot hope to analyze away its reality or possible appeal. The
fact that all films of the second group are internally invulnerable
and allied in a common effort indicates the superior weight of their
underlying authoritarian tendencies. The power of these tendencies
is confirmed by the fusion of the mountain films and the national
films which could take place only under the pressure of irresistible
impulses.
Considering the widespread ideological opposition to Hitler,
there is no doubt that the preponderance of authoritarian leanings
was a decisive factor in his favor. Broad strata of the population,
including part of the intelligentsia, were psychologically predisposed
to the kind of system Hitler offered ; so much so that their craving for
it made them overlook their welfare, their chance of survival. During
those years, many an unbiased observer warned white-collar workers
and employers alike against the Nazis, holding that in its own economic
interest the middle class would do better to associate itself with
the Social Democrats. History has corroborated this warning. In the
spring of 1943, Das Schwarze Korps, the official S.S. organ, bluntly
272 THE PRE-HITLER PERIOD
proclaimed that "the middle class is dead and should not rise again
after the war." 32
And yet this very middle class formed the backbone
of the Hitler movement. The impact of pro-Nazi dispositions
seemed to upset all sober considerations.
A further symptom of the essential role of these dispositions is
the magic spell that the Nazi spirit cast over youth and the unemployedtwo
groups which because of their remoteness from fixed
class interests were particularly sensitive to a propaganda appealing
to their longings for totalitarian leadership. Hitler, if anyone, knew
how to play upon such longings. Finally, it can be assumed that the
discrepancy between these ever-smoldering desires and the political
convictions of the Weiniar parties contributed much to the collapse
of the "system." The catholic Center as well as the Social Democrats
was increasingly drained of its vital energies. It was as if they were
both paralyzed. The tenets they advocated lacked the support of
strong emotions, and in the end their will for power degenerated
into impotent formal scruples.
Irretrievably sunk into retrogression, the bulk of the German
people could not help submitting to Hitler. Since Germany thus carried
out what had been anticipated by her cinema from its very beginning,
conspicuous screen characters now came true in life itself. Personified
daydreams of minds to whom freedom meant a fatal shock,
and adolescence a permanent temptation, these figures filled the
arena of Nazi Germany. Homunculus walked about in the flesh. Selfappointed
Caligaris hypnotized innumerable Cesares into murder.
Raving Mabuses committed fantastic crimes with impunity, and mad
Ivans devised unheard-of tortures. Along with this unholy procession,
many motifs known from the screen turned into actual events.
In Nuremberg, the ornamental pattern of NIBELTJNGEN appeared on
a gigantic scale: an ocean of flags and people artistically arranged.
Souls were thoroughly manipulated so as to create the impression
that the heart mediated between brain and hand. By day and night,
millions of feet were marching over city streets and along highways.
The blare of military bugles sounded unremittingly, and the philistines
from the plush parlors felt very elated. Battles roared and
victory followed victory. It all was as it had been on the screen.
The dark premonitions of a final doom were also fulfilled.
s
Quoted from "The Middle Class Is Dead . . ," New York Times, April 12, 1948.
SUPPLEMENT
PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
AUTHOR'S NOTE
THIS Supplement is, except for some changes in style, arrangement
and the transposition of tense from the present to
the past, a reprint of my pamphlet "Propaganda and the
Nazi War Film," issued, in 1942, by the Museum of Modern
Art Film Library, which kindly permitted its incorporation
into the present book. Originally serving the purposes of psychological
warfare, the pamphlet was made possible by a
Rockefeller grant and written under the auspices of Miss Iris
Barry. My debt of gratitude also extends to Professor Hans
Speier of the Department of State, Dr. Ernst Kris of the
Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research,
Dr. Hans Herma of the City College of New York, and Mr.
Richard Griffith, Executive Director of the National Board
of Review of Motion Pictures. As an analysis of official
screen activities under Hitler, this supplement may afford
some insight into developments beyond the scope of the book
proper.
S. K.
I. NAZI VIEWS AND MEASURES
THE following pages are devoted to the analysis and interpretation of
totalitarian film propaganda, in particular of Nazi film propaganda
after 1989. To be sure, all Nazi films were more or less propaganda films
even the mere entertainment pictures which seem to be remote from
politics. However, in this study only those propaganda films will be
examined which were produced for the express purpose of bolstering
Nazi Germany's total war effort.
The Nazis carried out their direct war film propaganda through
two types of films:
I. The weekly newsreels including a compilation of newsreels entitled
BLITZKRIEG IM WESTEN (BUTZKREEG nr THE WEST) ;
II. The feature-length campaign films, two of which were shown in
this country:
(a) FETJEKTAUFE (BAPTISM OF FIRE), dealing with the Polish
campaign, and
(b) SIEG IM WESTEN (VICTORY IN THE WEST), dealing with the
French campaign.
1
Before embarking upon my investigation proper, which refers
almost exclusively to the aforementioned material, I should like to present
an account of how the Germans handled their war film production.
Most official announcements and administrative measures were concerned
with the shaping and distribution of newsreels, but what holds true of
them also applies to the feature-length documentaries.
Immediately after the outbreak of war, the German Propaganda
Ministry employed every possible means to make of newsreels an effective
instrument of war propaganda. It is true that, long before the war
began, the Nazis used newsreels for the dissemination of propaganda
messages ; but the emphasis they put on newsreels after September 1989
goes far beyond their former achievements and cannot easily be over-
estimated.
Three principles asserted themselves in the German war newsreels.
First, they had to be true to reality; i.e., instead of resorting to
staged war scenes, they had to confine themselves to shots actually taken
at the front. Because of their documentary intention, the campaign films
1
The date of the original release of BLITZKRIEG IK THE WEST Is unknown to me.
It was shown for the first time in New York on November 80, 1940. BAPTISM or FIBB
(with a first run in Berlin at the beginning of April 1940) is a version of a film unknown
in this country, FELDZUG IN POLEN (CAMPAIGN- IN POLAND), released in
Berlin on February 8, 1940. VICTOET IN THE WEST was shown to the German and
foreign press for the first time in Berlin on January 29, 1941.
275
276 PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
BAPTISM off FIRE and VICTORY IN THE WEST, both of which consist
almost entirely of ncwsreel material, were also subject to this restriction.
Official accounts as well as press reviews never forgot to stress their
realism. On February 6, 1940, the Licht Bild Buhne stated that the
Polish campaign film matched the newsreels of the first weeks of the war
in that it gave the spectator the impression of being an eyewitness to
the battle scenes. Official sources became eloquent whenever they pondered
the dangerous mission of the film reporters. Mr. Kurt Hubert,
export director of Tobis, said in the fall of 1940, on a German shortwave
broadcast in English, that the regular army cameramen ". . . are
regular soldiers, doing a soldier's full duty, always in the first lines. . . .
This explains the realistic pictures which we show. . . ."
2
For the
enhancement of this realism, the losses among front-line reporter
formations were readily announced by people ordinarily reluctant
to admit the presence of death in their "realistic" pictures. On
April 26, 1940, the Berlin correspondent of the New York Times
was authorized to report that twenty-three war correspondents had
met death since the outbreak of the war, and the opening caption
of the main part of VICTORY IN THE WEST takes care to increase the
thrill of subsequent scenes by stressing similar facts. On the strength
of them, Mr. Hubert labeled the Nazi war film a "perfect document
of historical truth and nothing but the truth, therefore answering the
German demand for a good substantial report in every way."
3
But it
will be seen that the death of brave cameramen did not prevent a clever
editor from composing their shots into films that, if necessary, blurred
reality and set aside historical truth.
' The second principle concerned the length of newsreels. After the
ominous September days they were considerably enlarged. On May 6,
1940, the Licht Bild Buhne announced the forthcoming newsreel as a top
event of 40 minutes' length. This inflation of the newsreel made it possible
to produce on the screen much the same effects as those obtained
through steady repetition in speeches. It was one of many devices
which served to transform German audiences into a chain-gang of
souls.
The third principle was speed. Nazi newsreels had not only to be
true to reality but to illustrate it as quickly as possible, so that the war
communique's were not forgotten by the time their content appeared on
the screen. Airplanes flew the negatives from the front a dynamic procedure
apparently designed to parallel and support the radio front
reports.
Distribution of newsreels, the production of which was unified at the
2
Sight and Sound, 1941, Vol. 10, No. 88.
FILM DEVICES 277
beginning of the war, was most thoroughly organized. In 1940, Goebbels
said that films must address people of all strata,
4
Following his instructions,
the Nazis managed to impose their propaganda films upon the
entire German population, with the result that within Germany proper
no one could possibly escape them. Film trucks were sent all over the
country; special performances were arranged at reduced prices. Since
exact timing of the pictorial suggestions was desirable, the Propaganda
Ministry moreover decreed that each official front newsreel be released
on the same day everywhere in the Reich. Thus the domestic market was
completely held under control.
As to export, the effort of the Nazi authorities to flood foreign
countries with their official pictures is sufficiently characterized by the
fact that the Propaganda Ministry prepared versions in sixteen different
languages. The Summer 1941 issue of Sight and Sownd, cited previously,
completes this information. It states: "The U.F.A. office in
New York reports that, despite blockade difficulties, a German film
reaches this country on an average of once every two weeks." Of particular
interest is the well-known use Hitler diplomats made of propaganda
films to undermine the resistance of foreign peoples and governments.
In Bucharest, Oslo, Belgrade, Ankara, Sofia to mention but a
few official showings of these pictures served as psychological holdups.
Thus on October 11, 1941, the New York Times reported that Herr
von Papen had left Istanbul with a film of the German invasion of
Russia, and that he "will have a large party at the German Embassy
during which he will show the film to Turkish leaders." Propaganda
films as a means of blackmail the gangster methods of the Nazis could
not be better illustrated.
2. FILM DEVICES
THE film devices of Nazi propaganda are numerous and frequently
subtle. This does not imply that the Nazi propaganda films necessarily
surpassed similar films produced in other countries ; the British film TABGET
FOB. TONIGHT realized artistic effects one would seek vainly in any
of the Nazi films. Moreover, these films suffered somewhat from excessive
use of newsreel shots, and they included sequences which proved to be
more tiresome than convincing. Through such sequences certain weak
points of Nazi propaganda betrayed themselves.
But despite these deficiencies, which resulted from the problematic
4 Of. Licht BUd Biihne, Feb. 8, 1940.
278 PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
structure of Nazi propaganda rather than from awkwardness of technique,
the Nazis managed to develop effective methods of presenting
their propaganda ideas on the screen. There is hardly an editing device
they did not explore, and there exist several means of presentation whose
scope they enlarged to an extent hitherto unknown. They were bound
to do so, for their propaganda could not proceed like the propaganda
of the democracies and appeal to the understanding of its audiences ; it
had to attempt, on the contrary, to suppress the faculty of understanding
which might have undermined the hasis of the whole system. Rather
than suggesting through information, Nazi propaganda withheld information
or degraded it to a further means of propagandist^ suggestion.
This propaganda aimed at psychological retrogression to manipulate
people at will. Hence the comparative abundance of tricks and devices*
They were needed for obtaining the additional effects upon which
the success of Nazi film propaganda depended.
The art of editing had been cultivated in Germany long before 1938,
and Leni RiefenstahPs TRIUMPH oy THE WELL, for example, drew heavily
upon former achievements. Owing to these traditions, the Nazis
knew how to utilize the three film media commentary, visuals and
sound. With a pronounced feeling for editing, they exploited each medium
to the full, so that the total effect frequently resulted from the blending
of different meanings in different media. Such polyphonic handling is
not often found in democratic war films ; nor did the Nazis themselves
go to great pains when they merely wished to pass on information. But
as soon as totalitarian propaganda sprang into action, a sumptuous
orchestration was employed to influence the masses.
To begin with the commentary of the two campaign films, it
expresses in words the ideas that cannot be communicated by means
of the visuals, such as historical flashbacks, accounts of military activities
and explanations of strategy. These explanations, which recur at
regular intervals, deal with the German and enemy army positions and
report, in somewhat general terms, encirclements just achieved or
encirclements in the offing. Their whole make-up shows that .they are
intended to impress people rather than to instruct them ; they seem to
be advertising the efficiency of some enormous enterprise. Besides this
pseudo-enlightenment typical of the two campaign films, the linkages
between statements are repeatedly entrusted with propagandistic functions.
In VICTOBT rjsr THB WEST they are used to build ellipses: the
announcement of an action is immediately followed by its result, and
long developments are supposed to have been consummated in the tiny
period between two verbal units. Thus a great deal of reality and enemy
resistance disappears in the "pockets" of the commentary, giving the
audience a sense of ease of accomplishment and increasing the impression
FILM DEVICES 279
of an indomitable German blitz.
1
Actually the blitz has flashed through
an artificial vacuum.
Within the visuals, much use is made of the fact that pictures make
a direct appeal to the subconscious and the nervous system. Many
devices are employed for the sole purpose of eliciting from audiences
certain specific emotions. Such effects may be obtained by means of
maps. I wish to supplement the remarks in Professor Speier's excellent
article "Magic Geography,"
2
which also refers to the propagandistic
value of maps in the Nazi war films. These maps accompany not only
the strategic explanations, but appear whenever symbolic presentation
is called for and can be considered the backbone of the two campaign
films. They stress the propaganda function of the statements about
strategic developments inasmuch as they seem to illustrate, through an
array of moving arrows and lines, tests on some new substance. Resembling
graphs of physical processes, they show how all known materials
are broken up, penetrated, pushed back and eaten away by the new one,
thus demonstrating its absolute superiority in a most striking manner.
Since they affect all the senses, they are bound to terrorize the opposite
camp at least so long as the tests have not been invalidated. In addition,
these tests are performed on expanses that resemble areas seen
from an airplane an impression produced by the camera always panning,
rising and diving. Its continual motion works upon the motor
nerves, deepening in the spectator the conviction of the Nazis' dynamic
power ; movement around and above a field implies complete control of
that field.
Other important devices in this medium are: the exploitation of
physiognomical qualities by contrasting, for instance, close-ups of
brute Negroes with German soldier faces ; the incorporation of captured
enemy film material and its manipulation in such a way that it testifies
against the country of origin; the insertion of leitmotivs for the
purpose of organizing the composition and stressing certain propagandistic
intentions within the visuals. While BAPTISM OF FIEE presents
these leitmotivs only in the bud, VICTORY IN THE WEST shows them
flourishing. In this film, marching infantry columns betoken an advance ;
in it, the ideal type of the German soldier emerges time and again in
close-up, a soft face that involuntarily betrays the close relationship of
soul and blood, sentimentality and sadism.
The use of visuals in connection with verbal statements is determined
by the fact that many propaganda ideas are expressed through pictures
alone. The pictures do not confine themselves to illustrating the commentary,
but, on the contrary, tend to assume an independent life
which, instead of paralleling that of the commentary, sometimes pursues
1
Cf, p. 294 f. * Social Research, Sept. 1941.
280 PKOPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAE FILM
a course of its own a most important and extensively utilized device.
In employing it, totalitarian propaganda could manage to shape, on
the one hand, a rather formal commentary which avoided heretical or
overexplicit statements, and yet, on the other hand, could give audiences
to understand that Britons were ridiculous and that Nazi Germany was
pious and adored peace above all. The Nazis knew that allusions may
reach deeper than assertions and that the contrapuntal relation of
image to verbal statement is likely to increase the weight of the image,
making it a more potent emotional stimulus.
Where the visuals follow the line of the commentary, much care is
taken that the depiction of battle scenes does not go so far as
tô
reveal
the military operations clearly. Except for a few sequences, the pictures
of German warfare have no informative character. Instead of adequate
illustration of the verbally indicated activities, they mostly confine
themselves to exemplifications which frequently remain indistinct or
prove to be universally applicable stereotypes. Whenever artillery goes
into action, a series of firing guns appear in quick succession. Since
such patterns are not specific, the impression of a vacuum is reinforced.
Whole battles develop in a never-never land where the Germans rule over
time and space. This practice works in the same way as do a number
of other devices : it helps confuse the spectator by a blurred succession of
pictures so as to make him submit more readily to certain suggestions.
Many a pictorial description is actually nothing more than an empty
pause between two propagandists insinuations.
A conspicuous role is played by the music, particularly in VICTORY
IN THE WEST. Accompanying the procession of pictures and statements,
it not only deepens the effects produced through these media, but intervenes
of its own accord, introducing new effects or changing the meaning
of synchronized units. Music, and music alone, transforms an
English tank into a toy. In other instances, musical themes remove the
weariness from soldier faces, or make several moving tanks symbolize the
advancing German army. A gay melody imbues the parade and decoration
scene in Paris with a soupgon of "Za vie paiisienne." Through this
active contribution of the music the visuals affect the senses with intensified
strength.
3. THE SWASTIKA WORLD
IN their war propaganda films the Nazis, of course, pictured themselves
exactly as they wanted to be seen, and when, with the passing of
time, some trait or other lost its attraction, the propaganda experts did
not hesitate to suppress it. The meeting of Hitler and U Duce shown in
THE SWASTIKA WORLD 281
BLITZKRIEG IN THE WEST was eliminated in the fall of 1941 *
; and it
goes without saying that the Russian-German conference on the division
of Poland in BAPTISM OF FIRE had to disappear from a second version
of this film released in Yorkville in August 1941. But for interpretation
it makes little difference whether or not such self-portraits are true to
life ; obvious distortions prove to be particularly enlightening, and, on
the whole, reality cannot be prevented from breaking through its delusive
images, so that these vanish like the enemy armies on the maps in
Nazi war films.
All propaganda films were unanimous in emphasizing the dominance
of the army over the Party. In his Pattern of Conquest, Joseph C.
Harsch dwells upon the fact that, instead of letting the Party penetrate
the army, Hitler preferred to satisfy the army by setting aside Party
claims. For the period in question the propaganda films coincided with
Hitler's actual policy in that they devoted to Party activities during
the war only a few references and shots. After having mentioned the
role played by Danzig's SA and SS formations, BAPTISM OF FIRE confines
itself to showing Hitler's bodyguard being reviewed by its chief,
and that is all. In VICTORY IN THE WEST, the two statements acknowledging
the presence of armed SS are synchronized with pictures which
pass much too hastily to make their presence evident. What a contrast
with the Russian MANNERHEIM LINE, in which Party officials address
the encamped soldiers and shake hands with a newly enlisted recruit!
Such a scene would have been impossible in any of the Nazi films. On
the other hand, these films overlook nothing that might glorify the
army. In VICTORY IN THE WEST, which bears the subtitle "A Film of the
High Command of the Army," special effects are called upon to make it
the Song of Songs of the German soldier :
impressive mass-ornaments of
soldiers prelude the two parts of the film, and it ends with the banneroath
scene with which it begins. Here as well as in BAPTISM OF FIRE the
army occupies all the strategically important points of the composition.
2
1
This scene is mentioned in the article "The Strategy of Terror: Audience Response
to Blitzkrieg \m Westen" by Jerome S. Bruner and George Fowler (The Journal
of Abnormal and Soda} Psychology, Vol. 86, October 1941, No. 4). The description
refers to a performance of the film on April 9, 1941.
a
Regarding the various arms of the service, the frequency of their appearance in
the different propaganda films undergoes interesting changes. The ratio of air force
scenes to the total footage in BAPTISM OF FIRE is almost double the ratio in VICTORY IK
THE WEST. This is all the more surprising as BLITZKRIEG IK THE WEST which supplied
VICTORY IK THE WEST with a certain quantity of newsreel shots presents, relative to
the total amount of shots, air force activities to an even larger extent than does
BAPTISM OF FIHE; the ratio of the latter comes to merely a half of the same ratio in
BLITZKRIEG IK THE WEST. It is quite inevitable to draw from these figures the conclusion
that in VICTORY IK THE WEST the share of the air force has been deliberately
reduced. The question remains as to whether or not this shift resulted from the High
Commanďs desire to boast about tank warfare, for tanks do prevail in VICTORY IK THE
WEST, while, compared with the air force, they play but a minor role in BAPTISM OF
FIUE and BLITZKRIEG IK THE WEST.
282 PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
This could not be done without presenting Hitler as the war lord.
There is, however, an interesting difference between his appearance in
BAPTISM or FIUE and VICTOBY IN THE WEST a difference pointing to a
development which, as a matter of fact, had been confirmed by reports
from Germany. While the commentary of the Polish campaign film mentions
Hitler but a few times and then in a laconic manner, the visuals
zealously indulge in showing him as the ubiquitous supreme executive :
he presides over a war council, gives soldiers his autograph, increases
his popularity by having lunch at a military kitchen and shows pleasure
in parades. In VICTORY IN THE WEST the ratio of pictures to statements
is somewhat reversed: here the army praises as a strategic .genius the
man who has launched the attack against the Western powers. The war
lord exceeds the executive to become a war god and of a god images
must not be made. Thus Hitler disappears almost completely behind
clouds that disperse only on the most solemn occasions; but the commentary
is enthusiastic about the Fiihrer's ingenious plans and idolizes
him as the one who alone knows when the hour of decision has come.
The introductory part of VICTOBY IN THE WEST contains a shot of
Hindenburg and Ludendorff during the first World War, presenting
them as leaders upon whom the outcome of the war depended. They have
weight ; they seem to be conscious of a destiny beyond mere technical
considerations. According to the Nazi films, none of the generals of the
present war equals in rank or responsibility those two old army leaders
whose functions apparently are assumed by Hitler himself. From time
to time the real position of his generals is revealed through shots
showing them all together as his subordinates the staff assembled
around its "Fuhrer," And when they appear isolated, bending over
maps, pacing through columns of soldiers and issuing orders on the
field, they always give the impression of being high functionaries rather
than commanders-in-chief. But it is quite natural that increased mechanization
fosters the organizer type and tends to elevate technical experts
to the top. Moreover, the fact that in aU these films warfare itself is
described as but a part of a larger historical and political process somewhat
circumscribes the role of the generals.
For the rest, soldiers fill
up the propaganda pictures to such an
extent that there remains little room for civilians ; even cheering crowds
are closely rationed. In VICTORY IN THE WEST, this space is almost
entirely given over to the workers. "The best comrade of the German
soldier is the ammunition worker," to quote the commentary, and the
synchronized shots amount to several close-ups of worker types in the
manner of former German leftist films which, for their part, were influenced
by the classic Russian productions. The propagandistic reasons
for the insertion of these flattering photographs are plain enough.
THE SWASTIKA WORLD 283
Commentary and visuals of the two campaign films collaborate in
advertising the martial virtues of the Germans: their bravery, their
technical skill, their indefatigable perseverance.
3
But since such virtues
appear in the war films of all belligerent countries, they can be neglected
here in favor of certain other traits more characteristic of the behavior
of German soldiers. Pictures alone imply this behavior ; there is a complete
lack of dialogue, discussion or speeches to tighten and bolster the
impressions which the silent life on the screen may evoke. While the
English aviators in TARGET FOE TONIGHT speak frankly about what
they feel and think, the German soldiers even refrain from echoing any
official propaganda ideas. In earlier propaganda films, such as HITLEBJTHSTGE
QUEX and TRIUMPH or THE Wnx, people were not so discreet in
this respect. The later attitude may be due to the influence of the High
Command: talking politics would have offended venerable army tradi-
tion.
Numerous pictorial hints build up the propagandistic image of the
German soldier, among them the "camping idylls" of both BAPTISM OP
FIRE and VICTORY IN THE WEST rather drawn-out sections or passages
that show the troops during their rest period, exhibiting what is left to
the privates of their private life. Besides the routine work, which consists
mainly of cleaning weapons, the soldiers wash their shirts and their
bodies, they shave and enjoy eating, they write letters home or doze.
For two reasons Nazi film propaganda thus emphasizes general human
needs. First, in doing so it utilizes an old lesson taught by the primitive
film comedies that the gallery likes nothing more than the presentation
of vulgar everyday procedures. Each of the six times I attended VICTOEY
IN THE WEST in a Yorkville theater, people around me were noticeably
amused and refreshed when, after a terrific accumulation of tanks, guns,
explosions and scenes of destruction, a soldier poured cold water over his
naked comrade. Secondly, such scenes have the advantage of appealing
specifically to instincts common to all people. Like spearheads, they
3 It should be noted that in the two campaign films members of the elite alone are
mentioned by name; words of praise are very cautiously distributed and, with H
few exceptions, apply mostly to the German soldier in general or to army units as
a whole. German army tradition seems to have been decisive in this respect Single
soldiers or small groups of soldiers are nowhere explicitly praised except in four
possible instances in VICTORY IK THE WEST, while both films (and the newsreels as
well) speak highly of the different branches of the service. The exploits of the air
force and the infantry receive special recognition. "With regard to vilification and ridicule
of the enemy, there exists no reluctance whatever. The enemy is rarely mentioned
without being criticized; and whenever his bravery is acknowledged, praise is designed
to stress a subsequent blame. These deprecations are carried out less by verbal statements
than through pictures and synchronization of pictures with musical themes.
Exploring the polyphonic potentialities of the medium to the full, Nazi propaganda
excels In blending official suggestions with confidential intimations, of knitting the brow
and winking the eye at one and the same time.
284 PEOPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
drive wedges into the defense lines of the self, and owing to the retrogression
they provoke, totalitarian propaganda conquers important unconscious
positions.
To fashion the screen character of the German soldier the Nazi
films sometimes have recourse to indirect methods ; they single out and
criticize, through pictures, the alleged qualities of the various enemy
types, and, since they always draw upon contrasts, the naive spectator
automatically attributes the complementary qualities to the Germans.
Thus the elaborate scene in BAPTISM OF FIBE in which several Poles are
charged with having tortured and murdered German prisoners attempts
to impose upon audiences the conviction that Germans themselves are
indulgent towards their own victims. Could Nazis possibly be as flippant
and degenerate as the French soldiers who are shown mingling with
Negroes and dancing in the Maginot Line? The presentation of their
conduct invites unfavorable comparison with the Germans'. And when
English soldiers appear as funny, ignorant and arrogant creatures,
there is no doubt about the conclusions to be drawn from their vices
regarding the catalogue of virtues in the opposite camp. The more
Polish, Belgian, French and English prisoners pass over the screen, the
more this imaginary catalogue expands.
Its contents are supplemented by some indications to the effect, for
instance, that German soldiers ardently love peace. It is not by accident
that the beginning of VICTORY IN THE WEST presents a series of peaceful
German landscapes between soldier crowds and inflammatory maps ;
that each verse of the song of the "Lieselotte," which is sung by moving
infantry columns or Accompanies their advance, concludes with the
refrain "Tomorrow the war will be over." That the Nazis also wanted
soldiers to be attached to home and family is implied by the camping
idyll of the same film, in which a soldier, playing the organ in an old
French church, seems to dream intensely of his dear ones at home ; the
organ music dissolves into a folk-song, and on the screen appear the
soldier's mother, father and grandmother, whose carefree existence is
protected against aggressive enemies by the German army. It is well
known that in reality the Nazis followed quite another line with respect
to such ideas as home, peace, family ; no one familiar with their methods
can overlook the cynicism with which they concocted all these sentimental
episodes for the purpose of answering popular trends of feeling
and, perhaps, the demands of the High Command. To round out the
counterfeit, the Nazis used every opportunity to insert churches and
cathedrals, with soldiers entering or leaving them during their rest
period. Thus the films tacitly intimated that Germany fostered Christianity.
They also suggested the cultural aspirations of German soldiers
by showing, for instance, the Organization Todt taking care of historical
THE SWASTIKA WORLD 285
buildings threatened by the progress of war. But these aspirations were
never directed towards personal achievements. During the first years of
World War I, the boast was spread through Germany that her soldiers
carried Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Goethe's Faust in their knapsacks.
When, in BAPTISM OF FIRE, soldiers read newspapers while marching,
the possibility that they might be reading for sheer relaxation is denied
by the commentary which states: "The German soldiers are so newsstarved
that they jump at every paper they can get hold of ... enjoying
the reports from the front, from the work at home."
On the whole, the "Reichswehr" soldier prevails over the Nazi creation
of the "political soldier." There is, in this respect, a striking
difference between film propaganda and printed or broadcast propaganda.
While the Nazis always spoke and wrote of the revolutionary
war that the Axis powers the have-nots had undertaken against the
rich plutocracies, their films anxiously avoided corroborating such a
contention. Except for a somewhat eased discipline and the suppression
of the Prussian lieutenant type, the soldiers on the screen behave in so
traditional a manner that nobody could suspect them of being the military
vanguard of a revolution. The newsreel shots depicting these
soldiers are certainly true to reality. Why did the Nazis hesitate to
change the image further? Perhaps for the reason that the rendering
of a revolutionary army on the screen would have prevented them from
conveying through the word "revolution" its opposite meaning. Pictures
alone can be misused as much as words alone ; but as soon as they begin
to cooperate, they explain each other, and ambiguity is excluded. Since
the Nazis obviously could not afford to give up the advantage of covering
their real aims with such attractive slogans as "Revolution" or
"New Order," they were, indeed, forced to show in their films soldiers of
rather neutral behavior. The extensive use made of silent newsreel
soldiers was to paralyze audience attention and, moreover, to appeal to
certain strata abroad that Nazi propaganda wished to influence.
The achievements of the German army resulted from the organizational
abilities of a people which, as a consequence of its history, so
deeply desires to be shaped that it mistakes organization for shape and
submits to organization as readily as the wax to the seal. Nazi war
films, of course, parade the perfection with which, thanks to such abilities,
the blitz campaigns were prepared and accomplished. The episode
of Hitler's war council in BAPTISM OF FIEE includes the following statement
: "Continued information on the course of operations is passed on.
. . . The decisive orders and instructions are returned at once" sentences
that refer to some shots of soldier typists and telephonists
inserted in this episode. Like the series of firing guns, telephonists belong
among the stereotypes within the visuals; their appearance infallibly
286 PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
indicates that orders are being issued and an attack is in the making.
VICTOBY IN THE WEST adds to this cliche" a few innovations : a shot of a
"firing-schedule" (Feuerplan) which characterizes the subsequent artillery
bombardment as being "according to plan," and a little scene illustrating
the last staff conference before the offensive against the Chemin
des Dames. In the field of strategic measures, the swiftness of army
regroupments as well as the admirable functioning of the supply lines
are strongly emphasized. But, strangely enough, all these scenes treat
organization in a somewhat perfunctory manner. Compared with the
British film TARGET FOR TONIGHT, which really illustrates the preparation
and the accomplishment of a bomber raid over Germany, even the
purposefully informative sequence of the air attack in BAPTISM OF FIRE
is poor in organizational details. This negligence parallels the deliberate
superficiality with which military actions are exemplified in the medium
of the visuals. In both cases, the withholding of full information must
be traced to the inhibitions of a propaganda which lives in constant fear
of arousing the individuaľs intellectual faculties. However, this explanation
is too general to be sufficient. Fortunately, VICTORY IN THE WEST
offers a clue to 'the problem.
Captured French film material is used in this film to depict the
organization of the Maginot Line with surprising care. The main
sequence devoted to the French defense system offers an account of its
construction and also includes a series of pictures that dwell extensively
upon the technical installations of this subterranean fortress. Towards
the end of the film, the. Maginot Line appears again: French soldiers
serve a gun in one of the mechanical forts, and the synchronized statement
announces : "For the last time the clockwork of this complicated
defense machinery is in action.*' By exhibiting that machinery to the
full, the Nazis wanted not only to heighten the significance of the
German victory, but also to specify its unique character. The term
"defense," used in the statement, is
particularly revealing. Nazi
propaganda in the film of the French campaign sets defensive against
offensive warfare and, moreover, manages to present these two kinds of
warfare as belonging to two different worlds. That of the French defenders
appears as an obsolete static world with no moral right to
survive. Since the shots of the French soldiers in the Maginot Line were
made before the outbreak of the war, it was easy to evoke this impression
by contrasting them with shots of German soldiers taken during the
actual campaign. Here it becomes clear why the Nazis focused upon the
French defense organization, instead of stressing their own organizational
techniques. They wanted to show that the deus ex machina can
never be the machine itself; that even the most perfect organization
proves useless if it be regarded as more than a mere tool, if it be idolized
THE SWASTIKA WORLD 287
by a generation-on-the-decline as an autonomous force. The whole
presentation aims at implying that the Maginot Line was precisely that
to the French, and that, in consequence, the German victory was also a
victory of life over death, of the future over the past.
4
In accordance with their emphasis on Germany's offensive spirit,
the Nazi war films characterize organization as a dynamic process
within pictures of continual movement spreading over enormous spaces.
The big control-room from which, in TARGET FOR TONIGHT, British air
force activities are directed and supervised would be impossible in any
of the Nazi war films ; it is too solid a room, it has too much the savor
of defense. In these films, on the contrary, no room is more than an
improvised shelter if there exist shelters at all. Railway cars serve as
Hitler's headquarters or for conferences with the delegates of capitulating
nations; fields and highways are the very home of generals and
troops alike. The soldiers eat on the march and sleep in airplanes, on
traveling tanks, guns and trucks, and when they occasionally stop
moving, their surroundings consist of ruined houses no longer fit to
harbor guests. This eternal restlessness is identical with impetuous
advance, as the Nazi films never fail to point out through moving maps
and marching infantry columns devices already commented upon.
Significantly, the frequent appearance of infantry columns in the two
campaign films seems to exceed the use actually made of infantry in the
campaigns. Such columns were undoubtedly less effective than the
columns of tanks and air squadrons, but their appearance on the screen
is
particularly appropriate to impress the idea of advance upon the
audience. This impression is deepened by repeated close-ups of waving
swastika banners, which serve the additional purpose of hypnotizing
audiences.
To sum up: all Nazi war films insistently glorify Germany as a
dynamic power, as dynamite. But, as if the Nazis themselves suspected
that their sustained presentation of blitz warfare would hardly be sufficient
to suggest a war of life against death, of the future against the
past, they supplemented it by politico-historical records adding to the
parades of goose-stepping soldiers a panoroma of thoroughly manipulated
topical events. While BAPTISM or FIRE modestly contents itself
with reviewing current world events, VICTORY IN THE WEST widens the
perspective by an ambitious retrospect which goes back to the Westphalian
Peace of 1648. Hitler's speeches encouraged people to think in
terms of centuries. The accounts of current events as a rule illustrate
"history" through newsreel shots of notables and weighty incidents:
4 This is fully confirmed by the statement that accompanies the last appearance
of the Maginot Line: "Here, too, the heroism of the single soldier and the
enthusiasm of the young national-socialist German troops entirely devoted to the
Fuhrer and his ideas triumph over technique, machinery and material."
288 PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
Herr von Ribbentrop boards an airplane bound for Moscow to sign
there the nonaggression pact; displays of French, English and Polish
troops serve to demonstrate the war preparations of their countries ;
Professor Burckhard, delegate to the League of Nations for Danzig,
leaves his office after Danzig's annexation by the Reich ; King Leopold
of Belgium negotiates armistice conditions with a German general. By
shaping the world situation with the aid of sucli anecdotal scenes, the
Nazis may also have intended to flatter audiences, to give them the
proud feeling of being introduced to sovereigns, statesmen, diplomats
and other celebrities. It was a sort of cajolery which made the implications
of these screen editorials the more acceptable.
What implications did they convey? On the one hand, they make
the Western democracies appear as evil powers animated, for centuries,
by the design to destroy Germany; on the other, they suggest a sadly
wronged and innocently suffering Germany who, on the point of being
overwhelmed by these world powers, is only defending herself in attacking
them. The whole myth was to give the impression that Germany's
war and triumph were not accidental events, but the fulfillment of an
historic mission, metaphysically justified. Thanks to the introduction
of this myth, both BAPTISM OP FIEE and VICTOBY IN THE WEST expand
beyond the limits of mere documentary films to totalitarian panoramas
connecting the march of time with the march of ideas. Such panoramas
certainly answered the deep-rooted German longing to be sheltered by
a Weltanschauung. In transferring them to the screen, the Nazis tried
to conquer and occupy all important positions in the minds of their
audiences, so as to make their souls work to the interest of Nazi
Germany. They treated souls like prisoners of war ; they endeavored to
duplicate in the field of psychology Germany's achievements in Europe.
4. SCREEN DRAMATURGY
THE structure of the two Nazi campaign films is particularly important.
Unlike the newsreels, they are the outcome of compositional efforts
designed to make them documents of permanent value that would survive
the more ephemeral weekly reports. Lieutenant Hesse, Chief of the Press
Group attached to the German High Command, asserted in a radio talk
on January 0, 1941; "VICTORY IN THE WEST has been deliberately
planned and produced for the general public." The significance of this
statement, which might have been applied to the Polish campaign film as
well, is illustrated by the fact that both films were the product of intense
condensation : the 6*560 feet of BAPTISM OF FIBE were drawn from about
30,000 feet of newsreel shots, and YICTOBY nr THE WEST according
SCREEN DRAMATURGY 289
to Lieutenant Hesse profited by film material of about one million feet.
The Nazi experts would not have made a selection on such a vast scale
without a definite idea as to the choice and the arrangement of the
comparatively few subjects admitted.1
Except, perhaps, for the March of Time shorts and certain travelogs
which, in the manner of Flaherty's NANOOK and MOANA, rely on some
sort of story to animate the presentation of facts, most films of fact
affect audiences not so much through the organization of their material
as through the material itself. They are rather loosely composed ; they
prove to be more concerned with the depiction of reality than with the
arrangement of this depiction. The two Nazi campaign films differ from^
them in that they not only excel in a solid composition of their elements ,
but also exploit all propagandistic effects which may be produced by
the very structure. VICTORY IN THE WEST goes so far as to entrust
special leitmotivs and staged sequences with the function of reinforcing
the weight of the interior architecture. This evidently cannot be done
unless certain forceful ideas determine the composition, imbuing it with
their vigor. The strong will underlying the two Nazi campaign films is
of course more likely to work upon audience imagination than the mentality
behind documentaries which simply meander from one point of
information to the next. TARGET poa TONIGHT was one of the first
British war films to draw practical conclusions from this rule.
In approaching their main subject, both Nazi campaign films follow
the classic Russian films rather than those of the Western democracies ;
at any rate, they are exclusively concerned with the destiny of a collectivity
Nazi Germany. While American films usually reflect society or
national life through the biography of some hero representative of his
epoch, these German films, conversely, reduce individuals to derivatives
of a whole, more real than all the individuals of which it consists. Whenever
isolated German soldier faces are picked out in the campaign films,
their function is to denote the face of the Third Reich. Hitler himself is
not portrayed as an individual with a development of his own but as the
embodiment of terrific impersonal powers or better, as their meetingplace;
in spite of many a reverential close-up, these films designed to
idolize him cannot adapt his features to human existence.
It was Goebbels who praised POTEMEIN as a pattern and intimated
that the Nazi "-Revolution" should be glorified by films of a similar
structure. As a matter of fact, the few representative films of Hitler
Germany are as far from POTBMKIN as the Nazi "Revolution" was from
a revolution. How could they be otherwise? Like the great silent Russian
1
The following considerations are founded upon versions available in this country.
Other versions may differ from them. It can be assumed, however, that these differences
do not affect the basic principles of structural organization discussed here.
290 PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAE FILM
films, they naturally stress the absolute dominance of the collective over
the individual ; in POTEMKIN, however, this collective is composed of real
people, whereas in TRIUMPH OF THE WILL spectacular ornaments of
excited masses and fluttering swastika banners serve to substantiate
the sham collective that the Nazi rulers created and ran under the
name of Germany. Despite such basic differences, Goebbels* reference
to the Russian pattern was not precisely a blunder. Not so much
because of their allegedly revolutionary conduct as in consequence of
their retrogressive contempt for individual values, the Nazis were,
indeed, obliged to rely in their films more on Russian than on Western
methods, and had even this perverted affinity not existed, the unquestionable
propagandistic success of the early Soviet pictures would have
been sufficient to bring them to the attention of the German Propaganda
Ministry. As if finding their inspiration in such models as THE END OF
ST. PETERSBURG and TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, the two Nazi
campaign films assumed the form of epics.
The traditional German penchant for thinking in antirational,
mythical terms was never entirely overcome. And it was, of course,
important for the Nazis not only to reinforce this tendency, but to
revive old German myths ; in doing so, they contributed to the establishment
of an impregnable intellectual "West Wall" against the dangerous
invasion of democratic ideas. The opening sequence of TRIUMPH OF THE
WILL shows Hitler's airplane flying towards Nuremberg through banks
of marvelous clouds a reincarnation of All-Father Odin, whom the
ancient Aryans heard raging with his hosts over the virgin forests. In
keeping with their documentary functions, both BAPTISM or FIBE and
VICTORY IN THE WEST avoid evoking such reminiscences ; but they are
deliberately organized in an epic way, and the surface resemblance
between them and the Eisenstein and Pudovkin films is striking.
It is for propagandistic reasons that both campaign films not merely
render the course of battles and the succession of victories. Intent on
producing a totality of effects, Nazi propaganda had to enlarge its
program and offer a multifaceted composition rather than a simple
account of military events. To attain their aim, the Nazis endowed their
hero, i.e. Nazi Germany, with the traits of the old mythical heroes. Since
these inevitably had to suffer before they could rise like the sun,
Germany is shown suffering at the beginning of BAPTISM OF FIBE and
VICTORY IN THE WEST as weU. Weakened and alone, she stands against
a conspiracy of powers that have fettered her by the Treaty of
Versailles, and who would not sympathize with her attempt to shake off
her chains and get rid of her oppressors ? As propaganda pictures these
films, of course, do not charge their hero with a mythical guilt ; they
represent him as an entirely innocent, harmless creature on the maps
SCREEN DRAMATURGY 291
in the Polish campaign film the white of the German territory is in
symbolic contrast to the black of Poland, England and France and
they supplant for the motif of guilt that of justification. The Nazis are
so intent on justifying Germany's aggression that vindications appear
everywhere in the film ; towards the end of BAPTISM OP PIEE, the commentary
points to posters in occupied Warsaw through which the Polish
Government had summoned "the population to fight the German army
as irregulars."
2
Now it becomes clear why these films include the totalitarian panoramas
mentioned above: any such panorama is nothing more than the
mirage of epic structure transmitted in terms of propaganda. The
campaign films follow the laws of epics also in that they portray war as
the hero's struggle for liberation, for Lebensraum. Having introduced
him into the family of epic heroes, they throw a dazzling light on all his
feats. Germany's infallibility and invincibility are duly streamlined, and
a number of smaller apotheoses precede the final one which gives the
full taste of triumph. This world of light is opposed by one of darkness
with no softening shades. The enemies do not appear as normal foes with
whom Germany once maintained and afterwards will resume relations ;
rather, they are presented as the eternal adversaries of the hero, concocting
sinister plans to ruin him. Incarnations of opposing moral or
natural principles, in these films both Germany and her enemies belong
to the everlasting realm of the epics in which time does not enter.
Between the powers boiling in the democratic inferno differences are
made : France is an evil spirit in a state of decomposition ; England has
all the traits of the devil incarnate, and Poland serves as her wicked
helper. A clever device is used to characterize these malignant specters
as epic figures Nazi film propaganda attributes to them a mythical
lust for destruction. Numerous verbal statements in the campaign films
stigmatize the enemy's demoniac sadism by imputing to him the burnings,
havocs and wrecks abundant in the synchronized pictures ; whereas the
demolitions obviously caused by the Nazis assume the function of revealing
the supremacy of German weapons.
8
Germans also are shown re2
Cf. p. 806.
*
The ratio of destruction to the total footage in the newsreel compilation BLITZKRIEG
IN THE WEST is about 1:5; in BAPTISM OF FIRE about 1:8; in VICTORY isr THE
WEST about 1:15. Since newsreels even German newsreels are released before final
victory is assured, Nazi propaganda, always on the look-out for stimulants, here
(more than in the feature films) depended upon the accumulation of catastrophes,
provided they endangered the enemy. Such a catastrophe as the burning of a big oil
tank had the additional advantage of being photogenic. That VICTORY ixr THE WEST
exhibits far less destruction than BAPTISM OP FIRE must be traced to the different
intentions behind these Alms. While the Polish campaign film, issued during the period
of the "phony" war, attempted to spread panic among future enemies, the film of the
French campaign, with its elliptic construction, aimed, not without hilarity, at
demonstrating an incomparable military performance as if the happy ending were
292 PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
building destroyed bridges, protecting endangered architecture and
saving the Cathedral of Rouen. The positive nature of the hero is systematically
played off against the destructive ego of his antagonists.
To sum up : the Nazi campaign films can be considered propagandistic
epics. They are not concerned with portraying reality, but subordinate
its insertion, and the method of its insertion, to their inherent
propaganda purposes. These purposes constitute the very reality of the
Nazi films. It is interesting to compare BAPTISM OF FIRE and VICTOEY
nsr THE WEST with the early Eisenstein and Pudovkin films, which also
picture the suffering and ultimate triumph of a heroic collectivity. That
the Russian films have no less propagandistic significance than their
German counterparts is obvious ; but unlike the Nazi films they preserve
the character of true epics because of their allegiance to reality. In
these Russian films, the existing distress of the people is rendered with
such attention to detail that its reality impresses itself upon the audience.
How carefully the Nazis for their part avoid mobilizing reality can
be inferred from the superficial way they deal with the same distress.
Contrary to the Russians, they assign to a few commonplace shots the
task of bearing out the verbal statements that in the opening parts of
both campaign films publicize Germany's sufferings prior to Hitler's rise
to power. These shots, which never succeed in quickening the commentary's
complaints with a semblance of life, recall the conventional illustrations
in advertisements for some standard article.
4
It is as if the
Nazis were afraid of impinging on reality, as if they felt that the mere
acknowledgment of independent reality would force them into a submission
to it that might imperil the whole totalitarian system. On the other
hand, maps profusely illustrate the disastrous consequences of the
Westphalian Peace and the Treaty of Versailles. In these films the
suffering of the hero Germany is purely cartographic. Through their
just around the corner. It is noteworthy that with regard to the presentation of destruction
radio propaganda and film propaganda differ essentially. According to Pro*
fessor Speier, Nazi broadcasters generally refrained fom announcing the destruction
of military objectives which, in their belief, would not appeal to popular imagination;
to thrill the average listener they preferred a demolished city hall to heavily damaged
fortifications. Propaganda films, of course, did not omit any spectacular disaster; they
moreover profited by their specific possibilities in depicting perforated steel plates
and other strictly technical effects of German arms destruction that, if presented
through words, would hardly have interested people.
4
True, in such films as SA-MAKN BBAKD, HANS WESTMAK, HITLERJUNGE QUEX
and UM DAS MENSCHENRECHT (Poa THE SAKE OF THE RIOHXS OF MAN), Nazi
propaganda details to some extent the sufferings of the middle class and the "misled"
workers to popularize the Freikorps, the SA and the "national revolution."
But these sequences appear in films that are political screen plays rather than epic
documentaries after the Russian manner. At any rate, the classic Russian films
never confined themselves to illustrating the misery of the people through a few
stereotyped shots, as the German campaign films do.
SCREEN DRAMATURGY 293
maps the Nazi propagandists revealed that they recognized no reality
other than that of their pattern of conquest.
This difference between the Russian and German screen epics affects
their whole structure. Since the two campaign films shun the very reality
through which the 'Russian films work upon audiences, they have to use
other means to develop their story.
In actual political practice Nazi propaganda never was content with
simply spreading suggestions, but prepared the way for their acceptance
by a skillful combination of terrorist and organizational measures
which created an atmosphere of panic and hysteria. On the screen, these
preparatory measures are the task of the arrangement. Both films
include a number of compositional tricks designed to manipulate the
mind of the spectator. While the spectator's instincts and emotions are
kept alive, his faculty of reasoning is
systematically starved. Only one
single sequence challenges the intellect : that of the air attack in BAPTISM
OF FIRE, which indulges in information. This exceptional sequence can be
explained by the fact that BAPTISM OF FIEE was made during the period
of the "phony" war when the R.A.F. had not yet raided Germany, and
Germany herself was still convinced of her absolute air superiority. By
detailing the air attack in an unusually instructive way, the Nazis presumably
wanted to adjust the film to the English mentality in the hope
of impressing upon England the incomparable might of the German air
force.
5
In this one case, information is identical with threat, and panic
is to be produced by a sober appraisal of facts.
The two campaign films had not only to prepare the audience for the
acceptance of their suggestions, but, above all, had to dramatize the
story they told, so as to compensate for its lack of reality. Outright
dramatization was, if possible, to produce artificially the thrills that in
the Russian films resulted from the rendering of real-life events. Dramatic
techniques resort to intermissions, vacant spaces between the
power centers of the plot. Profiting by its liberty to time the narrative
at will, Nazi film propaganda endeavored to obtain through mere organization
the striking effects of drama.
The introductory parts of both campaign films are particularly
revealing in this respect. They use all compositional means available to
characterize the prewar period as a dramatic struggle between the
powers of light and darkness. At the beginning of VICTORY IN THE WEST,
this struggle is presented in the form of continual ups and downs
designed to produce a quick succession of tensions. After Versailles,
Germany seems annihilated, but Hitler appears and the prospect is
5
According to Professor Speier, the German war communiques broadcast to
England in English generally omitted all words and phrases of a merely emotional
appeal.
294 PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
changed. Is it really changed? The democracies persist in conspiring
against the young Third Reich, and each new German advance is followed
by a new assertion of its enemies' diabolic intentions. This steadily
accelerating series of tensions, increasing in dramatic weight as it
approaches the present time, leads straight to the ultimate catastrophe
war. But even the Polish campaign proves to be only an episode, for
Hitler's peace offer is immediately used as a means of suspense, preparing
for the next turn of the action, and thus making the drama continue.
Nazi propaganda always tended to work with such oscillations. They
would be more effective in this case if they were not presented by means
of pictorial stereotypes.
The narration of the two successful campaigns themselves is split up
into a number of sequences, most of which follow the same pattern. The
typical sequence opens with a map of pending strategic projects which
as a rule are realized in the sequence itself. Maps in this context assume
the function of dramatic exposition: they herald what is to come and
canalize the audience's anticipations. Once all is laid out, the action
takes shape as a process that piles up dramatic effects to compensate
for the omission of substantial documentation.
Either of two methods is employed to this end. First, in the interest
of increased suspense many sequences emphasize difficulties that delay
the happy ending in the offing or even pretend to frustrate it. Ilya
Ehrenburg reported the Russian General Gregory Zukhoff to have said
about Germany's military achievements in Poland and France: "For
them war was merely manoeuvres." e
This contention is borne out by the
spurious nature of those difficulties. The shots of French soldiers in the
Maginot Line, inserted towards the end of VICTOET IN THE WEST, distinctly
serve the propagandists purpose of postponing again and again
a conclusion reached long before. In the same film, a far-fetched "montage"
sequence appears directly after the sequence of the Maginot Line ;
resuming motifs of the introductory part, this interlude blends maps of
the world, toy soldiers and real soldiers, French statesmen and their
speeches, the "Marseillaise" and a parade on the Champs-Elyse'es to
strengthen, through fabricated testimony of Germany's hopeless situation,
the importance of her subsequent victories. All these insertions owe
their existence merely to the necessities of dramatic composition.
A second method of increasing suspense is the already-mentioned
"ellipse.*'
7
Many sequences in VICTOEY IN THE WEST skip the whole
development that leads from the announcement of an action to its completion.
Sometimes, the two methods are used jointly: an expository map
is followed by some obstacle that seems to block the way then a sudden
6 Cf. New York Times, Jan. 26, 1942.
T Cf. p. 278 f.
SCEEEN DRAMATURGY 295
jump and the trumpets of victory sound. To compensate for the suppression
of reality, no better compositional device could be used than
that of elliptic narration: it symbolizes the German blitz and makes
credulous spectators overlook all that has been removed by juggler's
tricks. The ellipse is often practiced with the aid of polyphonic technique,
which will be discussed later. This is exemplified in the following
instance: a verbal statement announcing a forthcoming action is combined
with a series of shots not commented upon. They illustrate, more
or less distinctly, several military operations, the precise meaning of
which no one would be able to decipher. Since these shots pursue a vague
course of their own with no connection with the statement to which they
belong, audience imagination is led astray by them. The verbal announcement
of attained success therefore comes as a shock to the distracted
spectator a most desirable effect for Nazi propaganda.
The triumph typical of the end of a sequence is not simply recorded,
but adorned and savored to the full except for those rare cases in
which its mention is passed over to deepen the significance of a subsequent
triumph. Frequently this concluding part is much longer than
the preceding main part devoted to the military actions themselves. In
BAPTISM OP FIRE, the battle of Radom is shown only by a moving map
and several flimsy pictures, while the report on the consequences of the
German victory covers a good deal more footage. In VICTORY IN THE
WEST the scene of Hollanďs capitulation prevails over the few shots of
her invasion, and in the same way the victory parade in Paris overshadows
the troops' approach to the French capital. These apotheoses
duplicate the old triumphal processions : first the victorious heroes move
in, and then while the commentary gloats over the tremendous booty
and summarizes the strategic outcome an immense multitude of prisoners
and captured munitions pass in review. Never did the Nazis tire of
assembling, to their own glorification, these masses of human and iron
material. The technique used in their presentation is the pan-shot. After
having focused upon a small group of marching or standing prisoners,
the camera begins to pan, with the result that the visual field expands
to include infinite columns or a huge camp : a well-known method cleverly
exploited, for enormous masses most impress the spectator if he can
compare them with groups of normal size.
As a whole, the typical dramatic sequence of the two campaign films
mirrors consciously or not the typical procedures of a regime in
which propaganda has been invested with such power that no one is
sure whether it serves to change reality or reality is to be changed for
the purposes of propaganda. What alone counts here is the Nazi rulers'
desire for conquest and domination. The Nazis utilized totalitarian
propaganda as a tool to destroy the disturbing independence of reality,
296 PBOPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
and wherever they succeeded in doing so, their maps and plans were actually
projected in a kind of vacuum. Thus their formula "according to
plan" acquired a specific meaning, and many a dramatic and surprising
effect was obtained. Practice itself furnished the pattern for the stereotyped
sequences that helped to shape the campaigns on the screen.
Drama needs moments of rest to underline the vehemence of subsequent
storms. Even more do the campaign films depend upon breaks in
the tension ; for they are not so much dramas as dramatized epics, and
their epic tendency counteracts excessive dramatization. The Nazi dramaturgists
had not only to supply such apparent "pauses*
5
as the "camping
idylls," but to insert everywhere brief breathing-spaces for the audiences
in their upward flight. Here a grave problem arises. As soon as the
spectator is permitted to relax, his intellectual faculties may awake, and
the danger is that he become aware of the void around him. And in this
frightening situation he might feel tempted to approach reality and,
approaching it, experience the emotions of that German pilot who, after
having bombed Leningrad from a great height, too high to see it,
was forced down by a Soviet plane. The New York Times (Feb. 86,
194$) retailed the story of this pilot as told by the Russian writer
Tikhonoff : "He landed on the roof of a high apartment house and was
found gazing wonderingly down onto the moonlit city. As he was brought
downstairs in the tall building past apartments in which the dwellers
were leading busy lives it was apparent from his expression . . . that he
had never thought of Leningrad as a real live place but only as a target
on the map. The pilot then said he believed Leningrad could never be
taken or bombed into submission.'*
It is evident that, despite the compositional necessity of inserting
pauses in the campaign films, Nazi propaganda could not afford to let
up on its constant pressure. If, on the screen or in life, the dynamic
power of that propaganda had slackened only for one single moment,
the whole system might have vanished in a trice.
This accounts for the extensive use made in the Nazi films of polyphonic
techniques. Well aware that propaganda must work continuously
upon the mind of audiences, the Nazis handled it as farmers do the soil.
The wise farmer does not always sow the same crop, but contrives to
alternate them; thus his soil is saved from exhaustion and yet with each
season he reaps his harvest. The campaign films parallel this procedure.
Instead of ever halting the succession of propaganda ideas, they merely
change the medium through which these ideas are transmitted. When
the commentary is reticent for a moment, one can be sure that the
visuals or the music take over, and often two or three independent meanings,
assigned to diverse media, run contrapuntally like themes in a
score. Since each of these media affects the spectator's psychological
CONFLICT WITH REALITY 297
constitution in a different way, their skillful variation is continually
relieving other regions of his mind. He is relieved without, however, being
released from the steady impact of propaganda.
The "camping idyll" in VICTOEY IN THE WEST, not synchronized
with any verbal statements, either predisposes the audience to suggeations
or spreads its own insinuations. After the commentary in this film
has denounced the alleged invasion of Belgium by French and English
troops, the visuals not merely depict it, but point derisively at the
Negroes in the French army and then with the aid of music ridicule the
British. Propaganda currents arising alternately or jointly from the
three media impose upon the spectator a kind of psychic massage that
both eases and strains him at the same time. By this method, polyphony
achieves its structural task of preventing his escape. Throughout the
whole of the dramatized pseudo-epics this technique attempts to maintain
in the spectator vacillations that, if they really could be maintained,
would make him indifferent to truth or untruth and alienate him from
reality forever.
5. CONFLICT WITH REALITY
THE outright use Nazi propaganda films make of newsreel shots seems
to be influenced by certain techniques favored in the leftist camp. In
1928, the Popular Association for Film Art (Volksverband fur FilmJcunst)
transformed, through mere editing procedures, a set of colorless
Ufa newsreels into a red-tinged film that stirred Berlin audiences to
clamorous demonstrations. The censor soon prohibited further performances,
even though the VolJcsverband based its protest upon the demonstrable
assertion that the film contained nothing but newsreel shots
already shown in all Ufa theaters without scandalizing anyone.
The Nazi film propagandists practiced leftist montage technique in
reverse order: they did not try to elicit reality from a meaningless
arrangement of shots, but nipped in the bud any real meaning their
candid-camera work might convey. Nothing was neglected in camouflaging
this procedure and in bolstering the impression that, through
unfaked newsreel material, reality itself was moving across the screen.
All Nazi war films include shots and scenes that, from a merely photographic
standpoint, are quite undesirable; Nazi propaganda, however,
retained them, because they testified to the authenticity of the film as a
whole and thereby supported confusion of veracity and truth. For the
same reason, the Nazis speeded the release of their newsreels, at least in
Germany,
1
reducing to a minimum the time interval between war events
1
Cf. p. 276.
298 PEOPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
and their appearance on the screen. Owing to such speed, audiences
involuntarily transferred the impressions they received from reality
itself to the newsreels, which, like parasites, fed on the real-life character
of the events they reflected.
It is not easy to understand why the Nazi film experts obstinately
insisted upon composing their campaign films from newsreel shots. The
average spectator, of course, believed their loudly proclaimed desire to
be true to reality. But actually the wholly staged bombardment in the
British film TABGET FOB TONIGHT seems more real and is aesthetically
more impressive than any newsreel of a similar bombardment in the
Nazi films. And the Nazis themselves knew quite well that life photographed
is not necessarily synonymous with the image of life. In the
Licht Bild Buhne of May 16, 1940, an article on films from the front is
followed by another one, "Truth to Life the Basic Law of the Artistic
Shaping of Films," the author of which contends : "Truth to life this
does not mean the mere photography of life. It rather means the artistically
shaped representation of condensed life.*' Precisely by piling up
'their newsreel shots, the Nazis betrayed how little they were concerned
with reality.
Since they wanted to remove reality, one would expect them to stage
films freely, instead of following so closely the pictorial records of their
front-line reporters. It is true that they resorted to moving maps and
did not hesitate to include in VICTOBY IN THE WEST a number of special
effects. But maps and editing devices disappear amid the overwhelming
mass of candid-camera work. Why then this predominance of newsreel
material? The answer does not lie in the aesthetics of film, but is found
in the structure of the totalitarian system as such.
Totalitarian propaganda endeavored to supplant a reality based
upon the acknowledgment of individual values. Since the Nazis aimed at
totality, they could not be content with simply superseding this reality
the only reality deserving the name by institutions of their own.
If they had done so, the image of reality would not have been destroyed
but merely banished; it might have continued to work in the subconscious
mind, imperiling the principle of absolute leadership. To
attain their aim, the Nazi rulers had to outdo those obsolete despots
who suppressed freedom without annihilating its memory. These modern
rulers knew that it is not sufficient to impose upon the people a "new
order" and let the old ideas escape. Instead of tolerating such remnants,
they persistently traced each independent opinion and dragged it out
from the remotest hiding-place with the obvious intention of blocking
all individual impulses. They tried to sterilize the mind. And at the same
time they pressed the mind into their service, mobilizing its abilities and
CONFLICT WITH REALITY 299
emotions to such an extent that there remained no place and no will for
intellectual heresy. Proceeding ruthlessly, they not only managed to
prevent reality from growing again, but seized upon components of this
reality to stage the pseudo-reality of the totalitarian system. Old folksongs
survived, but with Nazi verses ; republican institutions were given
a contrary significance, and the masses were compelled to expend their
psychic reserve in activities devised for the express purpose of adjusting
people's mentality, so that nothing would be left behind.
This is precisely the meaning of the following statement by Goebbels
:
"May the shining flame of our enthusiasm never be extinguished.
This flame alone gives light and warmth to the creative art of modern
political propaganda. Rising from the depths of the people, this art
must always descend back to it and find its power there. Power based on
guns may be a good thing ; it is, however, better and more gratifying to
win the heart of a people and to keep it."
Goebbels, an expert at combining journalistic rhetoric and smart
cynicism, defined modern political propaganda as a creative art, thereby
implying that he considered it an autonomous power rather than a
subordinate instrument. Could his propaganda possibly meet the real
wants of the people? As a "creative art," it excelled in instigating or
silencing popular wants, and instead of promoting valuable ideas, it
opportunistically exploited all ideas in its own interest. Goebbels, of
course, was too great an artist to mention that this interest coincided
with the lust for domination. Nevertheless, his definition is sufficiently
sincere to intimate that a world shaped by the art of propaganda
becomes as modeling clay amorphous material lacking any initiative
of its own. What Goebbels said about the necessity of an intimate relation
between propaganda and people reveals how artistically he manipulated
this emptied world. He rejected "power based on guns," because
power that fails to invade and conquer the soul is faced with everimpending
revolution. Here Goebbels' genius asserted itself: propaganda,
he declared, has "to win the heart of a people and to keep it."
In plain language, Goebbels' propaganda, not content with forcing the
Nazi system upon the people, endeavored to force the heart of the people
into this system and to keep it there. Goebbels thus confirmed that
Nazi propaganda drew upon all the capacities of the people to cover
the void it had created. Reality was put to work faking itself, and
exhausted minds were not even permitted to dream any longer. And why
were they exhausted? Because they had incessantly to produce the
"shining flame of ... enthusiasm," to which Goebbels attributed the
faculty of keeping Nazi propaganda alive. Bismarck once said : "Enthusiasm
cannot be pickled like herrings" ; but he did not foresee the art of
continuously creating it anew. Goebbels was, indeed, obliged to feed the
SOO PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
"shining flame" that gave "light and warmth" to his propaganda with
ever more propaganda. Cynic that he was, he himself admitted that his
propaganda must always return to the "depths of the people" and "find
its power there." Obviously it found its power there by stirring up
enthusiasm. This is an important point, for the fact that Goebbels*
artistic efforts were founded on abnormal conditions of life once again
testifies to the hollowness of the Nazi system : air whizzes when it streams
into a vacuum, and the more untenable a social structure is in itself, the
more "enthusiasm" must be aroused lest it collapse. Enthusiasm? Whenever
the Nazi propaganda films detailed their cheering crowds, they
picked out close-ups of faces possessed by a fanaticism bordering on
hysteria. In calling this fanaticism enthusiasm Goebbels was for once
being too modest ; in reality, it was the "shining flame" of mass hysteria
that he fanned so assiduously.
Goebbels spoke these words at the Nuremberg Party Convention in
1934 ; and TEIUMPH OP THE WILL, the film about this Convention, illustrates
them overwhelmingly. Through a very impressive composition of
mere newsreel shots, this film represents the complete transformation of
reality, its complete absorption into the artificial structure of the Party
Convention. The Nazis had painstakingly prepared the ground for such
a metamorphosis: grandiose architectural arrangements were made to
encompass the mass movements, and, under the personal supervision of
Hitler, precise plans of the marches and parades had been drawn up
long before the event. Thus the Convention could evolve literally in a
space and a time of its own ; thanks to perfect manipulation, it became
not so much a spontaneous demonstration as a gigantic extravaganza
with nothing left to improvisation. This staged show, which channeled
the psychic energies of hundreds of thousands of people, differed from
the average monster spectacle only in that it pretended to be an expression
of the people's real existence. When, in 1787, Catherine II
traveled southward to inspect her new provinces, General Potemkin, the
Governor of the Ukraine, filled the lonely Russian steppes with pasteboard
models of villages to give the impression of flourishing life to the
fast-driving sovereign an anecdote that ends with the highly satisfied
Catherine bestowing on her former favorite the title of Prince of Tauris.
The Nazis also counterfeited life after the manner of Potemkin ; instead
of pasteboard, however, they used life itself to construct their imaginary
villages.
To this end people as the incarnation of life must be transported
in both the literal and metaphoric sense of the word. As to the means
of transportation, TRIUMPH OP THE WILL reveals that the Convention
speeches played a minor role. Speeches tend to appeal to th? emotions
as well as the intellect of their listeners ; but the Nazis preferred to re-
CONFLICT WITH REALITY SOI
duce the intellect by working primarily upon the emotions. At Nuremberg,
therefore, steps were taken to influence the physical and psychological
condition of all participants. Throughout the whole Convention
masses already open to suggestion were swept along by a continuous,
well-organized movement that could not but dominate them. Significantly,
Hitler reviewed the entire five-hour parade from his standing car instead
of from a fixed dais. Symbols chosen for their stimulative power helped
in the total mobilization : the city was a sea of waving swastika banners ;
the flames of bonfires and torches illuminated the nights ; the streets and
squares uninterruptedly echoed with the exciting rhythm of march
music. Not satisfied with having created a state of ecstasy, the Convention
leaders tried to stabilize it by means of proved techniques that
utilize the magic of aesthetic forms to impart consistency to volatile
crowds. The front ranks of the Labor Service men were trained to
speak in chorus an outright imitation of communist propaganda
methods ; the innumerable rows of the various Party formations composed
tableaux vvoants across the huge festival grounds. These living
ornaments not only perpetuated the metamorphosis of the moment, bub
symbolically presented masses as instrumental superunits.
It was Hitler himself who commissioned Leni Riefenstahl to produce
an artistically shaped film of the Party Convention. In her book on this
film,
2
she incidentally remarks : "The preparations for the Party Convention
were made in concert with the preparations for the camera work."
This illuminating statement reveals that the Convention was planned
not only as a spectacular mass meeting, but also as spectacular film
propaganda. Leni Riefenstahl praises the readiness with which the Nazi
leaders facilitated her task. Aspects open here as confusing as the series
of reflected images in a mirror maze: from the real life of the people
was built up a faked reality that was passed off as the genuine one ; but
this bastard reality, instead of being an end in itself, merely served as
the set dressing for a film that was then to assume the character of an
authentic documentary. TRIUMPH OF THE WILL is undoubtedly the film
of the Reich's Party Convention; however, the Convention itself had
also been staged to produce TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, for the purpose
of resurrecting the ecstasy of the people through it.
With the thirty cameras at her disposal and a staff of about 120
members, Leni Riefenstahl made a film that not only illustrates the
Convention to the full, but succeeds in disclosing its whole significance.
The cameras incessantly scan faces, uniforms, arms and again faces,
and each of these close-ups offers evidence of the thoroughness with
which the metamorphosis of reality was achieved. It is a metamorphosis
so radical as to include even Nuremberg's ancient stone buildings.
3 Hinter den Rulissen des Reichsparteitag Films, Franz Eher, Mlinchen, 1985.
SOS PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
Steeples, sculptures, gables and venerable fa9ades are glimpsed between
fluttering banners and presented in such a way that they too seem to be
caught up in the excitement. Far from forming an unchangeable background,
they themselves take wing. Like many faces and objects,
isolated architectural details are frequently shot against the sky. These
particular close shots, typical not only of TEIUMPH OP THE WILL, seem
to assume the function of removing things and events from their own
environment into strange and unknown space. The dimensions of
that space, however, remain entirely undefined. It is not without
symbolic meaning that the features of Hitler often appear before
clouds.
To substantiate this transfiguration of reality, TRIUMPH or THE
WILL indulges in emphasizing endless movement. The nervous life of
the flames is played upon; the overwhelming effects of a multitude of
advancing banners or standards are systematically explored. Movement
produced by cinematic techniques sustains that of the objects. There
is a constant panning, traveling, tilting up and down so that spectators
not only see passing a feverish world, but feel themselves uprooted
in it. The ubiquitous camera forces them to go by way of the most
fantastic routes, and editing helps drive them on. In the films of the
Ukrainian director Dovzhenko, motion is sometimes arrested for a picture
that, like a still, presents some fragment of motionless reality : it is as
if, by bringing all life to a standstill, the core of reality, its very being,
were disclosed. This would be impossible in TRIUMPH OF THE WELL.
On the contrary, here total movement seems to have devoured the substance,
and life exists only in a state of transition.
The film also includes pictures of the mass ornaments into which
this transported life was pressed at the Convention. Mass ornaments
they appeared to Hitler and his staff, who must have appreciated them
as configurations symbolizing the readiness of the masses to be shaped
and used at will by their leaders. The emphasis on these living ornaments
can be traced to the intention of captivating the spectator with
their aesthetic qualities and leading him to believe in the solidity of the
swastika world. Where content is
lacking or cannot be revealed, the
attempt is often made to substitute formal artistic structures for it :
not for nothing did Goebbels call propaganda a creative art. TRIUMPH
OF THE WILL not only explores the officially fabricated mass-ornaments,
but draws on all those discovered by the wandering cameras: among
them such impressive tableaux wua/nts as the two rows of raised arms
that converge upon Hitler's car while it slowly passes between them;
the birďs-eye view of the innumerable tents of the Hitler Youth; the
ornamental pattern composed by torchlights sparkling through a
huge cloth banner in the foreground. Vaguely reminiscent of abstract
CONFLICT WITH REALITY SOS
paintings, these shots reveal the propagandists functions pure forms
may assume.
The deep feeling of uneasiness TRIUMPH OP THE WILL arouses in
unbiased minds originates in the fact that before our eyes palpable life
becomes an apparition a fact the more disquieting as this transformation
affected the vital existence of a people. Passionate efforts are made
to authenticate the people's continued existence through multifold pictures
illustrating Germany's youth and manhood and the architectural
achievements of their ancestors as well. Nazi Germany herself, prodigally
embodied, passes across the screen but to what end? To be
immediately carried away; to serve as raw material for the construction
of delusive villages la Potemkin. This film represents an inextricable
mixture of a show simulating German reality and of German
reality maneuvered into a show. Only a nihilistic-minded power that
disregarded all traditional human values could so unhesitatingly manipulate
the bodies and the souls of a whole people to conceal its own
nihilism. The Nazi leaders pretended to act in the name of Germany.
But the Reich's eagle, frequently detailed in the film, always appears
against the sky like Hitler himself a symbol of a superior power used
as a means of manipulation. TRIUMPH OF THE WILL is the triumph of a
nihilistic will. And it is a frightening spectacle to see many an honest,
unsuspecting youngster enthusiastically submit to his corruption, and
long columns of exalted men march towards the barren realm of this
will as though they themselves wanted to pass away.
This digression may explain why the Nazis in their campaign films
clung so desperately to newsreel shots. To keep the totalitarian system
in power, they had to annex to it all real life. And since, in the medium
of the film, the authentic representation of unstaged reality is reserved
to newsreel shots, the Nazis not only could not afford to set them aside,
but were forced to compose from them their fictitious war pictures.
Unlike those of TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, the events in BAPTISM
OF FIRE and VICTORY IN THE WEST form part of an independent
reality. Whereas the cameramen at Nuremberg worked on a wellprepared
ground, the army film reporters could shoot only what they
happened to find on their expeditions. Or overlook it. Of this latter
possibility the Nazis made persistent use, even though they must have
been aware that the average spectator knows enough of present warfare
to sense an incompleteness. The two campaign films as well as the
newsreels avoid touching on certain subjects inseparable from the war
they pretend to cover. Such omissions are the more surprising as they
seem to conflict with the basic design of Nazi propaganda.
One German newsreel issued after the French campaign vividly illus-
304 PROPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
trates the hearty reception given to the troops returning home. Little
boys climb upon a standing tank, girls in white strew flowers, and the
town's whole population is afoot to welcome back the regiment to its
old garrison. This sequence, however, seems to be an exception within
the newsreels. At any rate, neither campaign film exhibits people in their
natural state, but only and then rarely in the form of cheering
crowds. They differ in this respect from the Russian MANNEEHEIM
LINE which concludes with the Leningrad people happily applauding
the return of their victorious army. Theoretically, the end of VICTORY
IN THE WEST could have been composed in the same way, for, according
to William L. Shirer,
8
all Berlin turned out on July 18, 1940, to attend
the victory parade through the Brandenburg Gate. "I mingled among
the crowds in the Pariserplatz," he notes. "A holiday spirit ruled completely.
Nothing martial about the mass of the people here. They were
just out for a good time." The rejection of such scenes and of people
in general may be connected with the particular character of the campaign
films. As descriptions of blitz wars and conquests they could pretend
to be uninterested in the civil life within their national boundaries.
In addition, both of them are films of the German High Command and
are thus obliged to glorify the soldier rather than the citizen. Hence,
they end in parades military apotheoses which also indicate that the
war is to be continued. Nevertheless, the almost complete exclusion of
people from these representative films remains a puzzling fact; it betrays
the Nazi leaders* genuine indifference to the people they officially
praised as the source of their power.
The American versions of BAPTISM OP FIRE and VICTORY IN THE
WEST suppress even the slightest allusion to the anti-Jewish activities
of the Nazis in wartime. Other versions may be less reticent : the German
edition of the Polish campaign film is said to contain a scene with caricature-like
Polish Jews sniping at German soldiers from behind doors
and trees. Here, as in other cases, the newsreels are more communicative
than the feature-length films. One newsreel bestows on George VI the
title "King of Judaea" and calls Mr. Mandel "the Jew Mandel," further
characterizing him as "the hangman of France." Another, likewise released
after the French debacle, represents deserted cars on the highway
as the property of "Jewish warmongers and Parisian plutocrats"
who wanted to flee in them, their luggage filled with "ingots of gold and
jewelry." Except for the aforementioned Polish war episode, however,
these vituperations are confined to a few hints that, unseconded by
visuals, disappear in the mass of verbal statements. While the Nazis
continued practicing, printing and broadcasting their racial antiSemitism,
they reduced its role in the war films, apparently hesitant to
* Cf, Berlin Diary, pp. 451-52.
CONFLICT WITH REALITY SOS
spread it through pictures. On the screen, anti-Jewish activities were
almost as taboo as, for instance, concentration camps or sterilizations.
All this can be done and propagated in print and speech, but it stubbornly
resists pictorial representation. The image seems to be the last
refuge of violated human dignity. Only one scene, the identification of
alleged Polish murderers in BAPTISM OF FIRE, points to the unseen
background of the system an isolated instance designed to terrorize
audiences.
The omission of death in the German war films has struck many
observers. In this field, the two campaign pictures offer nothing but
two dead horses of enemy nationality, two graves of soldiers and several
wounded soldiers who pass by too quickly to make an impression. The
newsreels practice similar abstinence. In one of them, badly injured
soldiers appear in a hospital, but since their Fiihrer honors them with
a visit, they are the elect rather than victims. This cautious line never
seems to have been abandoned. The New York Times of June 14, 1941,
mentions a Nazi newsreel dealing with the blitzkrieg in the Balkans and
the German North African campaign "which did not show any German
dead or wounded." And in the New York Times Magazine of March 1,
1942, Mr. George Axelsson notes among other impressions : "The newsreels
show the German Army sweeping forward against the usually
invisible enemy without the loss of a single man or vehicle."
4
A side-glance at Russian war pictures proves the pictorial abolition
of death to be a peculiarity of Nazi propaganda. The campaign film
MANNEBHEIM LINE not only includes pan-shots over dead Russian
soldiers, but goes so far as to emphasize the horrors of war through
relentless close-ups of fragmentary corpses. In their ardent realism,
these Russian cameramen and film editors did not repudiate the most
terrifying details. Their later documentary, THE ROUT OF THE GEEMAN
ARMIES BEFORE Moscow, reportedly contains a scene with a
Red Army general "addressing his men against a background of eight
dangling figures of civilians of Volokalamsk who had been hanged by
the Nazis." 5
Shirer's Berlin Diary makes it evident that the Nazis proceeded
"according to plan" in withholding from general audiences the calamities
of war. On May 16, 1940, Shirer wrote : "I just saw two uncensored
newsreels at our press conference in the Propaganda Ministry. Pictures
of the German army smashing through Belgium and Holland. Some of
the more destructive work of German bombs and shells was shown.
Towns laid waste, dead soldiers and horses lying around, and the earth
4
George Axelsson : "Picture of Berlin, Not by Goebbels."
5
See the report cabled from Moscow: "Film of the Defense of Moscow Depicts
Army's and People's Fight," in the New York Times of Feb. 17, 1942.
S06 PEOPAGANDA AND THE NAZI WAR FILM
and mortar flying when a shell or bomb hit." This record is followed on
June 10, 1940, by some remarks on another newsreel likewise presented
at a press conference: "Again the ruined towns, the dead humans, the
putrefying horses' carcasses. One shot showed the charred remains of
a British pilot amid the wreckage of his burnt plane." Shirer's notes
testify to the pictorial presence of death in the original German newsreels
and to the occasional interest of the Propaganda Ministry in impressing
war horrors upon the minds of a selected group of foreign
correspondents. Presumably the Nazi authorities wanted them to write
or broadcast reports that would spread panic abroad; but, of course,
the Nazi authorities did not want to upset people at home. It is noteworthy
that the Nazis, while suppressing death in their films, once
allowed a radio broadcast from the front to include the cries of a dying
soldier
6
; this proves conclusively that they were well aware of the
immediate and striking reactions pictorial documents might provoke in
audiences. Although the whole totalitarian system depended upon its
ability to transfigure all reality, the Nazis did not dare to deal with
the image of death. PUB UNS (FoR Us, 1937), a short Nazi film presenting
the grandiose Munich commemoration for fallen partisans of
the movement, culminates in the following scene: a speaker calls the
roll of the dead, and at each name he shouts, the masses of living partisans
respond in unison, "Here." But this was a staged ceremony with
everything under control. How would uncontrollable audiences react to
pictures of dead German soldiers on the screen? The lack of corpses
in the Nazi war films reveals the leaders' secret fear that possibly no
"Here" would be audible then. Their fear was undoubtedly well-founded.
The sight of death, this most definitive of all real facts, might have
shocked the spectator deeply enough to restore his independence of
mind, and thus have destroyed the speU of Nazi propaganda.
What actually appears on the screen should be expected to achieve
its propagandists mission unequivocally. But the Nazis do not always
succeed in mastering their material. For instance, the carefully polished
commentary of the two campaign films overflows with self-justifications
which cannot but arouse the suspicions of unprejudiced spectators. Besides
the already-mentioned vindication,
7
BAPTISM OF FIRE offers such
a mass of arguments in favor of Germany that the alleged legitimacy
of her war against Poland is not only made clear, but too clear. After
Danzig's return to the Reich the commentator introduces the subsequent
war episodes with the words : "Poland ... is threateningly taking up
arms against the just cause of the German nation," and the bombardment
of Warsaw is made to appear the work of its defenders. Simi6
1 owe this information to the Research Project on Totalitarian Communication.
7 Of, p. 291.
CONFLICT WITH REALITY 307
larly, the verbal statements of VICTORY IN THE WEST overdo their
attempt to transform Germany's blitz attacks into measures of selfdefense
and in this way get entangled in patently dubious assumptions.
It was precisely by detailing the proofs of their innocence that the
Nazi leaders exposed themselves as the aggressors. Experienced criminals
arc rich in alibis.
The visuals are even more refractory than the commentary. The
reason is that unstaged reality carries a meaning of its own which
sometimes undermines the propagandist^ meaning imposed upon the
newsreel shots. Infinite columns of prisoners yield a monotony that
counteracts their task of substantiating glowing German triumphs.
Instead of feeling overwhelmed, audiences soon tire; the more so as all
columns, including those of the German soldiers, resemble each other.
The confused depiction of military operations not only produces the
intended effect, but also leads spectators to realize that the Nazis, far
from giving information, are merely seeking to impress them. In such
scenes, the Nazi rulers' contempt for the individual becomes apparent.
No less revealing are the incoherent shots that frequently fill the interlude
between the verbal announcement of a victory and its actual
achievement. In all these cases they could easily be increased images
of genuine reality indict totalitarian propaganda for their manip-
ulation.
The void behind this propaganda also manifests itself. It rises to
the surface in a German newsreel sequence in which Hitler, accompanied
by his architect, Professor Speer, and several other members of his staff,
pays a visit to Paris early in the morning. The columns of the Madeleine
sternly watch as he paces up the steps. Then the Nazi cars pass
before the Ope"ra. They cross La Concorde, drive along the ChampsElysees
and slow down in front of the Arc de Triomphe, a close shot of
which shows Rude's "Marseillaise" emerging from its cover of sand
bags. On they drive. At the end, Hitler and his retinue stand on the
terrace of the Trocadro, steadfastly gazing at the Eiffel Tower in the
rear. The Fiihrer is visiting the conquered European capital but is
he really its guest ? Paris is as quiet as a grave. Except for a few policemen,
a worker and a solitary priest hastening out of sight, not a soul is
to be seen at the Trocadero, the Etoile, the huge Concorde, the Opera
and the Madeleine, not a soul to hail the dictator so accustomed to
cheering crowds. While he inspects Paris, Paris itself shuts its eyes and
withdraws. The touching sight of this deserted ghost city that once
pulsed with feverish life mirrors the vacuum at the core of the Nazi
system. Nazi propaganda built up a pseudo-reality iridescent with
many colors, but at the same time it emptied Paris, the sanctuary of
civilization. These colors scarcely veiled its own emptiness.
STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
A. DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS
A FILM is as a rule divided into sequences, scenes and shots. This division,
however, cannot be used here, for it would unnecessarily complicate
the task of eliciting from the Nazi films all their propagandistic
functions.
Since the analysis of a whole presupposes the analysis of its elements,
we have to trace the smallest units that either isolated or in
relation to other units imply intended propagandistic functions. They
may be called basic units.
Complexes of these basic units compose what we call sections, passages
and parts.
To begin with the basic units, they appear in the three media of
which each propaganda film consists. These media are :
the commentary including both verbal statements and occasional
captions;
the visuals including camera reality and the numerous maps ;
the sound composed of sound effects and music, including songs
(words spoken by characters on the screen are so rare that
they can be ignored) .
In the medium of the commentary, the basic unit may be called a
verbal unit or, more specifically, a
statement. Each statement consists of one or more sentences. The
whole commentary of a propaganda film is a succession of such explicit
verbal statements, each separated from the other by an interval during
which visuals appear or continue to appear.
Example 1: BAPTISM OF FERE opens with the
STATEMENT: "As far back as the time of the Templars, the city of
Danzig used to be a German stronghold against the East. The
Hanseatic League, a merchant guild of Free German towns formed
to protect their trade in the Baltic region, developed the city into
an important and beautiful trade center. Beautiful old houses and
gates still bear witness to a proud past, and today as ever demonstrate
the Germanic character of the place."
FUNCTION : The intended propagandistic function of this statement is to
emphasize Germany's historical right to Danzig.
SOB
DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS 809
In the medium of the visuals, we call the basic unit a
picture wrwt. The picture unit consists of one or more shots. Shots
form a picture unit if they represent a unity of subject, of place, of
time, of action, a symbolic unity or any combination of several of these
factors.
Example %: Maps are sometimes represented through one and the same
traveling shot, which then constitutes a picture unit.
PICTUBE UNIT :
constituting a symbolic unity.
Example %a: The statement of Example 1 is synchronized with a picture
unit.
PICTURE UNIT : A number of shots showing old Danzig houses from different
angles. These shots represent a unity of subject and place. Its
intended propagandistic
FUNCTION: A romantic-aesthetic appeal.
In the medium of the sound the basic unit may be called a
sound unit. The sound unit consists of a uniform noise or a musical
motif a sad tune, a gay song, a terrific bombardment.
These three kinds of basic units cover whatever is communicated
within the three media. Since their propagandistic function originates
in the content of the commentary, the visuals and the sound, they may
be called content units.
In addition to the content units, there are basic units whose functions
do not originate in any content, but in the relations between content
units* These units may be called relation units. But before denning
them, we have once more to examine the content units.
Each explicit statement (verbal unit) is usually synchronized with
one or more picture units and/or sound units. We call such a complex a
section. Each section normally extends over all three media.
Example 8: The statement about the German character of Danzig
Example 1 and the picture unit representing old Danzig houses
Example a are accompanied by a sound unit. These three synchronized
content units form a section.
For practical purposes we assign to the commentary the leading
role within any section. Since the commentary differs from the other
media in that it is composed of explicit verbal statements, its propagandistic
functions are less ambiguous. This methodological preference,
however, does not imply that the commentary's propagandistic ap-
310 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
peal is more important than that of the visuals or the sound. The contrary
will frequently prove true.
To sum up : each statement determines a section. A section is composed
of one statement, one or more picture units and possibly one or
more sound units.
We now revert to the relation units, which can be divided into three
types : the linkage, the synchronization and the cross-linkage.
A linkage is the relation between successive content units within
one and the same medium. Such linkages may also occur between already-linked
content units.
Example 4: taken from the visual part of BAPTISM or FIEE. We shall
consider two successive sections of this film.
SECTION I
STATEMENT : "Hundreds of thousands of Polish prisoners are assembling
for transportation into the camps." Synchronized with
PICTURE UNIT: About eight shots representing moving Polish prisoner
columns. The last shot shows a prisoner column retreating towards
the rear.
SECTION II
STATEMENT: "The German troops are still following the retreating
enemy on all fronts, advancing steadily eastward."
PICTUBJB UNIT: Several shots representing a moving German infantry
column. The first two shots show the column moving towards the
foreground.
FUNCTION : The intended propagandists function of this linkage between
two picture units is to emphasize symbolically the contrast of
German advance with Polish retreat.
A synchronization is the relation between simultaneous content units
or linkages of different media within one section.
Example 5: taken from the historical part of VICTORY IN THE WEST,
STATEMENT: (dealing with the events in Germany after the first World
War) "The tributes extorted by the enemy, inflation and unemployment
dragged the German people into the deepest kind of want.
Exhausted, disrupted and in need of a leader, they drifted towards
extinction.'
5
This statement is synchronized with one
DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS 311
PICTURE UNIT :
consisting of about three shots :
1. Demonstrating worker processions with banners and signs:
"Revolution Forever."
2. Same, with signs claiming "General Strike."
8. Crowd with signs: "Dictatorship of the Proletariat." A (Jewishlooking)
speaker instigating the crowd.
FUNCTION : The intended propagandists function of this synchronization
of a picture unit with a simultaneous statement is obviously to
identify the moral collapse, emphasized in the commentary, with
the "Marxist Revolution" for the purpose of slandering this revo-
lution.
A cross-linkage is the relation between a content unit in one of the
three media of a section and a content unit in another medium of a
neighboring section.
Example 6: taken from the media of the commentary and the visuals
of VICTORY IN THE WEST. Towards the end of this film the following
two successive sections appear:
SECTION I
STATEMENT: "Up to the last moment the heavy forts of the Maginot
Line are fighting."
(This statement is followed by another one that can be neglected
here.)
PICTUEE UNIT a : A shot of a French gun-crew in a fort of the Maginot,
Line.
PICTURE UNIT b: Several shots exemplifying the German attack against
the fort and its surrender.
SECTION II
STATEMENT: It sums up the balance of the campaign : almost two million
prisoners have been taken, and there is no end of captured material.
PICTURE UNIT : It consists of four shots :
1. Two captured French officers
2. Pan-shot over a multitude of prisoners
8. Close shot of encamping Negroes
4. A group of Negroes, picked out in medium close-up.
DESCRIPTION: There is a distinct relation between the statement of
Section I praising French bravery, and the picture unit of Section II
pointing to the number of Negroes in the French army.
312 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
FUNCTION: The intended propagandistic function of this cross-linkage
between the statement of Section I and the picture unit of the subsequent
Section H is presumably to invalidate the praise of French
bravery by the pictorial suggestion that the same French army is eu
decadent as to rely on Negroes. Thus Germany's triumph appears to
be the outcome of moral as well as military superiority.
We have yet to 3efine the concepts of passage and part.
The passage is composed of two or several successive sections, the
number of which depends upon the length of the linkages and crosslinkages
connecting these sections. If a cross-linkage covers two sections
and a simultaneous visual linkage three sections, the passage is determined
by the linkage comprising three sections. (It must be noted, however,
that only linkages within the media of the commentary and the
visuals determine the length of a passage; linkages in the medium of
sound serve also as linkages of passages.)
Example 7: Both Example 4* and Example 6 contain two successive
sections which form passages. In the first case, the passage is determined
by a linkage; in the second, by a cross-linkage.
A part is a succession of passages.
Example 8: The introduction of VICTOET IN THE WEST, which surveys
German history from the Nazi viewpoint, must be considered a part
of this film.
DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS SIS
CONCEPTS OF STBTTCTITBAI, ANALYSIS
PROPASAKDA FILM
S Synchronization (indicated only in Mb. l)
L **
Linkage
CL = Cross-Linkage
The length of passage 3 is determined by linkage (@)
The length of passage 4 is determined by cross-linkage I
B. SCHEME OF ANALYSIS
A scheme has to be established through which all basic units of Nazi
propaganda films can be analyzed. Since any large unit is not merely
the sum of its
components, such an analysis does not anticipate that
of the "parts" of a film or of the film as a whole. On the other hand,
this scheme will enable us to discover all film devices within the dimension
of basic units.
The scheme is
designed to be followed through any propaganda film
from beginning to end.
In applying the scheme, for instance, to the analysis of a passage,
one has first to consider the units within each medium of this passage
i.e., the content units (statements, picture units and sound units) and
the linkages (relations between content units within each of the three
media). Only then can the basic units which connect media, i.e., synchronizations
and cross-linkages, be taken into account,
Until Within Each Medium
The commentary being the starting-point for the analysis of a
section, the media will have to be considered in the following order:
commentary visuals sound.
COMMENTARY
The commentary includes statements and linkages of statements.
Statements:
Each statement has to be listed. Sometimes a statement is followed
by one or several others that simply exemplify it. These exemplifying
statements will be put in parentheses to indicate their subordinate
character.
Example 9: taken from BAPTISM or Fran
STATEMENT: "Reconnaissance flights are producing valuable information,
and snapshots are taken of the movements and positions of the
enemy." This statement is followed by
STATEMENT: ("The snapshots are developed immediately, and form the
basis for decisive operations initiated on account of information
received.")
It is advisable to summarize, by means of generalization, the propa-
SCHEME OF ANALYSIS 315
gandistic content of most statements. This will be done under the
heading
CONTENT.
The intended propagandists function of the statement is pointed
out in the subsequent column
FUNCTIONS.
This column appears, of course, in each division of the scheme. It
should never contain anything but the presumed function of the basic
unit under consideration.
Like Nazi propaganda in general, Nazi film propaganda attempts
to reduce the intellectual faculties of audiences, so as to facilitate
the acceptance of its appeals and suggestions. Many basic units
particularly linkages assume such preparatory functions. Others are
intended to enlist sympathies for Nazi Germany or to terrify audiences
through a demonstration of the German army's striking power. Whenever
necessary, we characterize the type of the function.
REMARKS.
This column is reserved for all such remarks as may prove valuable
later.
Example 10: taken from the historical part of VICTORY IN THE WEST.
STATEMENT: "Willingly the Belgian customs guards open the frontier
barriers to the troops of the Western Powers."
CONTENT :
Belgium actually violating neutrality.
FUNCTIONS : Statement serves as moral justification of Germany's attack
against Belgium. (Vindication motif.)
REMARKS: Falsification of facts*
Linkages:
They have to be considered under the headings
DESCRIPTION and
FUNCTIONS.
VISTTAI*
The visuals include picture units and linkages of picture units.
Picture units:
The shots of which each picture unit consists have to be listed
and described. (See, Examples 4, 5 and 6.)
316 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
As in the case of most statements, it is useful to summarize the
propagandistically effective content of most picture units. This will be
done in the column
CONTENT.
Note on "additional" picture units: Frequently, a statement is synchronized
with a series of picture units, several of which are not covered
by the statement. These "additional" picture units, which may elaborate
on it or take a course of their own, seem to refer to a statement omitted
in the commentary. The summary of their content, as listed in the
column "Content," can be considered a substitute of this missing statement.
Such implicit statements will be put within quotation marks.
Example 11 : taken from VICTOET IN THE WEST
STATEMENT: "In the gray light of dawn the German armies advance
along a wide front." The following picture units are synchronized
with this statement:
PICTURE UNIT a: About eight shots, showing several running soldiers
and moving tanks that, like the soldiers, clear away obstacles.
CONTENT : Actions necessitated by the advance of the armies.
PICTURE UNIT b : Several shots of soldiers running across a field swept
by enemy fire, seeking cover and machine-gunning.
CONTENT: "Soldiers crossing a field under enemy fire." (Implicit state-
ment.)
PICTURE UNIT c : Several shots of an empty village street, with soldiers
running and machine-gunning.
CONTENT: "Soldiers taking possession of a village." (Implicit state-
ment.)
Linkages:
Like the linkages of statements, the linkages in the medium of the
visuals have to be taken into account under the headings
DESCRIPTION and
FUNCTIONS.
SOUND
The sound includes sound units and linkages of sound units.
Sound units:
They have to be examined in the column
CHARACTERIZATION.
Many sound units are definitely associated with certain images or
ideas. Marching music, for instance, conveys the idea of military life,
SCHEME OF ANALYSIS 317
dance music that of festive occasions. In addition, if a musical unit is
synchronized once or twice with picture units representing scenes of
advance, it will later serve as a "leitmotiv," and this "leitmotiv" will
automatically evoke the notion of advance. We mention all such fixed
associations in the column "Characterization."
Example 18: taken from VICTORY IN THE WEST and supplementing
Example 10. The
STATEMENT: (of Example 10) "Willingly the Belgian customs guards
open the frontier barriers to the troops of the Western Powers,"
determines a section composed of two picture units not to be listed
here. The second picture unit is synchronized with two sound units :
SOUND UNIT a : Music imitating the chatter in a chicken-yard.
CHARACTERIZATION I
Punny.
SOUND UNIT b :
English song, "The Siegfried Line," thinly instrumented
and sung by a chorus.
CHARACTERIZATION: Satirical variation of a popular British soldiers
5
song. Here we have an exception : the music alone assumes the function
of ridiculing English soldiers.
Since, as a rule, sound alone does not impart propaganda messages,
the column "Functions" is omitted here.
Linkages :
Linkages of sound are not considered in this scheme.
Units Connecting Media
SYNCHRONIZATIONS
There are three kinds of synchronizations (i.e., relations between
simultaneous content units or linkages of different media within one
section) :
Relation of the visuals to the commentary
Relation of the sound to the commentary
Relation of the sound to the visuals.
We consider first the
Relation of 'visuals to commentary:
Picture units or linkages in the medium of the visuals refer to statements
in different ways, each of which may assume a specific propa-
S18 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
gandistic function. We characterize these different relations under the
heading
CHA&ACTB&IZATION.
*
With regard to the statement to which they refer, picture units
(or linkages) may be symbolic, exemplificative, illustrative or explicative.
The exemplification is either clear or indistinct. All kinds of representation
can be elaborative.
As to the "additional" picture units, we refer to the note, page 816.
The relations of these "additional" picture units to their "implicit**
statements can be characterized, of course, in exactly the same manner
as the relations to explicit statements.
Relation of sound to commentary and visuals:
These relations need only be examined with respect to their intended
FUNCTIONS.
CROSS-LINKAGES
They have to be checked in the columns
DESCRIPTION and
FUNCTIONS.
The scheme will be completed by the division
COMPOSITION OF THE SECTIONS AND PASSAGES
Within this division we define the role each medium plays in producing
the total effect of the section or passage under discussion.
C. FIVE ELABORATE EXAMPLES
Preliminary remark: In case several basic units and their functions
are intermingled, it is
only the most important function that counts.
STATEMENTS
1) "The German Command
has received
information that a
strong enemy force in
the vicinity of Lille,
consisting of a large
number of French and
English divisions, has
been ordered to advance
against the
lower Rhine and on
Into the Ruhr District,
in violation of
Belgian and Dutch
neutrality."
2) ("Willingly the Belgian
customs guards
open the frontier barriers
to the troops of
the Western Powers.")
The beginning of this
statement coincides
with the shot of Belgian
customs guards in
Picture Unit 2a.
EXAMPLE I
taken from VICTOBY IN THE WEST
PICTURE UNITS
1) One shot of a map representing
this intention. Arrows symbolising
enemy groups cross Belgium's
boundaries and begin to advance
towards a point marked "Ruhr."
2a) About 19 shots representing
the advance of various French
army units: motorcyclists, cyclists,
artillery, moving tanks, soldiers in
a freight train. One of the first
shots shows Belgian customs guards
opening the barriers. The final
shots represent marching French
infantry, mostly Negroes, from different
angles.
2b) British troops:
Shot 1: Medium shot of two English
officers standing together.
Shot 2: Close-up of an English tank
moving towards the left.
Shot 8: English infantry column
advancing towards the left.
Shot 4: Same from another angle.
Shot 5: English infantry slowly
moving In Indian file towards the
rear.
Shot 6: Close shot of moving tank.
SOUND UNITS
2b) Sound unit synchronized
with Shots
1 and 2: music imitating
the chatter in a
chicken-yard.
2b) Sound unit synchronized
with Shots
8-6: variation of the
English soldiers' song,
"The Siegfried Line,"
thinly instrumented
and sung by chorus.
819
320 STKUCTUEAL ANALYSIS
ANALYSIS OF EXAMPLE I
COMMENTARY
Statements
1) CONTENT: Enemy's intention to violate Belgium's neutrality and
to invade the Ruhr on the point of being realized.
FUNCTIONS :
Enemy stigmatized as aggressor.
REMARKS : Statement a falsification.
2) CONTENT :
Belgium actually violating neutrality.
FUNCTIONS: Hint at Belgium's guilt implies moral justification of
German attack against Belgium.
REMARKS: Statement a falsification.
Linkages
None
VISUALS
Picture units
1) CONTENT: See description of picture unit.
FUNCTIONS : Threat to Ruhr symbolically stressed.
REMARKS: Moving map.
<a)
and
b) CONTENT: Through linkage with map (see Linkages) and relation
of map to Statement 1 (see Synchronizations), content is defined
as "Enemy enters Belgium" (Implicit statement).
FUNCTIONS :
a) Aggression is a fact.
b) Shots of Negro troops intended to arouse race bias and
deprecate French racial behavior.
REMARKS: Arrangement of captured French and English film ma-
terial.
Linkages
DESCRIPTION: Immediately following the map in Picture Unit 1,
Picture Unit 2 seems to substantiate the symbolic advance of the
arrows. Both picture units linked.
FUNCTIONS : See Function a) of Picture Units #a and 8b.
FIVE ELABORATE EXAMPLES 321
SOUND
2b) CHARACTERIZATION :
Funny.
2b) CHARACTERIZATION : Satirical variation. In ridiculing English soldiers,
music assumes a propagandist^ function an exceptional
case.
REMARKS : Use of the popular English song, "The Siegfried Line."
SYNCHRONIZATIONS
Relation of visuals to commentary
1) CHARACTERIZATION :
Map symbolizes Statement 1.
FUNCTIONS: Symbolic representation gives the impression that enemies
were already about to carry out intentions denounced by
statement.
2) CHARACTERIZATION : Illustrative with reference to implicit statement
"Enemy enters Belgium.'*
FUNCTIONS : See Function a) of Picture Units &a and b.
Relation of sound to visuals
Sb) FUNCTIONS: Ridiculing big English tank.
8b) FUNCTIONS: Ridiculing English soldiers.
COMPOSITION OF PASSAGE
COMMENTARY: Enemy intending aggression. Moral justification of
German attack.
VISUALS: They mark enemy aggression as a fact and, moreover,
arouse race bias (through relation of map to commentary, linkage
and picture units).
SOUND: Ridiculing English arms and troops (through sound alone
and relation of sound to visuals).
322 STEUCTUBAL ANALYSIS
EXAMPLE II
taken from VICTORY IN THE WEST
STATEMENTS
1) "Up to the last moment,
the heavy forts
of the Maginot Line
are fighting,"
(This statement is followed
by another one
that can be neglected
here,)
2) "Almost two malion
prisoners . . . and
the total materiel of
more than 130 divisions
. . . fall Into
German hands."
PICTURE UNITS
1)
Shot 1: Long shot of a fort.
Shot 2: In the fort of the Maginot
Line: French soldiers tending a.
gun.
Shot 8: Battlefield: German soldiers
cutting barbed wire.
Shot 4: Flashes of fire shooting
over the fort.
Shot 5: Clouds of smoke rising
from the fort.
Shot 6: Barbed wire before clouds
of smoke.
Shot 7: Medium shot of fort
Shot, 8; German soldiers entering
the fort.
Shot 9: French commander surrendering
the fort to the German offi-
cer.
Shot 10: The destroyed fort with
swastika banner hoisted.
2)
Shot 1: Two French officers (prisoners)
with an orderly.
Shot 2: Camera pans over a multitude
of prisoners.
Shot 3: dose shot of encamping
Negroes.
Shot 4: A group of Negroes picked
out in medium close-up.
SOUND UNITS
2) Negro music reminiscent
of jazz tunes.
ANALYSIS OF EXAMPLE II
COMMENTARY
Statements
1) CONTENT : Praise of French bravery.
FUNCTIONS :
Appreciation of French bravery does credit to Germany
and emphasizes German strength.
REMARKS: Praise of enemy.
) CONTENT :
Overwhelming proof of German victory,
FUNCTIONS :
Appeal of triumph.
REMARKS : Use of statistics.
FIVE ELABORATE EXAMPLES 32S
VISUALS
Picture units
1) CONTENT: French soldiers fighting and Germans conquering fort.
FUNCTIONS : Pictures show German bravery.
REMAEKS : Shot 2 taken from captured film material a faked insert.
Shot 10 shows a swastika banner.
2) CONTENT :
Prisoners, with emphasis on Negroes.
FUNCTIONS : See functions of cross-linkage.
SOUND
2) CHAEACTEEIZATION : Music reminds audiences of jazz bands.
SYNCHEONIZATIONS
Relation of visuals to commentary
1) CHAEACTEEIZATION : Shot & vaguely exemplificative. Other shots
illustrative.
Relation of sound to visuals
2) FUNCTIONS: Coloring pictures of French prisoners, the music hints
at French flippancy.
CEOSS-UNKAGE
DESCRIPTION :
Cross-linkage between Statement 1 and Picture Unit 2
synchronized with Sound Unit 8.
FUNCTIONS: Cross-linkage suggests the following thought: French
soldiers may be brave, but French people are decadent. They
deserve to be defeated. German victory proves moral superiority.
COMPOSITION OF PASSAGE
COMMENTAET: Emphasis on German efficiency. Appeal of triumph.
VISUALS: German bravery (through picture unit).
SOUND: Hint at French flippancy (through relation of sound to
visuals).
COMBINATION OF COMMENTAET AND VISUALS: Germany's moral superiority
(through cross-linkage).
324 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
EXAMPLE III
Opening of BAPTISM OF FIEE
STATEMENTS
1) "As far back as the time of the Templars,
the city of Danzig used to be a
German stronghold against the East. The
Hanseatie League, a merchant guild of
Free German towns formed to protect
their trade in the Baltic Region, developed
the city into an important and
beautiful trade center. Beautiful old
houses and gates still bear witness to a
proud past, and today as ever demonstrate
the Germanic character of the
place."
2) "This memorable German town was
cut off from the mother country by the
Treaty of Versailles and was formed into
a so-called 'Free State* under the control
of the League of Nations. Various
restrictions and obligations were imposed
upon this new political structure such as
exportation customs, postal and railway
sovereignty allotted to Poland within the
Green Line. A district especially needed
for the Territory of the Free State, the
Westernplatte, guarding the entrance to
Danzig's harbor, was equipped with extensive
munition dumps, and the little
fishing village of Gdynia, in a direct contradiction
to the agreement underlying
the constitution of the Danzig Free State,
was enlarged into a harbor admitting seagoing
ships, thus aiming at gradually
averting and battling the trade connections
of Danzig property.
5*
8) "The German fraction among the conglomerate
of nationalities was ruthlessly
persecuted. German schools were dosed,
industrials and landowners expropriated
and large parts of the German populace
were driven from the country. In steadily
growing numbers, they tried to escape
from Polish terror and seek protection
PICTURE UNITS
1) A series of shots of Danzig architec-
ture:
Facades behind the river among them a
granary
Close-up of the upper part of this
granary
Parts of an old fountain in close-up
Traveling around the fountain and its
fence towards a steeple
Another steeple
Upper parts of several patrician houses
Tilting up to the upper part of an old
house
Tilting down facade to the portal.
2a) Map representing the Danzig territory.
Camera travels up from the map.
At the left appears the territory of Poland
colored entirely black and thus contrasted
with the little white Danzig
region. The word "Polen" appears white
on the black ground. Then we see the
boundaries of the Free State region and
the words: Freistaat Danzig. Westernplatte.
Gdingen.
2b) Map representing Eastern Europe.
At the right of the Free State region the
black Polish territory with the word "Polen"
in white letters. Camera travels up
from the map, so as to encompass almost
all Europe with England and France. The
words "ISnfflanffi' and "Fronfcr^icA" appear
against black background.
8) Picture unit representing German refugee
procession:
German refugees with bag and baggage
moving through wood
They advance (about 20 to 80) towards
the foreground
A big column of refugees moving on road
towards the rear, where, at one point,
FIVE ELABORATE EXAMPLES 25
STATEMENTS PICTURE UNITS
on Reich territory. Hundreds of thou- there is a sign with inscription, "Lager
sands of worn-out, distressed and panic- Rwnmelsbwrg''
stricken people poured daily into Ger- Medium shot of a refugee group moving
man refugee camps." towards the foreground
Medium close-up: Refugees getting out of
buses
Two or three shots of a go-cart handed
down from the deck of a bus
Medium shot: group of refugees standing,
a crying woman with child in their
midst. Then a similar group
Another group with a man with a child
hi his arms; at his left a crying girl.
ANALYSIS OF EXAMPLE III
COMMENTARY
Statements
1) CONTENT: Statement puts emphasis on Germanic character of Danzig
and on beauty of its architecture.
FUNCTIONS: Germany a civilized nation (Appeal of culture). Her
historical right to Danzig.
2) CONTENT: Germany wronged by Versailles and the Poles.
FUNCTIONS : To arouse sympathy for Germany's sufferings.
8) CONTENT : Germans victimized by Polish terror.
FUNCTIONS : Same as above, with emphasis on Polanďs guilt.
REMARKS: Use of statistics.
Linkages
A) DESCRIPTION : Statements 1 and .
FUNCTIONS: Contrast between Germany's economic and cultural
achievements in Danzig (Statement 1) and Germany's sufferings
(Statement &) assumes the preparatory function of stirring
emotions. Thus the spectator's intellectual faculties will be somewhat
weakened. This kind of manipulation, found also in the
opening part of VICTORY IN THE WEST, is the more needed here
as the subsequent Statement 3 invites unprejudiced audiences to
think of the millions Nazi Germany herself drove away from
their homes.
B) DESCRIPTION: Statements and S.
FUNCTIONS: Intensification of the propagandists effect of each
statement.
826 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
VISUALS
Picture units
1) CONTENT: See description of picture unit.
FUNCTIONS: Romantic-aesthetic appeal.
REMARKS: Two steeples.
) CONTENT: Representation of Danzig's predicament and Polanďs
dependence on England and France.
FUNCTIONS: Black and enormous, Poland is made to appear an uncanny
threat to the tiny Free State region which, through its
white color, is marked as the innocent victim. The later appearance
of black England and France symbolizes these powers as
pulling the strings from behind.
REMARKS :
Moving maps*
2) CONTENT: See description of picture unit.
FUNCTIONS : To arouse pity for German refugees.
Linkages
Same as verbal linkages, with same functions.
SYNCHRONIZATIONS
Relation of visuals to commentary
1) CHARACTERIZATION: Illustrative, with reference to mention of Danzig's
beauty.
FUNCTIONS: Collaboration with statement.
S) CHARACTEEIZATION :
Symbolic and elaborative.
FUNCTIONS: Collaboration with statement.
8) CHARACTERIZATION: Clearly exemplificative, with reference to mention
of German refugees.
FUNCTIONS: Collaboration with statement.
COMPOSITION OF PASSAGE
COMMENTARY: Appeal of culture. Historical right to Danzig. Demanding
understanding of Germany's sufferings (through statements).
Stirring emotions and thereby reducing intellectual
faculties. Intensification of propagandists effects (through linkVISTJALS
: Picture units and linkages supporting statements and linkages
of statements.
Moreover: Homantic-aesthetic appeal. Poland an uncanny
threat. England and France pulling the strings (through picture
units).
FIVE ELABORATE EXAMPLES 327
EXAMPLE IV
taken from BAPTISM OF FIRE. The section deals with the attack
against the Westernplatte.
Remark: The sound consists of noise
without particular significance.
STATEMENTS PICTURE UNITS
"After the fortifications have been cov- Shot 1: Soldiers looking through peepered
by steady fire, a debarcation corps holes in a wall at the right,
is sent ahead to attack. The men spread Shot 2: Close shot of several soldiers
out in a hand-to-hand fight." passing from left to right. The harbor of
Gdynia in the background, with a battle-
ship.
Shot 8: Soldiers running around a ruined
building.
Shot 4: Soldiers moving through wood
towards the rear.
Shot 5: Infantry with hand grenades
moving towards the rear, through smoking
wood.
Shot 6s Same from another angle.
Shot 7: Long shot of same, with much
smoke.
Shot 8: Woods. White smoke rising. Explosion
in a remote glade.
Shot 9: Same, with river in the fore-
ground.
ANALYSIS OF EXAMPLE IV
Statement
CONTENT: Description of a military operation.
FUNCTIONS:
Picture unit
CONTENT: Soldiers action indistinct.
FUNCTIONS:
SYNCHRONIZATIONS
Relation of picture unit to statement
CHABACTERiZATiON :
Indistinctly exemplifying.
FUNCTIONS : It is of course difficult for film-makers to cope with what has
been called the intangibility of modern war* A battle covers enormous
space, and there is no longer a generaľs hill from which to
survey and direct operations. In addition, the mechanization of
328 STEUCTURAL ANALYSIS
warfare has contributed much towards transforming the battlefield
into a vacuum. However, all these difficulties do not prevent the
British film TARGET POB. TONIGHT from offering exhaustive information
about a bomber raid. Similarly, the air-attack episode in
BAPTISM OP FIRE proves that the Nazis themselves are quite able to
enlighten the audience if they want to do so. But, as a matter of fact,
they do want just the opposite, as can be inferred from the preponderance,
in both campaign films, of battle scenes edited after the
manner of Example IV. Blurred depictions of military actions, these
scenes seem designed to confuse the mind, so as to prepare it for the
acceptance of propaganda suggestions.
COMPOSITION OP SECTION
SYNCHRONIZATION OP PICTURE UNIT WITH STATEMENT! Preparatory
function of weakening intellectual faculties.
FIVE ELABORATE EXAMPLES
EXAMPLE V
taken from VICTOBT IN THE WEST
STATEMENTS
1) "Just as on the
Somme, the battle of
June 9 on the Aisne
begins with attacks
against the fortified
villages of the Weygand
Line. As soon as
they are overcome, the
road to the Marne is
clear."
2) "German troops
reach the Marne the
river of destiny of the
World War."
PICTURE UNITS
la) A series of shots devoted to
moving German tank units:
Soldiers passing a village
Tank moving towards rear
Same
Tank moving towards foreground,
with a soldier on it. Shot taken
from below (in Russian manner) to
heighten the soldier's significance;
he looks noble an incarnation of
the ideal German soldier.
Guns and trucks moving from left
to right
Close-up of a moving tank with
soldiers on it
House at the road, with signboard
"Reims 41 km"
Moving tanks
Same from another angle
Close-up of tank wheels.
Ib) Infantry column moving (right
to left)
Same (left to right)
Same (towards foreground)
Close shot of same, picking out soldier
faces, with horses in the rear
Close shot of same, showing marching
legs, wheels and wounded soldiers
in the background
Infantry column moving in Indian
file
2) A number of cars parking; between
the cars a soldier.
Stone bridge; on its balustrade the
word "Mame"
SOUND UNITS
1) The frequently repeated
"leitmotif* of
a marching theme*
March music ceases.
ANALYSIS OF EXAMPLE V
COMMENTARY
Statements
1) CONTENT: Intimation of German advance to the Marne.
FUNCTIONS :
&) CONTENT : The Marne reached.
FUNCTIONS :
SSO STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
Linkages
DESCRIPTION: Statements 1 and 2 form an elliptic linkage; i.e., the
intimation of German advance is abruptly followed by the
announcement of its success.
FUNCTIONS : To produce the impression of irresistible lightning
advance and thus to overwhelm audiences.
VISUALS
Picture iwits
la) CONTENT: Troops moving, particularly tanks.
FUNCTIONS ; The shot of the advancing tank with the noble soldier
on it is obviously intended to substantiate the idea of German
advance. (Proof: the same shot is resumed in the film's important
final passage.) Through this shot the whole picture unit, insigficant
in itself, assumes a symbolic meaning.
Ib) CONTENT :
Moving infantry column.
FUNCTIONS: Since such columns appear whenever the commentary
emphasizes advance, they play the role of a pictorial leitmotif
designed to evoke the impression of advancing German armies.
BEMABKS :
Moving infantry column.
#) CONTENT : Germans at the Marne.
FUNCTIONS :
SOUND
CHABACTEBIZATION :
Usually synchronized with advancing infantry
columns, march music assumes the character of a stimulating
leitmotif impregnated with the meaning "advance."
FUNCTIONS :
SYNCHRONIZATIONS
Relation of visuals to commentary
1) CHAEACTEEIZATION : Elaboration of statement in an exemplificative
way.
FUNCTIONS : The pictures are to imbue the audience with the conviction
that the verbal intimation of further advance will come true.
8) CHARACTERIZATION :
Sufficiently exemplificative.
FUNCTIONS : Collaboration with statement.
FIVE ELABORATE EXAMPLES 331
Relation of sound to visuals
1) FUNCTIONS: The musical leitmotif not only deepens the impression
of advance evoked by the pictures, but makes audiences overlook
the wounded soldiers and tired faces that might invalidate this
impression.
COMPOSITION OF PASSAGE
COMMENTARY: Irresistible lightning advance (through elliptic link-
age).
VISUALS: Representation of advance (through picture units that
include a shot of the ideal German soldier and the leitmotif of
moving infantry columns).
SOUND :
Deepening impression of advance (through musical leitmotif
alone and its relation to visuals).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Most of the books and articles listed here are available in the
Museum of Modern Art Library, New York.
"Abwege (Crisis)," Close Up, III (Territet, Switzerland, Sept. 1928),
no. 3: 72-75.
"Achtung, Liebe Lebensgefahr !
(Where's Love There's Danger),"
Close Up, V (Territet, Switzerland, Nov. 1929), no. 5: 441-42.
Ackerknecht, Erwin, Lichtspielfragen, Berlin, 1928.
"All for a Woman," Exceptional Photoplays, I (New York, Nov. 1921),
bulletin no. 10:4-5.
Alten, W. V., "Die Kunst in Deutschland," J. Meier-Graefe, ed.,
Ganymed: Blatter tier Marees Gesellschaft, II (Miinchen, 1920),
145-51.
Altenloh, Emilie, Zur Soziologie des Kmos, Schriften zur Soziologie der
Kultur, Jena, 1914,
Altman, Georges, "La Censure centre le Cinema," La Revue du Cinema,
III (Paris, I61"
Fevrier 1931), no. 19:33-42.
Amiguet, Frd.-Ph., Cintma! Cinema!, Lausanne and Geneve, 1923.
Arnheim, Rudolf, Film als Kunst, Berlin, 1932.
"Auch Murnau . .
," Filmwelt (Berlin, 22. Marz 1931), no. 12.
B., W., "Geschlecht in Fesseln," Close Up, IH (Territet, Switzerland,
Dec. 1928), no. 6:69-71.
Balazs, Bela, Der sichtbare Mensch: Eine Fttm-Dramaturgie, Halle,
Germany, 1924. 2nd ed.
, Der Geist des Films, Halle, Germany, 1930.
, "Der Film sucht seinen Stoff," Die Abenteuer eines Zehnmarkschems,
Berlin. [A publicity program to this film issued by Deutsche
Vereins Film A.-G.]
Balthasar, "Die Dekoration," Hugo Zehder, ed., Der Fttm von Morgen
(Berlin-Dresden, 1923), pp. 73-90.
"Barberina," Variety, New York, Nov. 1, 1932.
Bard&che, Maurice, and Brasillach, Robert, The History of Motion
Pictures, New York, 1938.
Barr, Alfred H., Jr., "Otto Dix," The Arts, XVH (New York, Jan.
1931), no. 4:285-51.
Barrett, Wilton A., "Grey Magic," National Board of Review Magasdne,
I (New York, Dec. 1926), no. 7 : 4-6.
334 BIBLIOGBAPHY
, "Morgenrot," ibid., VIE (June 1933), no. 6: 10-12, 15.
Barry, Iris, Program Notes, Museum of Modern Art Film Library.
[Reviews of and commentary on films,]
, "The Beggar's Opera," National Board of Review Magazine,
VI (New York, June 1931), no. 6: 11-13.
Bateson, Gregory, "Cultural and Thematic Analysis of Fictional
Films," Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences,
Series II, V (New York, Feb. 194$), no. 4:72-78.
Berr, Jacques, "Etat du Cinema 1931 : Etats-Unis et Allemagne," La
Revue du Cintma, III (Paris, ler
Juillet 1931), no, 24: 40-51.
Berstl, Julius, ed., %6 Jahre Berliner Theater wd Victor Barnowshy,
Berlin, 1930.
Birnbaum, Leonhard, "Massenscenen im Film," Ufa-Blatter, ProgrammZeitschrift
der Theater des Ufa-Konzerns (Berlin, 1921?).
Blakeston, Oswell, "An Epic Please," Close Up, I (Territet, Switzerland,
Sept. 1927), no. 3:61-66.
, "Lusts of Mankind," ibid., Ill (Nov. 1928), no. 5: 38-41.
, "The Adventures of a Ten-Mark Note," ibid., pp. 58-61.
, "Interview with Carl Freund," ibid., IV (Jan. 1929), no. 1:
58-61.
, "Dracula," ibid., pp. 71-72,
, "Snap," ibid. (May 1929), no, 5: 38-42.
Boehmer, Henning von, and Reitz, Helmut, Der Film m Wirtschaft und
Recht. Seme Herstellung und Verwendmg, Berlin, 1933.
Boehnel, William, "Avalanche," New York World Telegram, March 29,
, "Morgenrot," ibid., May 17, 1933.
Brody, Samuel, "Paris Hears Eisenstein," Close Up, VI (Territet,
Switzerland, April 1980), no. 4:283-89.
Bryher, FUm Problems of Soviet Russia, Territet, Switzerland, 1929.
, "The War from Three Angles," Close Up, I (Territet, Switzerland,
July 1927), no. 1: 16-22.
, "G, W. Pabst. A Survey," ibid. (Dec, 1927), no. 6: 56-61.
, "A German School Film," ibid., VI (Feb. 1930), no. 2: 128-3S.
, "Berlin, April 1931," Close Up, Vin (London, June 1931),
no. 2:126-33.
, "Notes on Some Films," ibid.t IX (Sept. 1932), no. 3: 196-99.
Buchner, Hans, Im Bawne des Films. Die Weltherrschaft des Kmos,
Miinchen, 1927.
"Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The," Exceptional Photoplays, I (New York,
March 1921), bulletin no. 4:3-4.
BIBLIOGRAPHY SS5
CaligarirHeft. Was deutsche Zeitungen iiber den FUm berichten, Berlin,
[A publicity pamphlet issued by Decla-Bioscop-Konzern.]
Canudo, UUsine aux Images, Paris, 1927.
Carter, Huntly, The New Spirit in the Cinema, London, 1980.
Chavance, Louis, "Trois Pages ďun Journal," La Revue du Cinema, II
(Paris, l
er
Juin 1930), no. 11: 52-54.
Chevalley, Freddy, "Mickey VirtuoseLa M&odie du Monde," Close
Up, VI (Territet, Switzerland, Jan. 1930), no. 1 : 70-73.
Chowl, H., "The French Revolution," Close Up, IV (Territet, Switzerland,
May 1929), no. 5:46-51.
Coboken, Jos., "Als ich noch rund um die Friedrichstrasse ging . . ,"
85 Jahre Kmematograph (Berlin, 1931?), pp, 13-14.
"Comment and Review," Close Up, II (Territet, Switzerland, Feb.
1928), no. 2:64-71.
,fttf. (May 1928), no. 5: 80-82.
"Crime and Punishment," National Board of Review Magazine, II
(New York, June 1927), no. 6: 10-11.
Crisler, B. R., "The Friendly Mr. Freund," New York Times, Nov. 21,
1937.
D., H., "Conrad Veidt : The Student of Prague," Close Up, I (Territet,
Switzerland, Sept. 1927), no. 3:34-44.
"Die Dame mit der Maske," Ufa-Leih, Berlin. [An undated bro-
chure.]
Davidson, Paul, "Wie das deutsche Lichtspieltheater entstand," Licht
Bild Buhne. SO Jahre Film (Berlin, 1924), pp. 7-10.
"Deception," Exceptional Photoplays, I (New York, April 1921),
bulletin no. 5 :
3-4, 7.
Decla-Bioscop Verleih-Programme, Berlin, 1923. [These illustrated
programs include short synopses of various films.]
Deming, Barbara, "The Library of Congress Project: Exposition of a
Method," The Library of Congress Quarterly Journal, II (Washington,
Nov. 1944), no. 1 : 3-36.
Diaz, P., Asia Nielsen. Eine Biographie unserer populdren Kunstlerin,
Berlin, 1920?.
"30 Kulturfilme," Ufa-Leih, Berlin. [An undated brochure.]
Dreyfus, Jean-Paul, "Films ďSpouvante," La Revue du Cmema, II
(Paris, l
er
Mai 1930), no. 10: 23-33.
, "La Femme sur la Lune," ibid., pp. 62-63.
Eger, Lydia, Kinoreform und Gememden, Veroffentlichungen der sachs,
Landesstelle fur Gemeinwirtschaft, Heft IV, Dresden, 1921.
SS6 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ehrenburg, Hya, "Protest gegen die Ufa," Frankfurter Zeitung, 29.
Feb. 1928. [Reprint in Museum of Modern Art Library, clipping
files.]
"Emelka-Konzern," Das grosse Bilderbuch des Films (Filmkurier, Berlin,
1926), pp. 49-64.
"Die entfesselte Kamera," Ufa-Magaxin, IV (Berlin, 25.-31. Mar2
1927), Heft 13.
Epardaud, Edmond, "Faust," Cin6a-Cine (Paris, 15 Mars 1927),
pp. 19-20.
Erikson, Erik Homburger, "Hitler's Imagery and German Youth,"
Psychiatry: Journal of the Biology and Pathology of Interpersonal
Relations, V (Baltimore, Nov. 1942), no. 4:475-93.
"Erlauterungen," [Szenen aus dem Tausť-Film], Film-Photos wit
nock nie (Frankfurt a.M., 1929), pp. 51-62.
Evans, Wick, "Karl Freund, Candid Cinematographer," Popular Photography,
IV (Chicago, Feb. 1939), no. 2: 51, 88-89.
Ewers, Hanns Heinz, Dr. Langheinrich-Anthos, and Noeren, Heinrich,
Der Student von Prag: Erne Idee von Hanns Heinx Ewers, Berlin,
1930.
Fanck, Arnold, Der Kampf mit dem Berge, Berlin.
^Sturme uber dem Montblanc. Em FilmUldbuch, Basel, 1931.
Farrell, James T., ''Dostoievsky and 'The Brothers Karamazov* Revalued,"
New York Times Boole Review, Jan. 9, 1944.
, "Will the Commercialization of Publishing Destroy Good Writing?"
Ncv Directions (Norfolk, Conn., 1946), no. 9:6-37. [Reprinted
as a pamphlet under the title: "The Fate of Writing in
America.'*]
"Faust," National Board of Review Magazine, I (New York, Nov.
1926), no. 6:9-10.
Fawcett, ĽEstrange, Die Welt des Films, Unter Mitwirkung des Wiener
Fihnbunds fur die deutsche Ausgabe frei bearbeitet und erganzt
von C. Zell und S. Walter Fischer, Zttrich, Leipzig, Wien, 1929?.
Film Forum, New York, March 19, 1933, program 3.
Film Index. A Bibliography/, New York, 1941.
Film Society Programmes, issued by The Film Society, London. [1925-
34].
F0nss, Olaf, Krig, Svlt Og Film, Fihnserindringer Gennem 20 Aar, II,
Copenhagen, 1932
"Frau im Mond," Close Up, V (Territet, Switzerland, Nov. 1929),
no. 5:442-44.
Freedley, George, and Reeves, John A., A History o/ the Theatre, New
York, 1941.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 337
Freeman, Joseph, Never Call Retreat, New York, Toronto, 1948. [A
novel.]
"Freie Fahrt," Close Up, IV (Territet, Switzerland, Feb. 1929), no. 2:
97-99.
"Fritz Lang Puts on Film the Nazi Mind He Fled From," New York
World Telegram, June 11, 1941.
Fromm, Erich, Escape from Freedom, New York and Toronto, 1941.
"25 Jahre Filmatelier," 85 Jahre Kinematograph (Berlin, 1981?),
pp. 65-66.
"Gassenhauer," Filmwelt (Berlin, 5. April 1981), no. 14.
"Geheimdienst," Filmwelt (Berlin, 21. Juni 1981), no. 25.
"The Golem," Exceptional Photoplays, I (New York, June 1921),
bulletin no. 7:8-4.
Gregor, Joseph, Das Zeitalter des Films, Wien, 1982. 8rd ed.
Grune, Karl, "Wie ein Film entsteht: Von der Idee bis zum Drehbuch,"
Ufa-Magazin, II (Berlin, 29. April 5. Mai 1927), Heft 18.
, "Was Karl Grune, der Regisseur, iiber den Russenfilm zu
sagen weiss," Film-Photos we noch nie (Frankfurt a.M., 1929),
p. 15.
H., D. L., "Films in the Provinces," Close Up, IV (Territet, Switzerland,
June 1929), no. 6: 52-57.
Haas, Willy, "Das letzte Filmjahr," Das grosse Bilderbuch des FUms
(Filmkurier: Berlin, 1925?), pp. 6-12.
Hafker, Hermann, Der Kmo mid die Gebildeten. Wege zwr Hebung des
Kmowesens, Gladbach, 1915.
Hain, Mathilde, Studien uber das Wesen des friihescpressionistischen
Dramas, Erhard Lommatzsch, ed., Frankfurter Quellen und Forschungen
zur germanischen und romanischen Philologie, Heft V,
Frankfurt a.M., 1988.
Hamilton, James Shelley, "Das Lied vom Leben," National Board of
Review Magazine, VI (New York, Nov. 1981), no. 9:7-9.
, M," ibid., VTIL (March 1988), no. 8 : 8-11.
,"Hell on Earth," ibid. (April 1988), no. 4 : 8-9.
Hamson, Nina, "Une Nouvelle OEuvre de Ruttmann," La Revue du
CinSma, H (Paris, 1 Juillet 1980), no. 12:70-71.
Harbou, Thea von, "Vom Nibelungen-Film und seinem Entstehen,'* Die
Nibelwngen (Berlin, 1924?), pp. 6-11. [A program brochure to
this film.]
Hartlaub, G. F., "Zur Einfiihrung," Die neue SachlichJceit : Wanderausstelhmg
der Stddtischen KwnstTiaUe zu Mawnheim (Sachsischer
Kunstverein, Dresden, 18. Okt.-22. Nov. 1925), pp. 8-4.
S38 BIBLIOGBAPHY
Hauptmann, Carl, "Film und Theater," Hugo Zehder, ed., Der Film
von Morgen (Berlin-Dresden, 1923), pp. 11-80.
Hegemann, Werner, Frederick the Great, London, 1929.
"Heimweh," Close Up, I (Territet, Switzerland, Dec. 1927), no. 6: 74-
76.
Hellmund-Waldow, Erich, "Alraune and Schinderhannes," Close Up, II
(Territet, Switzerland, March 1928), no. 8:45-51.
,"Combinaison: Le Film et la Scene," ibid. (April 1928),
no. 4:23-30.
Herring, Robert, "La Trage*die de la Rue," Close Up, III (Territet,
Switzerland, July 1928) no. 1 : 31-40.
, "Reasons of Rhyme," ibid., V (Oct. 1929), no. 4: 278-85.
Hildebrandt, Paul, "Literatur und Film," Dr. E. Beyfuss, ed., Das
Kulturflmbuch (Berlin, 1924), pp. 83-86
"Hochverrat," FUm-Magassm (Berlin, 29. Sept. 1929), no. 39; and
(17. Nov. 1929), no. 46.
Hoffman, Carl, "Camera Problems," Close Up, V (Territet, Switzerland,
July 1929), no. 1: 29-31.
Hollander, Felix, "The Road to Beauty and Strength," Wege w Kraft
und Schonheit (Berlin, 1926?), pp. 47-50. [Publicity pamphlet
issued by Kulturabteilung der Ufa,]
"Homecoming," National Board of Review Magazine, III (New York,
Dec. 1928), no. 12:7, 10.
Horkheimer, Max, "Theoretische Entwurfe iiber Autoritat und Familie,"
Horkheimer, ed., Studien iiber Autoritat und Familie, Forschungsberichte
aus dem Institut fur Sozialforschung (Paris,
1936), pp. 3-76.
JUustnerter Fttm-Kurier, Berlin. [Issues devoted to synopses and stills
of specific productions. Usually undated.]
"Inhaltsangabe fur die Nibelungen . .
," Die Nibelungen (Berlin,
1924?), pp. 17-24. [A program brochure to this film.]
Iros, Ernst, Wesen und Dramaturgic des Films, Zurich, 1938.
"Isn't Life Wonderful?" Exceptional Photoplays, V (New York, Dec.Jan.
1925), nos. 3 and 4:5.
Jacobs, Lewis, The Rise of the American Film. A Critical History,
New York, 1939.
Jahier, Valerio, "42 Ans de Cin&na," Le Rdle intellectual du CinSma,
Socie*t des Nations, Cahier 3 (Paris, 1937), pp. 13-151.
Jahrbuch der Filmindustrie (Berlin, 1923), 1. Jahrgang: 1922/8.
, (Berlin, 1926), 2. Jahrgang: 1923/25.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 839
Jannings, Emil, "Mem Werdegang," Ufa-Magasm, I (Berlin, 1.-7.
Okt. 1926), Heft 7.
Jason, Alexander, "Zahlen sehen uns an . .
," $5 Jahre Cinematograph
(Berlin, 1931?), pp. 67-70.
Jeanne, Rene", "Le Cinema Allemand," ĽArt Cinematographique, VJH
(Paris, 1931), 1-48.
Kalbus, Oskar, Vom Werden deutseller Ftlmkunst (Altona-Behrenfeld,
Germany, 1985), I: Der stumme Film; II: Der Tonfilm.
Kallen, Horace M., Art and Freedom, New York, 1942. % vols.
Kaufmann, Nicholas, Fttmtechnik und Kultur, Stuttgart, 1931.
Kracauer, Siegfried, Die Angestettten. Aus dem neuesten Deutschland,
Frankfurt a.M., 1930.
, "Der heutige Film und sein Publikum," Frankfurter Zeitung,
30. Nov. and 1. Dsz. 1928.
,
" <Kuhle Wampe' verboten!" ibid., 5. April 1932.
, "Courrier de Berlin," La Revue du Cintma, HI (Paris, lw Aout
1931), no. 25:6&-66.
, "Trop luxueux Passe-Temps," ibid. (I
61
"
Octobre 1931), no. 27 :
54-55.
Kraszna-Krausz, A., "The Querschnittfilm," Close Up, HI (Territet,
Switzerland, Nov. 1928), no. 5:25-34.
, "A Letter on Censorship," ibid., IV (Feb. 1929), no. 2 : 56-62.
, "G. W. Pabsťs 'Lulu,'
"
ibid. (April 1929), no. 4 : 24-30.
, "Exhibition in Stuttgart, June, 1929, and Its Effects," ibid.,
V (Dec. 1929), no. 6: 455-64.
, "Production, Construction, Hobby," ibid., VI (April 1930),
no. 4:311-18.
,"A Season's Retrospect," Close Up, VIII (London, Sept.
1931, no. 3:225-31.
^"Four Films from Germany," ibid., IX (March 1932), no. 1:
39-45.
Krieger, Ernst, "Wozu ein Weltkriegsfilm?" Ufa-Magazvn, Sondernummer:
Der Weltkrieg, ein historischer Film (Berlin).
Kurtz, Rudolf, Expressionismu* wid Film, Berlin, 1926.
Lang, Fritz, "Kitsch Sensation Kultur und Film," Dr. E. Beyfuss,
ed., Das KulturfLmbuch (Berlin, 1924), pp. 28-31.
,
"Worauf es beim Nibelungen-Film ankam," Die Nibelwngen
(Berlin, 1924?), pp. 12-16. [A program brochure to this film.]
, "Screen Foreword to 'The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse,'
"
Program
to THE LAST WILL OF Da. MABUSB, issued by World Theatre, New
York, March 19, 1943.
840 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lejeune, C. A., Cinema, London, 1931*
Leprohon, Pierre, "Le Cinema Allemand," Le Rouge et le Noir, cahier
special (Paris, Juillet 1938), pp. 184-43.
Lewis, Lloyd, "Erich von Stroheim of the Movies . . ," New York
Tvm.es, June 22, 1941.
Leyda, Jay, Program Notes, Museum of Modern Art Film Library.
[Reviews of and commentary on Russian films.]
"The Loves of Pharaoh," Exceptional Photoplays, II (New York,
Jan.-Feb. 1922), bulletin no. 1:2-3.
Lubitsch, Ernst, "Wie mein erster Grossfilm entstand," Licht BUd
Buhne. SO Jdhre Film (Berlin, 1924), pp. 13-14.
Mack, Max, Wie Jcomme ich sum Film?, Berlin, 1919.
McKechnie, Samuel, Popular Entertainments Through the Ages, London,
1931.
MacPherson, Kenneth, "Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney," dose Up, I (Territet,
Switzerland, Dec. 1927), no. 6:17-26.
, "As Is," ibid., Ill (Aug. 1928), no. 2: 5-11.
,"A Document of Shanghai," ibid. (Dec. 1928), no. 6:
66-69.
, "Time* Is Not What They Was !" ibid., IV (Feb. 1929), no. 2 :
33-36.
, "Uberfall (Accident)," ibid. (April 1929), no. 4: 70-72.
"Madchen in Uniform," National Board of Review Magazine, VII
(New York, Sept.-Oct. 1932), no. 7 : 9-10.
Magnus, Max, "Danton," Variety, New York, [Clipping in Museum of
Modern Art Library files, dated Feb. 1931?.]
"The Man Who Cheated Life," National Board of Review Magazine,
IV (New York, Feb. 1929), no. 2: 10-11, 23.
"Martin Luther," National Board of Review Magasme, HI (New York,
Oct. 1928), no. 10:4.
Martini, Wolfgang, "Nature and Human Fate," Close Up, I (Territet,
Switzerland, Nov. 1927), no. 5: 10-14.
Mayer, Carl, "Technische Vorbemerkungen des Autors," Ernst Angel,
ed., Sylvester: Em Lichtspiel von Carl Mayer, Das Drehbuch,
Band I (Potsdam, 1924), pp. 15-16.
, "Sylvester," ibid., pp. 17-96. [Scenario of this film.]
Meisel, Edmund, "Wie schreibt man Filmmusik?" Ufa-Magazin, II
(Berlin, 1.-7. April 1927), Heft 14.
Messter, Oskar, Mem Weg mit dem Film, Berlin, 1936.
Metzner, Erno, "German Censor's Incomprehensible Ban," Close Up,
IV (Territet, Switzerland, May 1929), no. 5: 14-16.
BIBLIOGRAPHY S41
, "A Mining Film," Close Up, IX (London, March 1932), no. 1 :
8-9.
"Middle Class Is Dead, Says Official Nazi Paper," New York Times,
April 12, 19^3.
"Das Modell von Montparnasse," Film-Magazin (Berlin, 21. April
1929), no. 16.
Mdllhausen, Balduin, "Der Aufstieg des Films," Ufa-Blatter, ProgrammZeitschrift
der Theater des Ufa-Konzerns, Berlin, 1921 F.
Molo, Walter von, Das Fridericus Rex-Buck, Berlin, 1922.
"Montmartre," Exceptional Photoplays, IV (New York, Feb.-March
1924), nos. 5 and 6: 5.
Moore, John C., "Pabst Dovjenko A Comparison," Close Up, IX
(London, Sept. 1932), no. 3: 176-82.
Moreck, Curt, Sittengeschichte des Kinos, Dresden, 1926.
"Morgenrot," Variety, New York, Feb. 28, 1933.
Moussinac, Le*on, Panoramique du Cinema, Paris, 1929.
,
"Introduction" [to "Dziga Vertov on Film Technique"], Filmfront,
I (New York, Jan, 28, 1935), no. 3:7.
Miihsam, Kurt, "Tiere im Film," Ufa-Blatter, Programm-Zeitschrift
der Theater des Ufa-Konzerns, Berlin, 1921?.
Mungenast, Ernst Moritz, Asta Nielsen, Stuttgart, 1928.
Museum of Modern Art Library, New York, clipping files. [These include
film reviews, programs, program brochures, prospectuses,
publicity booklets or sheets, etc., relating to a multitude of films,
and many pertinent notes.]
"
'Miitterchen' Russland," Ufa-Magazin, 1 (Berlin, 27. August-2 Sept.
1926), Heft 2.
Neumann, Carl, Belling, Kurt, and Betz, Hans-Walther, FUm- 'Kiwst,'
Film-Kohn, Film-Korruption, Berlin, 1937.
Neumann, Franz, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National
Socialism, Toronto, New York, London, 1942.
"Das Netz der Indizien," Filmwelt (Berlin, 22. Marz 1931), no. 12,
"New Educational Films from UFA," Close Up, V (Territet, Switzerland,
Sept. 1929), no. 3: 252-54.
Noldan, Svend, "Die Darstellung der Schlachten," Ufa-Magazin,
Sondemummer: Der Weltkrieg, ein historischer Film (Berlin). ,
Olimsky, Fritz, Tendenzen der FUmwirtschaft und deren AuswirJcung
auf die Filmpresse, Inaugural Dissertation, Berlin, 1931.
"Out of the Mist," Close Up, I (Territet, Switzerland, Oct. 1927), no.
4:84-86.
842 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pabst, G. W., "Servitude et Grandeur ďHollywood," Le Role intellectual
du Cmema, Socit4 des Nations, Cahier 3 (Paris, 1967),
pp. 251-65.
Pabst, Rudolf, "Die Bedeutung des Films als Wirtschafts-PropagandaMittel,"
Dr. Friedrich Rudolf Pabst, ed., Moderne Kinematographie,
Amtliches Organ der Internationalen Kinematographischen
Gesellschaft (Munchen, 1920), 1. Januarheft : 25-32.
Panofsky, Erwin, "Style and Medium in the Moving Pictures," transition
(Paris, 1937), no. 26: 121-33.
"Passion," Exceptional Photoplays, I (New York, Nov. 1920), bulletin
no. 1 : 3.
"Peter the Great," Exceptional Photoplays, IV (New York, Feb.-March
1924), nos. 5 and 6: 1-2.
Petzet, Wolfgang, Verbotene Filme. Eine Streitschrift, Frankfurt a.M.,
1931.
Pick, Lupu, "Vorwort des Regisseurs," Ernst Angel, ed., Sylvester:
Ein Lichtspiel von Carl Mayer, Das Drehbuch, Band I (Potsdam,
1924), pp. 9-11.
Pordes, Victor E., Das Lichtspiel: Wesen Dramaturge Regie, Wien,
1919.
Porten, Henny, "Mein Leben," Ufa-Magazm, H (Berlin, 22-28. April
1927), Heft 17.
Potamkin, Harry Alan, "Kino and Lichtspiel," Close Up, V (Territet,
Switzerland, Nov. 1929), no. 5: 387-98.
,"The Rise and Fall of the German Film," Cmema, I (New
York, April 1930), no. 3: 24-25, 57, 59.
, "Pabst and the Social Film," Hound $ Horn, VI (New York,
Jan.-March 1933), no. 2: 293-305.
"Les Presentations de PAHiance Cin&natographique Europenne,"
Cinea-CinS (Paris, 1** Avril 1927), pp. 14-16.
"Die Produktion des Jahres, Emelka-Konzern," Das grosse Bllderbuch
des Films (Filmkurier: Berlin, 1925?) , pp. 161-78.
Programs, program brochures, prospectuses, publicity booklets or
sheets, etc., relating to various films: see Museum of Modern Art
Library, New York, clipping files. In addition, I have used similar
material in the possession of Dr. Kurt Pinthus, Washington, D. C.
Pudovkin, V. I., Film Technique, London, 1933.
Ray, Man, "Answer to a Questionnaire," Film Art, III (London, 1936),
no. 7:9-10.
"Der Regisseur F. W. Murnau," Ufa-Magazm, I (Berlin, 15.-21. Okt.
1926), Heft 9.
Reiniger, Lotte, "Lebende Schatten : Kunst u. Technik des Silhouetten-
BIBLIOGRAPHY 343
films," Film-Photos me noch nie (Frankfurt a.M., 1929), pp.
45-46.
Reviews of films : see Museum of Modern Art Library, clipping files.
Richter, Hans, "Ur-Kino," Neue Zilrcher Zeitung (25. Feb. and 2. April
1940).
Riefenstahl, Leni, Hinter den Kulissen des Reichsparteitag Films,
Miinchen, 1935.
Robson, E. W. and M. M., The FUm Answers Back, London, 19B9.
Rohde, Alfred W., "German Propaganda Movies in Two Wars," American
Cinematographer, XXIV (Hollywood, Jan. 1943), no. 1: 1011,
28.
"Rose Bernd," National Board of Review Magazme, II (New York,
Feb. 1927), no. 2:16.
Rosenberg, Arthur, Geschichte der Deutschen Republik, Karlsbad,
1985.
Rotha, Paul, The Fttm Till Now, London, 1980.
, Celluloid: The Film To-day, London, New York, Toronto,
1988.
, Documentary Film, London, 1986.
, "Plastic Design," Close Up, V (Territet, Switzerland, Sept.
1929), no. 8:228-81.
, "Iťs in the Script," World Film News, IH (London, Sept.
1988), no. 5:204-5.
, "Carl Mayer, 1894-1944," Documentary News Letter, V (London,
1944), no. 8:39.
"Rund urn die Liebe," Film-Magazm (Berlin, 27. Jan. 1929), no. 4.
Ruttmann, Walter, "La Symphonic du Monde," La Revue du CmSma,
H (Paris, ler
Mars 1980), no. 8 : 48-45.
Samuel, Richard, and Thomas, R. Hinton, Expressionism m German
Life, Literature and the Theatre (1910-19&4), Cambridge, Eng.,
1939.
"Saucy Suzanne," Close Up, I (Territet, Switzerland, Nov. 1927),
no. 5:65-66.
Schapiro, Meyer, "Nature of Abstract Art," Marxist Quarterly, I
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, "A Note on Max Weber's Politics," Politics (New York, Feb.
1945), pp. 44-48.
Schlesinger, E. R., "Das moderne deutsche Lichtspieltheater," Das
grosse Bilderbuch des Films (Filmkurier: Berlin, 1925?),
p. 28.
Schmalenbach, Fritz, "The Term Neue SaMichJceit" The Art BuUetm,
XXH (New York, Sept. 1940), no. 3:161-65.
844 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Schwartzkopf, Rudolf, "Volksverband fur Filmkunst," Close Up, II
(Territet, Switzerland, May 1928), no. 5:71-75.
Schwarzschild, Leopold, World in Trance, New York, 1942.
Seeber, Guido, "Szenen aus dem Film meines Lebens," Licht BUd Bilhne.
80 Jahre Film (Berlin, 1924), pp. 15-19.
"Shattered," Exceptional Photoplays, U (New York, Jan.-Feb. 1922),
bulletin no. 1 : 4-5.
"Silberkondor uber Feuerland," Close Up, V (Territet, Switzerland,
Dec. 1929), no. 6:542-48.
"Skandal urn Eva," Close Up, VII (Territet, Switzerland, Sept. 1930),
no. 3:221-22.
Spottiswoode, Raymond, A Grammar of the Film: An Analysis of Film
Technique, London, 1965.
Stenhouse, Charles E., "Die Wunder des Films," Close Up, IV (Territet,
Switzerland, May 1929), no. 5 : 89-91.
,The World on Film," ibti., VI (May 1930), no. 5:
417-18.
, "A Contemporary," ibid., pp. 418-20.
"The Street," 'National Board of Review Magazine, II (New York,
June 1927), no. 6:9-10.
"Stiirme der Leidenschaft," Filmwelt (Berlin, 27. Dez. 1931), no. 52.
Tannenbaum, Eugen, "Der Grossfilm," Hugo Zehder, ed., Der Film von
Morgen, Berlin-Dresden, 1923), pp. 61-72.
"Tartuffe, the Hypocrite," National Board of 'Review Magazine, III
(New York, May 1928), no. 5 : 5-6.
Tazelaar, Marguerite, "Morgenrot," New York Herald Tribune, May
16, 1933.
Thomalla, Curt, "Der Kulturfilm," Das grosse BUderbuch des Films
(Filmkurier: Berlin, 1925?), pp. 23-27.
Bttderbuch'ltfsi," Das grosse des Films (Filmkurier: Berlin, 1925?),
pp. 323-80.
"Ufa, Das grosse BUderbuch des Films (Filmkurier: Berlin, 1926),
pp. 157-206.
Ufa, Kultur-Fttme, Berlin. [Catalogs, issued Jan. 1929, June 1929, Jan.
1930, March 1930, Oct. 1930, March 1931, Feb. 1932, July 1932,
Jan. 1933.]
Ufa Verier-Programme, Berlin, 1923 ;
1923/24 ; 1924/25. [These illustrated
volumes include short synopses of various films.]
Ullman, James Ramsay, The White Tower, Philadelphia and New York,
1945. [A novel.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY 345
Veidt, Conrad, "Mein Leben," Ufa-Magazin, II (Berlin, 14-20. Jan.
1927), Heft 8.
Vertov, Dziga, "Dziga Vertov on Film Technique," Filmfront, I (New
York, Jan. 28, 1985), no. 8:7-9.
Vincent, Carl, Histoire de I'Art Cinematographique, Bruxelles, 1989.
Wagner, Fritz Arno, "I Believe in the Sound Film," Film Art, III
(London, 2nd quarter, 1986), no. 8: 8-12.
"Was ist los?" Ufa-Magazin, II (Berlin, 4.-10. Feb. 1927), Heft 6.
, ibid. (8.-14. April 1927), Heft 15.
,ibid. (15.-21. April 1927), Heft 16.
Watts, Richard, Jr., "Madchen in Uniform," New York Herald Tribune,
Sept. 21, 1982.
, "Luise, Queen of Prussia," ibid., Oct. 5, 1982.
, "The King's Dancer," ibid., Oct. 27, 1982.
, "York," ibid., Nov. 24,
, "Kuhle Wampe," ibid., April 25, 1988.
Weinberg, Herman G., Scrapbooks of film reviews and illustrations.
8 vols. [I: 1925-27; II: 1927; III: 1928.] [In the Museum of
Modern Art Library, New York. Clippings are mostly undated.]
9 "Fritz Lang," Program to THE LAST WILL OF DR. MABUSE,
issued by World Theatre, New York, March 19, 1948.
, An Index to the Creative Work of Fritz Lang, Special Supplement
to "Sight and Sound," Index Series No. 5, London, Feb. 1946.
, An Index to the Creative Work of Two Pioneers: I. Robert J.
Flaherty; II. Hans Richter, Special Supplement to "Sight and
Sound," Index Series No. 6, London, May 1946.
Weiss, Trude, "Mutter Krausen's Fahrt ins Gliick," Close Up, VI
(Territet, Switzerland, April 1980), no. 4:818-21.
, "The Secret of the Egg-Shell," ibid. (May 1980), no. 5:
421-22.
,"A Starring Vehicle," ibid., VII (Nov. 1980), no. 5:838-85.
, "Achtung Australien! Achtung Asien!" ibid., VIII (London,
June 1981), no. 2: 14&-50.
,"Sonne iiber dem Arlberg," ibid., IX (March 1982), no. 1:
59-60.
, "The Blue Light," ibid. (June 1982), no. 2: 119-22.
, "Das keimende Leben," ibid. (Sept. 1982), no. 8: 207-8.
,"The First Opera-Film," ibid. (Dec. 1982), no. 4:242-45.
, "Elizabeth Bergner Again," ibid., pp. 254-56.
"Der weisse Rausch," Filmwelt (Berlin, 20. Dez. 1981), no. 51.
Weniger, Erich, "Die Jugendbewegung und ihre kulturelle Auswirkung,"
346 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dr. Erasmus, ed., Geist der Gegenwart (Stuttgart, 1928), pp.
1-54.
Wesse, Curt, Grossmacht FUm. Das Geschopf von Kunst und Technik,
Berlin, 1928.
Weyher, -Ruth, "Wir drehen in Paris," Ufa-Magazin, II (Berlin, 25.-31.
Marz 1927), Heft 13.
White, Kenneth, "Film Chronicle: F. W. Murnau," Hound $ Horn, IV
(New York, July-Sept. 1931), no. 4: 581-84.
"The White Hell of Piz Palu," Close Up, V (Territet, Switzerland,
Dec. 1929), no. 6:543-45.
"Wissen Sie schon?" Das grosse Bilderbuck des Films (Filmkurier:
Berlin, 1926), p. 145.
Zaddach, Gerhard, Der literarische Film. Em Beitrag zur Geschichte
der Lichtspielkunst, Inaugural Dissertation, Breslau, Berlin, 1929.
Zimmereimer, Kurt, Die Filmzenswr, Abhandlungen der Rechts- und
Staatswissenschaftlichen Fakultat der Universtat Konigsberg
(Breslau-Neukirch, 1934), Heft 5.
"Zuflucht," tffa-Leih, Berlin. [An undated brochure.]
INDEX
ABENTEUER EINES ZEHNMARKSCHEINS, DIE,
181-82, 211
Abraham, Karl, 170
abstract art, 68, 68 n., 194, 210 n., 802-8.
See also abstract films
abstract films, 68 n., 188, 210 n., 211 n.
See also abstract art
ABSTURZ, 128
ABWEGE, 178
ABYSS, see AFGRUNDEN
ACCIDENT, see OBERFALL
ACHT MADELS IM Boor, 256-57; Illus. 58
ACHTUNG, LlEBE LEBENSGEFAHR, 195 n.
Adalbert, Max, 206 n., 229
adolescence, 160-61, 162, 258, 272
adventure films, 56-57, 188-89
ADVENTURES OP A TEN-MARK NOTE, 860
ABENTEUER EINES ZEHNMARXSCHEINS,
DIE
AFGRUNDEN, 26
Albers, Hans, 8-9, 214; Illus. 44
ALLES DRJEHT SIGH, ALLJES BEWEGT sicn,
211 n.
ALLES FUR GELD, 128 n.
ALL FOE A WOMAN, see DANTON (1921)
ALL FOR MONEY, see ALLES FUR GELD
Allgeier, Sepp, 110, 260, 262, 262 n.
ALL QUIET oar THE WESTERN FRONT, 58,
ALRAUNE, 158-54
ALTE GESETZ, DAS, 127 n.
ALT HEIDELBERG, 58
America, 18, 57, 158, 169, 170, 190, 198,
248; A. film industry, 4, 5-6, 25, 101,
104, 126, 188-84, 185, 144, 148, 174, 190,
204, 216, 242, 255; A. films and film
trends, 4, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20-21, 28, 26,
82, 85, 87, 52, 58 59, 78, 92, 101, 102,
126, 135, 188, 144, 169, 170, 181, 184,
190, 205-6, 216, 282, 242, 255, 289; reception
of German films in A., 8, 4, 51-52,
58, 72, 80, 102, 104, 106, 122, 126, 126 n.,
141, 148, 150, 207, 227-28, 246, 258,
264, 267, 270, 288; reception of A.
films in Germany, 4-5, 15, 20-21, 58, 80,
92, 101, 185, 174, 206. See also New
York
Amiguet, Fred.-Ph., 51
ANCIENT LAW, THE, see ALTE GESETSS,
DAS
ANDEIUS, DER, 83-84, 122
ANDERS ALS DIE ANDERN, 45
Andra, Fern, 24
Andrejew, Andrej, 287
ANNA BOLEYN, 49-50, 51, 54, 57
ANNA KARENINA, 190
ANNA UND ELISABETH, 229 n.
ANTHEM OF LEUTHEN, THE, see CHORAL
VON LEUTHEN, DER
anti-Semitism, 46, 58, 804-5. See also Jews
Apollinaire, Guillaume, 26
ARABELLA, 156
ARIANE, 161, 255-56
aristocracy, 9, 38, 226, 228, 258
ARMORED VAULT, THE, see PANZERGEWOLBE,
DAS
Arnheim, Rudolf, 88, 220 n.
ARSENAL, 284
ASPHALT, 158-59, 187, 190, 195, 252
ASSASSINATION OF THE Due DE GUISE, THE
(original title: ASSASSINAT DU DUC DE
GUISE), 17
ATLANTIC, 204-5
ATLANTIDE, 242
ATLANTIS, see ATLANTIDE
AT THE EDGE OF THE WOULD, see RANDE
DER WELT, AM
Aufbruch, 38-39
Aus EINES MANNES MADCHENJAHREN, 45
AUSTBRNPRINZESSIN, DlE, 57
AUSTREIBUNG, 106, 106n.
Austria, 61-62, 141, 216, 260-61, 265, 26768,
269; A. films, 281; reception of
German films in A., 167
authoritarianism, 18-19, 87, 60, 62, 64-65,
67, 71, 72, 86, 94-95, 100, 112, 117-19,
121-22, 124, 124 n., 187, 158, 154-55, 160,
162, 164, 166-67, 186, 187, 191, 192, 195,
215, 222, 226, 227, 228-29, 280-31, 241,
251, 252, 266, 271
AVALANCHE, see STURME UBER DEM MONT-
347
348 INDEX
AWAKENING OP SPRING, THE, see FRUHLINGS
ERWACHEN
Axelson, George, 305
BACKSTAIRS, see HINTERTREPPE
Balazs, Bela, 78, 80, 109 n., 181, 189, 191 n.,
211, 258
Balkans, the, 87, 58, 805
Balzac, Honor de, 33
Bamberger, Rudolf, 108
Bang, Hermann, Michael, 128
Banky, Vilma, 261
BAPTISM OP Fins, see FEUEKTAUFE
Baranovskaia, Vera, 196
BARBERINA, DIE TANZEHIN vox SANSSOUCI,
267, 268, 269
Barr, Alfred H., Jr., 165, 165 n.
Barry, Iris, 94 n., 168-69, 176
Basse, Wilfried, 188
Bassermann, Albert, 25, 34 n.
Bateson, Gregory, 262, 262 n.
Bavaria, 111, 261. See also Munich
Beaumont, Count Etienne de, 76
BEAVER COAT, THE, see BIBERPELZ, DEB
Beer-Hofmann, Richard, 110
BEGGAR'S OPERA, THE, see DREIGROSCHENOPERj
DlE
BEGGAR'S PRIDE, THE, 15
Behrendt, Hans, 145, 253
Belgium, 284, 288, 297, 805, 815, 817,
819-21
Benott, Pierre, 24S
BERG DBS SCHICKSALS, 111-12; Illus. 17
BERGZ nsr FLAMMEN, 260-61, 268, 270, 271
Berger, Ludwig, 107, 185, 141, 141 n., 207
BERGKATZE, DIE, 58
Bergner, Elisabeth, 125, 151, 161, 255
Berlin, 15, 16, 24, 26, 82, 48, 58, 62, 68, 73,
88, 116, 126, 127 n., 148, 156, 173 n.,
188-84, 185, 187, 188, 189, 196, 196 n.,
197, 208, 206 n., 209, 212, 213, 223-24,
225, 281, 242, 248, 244, 254, 255, 258,
262, 268, 269, 275 n., 276, 297, 804; B.
stage, 17, 23, 68 n., 192, 238 ; B. movie
theaters, 45, 48, 71, 182, 214; B, local
films, 189, 206, 206 n.
BERLIN-ALEXANDERPLATZ, 223-24
BERLIN, DIE SYMPHONIE EINER GROSSSTADT,
186, 182-88, 194, 195, 209, 223; Illus.
87, 88, 89
Berliner Tageblatt, 116
BERLIN, THE SYMPHONY OF A GREAT Cmr,
see BERLIN, DIE SJTMPHONIE EINER
GROSSSTADT
Bernhardt, Kurt, 254, 268
Bettauer, Hugo, 167
BIBERPELZ, DEE, 145
BIG JUMP, THE, see GROSSE SPRUNG, DEB
Bild- und Filmamt, see Bufa
bioscop, 15, 70
Bismarck, 61, 155, 206-7, 299
BISMARCK, 155 n., 206-7
BLACK HUSSAR, see SCTIWARZE HUSAH.
DER
Blakeston, Oswell, 182, 182 n.
BIAUB ENGEL, DER, 215-18, 220, 222, 223,
225; Illus. 45, 46
BLAUE LICHT, DAS, 258-59, 260; Illus. 62
BLITZKRIEG IM WESTEN, 275, 275 n., 281,
281 n.
BLITZKRIEG IN THE WEST, see BLITZKRIEG
IM WESTEN
BlITZZUG DER LlEBE, 189
BLOND DREAM, see BLONDER TRAUM, EIN
BLONDER TRAUM, BIN, 212
BLUE ANGEL, THE, see BLAUE EXCEL, DER
BLUE LIGHT, THE, see BLAUE LIGHT, DAS
Bocklin, Arnold, 98
Boehnel, William, 258, 258 n.
Bbhme, Margarete, 179
bolshevism, 77, 178, 175, 176, 177. See also
communism
BOMBEN AUP MONTE CARLO, 214
Brasillach, Robert, 136
Brecht, Bert, 219, 286, 243, 244
BRENNENDER ACKER, 78
Broncho Bill, 20
BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, THE, see BRUDEH
KARAMASOFF, DIE
BRUDER KARAMASOFF, DIE, 109 n., 251
BRUDER SCHELLENBERG, DIE, 123
Bruning, Heinrich, 208, 206
Bryher, 193, 198 n., 242, 243, 243 n.
BUchner, Georg, 96
Buchowetski, Dimitri, 50, 185, 258
BUCHSE DER PANDORA, DIE, 178-79
Bufa, 35, 36
BURNING SOIL, see BRENNENDER ACKER
CABINET DBS DR. CAUGARI, DAS, 8, 3 n.,
61-76, 77, 79, 82, 88, 84, 86, 86 n., 87, 88,
96, 101, 109, 110, 120, 122; main characters:
Caligari, 68-74, 81-82, 88, 85, 87,
110, 221-22, 248, 272; Cesare, 68 ff., 82,
87, 221-22, 272; Illus. 2, 8, 4
CABIRIA, 47
CADETS, see KADETTEN
CALIGARI, see CABINET DBS DR. CAIJGARI,
DAS
Caligarisme, 71 ff.
INDEX 349
camera mobility, 4, 104-6, 127, 146, 148,
175-76, 205, 256, 279, 801, 802
CAMPAIGN IN POLAND, nee FELDZUG IN
POLEN
Canudo, 51
CAPTAIN OF KOPENICK, THE, 000 HAUPTMANN
VON KOPENICK, DER
CARLOS UND BLISABETH, 128 n.
CARMEN, 48
CABMEN VON ST.-PAULI, DIE, 158
Cassou, Jean, 75
Catholicism, 18, 44-45, 107, 108, 272. See
also Christianity
Cavalcanti, Alberto, 182
censorship, 44, 47, 58, 198, 195, 196, 206,
207, 209, 245
Chaplin, Charles, 28
Charrell, Eric, 208
Chevalley, Freddy, 209, 209 n.
CHILDREN OF No IMPORTANCE, see UNEHJBLICHEN,
DIE
Chmara, Gregori, 109, 254
CHORAL VON LEUTHEN, DER, 267, 268, 269 ;
Illus. 63
Christianity, 20, 98, 107, 10&-10, 209, 284.
See also Catholicism
Christians, Mady, 264 n.
CHRONICLES OF THE GRAY HOUSE, see
CHRONIK VON GRIESHUUS
CHRONIK VON GRIESHUUS, 106
CINDERELLA, see VERLORENE SCHUH, DER
circus films, 140, 140 n.
civilization, 19, 58-59, 78, 101, 119, 178,
198, 268, 807, 825
Clair, Ren6, 68 n., 141, 194, 211
Clote Up, 4, 175
Cohl, fimile, 16
COMEDY OF THE HEART, tee KOMODIE DES
HERZENS
communism, 10, 68, 107, 116, 160, 178-74,
185, 192, 208, 248, 247, 262, SOL See also
bolshevism
COMRADESHIP, see KAMERADSCHAFT
concentration camps, 72, 218, 805
CONGRESS DANCES, 100 KONORESS TANZT,
DER
COUNTESS OF MONTE CRISTO, THE, tee
GRAFIN VON MONTE CHRISTO, DIE
COITNT OF CHAROLAIS, THE, tee GRAF VON
CHAROLAIS, DER
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, tee RASXOL-
NIXOW
CRISIS, *00 ABWEOE
cross-section films, 181-89, 198, 194,
208-11
CRUISER EMDEN, 000 KREUZER
(1982)
Cserepy, Arzen von, 115, 267
Czinner, Paul, 125, 255
Dacho, 289
DAME MIT DER MASKE, DIE, 194 n.
DANTON (1921), 50-51, 58, 55, 258
DANTON (1981), 258-54, 262
Danzig, 264, 266, 281, 288, 806, 808-9,
Davidson, Paul, 17, 22, 26, 86, 44, 48,
57
DAWN, 900 MORGENROT
DECEPTION, tee ANNA BOLEYN
Decla, 00 Decla-Bioscop
Decla-Bioscop, 65, 70, 71, 88, 91 ff.
De MUle, Cecil B., 28
Deming, Barbara, 7
democracy, 10, 11, 19-20, 88, 37, 88, 52,
114, 116, 124 n., 184, 187, 162, 178, 174,
190, 192, 224r~26, 228, 251, 254, 268, 278,
288, 289, 290, 294
Denmark, film industry, 22, 26, 86; D.
films and film trends, 26, 59; reception
of D. films in Germany, 20
DESTINY, see MUDE TOD, DER
detective figure, the, 19-20, 225, 249. 100
also mystery films
detective films, 000 mystery films
Deulig, 85, 87, 47
Deutsche Bank, 86, 188
Deutsche Film Gemeinschaft, 226
Deutsche Lichtspiel-Gesellschaft, tee Deu-
lig
Deutsche Liga fur undbh&ngigen Film,
tee German League for Independent
Film
DEUTSCHLAND VON GESTERN UND HEUTE,
188
DIAGONAL SYMPHONY, 68 n.
DIARY OF A LOST ONE, tee TAGEBUCH
EINER VERLORENEN
Diaz, P., 27
Dickens, Charles, 88, 256
Dieterle, William, 84
Dietrich, Marlene, 216, 217; Illus. 46
DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS, tee ANDERS
ALS DIE ANDERN
Dimov, Ossip, 125
DIRNENTHAGODIE, 157-59, 187, 195, 197
Doblin, Alfred, 228
DR. BESSEĽS VERWANDLUNG, 191 n.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. ffyde, 88, 78
DR. MABUBE, DER SPIELER, 81-84, 86, 87,
88, 150, 248, 250; main character:
Mabuse, 81 ff., 85, 150, 248, 249, 272;
350 INDEX
Illus. 6. See also TESTAMENT DBS Da.
MABUSE, DAS
DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER, see DR.
MABUSE, DEB SPIELER
documentary films, 28, 35, 47, 81, 82, 84,
111, 141-43, 151 ff., 155, 159, 172, 175,
181, 182, 185, 186, 188, 197, 206, 209, 219,
228, 225, 256, 258, 275, 288, 289, 290,
292 n., 805. See also Kulturfilme
DOLL, THE, see PUPPE, DIE
DOLLY MACHT KABRIERE, 218 n.
DOLLY'S CAREER, see DOLLY MACHT
DOMINOSPIELER VON MONTMARTBE, DEE,
141 n.
DONA JUANA, 151, 161 n.
DDK CARLOS, 18
DON QUIXOTE, 248
DON'T PLAY WITH LOVE, tee MAN- SMELT
NIGHT MIT DEB I^TTiBT.
DOOMED BATTALION, THE, gee BEEGE IN
FLAMMEN
Dostoievsky, Feodor Mikhailovich, 38,
109-10, 251, 252
Dovzhenko, Alexander, 177, 189, 284, 802
DOWNFALL, see ABSTTJRZ
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 19, 150 n.
DREAMING MOUTH, THE, see TRAUMBNDB
MUND, DER
DREI CODOMTAS, DlE, 140 n.
Dreigroschenoper, Die, 219
DREIGROSCHENOPER, DIE, 286-89; Illus. 54
DREI TAOE MITTELARREST, 206 n.
DREI VON DER STEMPELSTELLE, DIE, 211-12
DBEI VON DER TANKSTELLE, DIE, 207, 212;
Illus. 41
Dresden, 46, 66
DRIVEN FROM HOME, see AUSTREIBXJNG
Duce, II, see Mussolini
Dudow, S. Th., 245, 246
Dupont, E. A., 127, 127 n., 185, 140, 175,
176, 205
ficlair, 28
Eggeling, Viking, 68 n.
Ehrenburg, Hya, 178, 174, 294
EIFEESXTCHT, 156, 171 n.
EIGHT GIRLS IN A BOAT, tee ACHT MADZLS
IM Boor
Eisenstein, Sergei M., 173, 174, 176, 196,
199, 290, 292
Eisler, Harms, 248
EXEL, DAS, 206 n.
ELF ScHHi'sCHBN OFFIZIEBE, DlE, 268
EMDEN, THE, see KREUZER EMDEN (1926)
Emelka, 270 n.
EMIL UND DIE DETEXTIVE, 224-26, 227;
Illus. 50
employees, 11, 128, 181-82, 144, 149, 189,
218, 271
END OF ST. PETERSBURG, THE, 180, 290
Engel, Erich, 218
England, 19-20, 33, 49, 52, 216, 229 n., 285,
269-70, 276, 280, 283, 284, 287, 288, 291,
293, 293 n., 297, 804, 806, 317, 319-21,
824, 326; E. film industry, 136; E. films
and film trends, 26, 205, 229 n., 277, 288,
286, 287, 289, 298, 828; reception of
German films in E., 150, 150 n., 167. See
also London
ERWACHEN DBS WEIBES, DAS, 144 n.
Es WERDE LIGHT, 44
ES WIRD SCHON WEEDER BESSER, 218
EVA SCANDAL, THE, see SKANDAL TTM EVA
EVERYTHING REVOLVES, see ALLES DREHT
SIGH, ALLES BEWEGT SIGH
Ewers, Hanns Heinz, 28-29, 158
EXPLOSION, 240 n.
expressionism, 88, 58, 65, 68, 68 n., 69-71,
75, 79, 82, 85, 87, 96, 97, 101 ff., 104,
117, 117 n., 120, 124, 127, 160, 162,
165
EXPRESS TRAIN OF LOVE, see BLETZZUG
EYES OF THE MUMMY, THE, see MUMIE
MA, DIE
fair (amusement park), 26, 62, 78-74,
84r-87, 110, 121, 126
Fairbanks, Douglas, 25, 91
Falk, Norbert, 49
Fanck, Arnold, 110, 111, 112, 155, 155 n.,
257, 259
Farrell, James T., 109
Farrere, Claude, 254
fascism, 166, 204
fate, 21, 88, 89-91, 98, 95, 97, 104, 106, 151,
181, 261, 267
Fatty (Roscoe Arbuckle), 20
Faust, 29, 328, 148 ff., 285. See also Goethe
FAUST, 148-49
Feininger, Lyonel, 69, 69 n.
FELDZUG IN POLEN, 275 n.
Feme, 48, 254
FEUER, DAS, 128 n.
FEUERTAUFE, 155, 267, 275, 275 n., 276,
278-97, 808-81
Feyder, Jacques, 136
Film ďArt, 17
film reformers, 18 n., 18-19, 21-22
INDEX 351
Film Society, The, London, Programmes,
79, 192, 192 n., 209 n,, 211 n., 288
FINANZEN DBS GROSSIIERZOGS, DIE, 102 n.
FIBE, THE, see FETTER, DAS
Fischinger, Oskar, 210 n., 211 n.
Flaherty, Robert F., 289
FLAMME, DIE, 125
FLOTENKONZERT VON SANSSOUCI, DAS, 206,
267, 268
FLUTE CONCERT AT SANS Souci, THE, see
FLOTENXONZERT VON SANSSOUCI, DAS
F0nss, Olaf, 82
Forster, Rudolf, 269; Illus. 64
FOR THE SAKE OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN,
see UM DAS MENSCHENRECHT
FOR Us, see FUR UNS
Fox Europe, 186, 181, 182
Fox HUNT IN THE ENGADINE, tee FUCHSJAGD
IM ENGADIN
F. P. 1 ANTWORTET NICHT, 214
F. P. 1 DOES Nor ANSWER, tee F. P. 1
ANTWORTET NICHT
France, 16-17, 88, 51-52, 58, 115, 119, 199,
216, 232-88, 285, 289-41, 248, 248 n., 258,
261-62, 263-64, 268, 284, 286-87, 288,
291, 292, 294, 297, 804, 811-12, 819-20,
822-28, 824, 826, 829-80; F. film industry,
17, 22, 23, 189; F. films and film
trends, 15, 16-17, 19, 21, 28, 28, 59, 68 n.,
186, 138, 155, 182, 184, 211, 248; reception
of German films in F., 8, 4, 26, 51,
71-72, 89, 150, 167, 217; reception of F.
films in Germany, 15, 19, 20; F. Revolution,
88, 48, 49, 50-51, 58, 76, 258;
Negroes in F. army, 279, 284, 297, 81112,
819, 820, 822, 828; Maginot Line,
284, 286-87, 294, 811, 822-28. See alto
Paris
Frank, Bruno, 265
Frank, Lconhard, 191,^285
Frankfurter Zeitunff, 124 n., 187, 247 n.
FRAUEN, DIB DEE ABGRUND VERSCHXINGT,
44
F&AU IM MOKD, DIE, 15 1
FnIuxiiN ELSE, 161
FRAULEIN JULIE, 106, 106 n.
FRAULEIN MUTTER, 46
FRECHDACHS, DEB, 206 n.
Frederick the Great, 115-19, 128, 124, 156,
158, 226, 227, 265-69; Illus. 20, 68. See
also Fridericus films
FREE TRIP, tee FEEIE FAHRT
Freeman, Joseph, Never Call Retreat, 72
FREIE FAHRT, 194
Freiheit, 116
Freikorps, 48,264, 292 n.
FREMDE MADCHZN, DAS, 18
Freud, Sigmund, 170
FREUDLOSE GA8SE, DlE, 157, 167-70, 172-78,
175, 177; Illus. 29, 81, 82
Freund, Karl, 99-100, 127, 127 n., 148, 181,
182-83, 192
Fridericus, see Frederick the Great
FRIDERICUS, 267
Fridericus films, 115-19, 122, 141, 156, 206,
265-69. See also national films and
Frederick the Great
FRIDERICUS REX, 115-19, 267; Illus. 20
Froelich, Carl, 24, 109 n., 226, 263, 267
FROLICHE WEINBERG, DER, 140
FROM THE VERGE OF THE SWAMP, see
RANDE DEB SUMPFES, VOM
Fromm, Erich, 11
FHUHLINGS ERWACHEN, 161, 161 n.
FUCHSJAGD IM ENGADIN, 110
Fuhrer, the, see Hitler, Adolf
FUR UNS, 806
Gad, Urban, 26
Gade, Sven, 94 n.
Galeen, Henrik, 30 n., 81, 77, 78, 78 n., 84,
84 n., 153
Gance, Abel, 156
Garbo, Greta, 167, 168
GASSENHAUEE, 211
Gaumont, 22, 28
Gay, John, The Beggar's Opera, 286
GAY VINEYARD, THE, see FBOHUCHX
WEINBERG, DEE
Gebtihr, Otto, 116-17, 156, 265, 267. See
alto Frederick the Great
GEHEIMNISSE EINEE SEELE, 170-72; Illus.
88
GtaiGER VON FLORENZ, DEE, 161
Geiselgasteig, 189
GELD LIEGT AUF DEE STEASSE, DAS, 218
GELUBDE DEE KEUCHHKT, 44-45, 46
Geneva, 51
GENUINE, 96
George, Heinrich, 223
George VI, 804
Gerlach, Arthur von, 80
German East Africa, 57
German film industry, 4, 6 nu, 15, 16, 17 ff.,
20, 22, 24, 85-87, 89, 45, 65, 182-84,
185-86, 141-42, 194, 204, 248; propaganda
measures in pre-Hitler Germany,
85-87, 47, 51, 68 n., 71, 188;
propaganda measures under Hitler,
275-77
German League for Independent Film,
198, 194
352 INDEX
GERMINATING LIFE, see KEIMENDES LEBEX
GESCHLECRT ix FESSELX, 145
Gessler, Otto, 184
GESUNKENEN, DIE, 144 n.
GHOSTS BEFOEE BREAKFAST, see VOBMIT-
TAGSSPUK
GXFTOAS, 196 n.
GULL AND THE MEN, THE, see MADCHEX
UXD DIE MANNER, DAS
GlBL IK THE MOON, THE, 966 FltATT IK
MOND, DIE
GLASS OF WATEB, A, see GLAS WASSEB,
Bias*
GLAS WASSEB, Era-, 107-8; Illus. 16
Goebbels, Joseph, 92, 164, 248, 249, 277,
289-90, 299-800, 802
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 148, 285
GOLEM, DEB (1915), 81-83
GOLEM, DER (1920), 112-18; Illus. 18
Gounod, Charles Francois, 148
GRAFIN vox MOXTE CHRISTO, DIE, 218-14
GRAF VON CHAROLAIS, DER, 110
GRAND DUKE'S FINANCES, THE, tee
FlXAXJSEX DES GaOSSHERZOGS, DlE
Granovsky, Alexis, 209, 210 n.
Grau, Albin, 118
Graz, 61-62
GREED, 170
Griffith, D. W., 28, 51, 53 n., 169-70, 181
Groener, Wffiielm, 184
6B08SE SPRUNG, DER, 155 n.
Grune, Karl, 119, 128, 156, 157, 158, 159,
171 n., 178 n., 186, 218, 240 n., 264 n.
GYPSY BLOOD, fee CABMEN
H
Hafker, Hermann, 22, 28
Hamburg, 25, 61-62, 197
Hamilton, James Shelley, 210, 210 n., 286
Hamlet, 147
HAMLET, 94 n.
HANDS OF ORLAC, THE, tee ORLAC'S HANDS
HANGMAN OF ST.-MARIEN, THE, tee
HENKER vox ST.-MARIEX, DER
HANS WESTMAR, 292 n.
HARBOR DRIFT, tee JENSEITS DER STBABSE
Harbou, Thea von, 81, 88, 92, 98, 151, 168,
219
Harsch, Joseph C., Pattern of Conquett,
281
Hartlaub, Gustav, 165, 166
Harvey, Lilian, 208
Hasenclever, Walter, 68 n.
Hauptmann, Carl, 70, 71, 97, 106
Hauptmann, Gerhart, 70, 106, 124, 145,
148
HAUPTMANN vox KSPEXICX, DER, 229-80
HEDDA GABLEB, 158 n.
Hegemann, "Werner, Frederick the Great,
117
Heidelberg, 68, 140
HEILIGE BERG, DEB, 112, 155, 259
HEIMKEHR, 191
HEIMWEH, 140
HELENA, 128 n.
HELL ox EARTH, tee NBEMAXDSLAXD
Helm, Brigitte, 158, 178, 191, 218
HEXKER vox ST.-MARIEX, DER, 110
HERBIX DEB WELT, DIE, 56, 57
Hesse, Lieutenant, 288-89
HIGH TREASOX, tee HOCHVEBRAT
Hildebrandt, Paul, 97
HlXTERTREPPE, 97, 101, 102
Hirschfeld, Magnus, 45
historical pageants, 47-^55, 57, 89, 128,
128 n.
Hitchcock, Alfred, 150
Hitler, Adolf, 9, 14, 24, 82, 72-78, 84,
94 ff., 107, 116, 186, 162, 164, 188, 208-4,
229, 281, 285, 248, 249, 257, 258, 262, 264,
265, 265 n., 267, 269-70, 271, 272, 280-82,
285, 287, 289, 290, 292, 298-94, 800, 801,
802, 805, 807
HITLERJTTXGE QUEX, 160, 262-68, 288,
292 n.
Hitler Youth, 160, 218, 262, 288, 292 n.,
802
HOCHVERBAT, 140 n.
Hoffmann, E. T. A., 29, 64, 79, 158
Hoffmann, Karl, 205
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 18
Holland, 87, 295, 805, 819
Hollander, Felix, 125
Hollywood, tee America, A. film industry,
and A. films and film trends
HOLY MOUNTAIN, THE, tee HEILIGE BERG,
DEB
HOMECOMING, tee HEIMKEHR
HOMESICKNESS, tee HEIMWEH
homosexuality, 88, 45, 82, 128
HoMuxcuLtrs, 81-88, 58, 74, 110; main
character: Honnmculus, 82-88, 84, 72,
80, 110, 154, 168, 272
Horkheimer, Max, 10 n.
HOSE, DIE, 145
Hubert, Kurt, 276
Hugenberg, Alfred, 188-84, 208, 264, 265,
269
Hugo, Victor, 178
HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY, tee UNGARISCHE
RHAPSODEE
HUSBAXDS OB LOVEIS?, SOB NjTJ
HY&XEX DEB LUST, 44
INDEX 353
Ibsen, Henrik, 168
immaturity, 83, 99, 112, 114, 118, 162, 171,
218, 222, 267
IN DEB NACHT, 210 n.
INDIAN TOMB, THE, see INDISCHB GRABMAL,
DAS
INDISCHE GRABMAL, DAS, 56
inferiority complex, 32-88. 80, 119, 122,
123, 171, 267
inflation, 10, 57, 59, 108, 181, 132, 136, 167,
169, 170, 181, 194, 194 n., 199, 310
INFLATION, 194, 194 n.
I. N. R. I., 109
IKS DRITTE REICH, 206
instinct films, 96-106, 107, 118, 119, 121,
126, 154, 177, 198, 217
intelligentsia, 16, 20, 88, 67, 96, 107, 117,
119, 160, 170, 192, 246, 271
ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL?, 169, 181
Italy, 64, 166, 204, 258-59, 260-61; I. films
and film trends, 15, 17, 20, 47, 52; reception
of German films in I., 167; reception
of I. films in Germany, 15, 20,
80
Jacobs, Lewis, 58, 53 n.
Jacques, Norbert, 81
Jahier, Valerio, 158 n., 205 n.
Jannings, Emil, 25, 44, 48, 85, 100, 125,
126, 127, 128 n., 135, 148, 216, 217-18,
224 n.; Illus. 14,28,26,45
Janowitz, Hans, 61, 61 n., 62-63, 64r-65,
66, 66 n., 67, 68 n., 70, 72, 78, 74, 76,
76 n.
JANUS-FACED, see JANUSXOPF
JANUBKOPF, 78, 128
Japan, 124
JEALOUSY, see EEFERSUCHT
Jeanne, Rene", 186
JENSEITS DEB STRASSE, 197
Jessner, Leopold, 97
Jews, 24, 31, 46, 112-18, 136, 285, 304-5,
811. See also anti-Semitism
Johannsen, Ernst, Vier von der Infanterie,
282
Joinville, 5
JOYLESS STREET, THE, see FREUDLOSE
GABSE, DIE
Jugendbewegung, see Youth Movement
JUNGES BLUT, 161 n.
Junghans, Carl, 196
Jutzi, Piel, 197, 228, 242
KADETTEN, 280-81
Kaiser, the, 30, 128, 145, 194, 229-80
Kaiser, Georg, 124
Kalbus, Oskar, 24, 52, 172, 172 n.
Kallen, Horace M., 7
KAMEBADSCHAFT, 239-42, 271; Illus. 55, 56
KAMPF DER TERTIA, DEB, 160; Illus. 80
KAMPF DES DONALD WESTHOF, DER, 161
KAMPF MIT DEN BERGEN, IM, 110
KAMPF UMS MATTERHORN, DEB, 155 n.
KAnAMAZOV, see MORDER DIMITBI KAUAMASOFF,
DER
Kastner, Erich, 224
Keaton, Buster, 21
KEXMENDES LEBEN, 44
Kiepura, Jan, 208
KINO'S DANCER, THE, see BARBERINA, DIE
TANZEBIN VON SANSSOUCZ
Klein, GSsare, 96
Kleist, Heinrich von, 117
Klopfer, Eugen, 120
KOFFER. DES HERRN O. F., DlE, 210 n.
KOHLHIESĽS DAUGHTERS, see KOHLHIESĽS
TOCHTEB
KOHLHIESĽS TOCHTER, 128
KOMODIE DES HERZENS, 128
KONGRESS TANJZT, DER, 128, 208
KONIGIN LUISE, 156, 264 n.
KOPFUBER INS GLXTCK, 206 n.
Kortner, Fritz, 251, 253
Kracauer, Siegfried, 11, 187, 199, 245,
247 n.
Kraly, Hans, 49, 185
Kraszna-Krausz, A., 189
Krauss, Werner, 25, 69, 69 n., 85, 98, 109,
145, 168, 170, 212, 264; Illus. 2, 81, 48
KREUZER EMDEN (1926), 155-56, 260,
270 n.
KREUZER EMDEN (1982), 270 n.
KREUZZUO DES WEXBES, 145
KBIEMIIILĎS RACHE (KRIEMHILĎS REVENGE),
see NIBELUNGEN, DIE
Krupp, 150
Kubin, Alfred, 67
KUHLE WAMPE, 248-47; Illus. 57
Kultvrfilme, 141-48, 151-52, 166, 186, 188,
193, 206, 206 n., 208
KURIEB DES ZAREN, DER, 140 n.
Kurtz, Rudolf, 75
Kyser, Hans, 148
LADY HAMILTON, 55, 55 n.
LADY JULIA, see FRAUIEIN JULIE
354 INDEX
LADY WITH THE MASK, THE, see DAME
KIT DEB MASXE, DIE
Lampel, Peter Martin, 196, 196 n.
Lamprecht, Gerhart, 148, 224, 268.
Land, Robert, 161
Lang, Fritz, 66, 56 n., 65, 66, 81, 88, 84,
88, 89 n., 91, 94 n., 185, 186, 149-51, 162,
164, 205, 205 n., 218-19, 220, 221, 223,
248-50
LAST COMMAND, THE, 216
LAST COMPANY, THE, see LETZTE KOMPAG2HE,
DlE
LASTER DER MENSCHHEIT, 158 n.
LAST LAUGH, THE, see LETZTE MANN, DER
LAST WILL OP DR. MABUSE, THE, tee TESTAMENT
DES DR. MABUSE, DAS
League of Nations, 288, 824
Lederer, Francis, 191
Le*ger, Fernand, 68 n., 194
Leipzig, 20, 46
Lejeune, C. A., 25 n., 55, 154
Leni, Paul, 85, 185
Lenin, Vladimir Hyich, 48, 185
Leningrad, 296, 804
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, Nathan the
Wise, 58
LET THERE BE LIGHT, see Es WERDE
LIGHT
LETZTE KOMPAGNIE, DlE, 268, 270
U5T2TE MANN, DER, 4, 96, 99-102, 108
104, 105-6, 127, 147, 218; Illus. 14, 15
liberalism, 19-20, 128, 167
Licht Bild Buhne, 102, 102 n., 276, 298
LIEBE, 161 n.
LIEBE DER JEANNE NET, DIE, 185, 169,
172-78; Illus. 84, 85, 86
LlEBELEI, 281
LIEBE MACHT BLIND, 141 n.
LlEBESBRlEFE DER 0ARONIN S., 128
LlEBESFEUJBR, 171 n.
LIEBESWALZER, 208 n.
Liebknecht, Karl, 48
Liedtke, Harry, 48
LIED VOM LEBEN, DAS, 209-10, 211, 215;
Illus. 42
LHJOM, 248 n.
Lindau, Paul, 88
Linder, Max, 20
Lloyd, Harold, 21
Loew^s Inc. (Metro-Goldwyn), 183
Lohmann, Captain, 184
London, 8, 49, 54, 79, 286, 256
LOOPING THE LOOP, 140 n.
Lorre, Peter, 220; Illus. 48
LOST DAUGHTERS, see VERLORENE TOCHTER
LOVE LETTERS OF BARONESS S., see LXEBESBBIEFE
DER BARONIN S.
LOVE MASSES ONE BLIND, see LIEBE MACHT
BUND
LOVE OF JEANNE NEY, see LIEBE DER
JEANNE NEY, DIE
LOVES OF PHARAOH, THE, see WEIB DES
PHARAO, DAS
LOVE TRAGEDY, see TRAGODIE DER LIEBE,
DIE
lower middle class, see middle class
Lubitscb, Ernst, 8 n., 23-24, 48-55, 56, 5758,
72, 86, 86 n., 89, 123, 125, 135, 141
LUCREZIA BORGIA, 55, 55 n.
Ludendorff, Erich, 86, 324 n., 282
LUGGAGE OF MR. 0. P., THE, see KOFFEH
DES HERRN 0. F., DIE
LUISE, KONIGIN VON PfiEUSSEN, 268-64
LUISE MILLERIN, 81 n.
LUISE, QUEEN OF PRUSSIA, see LUISE,
KONIGIN VON PREUSSEN
Lukacs, Georg, 28
~
Lumiere, Louis, 15
LUSTS OF MANKIND, see LASTER DER
MENSCHHETT
Luxemburg, Rosa, 43
M
M, 215, 218-22, 228, 224, 225, 249; Illus.
47, 48, 49
MABUSE, see DR. MABUSE, DER SPIELER
MACHT DER FINSTERNIS, DIE, 106, 106 n.
MacPherson, Kenneth, 175, 196 n.
MADAME Du BARRY, 3 n., 48-49, 50, 53, 54,
55, 57; Illus. 1
MADCHEN IN UNIFORM, 9, 226-29, 229 n.,
280, 231, 256, 271; Illus. 51, 52
MADCHEN UND DIE MANNER, DAS, 45
MAD LOVE, see SAPPHO
MAIDEN MOTHER, see FRAULEIN MUTTER
Mandel, Georges, 804
MANEGE, 140
Mann, Heinrich, 192, 215-16
MANN DER DEN MORD BEGING, DER, 254-55
MANNERHEIM LINE, 281, 804, 805
Mannheim, 165
MANN OHNE NAMEN, DEH, 56
MANON LESCAUT, 151 n.
MAN'S GIRLHOOD, A, see Aus BINES
MANXES MADCHENJAHREN
MAN SPIELT NIGHT MIT DER LlEBE, 170
MAN WHO MURDERED, THE, see MANN
DER DEN MORD BEGING, DER
MAN WITHOUT A NAME, THE, see MANN
OHNE NAMEN, DER, and MENSCH OHNE
NAMEN
MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA, THE, 185
March of Time, 289
INDEX 355
WlTTENBERGPLATZ, 188
Marlowe, Christopher, 148
Martin, Karl Heinz, 68 n,
MARTIN LUTHER, 161 n.
MARVELS OP SKI, see WUNDER DBS SCHNEE-
SCIIUHS
Marxism, 28, 88, 107, 176, 190, 208, 242,
247, 811
masochism, 88, 122
MASTER OF NUREMBERG, THE, see MEISTER
VON NURNBERG, DER
May, Joe, 48, 56, 109 n., 158, 191
May, Karl, 20
Mayer, Carl, 61-68, 64-65, 66, 70, 72, 78,
74, 79, 96-106, 118, 119, 121, 126, 186,
147, 156 n., 168, 175, 176, 177, 182-83,
184, 187, 198, 217, 255-56
Mehring, Walter, 209
Meinert, Rudolf, 268
Meisel, Edmund, 188
MEISTER VON NURNBERG, DER, 141 n.
M&ies, Georges, 15, 16, 28
MELODIB DER WELT, DIE, 208-9, 210, 210 n.,
211
MELODIE DBS HERZENS, 205
MELODY OF THE HEART, see MELODIE DES
HERZEKS
MEN OF TOMORROW, 229 n.
MENSCHEN AM SONNTAO, 188-89
MENSCH OHNB NAMEN, 212; Illus. 48
Menzel, Gerhard, 269
MERRY FROLICS OF SATAN, THE (original
title: QUATRE CENTS COUPS DU DlABLE,
LES), 28
Messter, Oskar, 15-16, 28, 24, 86
METROPOLIS, 149-50, 150 n., 162-64, 248,
272; Illus. 27, 28
Metzner, Ernd, 194-95, 195 n., 197, 240,
242
MICHAEL, 128
middle class, 8, 10, 11, 18, 22, 80, 88, 84,
47, 59, 71, 84, 99, 108-9, 118, 119, 122-28,
125, 132, 160, 167-68, 169, 170, 178, 179,
189, 212, 218, 242, 244, 252, 271-72,
292 n.; lower m. c., 11, 46, 96-97, 98-99,
100, 102, 107, 159, 187, 189, 194-95, 19798,
218, 217, 220, 222, 242, 246, 255. See
also employees
MlETEB SCHULZE GEGEN ALLE, 211 n.
militarism, 58, 184, 229-81, 286
military films, 189, 206, 206 n.
MIRACLES OF CREATION, see WUNDER DER
SCHOPFUNG
MIRACLES OF THE FILM, see WUNDER DBS
FILMS, DIB
MIRACLES OF THE UNIVERSE, see WUNDER
DBR WELT, DIB
MISTRESS OF THE WORLD, see HEBBJN DER
WELT, DIE
Mittler, Leo, 197
Mix, Tom, 20
MOANA, 289
MODELL VON MONTPARNASSE, DAS, 141 n.
Moeller van den Bruck, Artur, 109
Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo, 211 n.
Moliere, Tartuffe, 147
Molo, Walter von, 267
MONET LIES ON THE STREET, see GELD
LIEGT AUF DER STRASSE, DAS
montage, 121, 176, 185, 187-88, 208, 252,
294, 297
Monte Carlo, 62, 214
MONTE CARLO MADNESS, see BOMBEN AUF
MONTE CARLO
MONTMARTRE, See FLAMME, DlE
MOON OF ISRAEL, see SKLAVENXONIGIN,
DIE
Moore, John C., 284
MORDER DlMITRI KARAMASOFF, DER, 25158,
262
Morena, Erna, 24
MORGEN GEHŤS UNS our, 218
MORGENBOT, 269-70; Illus. 64
MORGENS BIS MlTTERNACHT, VON, 124
MORN TO MIDNIGHT, FROM, see MORGENS
BIS MlTTERNACHT, VON
Moscow, 159, 209, 288, 805, 805 n.
Moscow Art Players, 109
MOTHER, 178, 176, 196
MOTHER KRAUSEN'S JOURNEY TO HAPPINESS,
see MUTTER KRAUSEN'S FAHRT INS
GLUCK
MOULIN ROUGE, 140
MOUNTAIN CAT, THE, see BERGKATZE, DIE
mountain films, 110-12, 119, 155, 155 n.,
257-68, 271
Mrs. Warren's Profession, 179
MUDE TOD, DER, 88-91, 93, 219; Illus. 9
Muller, Renate, 218
MUMIE MA, DIE, 48
Munich, 58, 62, 111, 806
Murnau, F. W., 78, 99, 102 n., 105, 106,
128, 124, 185, 147, 148, 255
music-hall films, 125-27, 140
Mussolini, Benito, 280
MUTTER KRAUSEN'S FAHRT INS GLUCK,
197-99, 242, 244
mystery films, 19-20, 128, 189, 189 n., 206,
206 n.
N
NACHT GEHORT UNS, DIE, 205
NANA, 186
356 INDEX
NANOOK, 289
Napoleon, 151 n.f 156, 261, 268-64
NAPOLEON- ATTF ST. HELENA, 151 n.
NARCOSIS, see NARXOSE
NARXOSE, 191 n.
National Board of Review Magazine, 106,
122, 122 n., 148,228
national films, 155-56, 260, 268-69, 271.
See alto Fridericus films
National Socialism, 6, 10, 11, 24-25, 29,
52, 58, 77, 98, 94-95, 109, 112, 118, 181,
158, 155, 160, 162, 164, 189, 190, 208-4,
205, 206, 218, 224, 285, 242, 243, 247,
248, 249-50, 254, 255, 267-58, 261-63,
264, 267-68, 269-70, 271-72, 275-881;
N. S. Party, 206, 219, 281, 800-3, 306.
See also Hitler Youth, SA and SS
NATURE AND LOVE, tee NATUR UNO LIEBE
NATTJR UND LUBE, 151-52
Negri, Pola, 48, 50, 58, 185
Nero (film company), 145, 219, 282, 289,
248
Neubabelsberg, 17, 186, 151, 190
Neve Freie Presse, 167
New Sachlichkeit, see New Objectivity
Neumann, Franz, 10
"1914," 207
New Objectivity, 165-67, 172, 181, 190,
195, 211, 215, 282, 238-84
newsreels, 22, 185, 198, 205-6, 275-77,
281 n., 288 n., 285, 287, 288, 291 n., 29798,
808-6, 307
NEW YEAR'S EVE, see SYLVESTER
New York, 8, 8n., 72, 102, 106, 149, 208,
207, 248, 275 n., 277; Yorkville district,
New York Herald Tribune, 228, 264
New York Times, 276, 277, 296, 805, 305 n.
NIBELUNGEN, DXE (part 7: SIEGFRIED; part
Hi KRIEMHXLĎS RACHE), 91-95, 97,
149,219,272;IIlus. 10, 11
Nielsen, Asta, 17, 20, 26-27, 80, 94 n., 109,
128, 128 n., 144 n., 158, 158 n., 164, 168,
170; Illus. 29
NIEMANDSLAND, 235-86, 271
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 91, 285
NIK WIEDER LIEBE, 206 n.
nihilism, 52-58, 55, 57, 98, 803
NJU, 125, 255
Noldan, Sven, 155
NORA, 128 n.
Nordisk, 22, 26, 86
NOSFERATU, 77-79, 81, 84, 90, 107, 109,
184; Illus. 5
Noske, Gustav, 82
Nuremberg, 141 n.; Party Convention
of 1934, 95, 164, 258, 272, 290, 800-8
Olimsky, Fritz, 182
ONE ARABIAN NIGHT, see SUMURUN
operetta films, 57, 58, 141, 207-8, 214
Ophufe, Max, 281
OPIUM, 45
OPUS I, 68 n.
ORLAC'S HANDE, 154 n.
Oser, Jean, 242 n.
Oswald, Richard, 44, 46, 161, 207, 229
Oswalda, Ossi, 128
OTHER, THE, see ANDERE, DER
Otten, Karl, 289
Ottwalt, Ernst, 248
Our OF THE MIST, see SOHN DEB. HAOAR,
DER
OTSTER PRINCESS, THE, see AUSTERNPRINZESSIN,
DlE
Ozep, Fedor, 251, 252
Pabst, Georg Wilhelm, 5, 185, 155, 157,
167-80, 181, 192, 195 ff., 205, 205 n., 215,
282-85, 236-48, 260, 271
Pabst, Rudolf, 47
pacifism, 38, 62, 65, 156, 169, 284-86, 24142,
260, 271
PANAME, 141 n.
PANDORA'S Box, see BUCHSE DER PANDORA,
DIE
PANIK IN CHICAGO, 206 n.
Panofsky, Erwin, 6
PANZERGEWOLBE, DAS, 189, 139 n.
Papen, Franz von, 269, 277
Paramount, 188
Paris, 8, 15, 16, 48, 51, 54, 76, 125, 140-41,
141 n., 178, 174r-75, 177, 182, 204, 217,
248, 254, 255, 280, 294, 295, 304, 807
Parufamet agreement, 133, 184
PASSION, see MADAME Dxr BARRY
Path6 Freres, 22, 28
patriarchalism, 108, 115, 225, 228, 268
PEAK or DESTINY, see BERG DEB SCHICK-
SALS
PEOPLE ON SUNDAY, see MENSCHEN AM
SONNTAG
PERBUCXE, DIE, 124 n.
PETER DER GROSSE, 81 n.
Peters, Karl, 57
PETER THE GREAT, see PETER DER GROSSE
petty bourgeoisie, see middle class, lower
PHANTOM, 124
Phoebus (film company), 134, 265
Pick, Lupu, 98, 101 n., lOi, 105, 106 n.,
135, 189, 139 n., 211, 239
INDEX 357
Piel, Harry, 25-26, 128
Piscator, Erwin, 192
Poe, Edgar Allan, 29
Poirier, Leon, 155
Poland, 169, 181, 264, 281, 284, 288, 291,
294, 295, 804, 805, 806, 810, 824-27. See
alto Danzig and Warsaw
Pdlzig, Hans, 112
Pommer, Erich, 65, 127, 135, 158, 190, 191,
191 n., 205, 207, 208, 214, 216
Popular Association for Film Art, 19298,
194, 297
Pordes, Victor E., 58-59
Porten, Henny, 25, 50 n., 109, 128, 128,
151, 188, 268
Potamkin, Harry A., 75, 81 n., 126, 186,
145, 159, 160, 168, 168 n., 172, 179, 199,
215, 228, 282, 284-85, 288, 289
POTEMXIN, 178, 178 n., 176, 188, 289-90
Potsdam, 226-28
POWER OF DARKNESS, THE, see MACHT
DER FlNSTERNIS, DlE
Prague, 28 ff., 81, 88, 58, 55-56, 61, 128,
158, 196, 221
PRIMANERLIEBE, 161, 162
PRIVATE SECRETARY, THE, fee PRTVATSEKRETARIN,
DlE
PBIVATSEKRETARIN, DIE, 218, 215
Projection-A. G. Union, 17, 22, 26, 86, 44
proletariat, 181, 148^44, 151, 159, 176, 197,
199, 214, 241, 242, 262, 811
propaganda films, in pre-Hitler Germany,
28, 58, 194, 206; under Hitler, 275-881
prostitute figure, the, 119-20, 124, 157-60,
164, 168, 177, 179, 195, 197-98, 287, 252
PROSTITUTION, 44, 46
Prussia, 28, 80, 116, 188, 156, 208, 226,
228, 229-80, 268-69, 285
psychoanalysis, 88, 114, 161, 170-72
Pudovkin, V. I., 5, 178, 174, 176, 180,
196 n., 198, 199,241,290,292
PTTPPE, DIE, 57
QUEEN LmsE, see KONIGIN LUISE
QUICK, 214
quota certificate, 188
quota films, 188, 186, 188, 182
Quo VADIS, 20, 47
Rahn, Bruno, 157, 158, 159
RANDE DER WELT, AM, 156
RANDE DES SXTMPFES, VOM, 44
RASKOLNIKOW, 109
Rasp, Fritz, 179, 225, 251; Illus. 50
RAT OF PARIS, THE, see RATXE VON PARIS,
DIE
RATTE VON PARIS, DIE, 141 n.
RATJBERBANDE, DIE, 160
REBEL, THE, see RESELL, DER
rebel figure, the, 115, 117-18, 120, 122,
128, 125, 126, 157, 158, 160, 162, 168,
195, 218, 222, 228, 280, 247, 251, 252,
258-55, 257, 261-62, 264r-66
RESELL, DER, 261-68; Illus. 61
REFUGE, see ZUTTLUCHT
Reicher, Ernst (Stuart Webbs), 19, 128
Reichmann, Max, 140
Reimann, Walter, 68, 69 n.
Reinhardt, Max, 17, 18, 28, 28, 48, 54, 75,
85, 119
Reiniger, Lotte, 128, 210 n., 211 n.
Remarque, Erich Maria, 58, 190, 282
Renoir, Jean, 186
repertory company, 25, 25 n.
retrogression, 88, 59, 118-19, 122, 128,
162, 171-72, 218, 222, 228, 224, 242, 246,
247, 258, 267, 270, 272, 278, 284
Reutter, Otto, 16
REYOLTE IM ERZIEHTTNGSHATTS, 196
REVOLT IN THE REFORMATORY, gee REVOLTE
IM ERZIEHUNGSHATTB
Rhine, the, 140, 819
RHYTHM 21, 68 n.
Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 288
Richter, Hans, 15 n., 68 n., 198-94, 198 n.,
194 n., 210 n., 211 n.
Riefenstahl, Leni, 110, 257, 258, 262 n.,
278,801; Illus. 62
RlEN QUE LES HEURES, 182
ROBBER BAND, THE, fee RAUBERBANDE,
DIE
Robison, Arthur, 118, 171, 172
Robson, E. W. and M. M., 86 n.
Rbhrig, Walter, 68, 69 n.
romanticism, 79, 107-8, 141, 154, 166, 167,
809, 826
ROSE BERND, 106, 106 n.
ROSENKAVALIER, DER, 151 n.
Rotha, Paul, 8, 8n., 4, 4n., 75, 76, 108,
184 ff., 147-48, 148 n., 156, 156 n., 158,
175, 182, 184, 188, 188 n., 287, 256, 256 n.
ROUT OF THE GERMAN ARMIES BEFORE
Moscow, THE, 805
ROYAL SCANDAL, see HOSE, DIE
Ruegg, August, 166
Ruhr District, 819-20
RUKD tTM DIE LlEBE, 188
Russian films, see Soviet Russia
Russian motifs on the German screen.
358 INDEX
109, 109 n., 14.0, 140 n., 174-75, 190-91,
251^52
Ruttmann, Walter, 68 n., 94, 136, 183-87,
192, 194, 195, 208-9, 210 n., 211 n., 215,
Rye, Stellan, 29 n.
S
S. A., 203, 224, 281, 292 n.
Sachs, Harms, 170
Sade, Marquis de, 85
sadism, 88, 74, 80, 179, 196, 217-18, 222,
249, 257, 279, 291
Sagan, Leontine, 226, 229 n.
SA-MAWN BRAXD, 292 n.
SAPPHO, 106 n.
Scandinavia, 87
Schapiro, Meyer, 124 n., 166
SCHATTEN, 118-14, 156, 171-72, 224; Illus.
19
SCHATZ, DER, 167
Scheler, Max, 82
SCHERBEJT, 98, 101, 102, 103, 104-5, 126,
146
Schiller, Friedrich von, 18, 258
Scraan>ERHAsr:srES, 151 n.
SCHLOSS, VOGELOD, 78
Schmalenbach, Fritz, 165
Schneeberger, Hans, 258
Schniteler, Arthur, Liebelei, 18, 281
Schuman, Robert, 210 n.
SCHUSS IM MOBGENGRAUEN, 206 n.
Schwarz, Hanns, 190, 191 n.
SCHWARZE HUSAR, DEE, 268
Schwarze Korps, Das, 271
SCHWABS WEISS GRAU, 211 n.
Scribe, Eugene, 107
SECRETS OF A SOUL, see GEBHEIMNISSE EIKEH
SEELE
Seeber, Guide, 105, 190 n.
Seeler, Moritz, 188
self-pity, 99, 100, 198, 218, 258
sex films, 44-47, 189, 145
SEX nr FETTERS, tee GESCHXECHT IN FES-
SELN
SHANGHAI DOCUMENT, 198
SHATTERED, see SCHERBEX
Shirer, William L., Berlin Diary. 804,
805-6
SHOCK TROOP 1917, see STOSSTRUPP 1917
Shuftan, Eugen, 149, 188
SIEGER, DER, 214; Illus. 44
SIEGFRIED, see NIBBLUM-GEIT, DIE
SIEG IM WESTEW, 155, 267, 275, 275 n., 276,
278-97, 298, SOfr-81
Sight and Bound, 276 n., 277
Siodmak, Robert, 188, 207
SKANDAL UM EVA, 286
Skladanovsky, Max and Bmil, 15
SKLAVENKONIGIN, DlE, 128 n.
SLUMS OP BERLIX, set VERRUFENEN-, DIM
Social Democracy, 10, 48, 59, 67, 71, 189,
190, 194, 203, 242, 247, 271, 272
socialism, 81, 87, 88, 46-47, 59, 71, 118,
159, 163, 166-67, 170, 182, 187, 190, 192,
198, 241-42, 268, 271
SOHN DEE HAOAR, DEB, 154-55
So IST DAS LEBEN, 196
SONG or LIFE, see LIED VOM LEBEX, DAS
Sorge, Reinhard Johannes, Der Settlor,
75
sound films of 1908-1909, 16
SOUS LES TOITS DE PARIS, 211
South Germany, 108, 116
Soviet Russia, 88, 68, 173, 174-75, 185,
186, 234, 252, 277, 281, 296; S. film industry,
5; S. films and film trends, 25,
86, 174-75, 180, 185, 189, 198, 196, 196 n.,
284, 241, 281, 289-90, 292, 292 n., 293,
802, 804, 805; reception of German films
in S.R., 4; reception of S. films in Germany,
173, 178 n., 174-75, 176, 185, 19293,
194, 196, 196 n., 197, 198, 199, 24145,
252, 282, 289-90, 829. 800 also Moscow,
Leningrad, Stalingrad
Spain, 87
Spartacus, 43, 82
Speer, Albert, 807
Speier, Hans, 279, 292 n., 298 n.
Spengler, Oswald, Th Decline of the
West, 88, 101
SPIDERS, THE, see SPINS-BIT, DIB
SPIKNEST, DIE, 56, 56 n^ 65
SPIONE, 160-51
split personality (duality or mental disintegration),
80-81, 84, 123, 153
Spottiswoode, Raymond, 262, 262 n.
SPY, THE, see SPIÔE
S.S., 257, 271, 281
Staaken, 186, 219
Stahlhelm, 156
Stalingrad, 269
STEINER, RUDOIJP, 107
STEIKER2TE RfilTEE, DER, 110
Sten, Anna, 251
Stendhal (Marie Henri Beyle), 68, 79, 90
Sternberg, Joseph von, 216, 217, 218, 223
Sternheim, Carl, 145
Stoker, Bram, Vracula, 77
STOITE RIDER, THE, see STEINERKE REITER,
DER
Storm, Theodor, 106
STORM OVER ASIA, 196 n.
INDEX 359
STOSSTRUPP 1917, 285
STRANGE GIRL, THE, see FEEMDE MADCHEN,
DAS
STRASSE, DIE, 119-28, 124, 125, 182, 156,
15T, 158, 159, 186, 218, 222, 266, 272;
Illus. 21, 22
Strauss, Oscar, 141
STREET, THE, see STRASSE, DIE
street films, 157-60, 162, 164, 179, 187,
190, 191, 195, 197, 215, 252-58
STREET MARKETS IN BERLIN, see MARKT
AM WlTTENBERGPLATZ
Stresemann, Gustav, 131
Strindberg, August, 106
Stroheim, Erich von, 7, 170
STRUGGLE FOE THE MATTERHORN, see
KAMPF UMS MATTERHORN, DER
STRUGGLE WITH THE MOUNTAINS, see
KAMPF MIT DEN BERGEN, IM
STUDENT PRINCE, see ALT HEIDELBERG
STUDENT VON PRAG, DER (1918; main
character: Baldwin), 28-81, 88, 84, 58,
55-06, 128, 221
STUDENT VON PRAG, DER (1926), 158
STUDENT VON PRAG, DER (1986), 158
STURME DER LEIDBNSCHAFT, 224 n.
STURME UBER DEM MONTBLANC, 257-58,
257 n., 259, 260, 262 n.; Illus. 59
Sturm group, 68
SUCH Is LIFE, see So IST DAS LEBEN
Sudermann, Hermann, 24
Swmurun, 18, 19, 50
SUMURUN, 50, 52, 57, 86
SUNKEN, THE, see GESUNKENEN, DIE
SUNRISE, 255
surrealism, 68 n.
Sweden, film industry, 28; S. films, 74;
reception of S. films in Germany, 78,
80, 101, 102 n.
Switzerland, 87, 51, 182
STLVESTER, 98-99, 100, 102, 108, 104, 105,
112, 122, 182, 198, 218; Illus. 18
TAGEBUCH EINER VERLORENEN, 179-80
TARGET FOR TONIGHT, 277, 288, 286, 287,
289, 298, 828
TARTUFFE, 147-48, 182; Illus. 26
TATER GESUCHT, 207 n.
Tauber, Richard, 208
Tempelhof, 17
TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, 290
Terra, 254
TESTAMENT DBS DR. MABUSE, DAS, 84, 24850.
See also DR. MAIJUSE, DER SPIELER
THEODOR KORNER, 265 n.
THE"RESE RAQUIN, 186
THIEF OF BAGDAD, THE, 91
Thiele, Hertha, 227, 229 n., 248; Illus. 52
Thiele, Wilhelm, 207, 212, 218
THINGS WILL BE BETTER AGAIN, see Es
WIRD SCHON WIEDER BESSER
THREE DAYS IN THE GUARDHOUSE, see
DREI TAGE MITTELARREST
THREE OF THE FILLING STATION, THE, see
DREI VON DER TANKSTELLE, DIE
titleless narration, 102, 105, 118, 119
Tobis, 204, 209, 286, 276
Toller, Ernst, 54, 68 n., 192
Tolstoy, Leo, The Power of Darkness, 106
TOMORROW WE'LL BE FINE, see MORGEN
GEHT*S UNS GUT
Tontolini, 20
torture, 49, 57, 67, 72, 77, 85, 86, 217, 257,
272, 284
totalitarianism, 164, 204, 218, 272, 275-831
TRAGEDY OF THE STREET, see DIRNEN-
TRAGODIE
TRAGODIE DER LEEBE, DIE, 109 n.
TRAUMENDB MUND, DER, 255-56
TREASURE, THE, see SCHATZ, DER
TRENCK, 265-66, 268
Trenker, Luis, 110, 259-68, 271; Illus. 61
TRIAL OF DONALD WESTHOF, THE, see
KAMPF DES DONALD WESTHOF, DER
TRILBY, 78
TRIP TO THE MOON, A (original title:
VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE), 28
TRIUMPH DBS WILLENS, DER, 95, 258,
262 n., 278, 283, 290, 800-8; Illus. 12, 60
TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, see TRIUMPH DES
WILLENS, DER
Trivas, Victor, 235
TSAR'S COURIER, THE, see KURIER DES
ZAREN, DER
Tschechowa, Olga, 128 n.
Tschet, Konstantin, 262
Two BROTHERS, see BRUDER SCHELLENBERG,
DIE
Two HEARTS IN WALTZ TIME, see ZWEI
HERZEN IM DREIVIERTEL TAKT
tyrant figure, the, 49, 50, 72, 77, 79, 8081,
84r-86, 98, 151, 162, 168, 216, 248,
257, 266. See also tyrant films
tyrant films, 77-87, 96, 98, 107, 162
Tyrol, the, 261 ff.
U
UBERFALL, 194r-96, 197, 242; Illus. 40
Ucicky, Gustav, 264, 267, 269
Udet, Ernst, 155, 258
Ufa, 6 n., 86-87, 88, 47-48, 52, 65, 68 n.,
360 INDEX
79, 92, 115-16, 119, 188-84, 141-48, 147,
148, 149, 150, 151-52, 156, 161, 166,
171 n., 172, 173, 174, 177, 186, 188, 190,
191, 198, 194, 199, 207, 212, 218, 214,
215, 224, 268, 264, 265, 269, 277, 297
Ufa-Palast am Zoo, 48, 182
Ukraine, 86, 177, 284, 802
Ullman, James R., The White Tower,
llln.
Ullmer, Edgar, 168
UM DAS MENSCHENRECHT, 160, 292 n,
UNDER A HOT STJN, see UNTEB HEISSER
SONNE
UNDERWORLD, 216
UiraHEUCHEN, DIE, 160
unemployment, 10, 16, 48, 181, 197, 208,
211, 212, 229, 289, 248-47, 272, 310
U-9 WEDDIGEST, 156, 260
UNGARXSCHE RHAPSODIE, 191 n.
UNHOLY LOVE, tee ALRAUNE
Union, see Projection-A. G. Union
United Artists, 254
United States, see America
Universal, 261
Universum Film A. G., see Ufa
UNTER HEISSER SONNE, 25
UNWELCOME CHILDREN, see KREUZZITG DBS
WEIBES
VANINA, 79-81, 85, 86, 91, 98
VARIED 4, 71, 125-27, 135, 140, 169, 175;
Illus. 28, 24
Variety, 267, 267 n., 269, 269 n.
VARIETY, see VARE&TE
Veidt, Conrad, 69 n., 70, 85, 125, 185, 254,
268; Illus, 2, 8, 8
VEBDTW, 155
VEBITAS VINCIT, 48
VERXORENE SCHTTH, DER, 107, 108
VERLORENE TOCHTER, 44
VEBRUFENEN, DDE, 148-44, 212
Versailles, 124 n., 289-40, 241, 254, 263
64, 290, 292, 298, 824, 325
Vertov, Dziga, 185, 18&-87
VICTOR, THE, see SIEGER, DER
VICTORY IN THE WEST, see SIEG ra
WESTEN
Vienna, 141, 167, 207, 208, 281
Viertel, Berthold, 124 n., 128 n., 182
Vincent, Carl, 104, 196
VIOLINIST OF FLORENCE, THE, see GEIOER
VON FLORENZ, DER
VOGELOD CASTLE, see SCHLOSS VOGBLOD
Volksverband fiir Filmkuntt, tee Popular
Association for Film Art
Voltaire, 119, 268
VORMITTAOSSPTJK:, 194
VOBUNTERSTTCHUNG, 207
Vorwarts, 71, 116
Voss, Richard, Evaf 18
Vow OF CHASTITY, see GELUBDE DER
KEUCHHEIT
W
WACHSFIGtrRENKABlNETT, DAS, 84-87, 89,
272; lUus. 7, 8
Wagner, Fritz Arno, 78, 114, 175, 288
Wagner, Richard, 92, 98, 150
Walden, Herwarth, Sturm, 68
WALTZ DREAM, fee WALZERTBAUM, EIN
WALZEKKRIEG, 207
WALZERPARADIES, 208 n.
WALZERTRATTM, EIN, 141
Wandervogel, 46
war films, 28, 35, 155-56, 207, 282-86, 26064,
265 n., 269-70, 270 n., 271, 275-98,
308-31. See also national and Fridericus
films
Warm, Hermann, 68, 68 n., 69 n.
Warner Brothers, 286
WARNING SHADOWS, see SCHATTECT
WAR OF THE WALTZES, see WALZERKBIEG
Warsaw, 291, 806
Waschneck, Erich, 256
WATERLOO, 156
Watts, Richard, Jr., 246, 246 n., 264,
264 n., 269, 269 n.
WAXWORKS, see WACHSFiGtrBENKAMNETT,
DAS
WAYS TO HEALTH AND BEAUTY, see WEGE
zu KRAFT UND SCHONHEIT
WEAVERS, THE, see WEBEH, DIE
WEBER, DIE, 145
Weber, Max, 38, 124 n.
Wedekind, Frank, 117, 161, 178-79
WEEK END, 210 n.
Wegener, Paul, 28-81, 81 n., 82, 55, 62,
80, 112, 153; Illus. 18
WEOE zu KRAFT UND SCHONHEIT, 142-43 ;
Illus. 25
WEIB DBS PHARAO, DAS, 50, 54
Weill, Kurt, 286
WEISSE HOLLE VON Piz PALI;, DIE, 155, 258
WEISSE RAUSCH, DER, 257
Wells, H. G., 150 n.
WELTKRIEG, DER, 155, 156, 207
Wendhausen, Fritz, 154
Westerns, 20
WESTFRONT 1918, 282-35, 242, 260, 271:
Illus. 58
WHERE'S LOVE THERE'S DANGER, see AcnTTTNG,
LIEBE LEBENSGEFAIIR
INDEX 361
White, Kenneth, 106
white-collar workers, tee employees
WHITE FRENZY, THE, see WEISSE RAUSCH,
PER
WHITE HELL OP Prcz PALU, THE, tee
WEISSE HOLLE VON PlZ PALU, DlE
WHITHER, GERMANY?, see KUHLE WAMPE
Wieck, Dorothea, 227, 229 n.
Wiene, Robert, 66-66, 67, 70, 96, 109,
154 n.
Wio, THE, tee PERRTTCKE, DIE
WILD DUCK, THE, tee WILDENTE, DCS
WILDENTE, DIE, 106 n.
Wilder, Billy, 188
Wilson, Woodrow, 51
Windt, Herbert, 269
Winsloe, Christa, Oettern und Heute,
226
WOLOA-WOLGA, 140 n.
Wolzogen, Ernst von, 19
WOMAN'S AWAKENING, tee ERWACHEN
DBS WEIBES, DAS
WOMEN ENGITLFED BT THE ABYSS, tee
FRAUEN, DIE DER ABGRUND VERSCHLINGT
WONDERFUL LIE OF NINA PETROVNA, THE,
tee WTTNDERBAHJ5 LUGE DER NlKA
PETROWNA, DIE
workers, 9, 10, 11, 16, 80, 82, 67, 116,
181-82, 148, 144, 149, 168-64, 169, 181,
184, 189, 194, 197, 198, 207, 289-41,
248-47, 282, 292 n., 811
WORLD MELODY, tee MELODIE DER WELT,
DIE
WORLD WAR, tee WELTKRIEO, DER
World War I, 8, 15, 19, 20, 21-25, 26,
85-87, 88, 44, 45, 58, 62, 84, 111, 146,
155-56, 169, 190, 191, 192, 207, 212,
282-85, 240, 260, 264, 269, 282, 285, 810,
829
WTTNDERBARE LtTGE DER NlNA PETROWNA,
DIE, 190-91, 192
WUNDER DER SCHOPFUNO, 152
WUNDER DER WELT, DlE, 188
WUNDER DBS FILMS, DIE, 198
WUNDER DBS SCHNEESCHUHS, 110
Wysbar, Frank, 229 n.
YORK, 264r-65, 266
youth films, 160-62, 164, 215, 226
Youth Movement, 117-18, 257
Zelnik, Friedrich, 267
Zille, Heinrich, 148-44, 160, 197, 211, 228.
See alto Zille films
Zille films, 148-44, 144 n., 145, 197-98,
211 n., 212
Zinneman, Fred, 188
ZlRKtTSPRINZESSIN, DlE, 140 D.
Zoberlein, Hans, 285
Zola, Smile, Germinal, 289
Zuckmayer, Carl, 140, 229
ZOXTTCHT, 151, 199
Zukhoff, Gregory, 294
Zweig, Stefan, 191 n.
ZWEI HERZEN IM DREIVIERTEL TAKT, 207
I. PASSION: The threat of mass domination.
y. CAUGAKI: Insane authority.
3. CALIGARI: A draftsman's imagination.
4. CALIGARI: The three flights of stairs in the lunatic asylum symbolize Dr. Caligari's
position at the top of the hierarchy.
1 1 II II II
5. NOSFERATU: The vampire, defeated by love, dissolves into thin air.
G. DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER: Interpenetration of realistic and expressionist
style, betraying the close relationship between Mabuse and CaligarL
7, WAXWORKS: A phantasmagoria Jaek-the-Rippi'r pursuing the lovers.
8. WAXWORKS; Ivan the Terrible, an Incarnation of insatiable lusts and unheard-of
cruelties
J>. DESTINY: The huge wall symbol izing
1
l
;
at<:'s imuxvssibiHtv.
10. NIBKH.TNGEN: Triuinpii of the ornamental over the human.
11. NIBELUNOEN: \ The patterns of Nibelungen are resumed in Nazi
12, TRIUMPH OF THE WILL: ) pageantry.
15. THK LAST LAUGH: The revolving door something between a merry-go-round
and a roulette wheel.
16. A GLASS OK WATKH: With its stress on .symmetry the decor breathes romantic
nostalgia.
17. PKAK OK DKSTINY: Mountain climbers are devotees performing the rites of
cult.
IS. TIIK GOLKM: The Golem, a figure of clay, animated by his master, Habbi Loew.
$2
% .S
21. THE STREET: Mute objects take on life.
2. THE STHKET: This gesture- -recurrent in many German films is
symptomatic
of the desire to return to the maternal womb.
W. .VAHIKTY: Jannings' bulky back plays a conspicuous role in the prison seme.
24. VAHIKTY: The inquisitive camera breaks into the magic circle of action.
25. WAYS TO STKKNCJTH AND BKATTV: Tableau vivant of Greek gymnasium.
26. TARTCFFK; The grand-style manner.
27. METROPOLIS: Sham alliance between labor and capital.
28. METROPOLIS: Ornamental despair.
29. THE JOVLKSS STRKKT: A.sta Nielsen in one of tbr rulon in which sbr
social t-onvrntions in her abundance of love.
KAMPP x>KR TEHTIA: One of the iy youth fil
adolescence.
31. THE JOYLESS STREET: The ghastliness of real life.
32. THE JOYLESS STREET: Realism, not symbolism.
33. SECRETS OF A SOUL: Dreams cinematically externalized.
34. THE LOVE OF JEANNE NEY: The orgy of anti-Bolshevist soldiery a scene elicited
from life itself.
35. THE LOVE OF JEANNE NEY: The broken mirror, a silent witness, tells of glamour
and destruction.
36. THE LOVE OF JEANNE NEY: Casual configurations of life.
37. BERLIN: Patterns of movement.
38. BERLIN: What once denoted chaos in now simply part of thr rmml lift
among facts.
9. BERLIN: A close-up of the gutter illustrates the harshness of mechanized life
40, ACCIDENT: The use of distorting mirrors helps to defy deep-rooted conventions.
THK MAN WITHOUT A
NAMK: The nightmarish
workings of bureauc-
racy.
THK VICTOR: Hans
Albers, the embodiment
of popular daydreams.
45, THK BLUK ANGBL: Jannings as the professor tainted by his pupils.
46. THE BLUE ANOICL: Marlcne Dietrich as Lola Lola provocative legs and an
over-all impassivity.
49. M: The group of criminals, beggars and .street women sitting in judgment on
the ehiM-murderer.
50. KM ii* i'ND I>IK DKTKKTIVK: The thief, a Pied Piper in reverse, pursued by the
children tinder u radiant morning
1
sun.
1/31. MXm'iiKN IN UNIKOUM: The hoadini.strr.ss a feminine Frederick the Great.
52. MADCHKN IN UNIFORM: To prepare the audienee for this scene, the staircasi
i.s featured throughout the film.
15)18: Field hospital filled with moans and agonized cries.
5-t, THE BEGGAR'S OPERA: Glass screens transform the crowded and smoky cafe
into a confusing maze.
55. COMRADESHIP: Three German miners about to remove the iron fence set up since
Versailles.
5(5. COMRADESHIP: German miners in the shower room the audience is let into one
of the arcana of everyday life.
57. KUHLE WAMIE: Young athletes at the Red sports festival which glorifies collective
life.
58. EIGHT GIRLS IN A BOAT: This film betrays the affinity of the earlier Youth
Movement with the Nazi spirit.
\\ M %\i <-I<m<i rimjclomrrati<ms indicates the ultiftm
l dtp mountain- and the Hitler-cult.
1