This week I've been at the National Film Archive in Berlin from 9:00-3:00 every day, watching movies made 1946-1949 in Germany, many of the so-called "rubble films". I had to make myself a schedule of what I can fit into my time there. I know the archive gets really busy with summer researchers, so I wanted to make sure I got in now. (And it's been rainy and gross: good film-watching weather.) I didn't really know what to expect, but I contacted the archive and since I'm a PhD student the use of their materials is free of charge. They just set me up in a little room with a TV and VCR and DVD player and let me watch their materials. Tomorrow I am going to see one movie that is still film, hasn't been transferred to DVD or VHS, so I have to have someone run the projector for me.
"Rubble Films" are the films that were shot in the ruins of Germany, with the rubble as a background. Only a few deal with Nazi past, many deal with contemporary issues (food shortage, black market, housing shortage, war veterans). Some are comedies, some are dramas. These are mostly films that you can't watch many other places. There are only a handful that you can get outside of an archive, in normal video rentals or libraries (Die Mörder sind unter uns is the most famous, from 1946, and is widely available. It was the first post-war film). So it's an amazing resource. It's not as fun as it may sound, though. Some of the films are good, but not all of them. Some are quite boring and the DEFA films can be a little heavy-handed on the socialist optimism. I really enjoyed Kein Platz für Liebe, No Space/Place for Love. It's a comedy about a couple that was married via long-distance during the war (fern getraut), and now that they are reunited they can't find any privacy in postwar Berlin (housing shortage, etc). They go to the Tiergarten to sit on a park bench, and just as they're about to kiss some guy accuses them of stealing vegetables (they turned the Tiergarten into aa veg garden after the war). They tell him that they're married, and he just laughs at the idea that a married couple would be kissing on a park bench. ha! I'm learning lots about 1940s social norms :). Unfortunately, some of the film and sound quality isn't that great, so that also adds a bit of complication. Three more films to go tomorrow, then I get my much-needed vacation. :)
Here is some rare film footage of Berlin after the war:
We just saw The Artist tonight and so I thought I'd do a little silent-film inspired post about Germans in Hollywood, with some film recommendations. Feel free to post any other suggestions.
I've seen a lot of the classic German silent films, and shown them to students...and to be honest, they can be hard to take sometimes. The intertitles are usually made for people who need more time to read on the screen, and the movies usually move more slowly in general. I can watch Caligarifor the beautiful sets, and I have really enjoyed Nosferatu at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, with live organ accompaniment around Halloween. But if you rent them at home and watch them in your living room, I can't promise you that you will love it. Or Metropolis, or Berlin: Sinfonie der Großstadt. The latter I got to see with modern music at the Babylon in Berlin, an amazing experience. And last year at the Michigan Theater I went to quite a few Charlie Chaplin films on the big screen, with a full audience, laughing with you. It totally changes the experience. Silent films were meant to engage you (the audience) loudly and viscerally, and communally, and that has totally been lost along the way, and it's hard to recapture (but can be done!). Watch Cinema Paradiso for a feel for the loud, grimy and hot atmosphere at the local theater. Some of the opening scenes of The Artist try to capture this, when they zoom out so you can see the movie palace where the film was being shown. But that was a movie premiere in Hollywood, not your local theater. But I'm getting off-track...
The Artist takes place during the late 20s, early 30s, roughly the same time frame for Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel, starring Marlene Dietrich, which also flashes the dates as intertitles, and uses the stock market crash as a time reference. The Blue Angel was the first major German sound film, and also made Dietrich internationally famous. Both she and von Sternberg went to Hollywood after the film.
Then came the mid 30s and 40s, when Hollywood benefited from the talented writers, directors, composers, and actors who were either driven out or chose to leave Nazi Germany, including: Fritz Lang (in Germany: expressionist classic Metropolis, film noir M, in the US: The Big Heat), Peter Lorre (in Germany: M; in the US: Casablanca), and Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, The Apartment, Sabrina, and many others).
I read that when The Artist director Michel Hazanavicius gave his acceptance speech, he said he wanted to thank three people, "Billy Wilder, Billy Wilder and Billy Wilder." Billy Wilder tops my list of the most amazing stuff you'll ever see that doesn't seem to age (also including Chaplin on the big screen, and Hitchcock). (Maybe that's also why my expectations were very, very high.) If you haven't seen Sunset Boulevard, it is also a film about a silent film star ruined by the sound age. Rent it. Amazing. And, if you want to see some of his work tied to Germany and the immediate postwar period, rent One, two, three (1961); and A Foreign Affair (1948). Hilarious!
Watch the first minute of this clip, where American GIs are hitting on German "Frolleins," and then accidentally pick up an American from Iowa. The whole film is actually available on YouTube, starting here.
So today on my way to the library I got tickets for a few Berlinale films. Tickets are on sale at Potsdamer Platz, right near the Staatsbibliothek. My "strategy" (or lack thereof) was to pick films whose titles sounded intriguing from the screen above the ticket line with the "green" (= tickets available) box next to them. Yes, rather random. So...I am going to see one film as part of the "kulinarisches Kino" [culinary cinema], called The Raw and the Cooked about the green movement in Taiwan, a film caled hiver nomade about nomadic shepherds in French-speaking Switzerland, and a film about three couples in couples therapy, Beziehungsweisen. Ha! It's like playing Russian roulette with film. :) But hey, this way I'm seeing things I might not have otherwise chosen! (Besides the first one, which I chose knowing it was part of the "culinary cinema" series, and which will be great, for sure.)
There are different categories of films, including the "competition," for the main prize: the Golden Bear. The ones I have tickets to are all "outside of competition", in the "forum" category.
Tonight we saw Walter Ruttmann's classic 1927 film Berlin, die Sinfonie der Großstadt, with live musical accompaniment by the two-man electro band from Berlin Tronthaim. I had seen it before and really wanted to see it again. My eyes just couldn't get enough. The editing is really fast, and the techno music works really well with the fast-paced scenes of city life. The film is divided into 5 acts, starting with the beginning of the factory working day, and ending with nighttime entertainment and leisure. The film opens with a train pulling into Berlin's main station, and trains, trams, buses, cars are a major theme of the film. It's just amazing to see how the streets looked, what people wore, what children wore, the various hats and shoes...and all the differences in the lives of the working class and the middle classes. It's also amazing that cars and horses co-existed at this time, and makes for chaotic streets! I really love this film with this accompaniment...They seem to play regularly in Berlin, and it's a really unique event. Below is a short clip:
It's not as fun as it may sound, though. Some of the films are good, but not all of them. Some are quite boring and the DEFA films can be a little heavy-handed on the socialist optimism. I really enjoyed Kein Platz für Liebe, No Space/Place for Love. It's a comedy about a couple that was married via long-distance during the war (fern getraut), and now that they are reunited they can't find any privacy in postwar Berlin (housing shortage, etc). They go to the Tiergarten to sit on a park bench, and just as they're about to kiss some guy accuses them of stealing vegetables (they turned the Tiergarten into aa veg garden after the war). They tell him that they're married, and he just laughs at the idea that a married couple would be kissing on a park bench. ha! I'm learning lots about 1940s social norms :). Unfortunately, some of the film and sound quality isn't that great, so that also adds a bit of complication. Three more films to go tomorrow, then I get my much-needed vacation. :)
