Kuhle Wampe or: Who Owns the World?

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Movie
Original title Kuhle Wampe
Kuhle Wampe Poster.jpg
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1932
length 74 minutes
Rod
Director Slatan Dudow
script Bertolt Brecht ,
Ernst Ottwalt ,
Slatan Dudow
production Prometheus film
music Hanns Eisler
camera Günther Krampf
occupation

Kuhle Wampe or: Who Owns the World? is a film from the time of the Weimar Republic , which belongs to the genre of proletarian film . It is a mixture of feature , documentary and propaganda film , enriched with elements of a music film. Bertolt Brecht worked as a screenwriter on its creation . The director was the Bulgarian Slatan Dudow , who had recently made a kind of documentary about the living conditions of workers in Berlin . The film was made under massive time pressure and political repression .

action

Version approved by the censors

"Kuhle Wampe" is set in Berlin in the early 1930s. At the beginning of the film, an unemployed young man (Annis brother) throws himself out of the window in desperation after having spent the day again in vain looking for work. His family's apartment was given notice shortly afterwards. She moves to a campsite called "Kuhle Wampe".

Anni, the daughter of the family and the only member of the family who still has a job, becomes pregnant and becomes engaged to her boyfriend Fritz, who explains on the same evening that the engagement was forced on him because Annis was pregnant. Anni leaves him after this explanation and moves in with her friend Gerda. She later takes part in a workers' sports festival, where she meets Fritz again, who has previously lost his job. You will then find each other again.

The highlight of the film is the journey home on the S-Bahn (this scene was written by Bertolt Brecht). In this, Anni, Fritz and some workers argue with middle-class and wealthy men and women about the situation of the global economic crisis . One of the workers observes that the wealthy are not going to change the world anyway, to which one of the wealthy replies questioningly, who can change the world instead. Gerda replies: "Those who don't like it."

The film ends with the singing of the solidarity song .

Original version of the film

From the final version of the film it is not quite clear that Anni wants to have her child aborted , but does not have the 90 marks that she herself has to raise for an illegal abortion. The problem is solved by the fact that the worker athletes show solidarity by collecting the amount and Anni can abort the child.

The censors also wanted a scene to be deleted that called for people to prevent evictions through collective resistance from workers.

The influence of the "playwright" Brecht

On the cover of the anthology from 1969 (see under “Literature”) only Bertolt Brecht is mentioned by name as the author. The last act of the screenplay for the film Kuhle Wampe was mainly written by Brecht ; his co-authors were also significantly involved in the other acts.

Nevertheless, it can be clearly seen in the film that a playwright was involved in it who propagated the idea of epic theater in Germany . Brecht interrupts and supplements the plot in his plays with commentary songs (in the film this is done with the song “The game of the sexes renews itself” and the “Solidarity song”). The occasional fade-in of the nude titles is an anachronistic relic from the silent film era, but on the other hand it is also a demonstration technique that Brecht uses in his pieces.

The use of V-effects is of central importance for the film . For example, at the beginning of the fourth act there is no real conversation: the mother is silent throughout the sequence; Anni follows her example after a brief greeting after their arrival. You can hear the father reading a slippery newspaper text, which is a stark contrast to his situation as well as to the situation of the two women, since the text is about the upper class milieu. The father does not speak directly to his wife and daughter either. In the story about Mata Hari and her luxury life as a noble prostitute, the worried face of the mother who keeps her household book is repeatedly faded in; In addition, still images of food with price tags appear, which look like alienated still lifes . The contrastive image-sound montages in the tradition of Sergej Eisenstein are intended to shock and confuse the viewer and thereby make them think. In Kuhle Wampe, too, Brecht follows his program critical of Aristotle , not to induce a catharsis by showing pity and terrifying events , but rather to make the viewer think through inconsistencies.

As early as 1931, during the Threepenny Trial , Brecht had recognized that “a simple 'rendering of reality' says less about reality than ever”, that it was wrong to indulge in filmic depictions of misery, because it would lead to the process of generalization , political learning is hindered.

Background and location

Sign 'Kuhle Wampe'

"Kuhle Wampe" was the name of a campsite on the Great Müggelsee (see picture with location information) in Berlin, where parts of the film are set. Kuhl (cool) describes the water temperature of the bulbous bay there. Wampe stands for belly in Berlin . Kuhle Wampe can also mean “empty stomach”. Today's campground of the same name on the Große Krampe was named after it. The politically left-wing motorcycle club Kuhle Wampe named itself after the film.

Turning conditions

There was a lack of money during the shooting. The production company Prometheus film was nearing completion of filming in the bankruptcy . A replacement was found in the Zurich company Praesens-Film under the producer Lazar Wechsler . During the filming, those involved were protected by members of the KPD from interference with the shooting by the National Socialist SA .

Performances

The premiere took place on May 14, 1932 in Moscow in front of a selected audience. The German premiere was on May 30, 1932 in the Berlin film theater atrium . The success led to the takeover of the film in 13 other Berlin cinemas. At the end of 1932 the film was shown in other major European cities. In 1934 it was published in New York under the title Whither Germany? shown. After the Second World War, the film was considered lost until 1958, after which it was shown again in the GDR . In the Federal Republic of Germany it was shown again in 1968 against the backdrop of the student movement. Occasionally he can be seen on public German-speaking television.

reception

Germany: final phase of the Weimar Republic

Behavior of censorship

Shortly after its appearance in 1932, the screening of the film was banned by both the Berlin Film Inspectorate and the Film-Oberprüfstelle because "the overall impression and overall effect of the film strip, given the necessary special consideration of the current circumstances, is suitable for public safety and To endanger order and vital interests of the state ”. The decisive factor for the ban is that “the fates of the Böhnicke family described in the first part of the film” should not be understood as “the artistic creation of an individual fate”, but rather as “typical for the entire current situation”. The suicide of the young Bönike is therefore attributed by the viewer to “the lack of care of the state”, and such an assignment of guilt is inadmissible. The film also called on the police and bailiffs to prevent official acts and did not take the current legal ban on abortion seriously. Finally, the final act asserts that “no effective help against hardship and misery can be expected from the current state and its representatives”, which in the opinion of the filmmakers requires an elimination of the democratic state system “in the sense of a communist world revolution”.

Brecht could not avoid praising Government Councilor Dillinger as chairman of the Berlin Film Inspectorate for recognizing better than many benevolent critics what matters to him, in particular why the film did not turn the suicide of the young unemployed into a melodrama . The assessment that he wrote for the first Moscow screening: "The content and intent of the film can best be seen from the presentation of the reasons for which the censors banned it." Is therefore meant seriously.

Irony comes into play in Brecht's statement insofar as the Oberregierungsrat Erbe had asserted during the proceedings of the Filmprüfstelle that the film is about the older social democratic generation of workers and "the Christian culture on which the German state is based" by showing one thing Church tower and the ringing of bells while showing the "communist nude bathing culture". In fact, there is no evidence that Father Bönike is a social democrat and that the film authors wrote the film with intentions critical of the church.

Resistance to the restriction of artistic freedom

The well-known critic Herbert Ihering warned: "The German film - narrowed by the crisis, narrowed by the misguided audience, narrowed by the censorship - loses its international reputation", "if the will to be truthful not only with the risk of diarrhea, but also is burdened with the risk of the ban. ”Under these circumstances, hardly anyone would invest money in a high-quality film.

Thus a final joint attempt was made to save freedom of expression in a democracy that was nearing its end. The performance ban was after public protests. B. the German League for Human Rights held a rally, in a third censorship negotiation under cut conditions. Any allusions to Anni's planned abortion and, among other things, a nude bathing scene in which a church bell can be heard from the lakeshore, had to be erased.

Movie reviews

Rudolf Olden praised the development of the film, the "[r] a line from bottom to top, from the depths to the top", "[a] from the misery of unemployment to the joy of proletarian sports, from the narrowness of the rear building for the enjoyment of Nature, from the dogged family bickering to the comradely solidarity of the youth, from the pressure of petty-bourgeois despair to idealistic hopes for the future. ”However, Olden also criticizes the fact that the film does not show the full extent of the misery of the Depression, that it is a nice touch.

Era of national socialism

On March 26, 1933, the film was banned again with reference to the Emergency Ordinance for the Protection of the People and the State , this time legal remedies were excluded.

post war period

The cut scenes remained lost; they were recreated in 1973 in the GDR television production Ein Feigenblatt für Kuhle Wampe .

Movie reviews

  • Dieter Krusche wrote in Reclam's film guide that the film is best where it is closest to the documentary chronicle, for example in the introductory montage with her unemployed. Later, partisanship in the sense of the KPD tactics of the time clouded the view, especially towards older workers who suspected sympathy with the SPD and allowed themselves to be distracted from the real problems at the engagement party with beer and good food. Nevertheless, Kuhle Wampe is an unusual film document from that time, in which a reality becomes clear in many sequences that had been driven out of most films at the time.
  • In Reclam's Lexicon of German Films, Thomas Kramer described Hertha Thiele's unsentimental embodiment of Anni as the most intense moments in the film, the sober description of the milieu and the connection between Hanns Eisler's music and the montage, which was trained on Soviet models.

foreign countries

Bernhard Reich , who was present, described the reaction of the audience at the Moscow premiere as "strange". After that, the film was no longer shown in Moscow - compared to Soviet conditions, the workers under capitalism, who in the film, for example, were B. had motorcycles "too good".

The film was in a new edition with English subtitles 1999 in the UK by Black & White as VHS edited again. In December 2008 the film was released on DVD with an essay by Heinrich Geiselberger.

literature

  • Wolfgang Gersch, Werner Hecht (eds.): Bertolt Brecht: Kuhle Wampe. Protocol of the film and materials. Edition Suhrkamp 362, Frankfurt / Main 1969.
  • Wolfgang Gersch: Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World? In: Günther Dahlke, Günther Karl (Hrsg.): German feature films from the beginnings to 1933. A film guide. Henschel Verlag, 2nd edition, Berlin 1993, p. 298 ff. ISBN 3-89487-009-5 .
  • Theodore F. Rippey: Quiet Audience, Roaring Crowd: The Aesthetics of Sound and the Traces of Bayreuth in Kuhle Wampe and Triumph of the Will. In: David Imhoof, Margaret Eleanor Menninger, Anthony J. Steinhoff (eds.): The Total Work of Art. Foundations, Articulations, Inspirations. New York ; Oxford: Berghahn 2016, pp. 183–205. ISBN 978-1-78533-184-8 .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Gersch, Werner Hecht: The case "Kuhle Wampe". In this. (Ed.): Bertolt Brecht: Kuhle Wampe. Protocol of the film and materials. Edition Suhrkamp 362, Frankfurt / Main 1969, p. 178.
  2. ↑ a b Jan Knopf (Ed.): Brecht Handbuch , Volume 3; JBMetzler Stuttgart 2002; P. 439 f.
  3. ^ Decision of the Berlin Film Inspectorate, Chamber III, March 31, 1932. In: Gersch, Hecht, p. 110.
  4. ↑ Bertolt Brecht: Small contribution on the subject of realism. In: Gersch, Hecht 1969, pp. 93–96.
  5. ^ Bertolt Brecht: Large commented on Berlin and Frankfurt edition , Volume 21; Suhrkamp 1988-1999; P. 547.
  6. ^ Decision of the Berlin Film Inspectorate, Chamber III, March 31, 1932. In: Gersch, Hecht 1969, p. 116.
  7. ^ Herbert Ihering: The forbidden "Kuhle Wampe". Original source: Berliner Börsen-Courier. April 2, 1932. Printed in: Gersch, Hecht 1969, p. 144.
  8. ^ Rudolf Olden: Kuhle Wampe. Original source: Berliner Tageblatt. April 2, 1932. Printed in: Gersch, Hecht 1969, p. 146.
  9. ↑ F.-B. Habel: Cut up films. Censorship in the cinema. Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig 2003, p. 59.
  10. ↑ Reclam's film guide by Dieter Krusche with the assistance of Jürgen Labenski, Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1973, 5th edition 1982, pp. 294–295
  11. ↑ Reclam's Lexicon of German Films , Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1995, pp. 183–184