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Reviewing old films again
Oct. 29th, 2004 07:51 pmSomething to look forward to: Tomorrow is the day of the Londothon.
Among the DVDs I recently aquired is the film version of Der Untertan, which I hope will get exported because this particular film is one of our genuine classics, and if it were better known in the English speaking world, I might have named it in the movie meme as "best movie based on a classic" in addition to Great Expectations.
The classic in question is the novel by Heinrich Mann, variously translated as Man of Straw or The Patrioteer or The Loyal Subject, though Man of Straw is the most commonly used English title. When mentioning Heinrich Mann in English conversation, one is almost forced to add "elder brother of Thomas", which is a pity because Heinrich wasn't just a great novelist but, imo, a more sympathetic person. One of the few artists (or indeed people in any profession) not just in Germany but in Europe who weren't greeting the start of WW I with a nationalist "Hurrah!" and in fact opposed it, which led to a furious quarrel with brother Thomas because at the time Thomas M. was as conservative and nationalist as they get, and the argument lasted through the entire war. They reconciled in the 20s and during WWII were both exiles (though Thomas waited three years to critisize the Nazis, as his books were still getting published in Germany during that time, whereas Heinrich protested from day 1, and got his books burned from day 1 as well). Ending up in Hollywood where, as Heinrich put it drily, his fame rested entirely on the legs of Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel is based on Heinrich's early novel Profesor Unrat) meant living in a country with a language he didn't speak very well and being dependent on his younger brother's charity, but he bore it with dignity. More about Heinrich Mann here; back to Der Untertan.
This novel, with a title that literally means just "The Subject", was starting to get published in 1914 in a magazine when war broke out and it had to be withdrawn immediately, as the censor surpressed anything that looked like a satire on the head of state. In 1918, it was published again, in its entirety, and suddenly didn't look just dead-on and entirely accurate but eerily prescient. Der Untertan is, among many other things, a brilliant satire on Wilhelmian Germany, on the entire über-patriotic mentality with its cult of authority and suspicion of anything remotely critical as unpatriotic, and its (anti-)hero, the man of straw and loyal subject in question, Diedrich Heßling, is at the same time himself and a parallel to his idol Wilhelm II (this was more apparent to contemporary readers as they would have recognised the names of the wives to be identical, the allusions to details of Wilhelm's life etc.). It's hard not to see the storm in which the novel ends as the war.
The first war, that is. After the second, one of the earliest directors to emerge in post-war Germany (both Germanies) was Wolfgang Staudte, who had started out as an actor and, in a nice bit of cinematic irony, had his first part as one of the students in The Blue Angel. (And his second was in All Quiet on the Western Front, also very appropriate.) Wolfgang Staudte made a film out of Der Untertan in 1951, which was a resounding success, but because he made it in East Germany, and because of one other thing I'll get to later, the film wasn't allowed to be shown in West Germany until Staudte himself fled from East to West in 1956. (Yes, censorship worked both ways back then.)
What makes the film version of Der Untertan so great and eminently watchable is, next to the basic text, the cast - Werner Peters was terrific as Diedrich Heßling, never succumbing to the temptation of making Diedrich less repellent, or into a demonic movie villain or conversely into a misunderstood nice guy. (Poor Peters thereafter was doomed to a career of "ugly Germans", though. Pity. He had range and could have played more than just a variation of that one role.) Meanwhile, Staudte pulls all the stops with the camera, using it to give us the child Diedrich's pov in the opening sequences through extreme shots upwards, the orgy of Wilhelminian kitsch on the living room of the family Goepel Diedrich visits in Berlin, the faces of Diedrich and his fellow frat boys filmed through beer glasses, or, in a celebrated sequence, Diedrich's one encounter with his idol and counterpart, the Emperor. The camera looks out of the carriage bearing the German Kaiser and onto his obedient servant running alongside it, constantly hailing the Kaiser and at the same time devoutly bowing low, all at a running pace.
All the same, this is never just a period piece. Or limited to just one country. Diedrich (who inherits his father's factory) getting contracts through cozying up to the military and starting a vicious rumour campaign against the liberal competition, the casual and gross brutality towards workers or anyone else in a powerless position, combined with the complete subordination towards the authorities, the conviction one has the absolute moral superiority towards the rest of the world, the best system...
Like the novel, the film ends in a gigantic thunderstorm which occurs when Diedrich holds his speech apropos the unveiling of a new statue of Wilhelm II. However, Wolfgang Staudte did shoot this film in 1950/51, with a second war, which had depended very much on the Untertanengeist (="spirit of the subject"), was the immediate past, and ruins were still everywhere. So the thunder and lightning of the storm, in a great montage of sound and images, gives way to the musical signature of the Wochenschau (the German weekly news shown in the cinemas during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich), and the town square with the unveiled statue in thunderstorm becomes an image very familiar indeed to anyone watching in 1951 - a bombed German city utterly in ruins. While the voice of the narrator tells us in basically the only lines not from Heinrich Mann in this film: "Thus spoke Diedrich Heßling then, and many after him - until this very day." The implication, not just of a direct line from Wilhelmian Germany to Nazi Germany but the implication that the Heßling types were alive and well in the 50s was apparently too much. As I said, this ensured the film wasn't shown in West Germany for years.
An English review of this film here. Let me add something more: in addition to all of this, it's also just plain funny. Scenes like Diedrich wanting to have a scar like his fellow frat boys but not wanting to really get hurt in the obligatory duel, or the way he gets out of military service via connections (err...) while ever after loving to dress up and speechifying about the glories of the military, or his honeymoon (which Diedrich cuts short so he can see Wilhelm II in Rome) are just comic genius.
Among the DVDs I recently aquired is the film version of Der Untertan, which I hope will get exported because this particular film is one of our genuine classics, and if it were better known in the English speaking world, I might have named it in the movie meme as "best movie based on a classic" in addition to Great Expectations.
The classic in question is the novel by Heinrich Mann, variously translated as Man of Straw or The Patrioteer or The Loyal Subject, though Man of Straw is the most commonly used English title. When mentioning Heinrich Mann in English conversation, one is almost forced to add "elder brother of Thomas", which is a pity because Heinrich wasn't just a great novelist but, imo, a more sympathetic person. One of the few artists (or indeed people in any profession) not just in Germany but in Europe who weren't greeting the start of WW I with a nationalist "Hurrah!" and in fact opposed it, which led to a furious quarrel with brother Thomas because at the time Thomas M. was as conservative and nationalist as they get, and the argument lasted through the entire war. They reconciled in the 20s and during WWII were both exiles (though Thomas waited three years to critisize the Nazis, as his books were still getting published in Germany during that time, whereas Heinrich protested from day 1, and got his books burned from day 1 as well). Ending up in Hollywood where, as Heinrich put it drily, his fame rested entirely on the legs of Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel is based on Heinrich's early novel Profesor Unrat) meant living in a country with a language he didn't speak very well and being dependent on his younger brother's charity, but he bore it with dignity. More about Heinrich Mann here; back to Der Untertan.
This novel, with a title that literally means just "The Subject", was starting to get published in 1914 in a magazine when war broke out and it had to be withdrawn immediately, as the censor surpressed anything that looked like a satire on the head of state. In 1918, it was published again, in its entirety, and suddenly didn't look just dead-on and entirely accurate but eerily prescient. Der Untertan is, among many other things, a brilliant satire on Wilhelmian Germany, on the entire über-patriotic mentality with its cult of authority and suspicion of anything remotely critical as unpatriotic, and its (anti-)hero, the man of straw and loyal subject in question, Diedrich Heßling, is at the same time himself and a parallel to his idol Wilhelm II (this was more apparent to contemporary readers as they would have recognised the names of the wives to be identical, the allusions to details of Wilhelm's life etc.). It's hard not to see the storm in which the novel ends as the war.
The first war, that is. After the second, one of the earliest directors to emerge in post-war Germany (both Germanies) was Wolfgang Staudte, who had started out as an actor and, in a nice bit of cinematic irony, had his first part as one of the students in The Blue Angel. (And his second was in All Quiet on the Western Front, also very appropriate.) Wolfgang Staudte made a film out of Der Untertan in 1951, which was a resounding success, but because he made it in East Germany, and because of one other thing I'll get to later, the film wasn't allowed to be shown in West Germany until Staudte himself fled from East to West in 1956. (Yes, censorship worked both ways back then.)
What makes the film version of Der Untertan so great and eminently watchable is, next to the basic text, the cast - Werner Peters was terrific as Diedrich Heßling, never succumbing to the temptation of making Diedrich less repellent, or into a demonic movie villain or conversely into a misunderstood nice guy. (Poor Peters thereafter was doomed to a career of "ugly Germans", though. Pity. He had range and could have played more than just a variation of that one role.) Meanwhile, Staudte pulls all the stops with the camera, using it to give us the child Diedrich's pov in the opening sequences through extreme shots upwards, the orgy of Wilhelminian kitsch on the living room of the family Goepel Diedrich visits in Berlin, the faces of Diedrich and his fellow frat boys filmed through beer glasses, or, in a celebrated sequence, Diedrich's one encounter with his idol and counterpart, the Emperor. The camera looks out of the carriage bearing the German Kaiser and onto his obedient servant running alongside it, constantly hailing the Kaiser and at the same time devoutly bowing low, all at a running pace.
All the same, this is never just a period piece. Or limited to just one country. Diedrich (who inherits his father's factory) getting contracts through cozying up to the military and starting a vicious rumour campaign against the liberal competition, the casual and gross brutality towards workers or anyone else in a powerless position, combined with the complete subordination towards the authorities, the conviction one has the absolute moral superiority towards the rest of the world, the best system...
Like the novel, the film ends in a gigantic thunderstorm which occurs when Diedrich holds his speech apropos the unveiling of a new statue of Wilhelm II. However, Wolfgang Staudte did shoot this film in 1950/51, with a second war, which had depended very much on the Untertanengeist (="spirit of the subject"), was the immediate past, and ruins were still everywhere. So the thunder and lightning of the storm, in a great montage of sound and images, gives way to the musical signature of the Wochenschau (the German weekly news shown in the cinemas during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich), and the town square with the unveiled statue in thunderstorm becomes an image very familiar indeed to anyone watching in 1951 - a bombed German city utterly in ruins. While the voice of the narrator tells us in basically the only lines not from Heinrich Mann in this film: "Thus spoke Diedrich Heßling then, and many after him - until this very day." The implication, not just of a direct line from Wilhelmian Germany to Nazi Germany but the implication that the Heßling types were alive and well in the 50s was apparently too much. As I said, this ensured the film wasn't shown in West Germany for years.
An English review of this film here. Let me add something more: in addition to all of this, it's also just plain funny. Scenes like Diedrich wanting to have a scar like his fellow frat boys but not wanting to really get hurt in the obligatory duel, or the way he gets out of military service via connections (err...) while ever after loving to dress up and speechifying about the glories of the military, or his honeymoon (which Diedrich cuts short so he can see Wilhelm II in Rome) are just comic genius.
