“The year was 1929, Germany was undivided, although the real Germany, its schools and other places pictured in the film were not German and reality failed to interest me.”
Josef von Sternberg
I have seen a few German films lately. I rented Blue Angel a few weeks ago and watched Goodbye Lenin and The Lives of Others. Here is a quickie as I have to go to sleep…don’t expect some logical thread here…
Blue Angel (1930):
The story of the precipitous fall of a prominent professor to the life of a vagrant after succumbing to the charms of Lola, a cabaret dancer played by the great Marlene Dietrich.
The plot takes place during the late 20s Weimer period and is said–despite the director‘s denial– to be an allegory for pre-war Germany. The story was based on Heinrich Mann’s “Professor Unrat”. Given Mann’s humanistic interests and his mission to satirize Germany’s imperial aspirations, it’s hard not to read/hear some subversive tones in this black-and white gem.
In Blue Angel, Dietrich’s overexposed body and sexual energy pays tribute to old notion that a woman mystique can sink ships and ruin civilizations.
Spellbound, the professor loses himself, his reputation , his identity, his manlihood. He is cindered, completely decimated by this lusty life force called Lola, man of letters-turned- bitter bag of shredded rags. Much like Dresden in 1945.
The film was outlawed in Germany and heavily edited in the United States.
I read that director Josef von Sternberg was a fascinating character. Of Jewish ancestry, his family didn;t fit the norms of any social group. Von Sternberg is certainly one of the most important and underrated filmmakers of our time. Several examine his take on women … and like his Austrian psychoanalyst buddy, he just flaps his arms in exasperation when confronted with the subject. (For more on…. http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/19/sternberg.html).
I rented it on Netflix.
What else…
The Lives of Others (2006) is a gorgeous film. Let’s start with the style… it’s a film that breathes naturally with its exuberant simplicity. We travel through the opaque colors of East Berlin under Communism. The film’s subtle sounds and minimal street movement contrast the busy sceneries of the fast-moving , capitalist West. Clean walls, few people passing by, less cars (I remember that in Vietnam… you could actually hear the birds, the wind…Lenin said much about the proletariat and their ear drums).
The story involves a Stasi agent who spies on writers and artists. As a result, he is enlightened by what he hears and sees and becomes subversive himself (ok, this is a real shortcut). Art, the film seems to tell you, is impermeable to ideological authoritarianism. It needs room to breathe. And it does, at the end of the film, with the debut of the protagonist’s play in the West. Ironically, the Stasi agent is often having to save the protagonist from being told on by his lover, East Germany’s theatrical star who is threatened and violated by a high official.
Interesting things I learned about this film:
+++First time director Henckel von Donnersmarck won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film had earlier won seven Deutscher Filmpreis awards – including best film, best director, best screenplay, best actor, and best supporting actor – after having set a new record with 11 nominations. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Golden Globe Awards. The Lives of Others cost US$2 million[1] and grossed more than $77 million worldwide as of November 2007[update].[4] Prior to his death, Sydney Pollack was said to be directing a possible Hollywood remake of the film.
++The film was released in Germany on March 23, 2006. At the same time, the screenplay was published by Suhrkamp Verlag. Henckel von Donnersmarck and Ulrich Mühe were successfully sued for libel for an interview in which Mühe asserted that his former wife informed on him while they were East German citizens[1] through the six years of their marriage.[2] In the film’s publicity material, Henckel von Donnersmarck says that Mühe’s former wife denied the claims, although 254 pages’ worth of government records detailed her activities.[3] The film succeeded in Germany despite a widespread contemporary reluctance in the country, particularly in its films,[1] to confront the totalitarian excesses of the East German state.[2]
Goodbye Lenin
Hmmm… a decorative tour of East Germany’s vintage goodies filled with untranslatable German jokes? Ok, not too crazy about the film but don’t have the time or inclination to diss it. So, I’ll leave you with some real critics who have something to say about it. It was a bit cute to me, but I know I’m no fun.
New York Times:
A softhearted tribute to — of all things — Communism, ”Good Bye, Lenin!,” the German director Wolfgang Becker’s social satire, has a knobby tone that somewhat mutes its crowd-pleasing ambitions and keeps it from becoming ”My Big, Fat Life Is Beautiful.”
The film captures the struggle of the devoted Alex (Daniel Brühl) as he fights to keep up his mother’s failing health. In 1989, just before the fall of the German Democratic Republic, Christiane (Katrin Sass) sees her son beaten by police during a riot. She falls into a coma, and then the Berlin Wall — and all it stands for — collapses. ”Mother slept through the relentless triumph of capitalism,” Alex notes. Any sudden shock could kill Christiane, a committed woman of the left, so Alex contrives to keep her convinced that things are still the same.
Mr. Becker wryly uses Alex’s scramble to refit the apartment with castoff tacky Communist-era décor to tweak the heedless encroachment of capitalism. Alex has to rescue the pasteboard furniture that he and his sister, Ariane (Maria Simon), were happy to heave onto a junk heap. The furniture’s utilitarian design seems to inform us that East Berlin might have been where Ikea got its ideas from.
The opening-credit sequence, a flashback to Alex’s childhood, details his mother’s emotional fragility. His father runs off to frolic with, as Alex puts it, ”his enemy-of-the-state girlfriend.” Afterward Alex observes that his mother married the fatherland and ‘’since the relationship was not sexual, she had a lot of energy for us kids.” Part of Christiane’s commitment involves hurling herself into Communism.
And part of Alex’s commitment — keeping his mother in the dark — involves flinging himself into locating all of the horrible groceries Christiane craves when she regains consciousness eight months after the fall of the East German Communist regime. Neighbors shake their heads sadly after he’s caught digging through the garbage looking for empty jars with the original labels. We catch Mr. Becker and his co-screenwriter, Bernd Lichtenberg, rummaging through other stories, like Washington Irving’s ”Rip Van Winkle,” as well as Emir Kusturica’s ”Underground” (1995) and ”Situation Hopeless but Not Serious,” a 1965 comedy with Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Sundance Kid and Mannix (Alec Guinness, Robert Redford and Mike Connors). In ”Serious,” an old German doesn’t tell the American soldiers hiding in his basement that World War II has ended.
There are a few bright jokes and sharp observations in the sentimental ”Lenin!,” which opens today in New York and Los Angeles. Alex’s determination eventually pulls in everyone he knows; instead of paying off East German officials for better supplies, he’s now giving money to kids to dress as Young Pioneers — the left-thinking G.D.R. equivalent of Boy Scouts — to serenade his mother. Alex’s boyhood idol, a cosmonaut who now occupies a reduced station in life, becomes part of the imposture. And his best friend and fellow satellite television installer, who recuts wedding videos to match up with sequences from ”2001: A Space Odyssey,” recreates old-school newscasts.
The laughs grow out of the elaborate lies they have to construct when Christiane inadvertently glimpses the new world. ”My mother’s bedroom resounded with the melody of yesterday,” Alex says, and he and his pals become the kind of propagandists that disappeared when the Berlin Wall came down. It is not until the film’s denouement that the repercussions of the Communist regime’s campaign of disinformation aimed at the family adds a harsh, melodramatic tinge to the climax.
Alex’s efforts to surround his mother with a Potemkin village adds direction to his existence. ”Somehow my scheme took on a life of its own,” he says. One of the funniest scenes in the movie comes when Alex finds a way to make his mother’s dream come true. ”Our Trabant is here!” he announces, informing her of the arrival of the legendary Eastern European auto so shoddy in manufacture it could have had a wood-burning engine. ”And after only three years waiting,” Christiane responds, glee adding a tremble to her voice.
But despite their sting, the movie’s laughs don’t keep ”Lenin!” breathless enough. Although Mr. Becker can generate tension when necessary, he doesn’t flex that muscle enough. Despite his ability — and affinity — for recreating the physical details of the early 1990’s, ”Good Bye, Lenin!” is much too long. It starts to feel like a flabby, dramatic version of the first ”Austin Powers” movie, another exercise in living anachronism as a storytelling device. By the time the picture’s final note about German reunification is struck, ”Lenin!” has raised a wall of indifference for the audience.
”Good Bye, Lenin!” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has Communist rioting and violence and post-Communist nudity, strong language and alcohol consumption.
GOOD BYE, LENIN!
Directed by Wolfgang Becker; written (in German, with English subtitles) by Bernd Lichtenberg and Mr. Becker; director of photography, Martin Kukula; edited by Katja De Bock and Andreas Schreitmüller; music by Yann Tiersen; produced by Stefan Arndt; released by Sony Pictures Classics. Running time: 118 minutes. This film is rated R.
WITH: Daniel Brühl (Alex), Katrin Sass (Christiane Kerner), Chulpan Khamatova (Lara), Maria Simon (Ariane), Florian Lukas (Denis) and Alexander Beyer (Rainer).
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