Between hands and heart (2011)

Film Review from the January 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927, re-release 2010)

Since its 1927 release, we have only been able to see an abridged version of Metropolis, one of cinema’s definitive visions of the future. The scenes cut, largely because they were thought to confuse American audiences, have since become a film holy grail. So the discovery of a near-complete copy of Metropolis in an Argentine archive was met with justified excitement.

Metropolis is a city of skyscrapers, crowded roads and hedonistic dance halls. Underground, its workers power the city in long, painful shifts. They are given hope by Maria, a preacher, and Freder, the ruler’s son who is sympathetic to their predicament. Metropolis’ ruler orders the creation of a robot replica of Maria so it can impersonate her and cause discord among the workers. Instead, it leads the workers to revolt and attack the city’s power station.

There is almost half an hour of ‘new’ material, including a sub-plot which expands the reasons behind the robot’s appearance. The rediscovered scenes are easy to spot, as even restoration hasn’t been able to improve their picture quality. Despite this, Metropolis’ design work still looks stunning, even when competing against modern computer-generated imagery. But although we get a good look at the city, we don’t learn enough about how this society is arranged. A class struggle is evident, with the elite enjoying the products of the workers’ labour. But the system is criticised because its rulers indulge in the seven deadly sins, rather than because they exploit the workers. And these workers are only portrayed as obedient, whether they’re carrying out their monotonous jobs, listening to Maria’s soppy sermons, or, as a mob following the robot. It turns out these workers don’t really want revolution or even reform, just ‘mediation’ with their bosses. The film’s message – stated very explicitly – is “the mediator between head and hands must be the heart”, with ‘head’ representing the ruling class and ‘hands’ being the workers.

The ‘heart’ turns out to be the ruler’s son. So, the film doesn’t even advocate a ‘trade union consciousness’, just a more amiable figurehead for the elite.

Director Lang thought Metropolis was “silly and stupid”, and the blame for its patronising story is now placed on his then-wife, Thea von Harbou. Her views were made clearer by her later enthusiastic support for the Nazis. So, watch Metropolis for its amazing visuals, not its politics.

Mike Foster

Blood in the Mud (1958)

Film Review from the December 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

I don't like war films. But a Socialist will find much to interest them in "Blitzkrieg," even though it is the latest propaganda effort from Germany.

This film does not tell you anything about why the war arose. Nor does it ask how war can be avoided. But it gives, nevertheless, a devastating picture of what real war is like.

Propaganda films are interesting for one who does not take them at their face value, but recognises them as such. These pictures are made with the intention of making us think, and feel along certain lines. Knowing this beforehand, we can study the methods used by those who hope to influence us.

The makers of “Blitzkrieg” are “good German”a patriots. And, though they have used real news films from all countries in its production, their commentary (in English) is an alibi for their actions and for their defeat: Why did we Germans lose the war? Because of the mud and unending snow which trapped our tanks in the steppes of Russia: because the distances we had to cover were too vast; because of American superiority in production: because our allies—the Italian, the Hungarian and Rumanian troops—fought badly on the Eastern front; because Hitler was a very bad general, and a fanatic, whose strategy was disastrous: because he interfered constantly with the experts of the High Command: and because the Reds outnumbered our soldiers ten to one.

But—as we are incessantly reminded throughout the film—the brave German army and its heroic soldiers were never really defeated. They proved their worth . . . One German soldier is worth several Russians or Italians . . . one can almost hear the commentators say “ Wait till next time; when we try again—with the lessons in snow warfare which we have learnt at such a cost, and with the armed might of Britain and America behind us instead of against us—we shall beat the Russians.”

What caused the war? What were the interests at stake that persuaded the British and German ruling classes to spend so much money fighting each other?

For the Socialist the essential lies in what the film conveniently omits to tell us: How the German Capitalists, undoubtedly with the approval of a good many German people, exterminated millions of Russians, Jews, and Gypsies—and why; how they terrorised and tortured and murdered tens of thousands of German and other Communists, pacifists, and other opponents. It does not tell us of the huge numbers of patriotic men who returned from the war legless, armless, and worse; nor are we shown how the leaders of each country, Nazi and Labour Party leaders, Communists, Christians, Conservatives and Fascists enthusiastically urged the peoples of the world to butcher each other.

What we Socialists are opposed to are the implications that are behind these war films. They are an attempt to justify a past war in order to make a future once more acceptable and they do so by playing on the emotions of the filmgoer. The film is good. But the better it is the more dangerous it is to human well-being. War films are made to glorify war. The majority of those watching no doubt identify themselves with the hero, whether the hero be an individual or army. It is they who, in imagination, perform those deeds of valour, which stripped of their glory, are nothing but killing and terror. This picture is no exception to the rule, and is essentially similar in outlook to British and American war films.

War films reinforce thinking in terms of nationalism and the fake ideals for which fie various countries profess to fight. Films such as this help to prepare people for war, and educate them in its basic ideas: they justify the struggles of the ruling class and they present war as inevitable. And, when they shout “Égalité, Fraternité, Liberté! ” they mean “Infantry, Artillery and Cavalry."

H. L. R.

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (2013)

Film Review from the April 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

As part of the Step Into the Dark season, the Barbican recently screened the German 'expressionist' silent film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) with live piano 'four hands' accompaniment by Neil Brand and John Sweeney. The film was directed by Robert Wiene in 1919 in Berlin and cast Werner Krauss as Dr Caligari and Conrad Veidt as Cesare the somnambulist. It was made in the revolutionary period after the Great War when film censorship was abolished by the Council of People's Representatives, and a film Different From the Others (1919)written by Dr Magnus Hirschfeld could depict homosexuality in a sympathetic light.

Dr Caligari is a tale of hypnosis and murder imbued with fear, gloom, and oppression in a dislocated world. It was written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Meyer in Berlin in February-March 1919. They had both fought in the Great War and their experiences had made them anti-militarist and anti-authoritarian.

1919 in Berlin saw Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, the spontaneous 'Spartacist' working class uprising, described by Paul Levi as ‘the greatest proletarian demonstration in history, proletarians standing shoulder to shoulder with their weapons and red flags ready to do anything.’ The SPD government brought in Freikorps soldiers to crush the revolutionary uprising, and socialists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were brutally murdered.

Dr Caligari has its origins in Janowitz's memories from 1913 of a sex murder in Hamburg, and Meyer's experience of harsh therapy sessions with a military psychiatrist. Janowitz and Meyer also visited a fairground sideshow in Berlin where they saw a man in a hypnotic state predicting the future. Dr Caligari indicts authority, war, the state, conscription and the slaughter of millions of the working class in the Great War. Cesare symbolises the human used as a tool and violated by the state, and authority is seen as inherently insane (Dr Caligari and the lunatic asylum director are the same person).

Dr Caligari is celebrated for its 'expressionist' production design by the painters Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Rohrig. The designs are reminiscent of Kirchner's 'expressionist' paintings of Berlin streets. The 'expressionist' design is jagged architecture, stark geometrics, and oblique projected chimneys on pell-mell rooftops, tree-like arabesques, and buildings out of 'normal' perspective in chiaroscuro lighting. The aesthetics influenced films Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Batman Returns (1992) by Tim Burton.

There is controversy about the flashback framing device used in the film which was not in the original story. With the framing device Franzis the narrator is seen as insane and the story a figment of his deranged imagination, and the figure of the lunatic asylum director represents benign authority. Is then Dr Caligari not a revolutionary but a conformist bourgeois film? But the film's ending is not shot realistically: lines have not been straightened and 'expressionist' perpendiculars removed; we have not returned to conventional reality. All the characters such as Cesare and Jane are in the Lunatic Asylum but where is the 'murdered' Alan? Is Franzis right about Dr Caligari?

Steve Clayton

The Edukators (2005)

Film Review from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Edukators. The Warwick Cinema, Carlisle

Co-written and directed by Hans Weingarten, the eponymous heroes of this film are two young men - radicals, we might perhaps call them - who seem to have fused feng shui with Situationism to create a stylish and esoteric new form of political protest. Their method is to break into the homes of the rich but, rather than steal, they move the furniture into new spaces, or rearrange it into newforms, to create a visual spectacle designed to shock the occupants out of their cash-encrusted apathy. Like high-class catburglars, they leave prominent calling cards stating 'the days of plenty are numbered' or 'you have too much money,' and later read of their exploits in the newspapers.

Played by Daniel Brühl (Jan) and Stipe Erceg (Peter), it starts to go wrong for the Edukators when, unknown to Peter, his girlfriend, Jule, and Jan become an item (never let a woman spoil a good relationship, the film seems to imply). Witness to police brutality, bullied by her manager, bullied by her landlord, and crippled by debt, Jule has been sufficiently radicalised by these experiences to align herself with Peter and Jan and become the unofficial third Edukator.

The kind of Spectaclesque rich bashing they engage in may leave some of their older victims remembering that there's a beach beneath their gravel driveway. Indeed, after the Edukators have been forced to abduct one of their victims they learn that he was once a radical who rubbed shoulders with the prominent Lefties in the glory days of '68. Now a rich entrepreneur, the Edukators - and the audience - are moved to wonder if his revolutionary ideals are now dead, or just dormant. During his captivity he befriends Jan, Jule and Peter; cooking for them, washing their clothes, sharing their drugs, and it seems that the accumulated detritus of thirty years in the business world begins to fall away to reveal, to some extent, the idealist heonce was, or at least a more benign capitalist, a Scrooge on Christmas morning. The Edukators suspect his motives and are alarmed by their developing friendship with their class enemy and 'hostage'. His abduction by the Edukators becomes his education, and he parts company with his captors on friendly terms, letting bygones bebygones and, more importantly, promising not to contact the authorities. But some leopards never change their spots . . .

To some extent the film is reminding us of the generally perceived view that youthfulness and radicalism seem to go hand in hand,whilst 'ageing' and 'conservative' are words which frequently keep each other company. There are many people who claim to have been socialists back in the sixties, yet after a few pints confess that Enoch was right. And some know, and some even perhaps are, former radicals who now vote New Labour and watch the world go by from behind the Financial Times.

As The Edukators should have tried to explore more often, there are probably many reasons why youthful would-be smashers of the state mature into upholders of the status quo. It is often the case that self-styled radicals were never radical in the first place, and a promising career is a great incentive for abandoning one's revolutionary ideals. But as Socialist Party members will evince, radicalism never dies: it simply loses its dress sense.

Neil Windle