Kuhle Wampe oder Wem gehört die Welt? (Brecht/ Dudow / Eisler / Ottwald , 1931)

1. KuhleWampeoderWemgehört die Welt? (Brecht/Dudow/Eisler/Ottwald, 1931)

2. KuhleWampe • opened in Berlin 30 May 1932 • Reported audience of 14,000 in first week • banned by Nazis on 26 March 1933. Brecht’s influence on Film - Jean-Luc Godard and French New Wave - Jean-Marie Straub & DanièleHuillet - Fassbinder and New German Cinema (e.g. Sanders-Brahms, H.J.Syberberg, Alexander Kluge) See Martin Brady, ‘Brecht and Film’, Cambridge Companion to Brecht.

3. KuhleWampe • 1. Opening to suicide • 2. Bönikeeviction to engagement party • 3. Sports festival • 4. Tram scene

4. Film and Photography between documentary realism and ideology • ‘The situation has become so complicated because the simple ‘reproduction of reality’ says less than ever about that reality. A photograph of the Krupp works or the AEG reveals almost nothing about these institutions. Reality as such has slipped into the domain of the functional. The reification of human relations, the factory, for example, no longer discloses these relations. So there is indeed ‘something to construct’, something ‘artificial’, ‘invented’. • Grosse Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Berlin, Weimar, Frankfurt am Main, 1988–2000, vol. 21, p. 469

5. in detail film has terrible flaws which seem in principle to be incurable. there is the dislocation of the sound . . . then there is the fixed perspective: we only see what one eye (the camera) sees . . . mechanical reproduction makes everything appear final, unfree, inalterable. this brings us back to the basic objection: the public no longer has a chance to adjust the actor’s performance, it is not faced with a production but an end product that has been produced in its absence. • Brecht, Arbeitsjournal, 27.3.1942

6. Montage as distancing device • ‘For Brecht the possibilities of epic fragmentation are undermined by the inflexible Cyclopean gaze of the camera. In KuhleWampehe and his collaborators attempt to use the former to disrupt the latter.’ • Martin Brady, ‘Brecht and Film’, p. 304

7. The city • In modernism: often site of anonymity, jungle, force in its own right (Ruttmann, Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Groβstadt, Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz(1928), John Dos PassosManhattan Transfer (1925) • In KuhleWampe: Site of political struggle: ‘WessenStraßeist die Straße?’ • City as metaphor for political scene

8. Sozialfaschismus-Theorie • Communist idea that Social Democracy is ‘left wing of Fascism’ • Originates in GrigoriSinowjew (1924) and adopted by Stalin, reactivated 1928. • For KPD, idea that SPD, because of its support of republican democracy is working into the hands of fascism. • Based on concept that fascism is outcome and goal of crisis of Capitalism (and democracy is a Capitalist form of government) • Splits working class in Germany in time of its opposition to Nazism • Represented in KuhleWampe in Bönike family as petty bourgeois (see engagement party)

9. Montage • ‘Montage is here a cognitive process and its effects take place on the micro-level in the spectator, who becomes aware that the ‘content’ itself is also split. Montage breaks with the ‘normal’ (linear, natural) film narration at the formal level; whilst at the same time, at the level of content, the spectator sees the juxtaposition of different ideologies and realities.’ • Gal Kirn, ‘KuhleWampe – Politics of Montage, De-Montage of Politics?’, Film-Philosophy 11/1, 2007, 33-48)

10. Dialectical montage Moralising parents espousing liberal maxim of success through strife – images of Franz’s cycling wheels. Does Franz die as an individual or as a representative of his class? Neighbours comments on Franz’ suicide?

11. Dehumanisation and Verfremdungseffekt • Effect of reification, i.e. the principle that under Capitalism the relationship between people turns into the relationship between things. • Brecht: ‘Don’t start from the good old things but the bad new ones.’ (Walter benjamin, ‘Conversations with Brecht’, in: Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, London, 1998, p. 121.

12. Gender • Patriarchal structure of family • Anni as ‘neue Frau’: modern, self-confident, working woman as result of social changes in Weimar Republic • No of female employees trebled 1907-25 to 1.5 mio • ‚Bubikopf, Zigaretten aufgesteckt im Spitz und knielange Röcke wurden vor allem in den "Goldenen Zwanzigern" zu den Modeerscheinungen einer neuartigen Massenkultur‘ (lemo.de) • Open consideration of abortion (illegal unter §218 of Weimar constitution – resulted in censorship)

13. Class • Split working class • Petty bourgeois ideals • Working class culture and education: creation of class consciousness and trans-family ties • Solidarity: ‘Vorwärts und nichtvergessen, worinunsereStärkebesteht’ • Anni as alternative to Franz (self-sacrifice for family values)?

14. ‘Der Faschismusversucht, die neuentstandenenproletarisiertenmassenzuorganisieren, ohne die Eigentumsverhältnisse, auf derenBeseitigungsiehindrängen, anzutasten. […] Der Faschismusläuftfolgerecht auf eineÄsthetisierungdes politischenLebenshinaus. […] So stehtes um die Ästhetisierungder Politik, welche der Faschismusbetreibt. Der Kommunismusantwortetihmmit der Politisierung der Ästhetik.’ • Walter Benjamin, ‘Das KunstwerkimZeitalter seiner technischenReproduzierbarkeit’, GesammelteSchriftenI.1, , Frankfurt/M., 1991 (1936), 506-508.

15. Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph des Willens(1934)

16. Nazi ‘Lichtdom’ (Cathedral of Light)

17. Nazi decoration of Unter den Linden in Berlin for Mussolini visit, 1937

18. Fascist vs. Communist bodies – LeniRiefenstahlsOlympia (1936) & KuhleWampe