Showing posts with label Weimar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weimar. Show all posts

Saturday, February 18, 2023

Louise Brooks and Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis

Thanks to Simon Werrett for tipping me off to the forthcoming screenings of Walther Ruttman's Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927) in Berlin! Curiously, posters for the event feature Louise Brooks. And what's more, those very posters are, according to Simon, "peppered" throughout Berlin's underground stations. More information about this pair of screenings (one on February 22, and the other on March 26) can be found HERE.

Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (also sometimes called Berlin: Symphony of a City) is an exceptional film. It is a thrilling non-fiction, poetic film, an example of the "city symphony" film genre. According to its Wikipedia entry, "it portrays the life of a city, mainly through visual impressions in a semi-documentary style, without the narrative content of more mainstream films, though the sequencing of events can imply a kind of loose theme or impression of the city's daily life." If you haven't seen the film, you must. I wish I could make it to Berlin, not only to snatch one of those posters, but to see this magnificent film on the big screen with live music IN BERLIN.


Here is information about the event both in German and in English:

Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Großstadt Live begleitet vom Babylon Orchester Berlin unter Leitung von George Morton (Sa, 11.2.)

So klingt #Berlin ! #TheSoundofBerlin
Walter Ruttmann's classic is a fascinating journey through time in the roaring twenties from Berlin.
… accompanied by #edmundmeisel‘s stirring original music!

Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Großstadt, D 1927, R: Walther Ruttmann, 65 Min., ohne Dialog/No dialog!

Berlin, eine Stadt erwacht aus dem Schlaf und wird zur Legende, 1927, fünf Jahre vor dem Ende der Weimarer Republik. Elektrisierend!
Eine Stadt vor ihrem Untergang.

Ein Kaleidoskop von Eindrücken, die ein lebendiges Bild der Viermillionen-Metropole vermitteln: von der ersten Morgendämmerung, wenn die ersten Pendlerzüge einlaufen bis in die späte Nacht, wenn sich die Lichtreklamen der Kinos und Tanzpaläste auf dem regennassen Asphalt spiegeln.

Hektik und Beschaulichkeit, Armut und Reichtum, Angestellte, Flaneure, und immer wieder Busse, Straßenbahnen, Lastwagen, U-Bahnen, Züge, Autos, Fahrräder, Fußgängerströme als Pulsgeber des groß-städtischen Rhythmus: Walter Ruttmanns Klassiker ist eine faszinierende Zeitreise in die #goldenezwanziger

ENGLISH
A daily routine in Berlin's life, filmed in the late 1920s.

Berlin, a city awakens from sleep and becomes a legend, in 1927, five years before the end of the Weimar Republic. Electrifying! A city before its downfall.

A kaleidoscope of impressions that convey a vivid picture of the four million metropolis: from the first dawn, when the first commuter trains arrive, until late at night, when the neon signs of the cinemas and dance palaces are reflected on the rain-soaked asphalt.

Hustle and bustle and tranquility, poverty and wealth, employees, strollers, and again and again buses, trams, trucks, subways, trains, cars, bicycles, pedestrian streams as the pulse generator of the urban rhythm: Walter Ruttmann's classic is a fascinating journey through time in the roaring twenties from Berlin.

 

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2023. Further unauthorized use prohibited.

Friday, January 15, 2021

Nazi hatred of Charlie Chaplin, along with mention of a Louise Brooks film

Late last year, I ran a short series of blogs highlighting some of the new and unusual material I have come across while researching Louise Brooks' life and career. This was research conducted over the internet during the stay-at-home doldrums of the 2020 pandemic lock-down. My research has continued into 2021, as have the stay-at-home orders. Thanks to longtime Louise Brooks Society supporter Tim Moore, I have recently come across a handful of new and unusual items which I wish to share. This post kicks off another short series of blogs highlighting that material.

In the past, the UK newspaper Daily Telegraph ran a regular feature called "London Day by Day," featuring short news bits about and related to life in the English capitol. In August of 1934, it ran a piece on the English-born actor Charlie Chaplin, followed by a piece on the German actor Fritz Kortner (Brooks' co-star in Pandora's Box), who was then a recent emigrant to England. These two piece reveal the tenor of the times.

Chaplin’s movies were banned in Germany because of the actor’s suspected Jewish heritage. Though Nazi hatred of Chaplin is well known, their deep contempt for the widely loved comedian is still surprising, even shocking, after all these years - especially when one reads the Nazi description of Chaplin as "A nasty little Jew, not yet hanged." This clipping, it is worth noting, came 6 years before Chaplin satirized Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940).

Also surprising to me is the mention of Pandora's Box (a silent film) having shown in Berlin in 1934, some five years after it was first released - that is, four to five years into the sound era and a year after the Nazis assumed power. What also surprised me is the description of Pandora's Box as a "distinctly Liberalistic, if not Marxist" film. (It is unclear to me if that is the attitude of the Nazis, or the newspaper.) The clipping also mentions that Pandora's Box was one of the last films shown at the Camera theatre before it was closed by the Nazis, implying that this "world famous pocket cinema" was shuttered because of the films it showed.

The director behind Pandora's Box, the Austrian-born G. W. Pabst, was known as a left-of-center film-maker, and a number of his films contain subtle and not-so-subtle critiques of German society. (Pabst's critical attitude toward German society is also apparent in the other film he made with Brooks, Diary of a Lost Girl). Despite, or perhaps in addition to Pabst's leftist politics, what likely got the Camera theatre shuttered was the fact that Brooks' co-star in Pandora's Box, Fritz Kortner, was Jewish. (No doubt, Kortner left Germany in 1934 because the Nazis prohibited Jewish individuals from working in the film industry. Also exiled because of the Nazi ban were members of Syd Kay's Fellows, the small jazz band seen playing at Lulu's wedding in Pandora's Box.)

Fritz Kortner looms over Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box. A Menorah  sits on the shelf to the left.

I don't know much of anything about Die Kamera theater, now demolished, except for what can be found on its Cinema Treasures page. Built in 1928, the theater
was badly damaged by Allied bombs during World War II. It was not reopened, and later the Russian Embassy was built at its site. If any reader of this blog knows more, I would certainly be interested to learn what I might about its existence in the early 1930s. I would also be especially interested in obtaining any vintage newspaper advertisements from the time, especially for Pandora's Box. I wonder which German newspaper might have carried them?

Cinema Treasures has a couple of image of this historic theater, one an interior view, and another 1936 image of an exterior, street view. (That image, the image shown below, is a cropped from this Wikipedia image.) Its name, Kamera, can be seen behind the lamp pole above the door in the middle of the image. Another image of the theater, dating from 1934, and with Nazi flags hanging from the building exterior, can be found HERE.

For more on a 1933 screening of Pandora's Box, see this earlier LBS blog, "Amazing letter from Theodor Adorno to Alban Berg," in which the famous philosopher recounts seeing the film in a letter to the famed composer.

Friday, January 12, 2018

Weimar German culture seems to be trending.....

Weimar Germany seems to be trending..... I just came across a rather good article in Tablet magazine about the avant-garde performer Valeska Gert. "The Forgotten World of the Badass Valeska Gert," by Elyssa Goodman, looks at the influence of the "incomparable ‘dance performance artist’ who inspired entertainers from German Expressionism through to 1980s punk."


I've been fascinated by this strange artist ever since I saw her in the 1929 Louise Brooks film, The Diary of a Lost Girl. Despite Brooks' presence, Gert dominates the few scenes she is in. As Goodman notes,
"Gert began performing all over Europe, at Brecht’s cabaret The Red Revue, in Paris, in London, and elsewhere. She also moved her parody into a new medium, performing in film alongside a very young Greta Garbo in the 1925 film Joyless Street; in G.W. Pabst’s 1929 film Diary of a Lost Girl also starring American cinema sensation Louise Brooks; in the first film version of Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera as Mrs. Peachum in 1931, and many others. Gert knew how to manipulate her face and her body to dominate a stage in her solo performances, and the same happens even when she’s on screen with multiple people, as in this scene from Diary of a Lost Girl: Her face twists, her eyes expand, her mouth bends and even if she’s not saying anything, you simply can’t look away."

I encourage everyone to check out Goodman's article HERE. It is a good read. Back in 2010, I also wrote a piece on Gert which you may also want to check out, "The Remarkable Life of Valeska Gert." It ran on Huffington Post.

And that's not all the news from Weimar Germany. The culture of this special period in history is being celebrated in a new book, Night Falls on Berlin in the Roaring Twenties by Boris Pofalla (Author) & Robert Nippoldt (Illustrator). It is due out in May from Taschen. The publisher description reads thus:


"It was the age of drag balls, Metropolis, and Josephine Baker. Of scientific breakthroughs, literary verve, and the political chaos of the Weimar Republic. After the best-selling Hollywood in the 30s and Jazz: New York in the Roaring Twenties, illustrator Robert Nippoldt teams up with author Boris Pofalla to evoke the fast-moving, freewheeling metropolis that was Berlin in the 1920s.

Like a cinematographic city tour through time, Berlin of the Roaring Twenties takes in the urban scale and the intricate details of this transformative decade, from sweeping street panoramas, bejeweled with new electric lights, to the foxtrot and tango steps tapped out on dance floors across the town. With characteristic graphic mastery of light, shadow, and expression, as well as a silver-printing sheen, Nippoldt intersperses portraits with cityscapes, revealing the changing scenery and dynamic hubs of this burgeoning and rapidly industrializing capital, as well as the extraordinary protagonists that made up its hotbed scene of art, science, and ideas.

With an eager eye on the eccentrics and outlaws that made up this heady age as much as the established “greats,” Nippoldt includes rich profiles not only of the likes of Lotte Reiniger, Christopher Isherwood, Albert Einstein, Kurt Weill, Marlene Dietrich, and George Grosz, but also for “the woman with ten brains” Thea Alba, “Einstein of Sex” Magnus Hirschfeld, and the city’s notorious criminal Adolf Leib. So, too, does the book contain special features for some of the most prominent cultural and political phenomena of the time, whether the most iconic film characters or the frenzied chaos of the Weimar cabinet.

Beyond the people and the places, the book captures above all the incomparable and ineffable spirit of time and place, of an epoch suspended between two world wars and a country caught between joie-de-vivre daring and the darkness of encroaching National Socialism. Before the night falls, Nippoldt shows it all to us: the bright lights and the backstage whispers, the looming factories and the theoretical physics, the roar of the sports hall and the hush of the theater, the songs of the Comedian Harmonists, the satire of George Grosz, and the gender-bending icon of Marlene Dietrich, lighting up a cigarette in top hat, tuxedo, and come-to-bed eyes."

Check out this video introduction to the book:


Or, check out this Taschen podcast about the new book:



But wait, there's more.... Just out on DVD from Kino Lorber is Rudiger Suchsland's documentary film From Caligari to Hitler. From Kino: "In the relevatory documentary From Caligari to Hitler filmmaker Rüdiger Suchsland explores the connections between the expressionist silent cinema of Germany and the subsequent rise of Nazism. The film illustrates Siegfried Kracauer's 1947 thesis that Nazism is anticipated in many themes found throughout Weimar cinema of the 1920s, whiles situating Kracauer in the philosophy and histories of the time. Looking at landmark films like Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, Metropolis, The Golem, and many others, Suchsland brilliantly tracks the concept of the charmismatic villain bewitching the people." (Reminds me of someone today.) From Caligari to Hitler got a ★★★ review on Video Librarian: "In fact, one of the documentary's major virtues is that it not only covers noted filmmakers such as Lang, F.W. Murnau, and Ernst Lubitsch but also serves as an introduction to movies in many different genres by other directors who are virtually forgotten today."


Of course, Louise Brooks made two of her greatest films in the Weimar era, the G.W. Pabst directed Pandora's Box (1929) and The Diary of a Lost Girl (1929). The English film critic Pamela Hutchinson has written a newly released book, Pandora's Box, published by BFI Film Classics. I just got a copy last week, and read it promptly. It is really, really good - displaying graceful prose and lively thinking. If you haven't already done so, check it out.


And lastly, there is a new article about G.W. Pabst which ran in a Brazilian publication, Estadao Cultura. The piece is titled "Georg Wilhelm Pabst: A obra por trás do homem."

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

The Book Cover in the Weimar Republic

For Christmas, I got a remarkable new 452 page book, The Book Cover in the Weimar Republic,
by Jürgen Holstein. Published by Taschen earlier this year, it's an eye popping treat for both book lovers and those interested in 20th century German history.

The publisher description reads this way: "The years between the First and Second World Wars in Germany are famed for their cultural boom. With Berlin as its epicenter, the Weimar Republic was replete with ground-breaking literature, philosophy, and art. At the heart of this intellectual and creative hub were some of the most outstanding and forward-thinking book designs in history.

The Book Cover in the Weimar Republic assembles 1,000 of the most striking examples from this golden age of publishing activity and innovation. Based on the remarkable collection of Jürgen Holstein and his rare collectible Blickfang, it combines an unparalleled catalog of dust jackets and bindings with Holstein’s introduction to the leading figures and particular energy of the Weimar publishing age. Expert essays discuss the aesthetic and cultural context of these precious fourteen years, in which a freewheeling spirit would flourish, only to be trampled, burned, or driven out of the country with the rise of National Socialism.

From children’s books to novels in translation, bold designs for political literature to minimalist artist monographs, this is a dazzling line-up of typography, illustration, and graphic design at its most energetic and daring. Part reference compendium, part vintage visual feast for the eyes, this very particular cultural history is at once a testament to an irretrievable period of promise and a celebration of the ambition, inventiveness, and beauty of the book."

The Book Cover in the Weimar Republic is not only a visual feast for those who love books and literature, but also for those interested in early German film. Here are snapshots of some representative pages which speak for its many visual treasures. 





"Just browsing through the pages can easily transport you into a huge bookstore in early 20th Century Berlin, well-stocked with just about every genre of fiction and non-fiction you can imagine… To enjoy the pleasures and glories of the golden age of the region’s visual — and literary — arts, you can blissfully immerse yourself for hours in The Book Cover in the Weimar Republic." — PRINT Magazine

"This book is, in the parlance of my profession, total eye candy. The work is stunning, and there’s a whole lot of it: over a thousand distinct (and distinctly interesting) book covers, jackets and bindings for books in a variety of genres. It turns out that Weimar, that creative caldron of philosophy, literature, painting and music, also cooked up a renaissance in the book arts, a golden age of book cover design. Who knew? The release of a monograph such as this one is a big deal for designers like us, important not only because the work that The Book Cover in the Weimar Republic comprises is so inspiring aesthetically, but also because these designs present a new historical context for our own contemporary covers." — New York Times Book Review


For more on this stunning book, be sure and check out this heavily illustrated write-up on the Paris Review website.


Sunday, December 30, 2012

Best Film Books of 2012 and then some

Looking for something good to read? Here are some suggestions for fans of early film - be it the silent era, pre-code, or golden age of Hollywood. My "Best Film Books of 2012" appeared on the Huffington Post. It includes books on Mae Murray, Thelma Todd, Mary Pickford, Lupe Velez and others.

Fans of Louise Brooks will also want to check out my "Best 2012 releases for the Louise Brooks Fan" which appeared on examiner.com. It includes newly released books, e-books and DVDs.

# # # 

Louise Brooks made two films in Germany, Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl (both 1929). Each were made against the backdrop of considerable artistic ferment and social upheaval. All, it seemed, was in flux. This year and last, a handful of academic and specialty presses released books which look at various aspects of the Weimar era. Here are a few of most interesting titles, followed by the publisher supplied description.

The Artificial Silk Girl, by Irmgard Keun (Other Press, 2011)

In 1931, a young woman writer living in Germany was inspired by Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to describe pre-war Berlin and the age of cinematic glamour through the eyes of a woman. The resulting novel, The Artificial Silk Girl, became an acclaimed bestseller and a masterwork of German literature, in the tradition of Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and Bertolt Brecht's Three Penny Opera. Like Isherwood and Brecht, Keun revealed the dark underside of Berlin's "golden twenties" with empathy and honesty. Unfortunately, a Nazi censorship board banned Keun's work in 1933 and destroyed all existing copies of The Artificial Silk Girl. Only one English translation was published, in Great Britain, before the book disappeared in the chaos of the ensuing war. Today, more than seven decades later, the story of this quintessential "material girl" remains as relevant as ever, as an accessible new translation brings this lost classic to light once more. Other Press is pleased to announce the republication of The Artificial Silk Girl, elegantly translated by noted Germanist Kathie von Ankum, and with a new introduction by Harvard professor Maria Tatar.


Women in Weimar Fashion: Discourses & Displays in German Culture, 1918-1933, by Mila Ganeva (Camden House, 2011)

In the Weimar Republic, fashion was not only manipulated by the various mass media -- film, magazines, advertising, photography, and popular literature -- but also emerged as a powerful medium for women's self-expression. Female writers and journalists, including Helen Grund, Irmgard Keun, Vicki Baum, Elsa Maria Bug, and numerous others engaged in a challenging, self-reflective commentary on current styles. By regularly publishing on these topics in the illustrated press and popular literature, they transformed traditional genres and carved out significant public space for themselves. This book re-evaluates paradigmatic concepts of German modernism such as the flâneur, the Feuilleton, and Neue Sachlichkeit in the light of primary material unearthed in archival research: fashion vignettes, essays, short stories, travelogues, novels, films, documentaries, newsreels, and photographs. Unlike other studies of Weimar culture that have ignored the crucial role of fashion, the book proposes a new genealogy of women's modernity by focusing on the discourse and practice of Weimar fashion, in which the women were transformed from objects of male voyeurism into subjects with complex, ambivalent, and constantly shifting experiences of metropolitan modernity.

The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema: Rediscovering Germany's Filmic Legacy, edited by Christian Rogowski (Camden House, 2011)

Traditionally, Weimar cinema has been equated with the work of a handful of auteurist filmmakers and a limited number of canonical films. Often a single, limited phenomenon, "expressionist film," has been taken as synonymous with the cinema of the entire period. But in recent decades, such reductive assessments have been challenged by developments in film theory and archival research that highlight the tremendous richness and diversity of Weimar cinema. This widening of focus has brought attention to issues such as film as commodity; questions of technology and genre; transnational collaborations and national identity; effects of changes in socioeconomics and gender roles on film spectatorship; and connections between film and other arts and media. Such shifts have been accompanied by archival research that has made a cornucopia of new information available, now augmented by the increased availability of films from the period on DVD. This wealth of new source material calls for a re-evaluation of Weimar cinema that considers the legacies of lesser-known directors and producers, popular genres, experiments of the artistic avant-garde, and nonfiction films, all of which are aspects attended to by the essays in this volume.

The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany, by Katie Sutton (Berghahn Books, 2011)

Throughout the Weimar period the so-called "masculinization of woman" was much more than merely an outsider or subcultural phenomenon; it was central to representations of the changing female ideal, and fed into wider debates concerning the health and fertility of the "German race" following the rupture of war. While some commentators celebrated this new, "masculine" woman in her short skirt, tuxedo, and pageboy haircut as symbolic of women's entrance into non-traditional fields of work, leisure, and consumption, others held her up as a warning against deviating too far from traditional ideas about men's and women's "roles." Drawing on recent developments within the history of sexuality, this book sheds new light on representations and discussions of the masculine woman within the Weimar print media from 1918-1933. It traces the connotations and controversies surrounding this figure from her rise to media prominence in the early 1920s until the beginning of the Nazi period, considering questions of race, class, sexuality, and geography. By focusing on styles, bodies and identities that did not conform to societal norms of binary gender or heterosexuality, this book contributes to our understanding of gendered lives and experiences at this pivotal juncture in German history.

The Mad Square: Modernity in German Art 1910-1937, by Jacqeline Strecker (Prestel Publishing, 2012)

This insightful volume focuses on the full array of artists and movements of the German avant-garde. The years between the birth of the Weimar Republic and Hitler's rise to power were marked by explosive creative output. This volume surveys every major movement of Germany's modernist period. Focusing on the work and interactions of several important artists. Starting with the Expressionists' emotionally fraught reaction to the country's march to war, the book then follows the nihilist movement as it recorded-and attempted to make sense of-the horrors of war. The emergence of Dadaism, the utopian vision of the Bauhaus School, and the practical ideologies of the New Objectivity movement are also given close consideration. Stunning reproductions of more than 200 works reflect the fascinating and complex ways artists responded to the forces of modernity with passion, anger, dark humor, and despair. Informative essays explore the historical events that shaped those artistic innovations as well as the often-tense relationship between art and politics during this critical time in the history of the Western World. The result is a wide-ranging exploration of one of the most dynamic and influential periods of artistic output.


Banned in Berlin: Literary Censorship in Imperial Germany, 1871-1918, by Gary D. Stark (Berghahn Books, 2012)

Imperial Germany s governing elite frequently sought to censor literature that threatened established political, social, religious, and moral norms in the name of public peace, order, and security. It claimed and exercised a prerogative to intervene in literary life that was broader than that of its Western neighbors, but still not broad enough to prevent the literary community from challenging and subverting many of the social norms the state was most determined to defend. This study is the first systematic analysis in any language of state censorship of literature and theater in imperial Germany (1871 - 1918). To assess the role that formal state controls played in German literary and political life during this period, it examines the intent, function, contested legal basis, institutions, and everyday operations of literary censorship as well as its effectiveness and its impact on authors, publishers, and theater directors.

Metropolis Berlin: 1880-1940, edited by Iain Boyd Whyte and David Frisby (University of California Press, 2012)

Metropolis Berlin: 1880-1940 reconstitutes the built environment of Berlin during the period of its classical modernity using over two hundred contemporary texts, virtually all of which are published in English translation for the first time. They are from the pens of those who created Berlin as one of the world's great cities and those who observed this process: architects, city planners, sociologists, political theorists, historians, cultural critics, novelists, essayists, and journalists. Divided into nineteen sections, each prefaced by an introductory essay, the account unfolds chronologically, with the particular structural concerns of the moment addressed in sequence--be they department stores in 1900, housing in the 1920s, or parade grounds in 1940. Metropolis Berlin: 1880-1940 not only details the construction of Berlin, but explores homes and workplaces, public spaces, circulation, commerce, and leisure in the German metropolis as seen through the eyes of all social classes, from the humblest inhabitants of the city slums, to the great visionaries of the modern city, and the demented dictator resolved to remodel Berlin as Germania.

Berlin Psychoanalytic: Psychoanalysis and Culture in Weimar Republic Germany and Beyond, by Veronika Fuechtner (University of California Press, 2011)

One hundred years after the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute was established, this book recovers the cultural and intellectual history connected to this vibrant organization and places it alongside the London Bloomsbury group, the Paris Surrealist circle, and the Viennese fin-de-siecle as a crucial chapter in the history of modernism. Taking us from World War I Berlin to the Third Reich and beyond to 1940s Palestine and 1950s New York--and to the influential work of the Frankfurt School--Veronika Fuechtner traces the network of artists and psychoanalysts that began in Germany and continued in exile. Connecting movements, forms, and themes such as Dada, multi-perspectivity, and the urban experience with the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, she illuminates themes distinctive to the Berlin psychoanalytic context such as war trauma, masculinity and femininity, race and anti-Semitism, and the cultural avant-garde. In particular, she explores the lives and works of Alfred Doumlblin, Max Eitingon, Georg Groddeck, Karen Horney, Richard Huelsenbeck, Count Hermann von Keyserling, Ernst Simmel, and Arnold Zweig.
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