Audio transcription

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

John Quackenbush  0:00 

November 12, 2018. The Harvard Film Archive screened the film Die Rote. This is a recording of film curator Olaf Möller's introduction and the conversation that followed with Eric Rentschler, Harvard Professor of German Language and Literature.

Haden Guest  0:16 

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Haden Guest. I'm Director of the Harvard Film Archive. I'm very happy to be here to welcome back Olaf Möller, who is a seemingly indefatigable critic, a curator with regular columns in the two best English-language film journals today, Film Comment and Cinema Scope.

Olaf Möller is based in Cologne, but is seemingly everywhere. He’s a constant presence at international film festivals as a committed cinephile, and increasingly as an inventive and wonderfully original curator. I first encountered Olaf through his writings, and was impressed by his encyclopedic and wide-ranging knowledge of cinema and film scholarship, as displayed in his omnibus book reviews of current publications and in his festival reviews. A little later, I began to attend the Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, and saw Olaf in action, anchored in the center of the front row of the theater, like the figurehead of a ship. If Olaf was in the theater, I knew the film was of interest, and, at the least, would be worth discussing afterwards with him.

Over the past years, Olaf has been spreading his wings as a curator, and has been creating truly inspiring and pathbreaking retrospectives. One of the highlights so far was his 2016 retrospective for the Locarno Film Festival, entitled Beloved and Rejected: Cinema in the Young Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. A loving and unexpectedly wide-ranging archaeology of an overlooked and often problematized period of German film history, Beloved and Rejected brought together a rich diversity of West German films, not just feature films, but also all manner of industrial films, animated films, and avant-garde shorts that, Olaf made clear, were not mere accompaniments, but were, in fact, central to his argument about the cutting edge that he traced across the period. I was lucky to attend many of the screenings, and to experience the real gift of the program, which was Olaf Möller's presence at each and every screening, that he introduced with great precision and care, telling stories at times quite personal, and revealing hidden histories and contexts for all of the films.

And as revealing, as well, was his true love for the films, and for the experience of seeing them and sharing them on the big screen. And this is the book that came out, which is a really important work of scholarship. It includes many essays, as well as writings by Olaf Möller, as well as by our other guest, Jennifer Lynde Barker, who was here yesterday, to introduce a really beautiful program of animated films. I'm really pleased to welcome Olaf Möller here tonight to be presenting two films that come from the Locarno program, but this tonight is a different variation, shall we say, of, of that program. And we're going to be seeing Die Rote by the great Helmut Käutner, whose films we've screened here before—we showed Unter den Brücken earlier in the spring—together with a beautiful abstract dance film by Franz Schömbs.

And now the pleasures and rewards of tonight's event are doubled and multipled, perhaps many times more, by the presence, as well, of a dear colleague and brilliant film scholar and thinker about cinema, Professor Eric Rentschler of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures here at Harvard. Professor Rentschler wrote the book about the history and legacy of German cinema of the Third Reich. It's called The Ministry of illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife. But he's continued to mine and expand German film history, most recently, with the celebrated The Use and Abuse of Cinema: German Legacies from the Weimar to the Present. Professor Rentschler is an ardent and omnivorous cinephile and an ideal interlocutor for Olaf Möller, I believe. I've been dreaming and scheming to bring the two of them together, and I'm so pleased that this dream will come true after the screening.

But now we have Olaf Möller here to introduce the film. I want to ask everybody before then to please turn off any cell phones, any electronic devices that you have. And please refrain from using them. I want to thank the Goethe-Institut here in Boston for their support of the program. I also want to thank my colleague, Karin Kolb, who will be running live subtitles from the back of the room for the feature film. And now, with no further ado, please join me in welcoming Olaf Möller.

[APPLAUSE]

Olaf Möller 5:06 

Yep, it's me again. Good evening. So, we are now looking at a rather tragic case in German film history. If you look for an end of the period of what you might call the “old German cinema,” then that's maybe Die Rote. Not in, let’s say, in numerical terms. The old German cinema lived much longer than it's usually given credit for. Most directors of some importance, let's just mention Rolf Thiele, or Kurt Hoffmann, or Wolfgang Staudte, who were actually making films for cinema till the 70s. So the Young German Cinema might have said, “The old German cinema is dead! We believe in the new one.” Well, it might have been dead, but then we had another decade of merry little zombies!

So, when did the Young German Cinema proclaim that? It proclaimed that on February 28, 1962. 1962 was also the year in which Die Rote had, in July, I think, its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival. The screening, and actually the press conference afterwards, became something of a scandal. Because Alfred Andersch, the writer on whose novel the film is based, attacked Helmut Käutner on stage, basically saying that he ruined his book. And he pointed out the really horrible dialogue, to which Käutner had only one thing to say: “But you wrote that!”

[LAUGHTER]

What can I say? Käutner knew that he was in many ways committing suicide with that film, and he did so in style. How was he committing suicide? Well, he did something that he knew was always bad. He cast Ruth Leuwerik in a role that was not in her normal mold. Ruth Leuwerik was one of the greatest actresses of the cinema of that period. And I'm very happy to say that I talked to her on the phone a few months before she died, and she was still truly a lady. She was two weeks away from her 91st birthday, shocked that a man half her age would be interested in what she did, and fascinated by the idea that maybe, despite everything that had been said, it hadn't all been in vain.

Well, Käutner was somebody who really understood Leuwerik, probably better than many other people. And due to that, he often really cast her against type. The type was really the very down to earth, motherly erotica. Okay, erotica we forget. Motherly, down to earth. Almost asexual. Basically, a woman German women of that period liked to identify with.

Here, she is definitely not down to earth, very unmotherly, and enormously sexy. And she could do that. And people did not want to see that. It's actually, whenever she did that, the film became a disaster. And Käutner actually said that everybody had told him before he started making the film, “Don't do that! Nobody wants to see Ruth like that.” And Käutner just said, “I know. But she's the only one who can play this role."

And so he basically, his eyes very wide open, made a film that I guess he sensed would be a farewell tour, in many ways. Because he had been really in quite troubled waters for some time. If we go back eight years, 1955 or so, seven years, Käutner is the director in West German cinema. And I mean, as a little program that I did last year in Bologna showed, he's still the director that bowls people over, to this day. Käutner is a genius. He was one of the all-time greats, and not only of German cinema. In ’55, he's really an icon. He's also internationally revered. People like Truffaut write about him, praising his genius. Käutner gets an invitation to the United States. He actually does two melodramas for Universal. And is unhappy, and goes back to Germany. West Germany, that is.

I have to say, I think people never really seem to have understood how important these– I think in reality, it were only eighteen months that Käutner was away from Germany. And he was not even all the time away, because he was already scheming, preparing new films here. But in these eighteen months, something in the whole nation changed. And in the attitude of the whole nation changed. And when he came back, he could still make kind of commercially successful films, off and on. But the artistic reputation was gone. He was a goner. He was a director by whom people professed to expect great things, but that whatever he did, was just looked at with disdain. From today's perspective, this is almost insane. I mean one of the films that, in Locarno, left people speechless, was Schwarzer Kies, a film that he had made one year before Die Rote, and which, back then, was voted Worst Film by a Prominent Director by the so-called Young German film criticism. This was a film that for decades, nobody wanted to look at, and that was, in many ways, way ahead of its time. Die Rote had a similar fate. As I said, it was screened in Berlin, people hated it, it didn't do any box office at all. And that was it with Käutner. I think he did three more feature films for cinema. All of them, well, let’s say, pleasant entertainments. But he actually was the first of the major directors to essentially focus on television. So after this film, his career would continue for another fifteen years, actually, as a master of television films. But he was kind of the first victim, in many ways, of what the Young German Cinema would do to the reputation of the old German cinema.

One more word, also, with regards to the connection between Young German literature and old German cinema. I mean, I'm quite certain Eric Rentschler and I will talk about the year 1957, which is, hands down, one of the most important dates in the history of our very unhappy and young nation. 1957, there’s so much changes in cinema, but as I said, also in society, it's difficult to keep track. One of the things that kind of, almost, makes it almost like a flag, so to speak, for this change, is actually the fact that we have the first films written by authors of the Young German literature. There is Jonas, that you've seen, hopefully, a few months ago here, by Ottomar Domnick. Around the same time, Harald Braun directs Der gläserne Turm, which is based on the only screenplay ever written by Wolfgang Köppen, one of the grandmasters of German twentieth century literature. And that's already set a pattern. Köppen hated the film.And it would continue like that, that really the great writers, also like Andersch—not a great writer, but famous—would usually be very unhappy. So this was, you have between ’57 and ’62 several attempts at finding common ground between the new literature and the old cinema, and it never works out, really. It might have worked out in terms of the films because Der gläserne Turm, as well as Die Rote, are among the great works of that period, works that still dazzle and surprise. But in the climate of that period, these were films that were too far off already in a future nobody could imagine.

There’s a different cinema, a different path for German film history in these films, that could never be followed. It’s the same thing, to a certain degree, with Franz Schömbs, who, as Jennifer Barker said yesterday, is really the only director of abstract films, of only abstract films, of that period. And it's interesting that his creative period stretches exactly, more or less, the period of the Federal Republic's first Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. So it seems that he had a certain climate in this very strange period of repression and, on the other hand, a newfound energy, newfound life, newfound idea of liberty, that he would find, let's say, of interest, to interact with. Come the Willy Brandt years, he stops making films. It's interesting that really, he does start several films after the one we are seeing tonight. But he doesn't finish any of them. The only film that he finishes after Den Einsamen allen is, in fact, a recreation of a Bauhaus theater piece that was done for television.

So, I now wish you a wonderful screening of these two very melancholic movies. Don't be afraid to be depressed after the film. Eric Rentschler and I will try our utmost to basically cheer you up a little bit. Okay, thank you very much. And enjoy!

[APPLAUSE]

Haden Guest  16:16 

Please join me in welcoming back Olaf Möller and Eric Rentschler.

[APPLAUSE]

Eric Rentschler  16:28 

Good evening. Um, we thought that we would use this opportunity to do two things. Like to have a conversation in general about the concept behind this marvelous series of films that Olaf put together for the Locarno Film Festival, and of which, you know, we've seen at least a fairly healthy sliver. And then we obviously want to talk about the films that you've just seen, and then do justice to them, as much as we can, in this short time.

So, Olaf, I want to start with a question about, actually, even just going back to the title of your series, Geliebt und verdrängt. Now, you've translated that as “beloved and rejected.” But if you take the German word, actually, verdrängt is “repressed.”

Olaf Möller

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler

And I guess the question would be, in a way, it's not that these films are not only verdrängt, they're also verflucht.

Olaf Möller

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler

I mean, one curses about them.

Olaf Moller

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler

And I think, perhaps, for American audiences, it's hard to understand the vitriol with which these films were confronted, let us say, by this new generation of filmmakers, you know, who signed the Oberhausen Manifesto. And I think that vitriol has pretty much shaped, well it shaped for a while, at least, until your series, I think, the film histories that have been written. That film history, German film history has been written from the perspective of New German filmmakers. And so I think, and you know, in that regard, films of the 50s are hopelessly provincial. There are next to no major auteurs. These are films that are not international. These are films that don't take stylistic risks, at all. These are films that are more what, what Horkheimer and Adorno would call “affirmative culture.” It's a long litany along those lines. So, in a sense, then, going back to this, and going back to, also, then, these keywords, “repressed” and “cursed.” How does your, how does your ser–, I mean, the thought behind your series is obviously one that questions all of these premises, in a major way.

Olaf Möller

Yep. [LAUGH] Well, okay. I should say one thing first, that the Locarno retrospective was more or less dropped into my lap. I actually forgot to mention that, when you asked me about it earlier. I did something like sketches for that at a tiny festival in Trieste called Imilleocchi over a few years, where I showed, well, a few, let’s say, off-beat German films from the 50s, which were met with quite a lot of fascination by the audience. I mean, Trieste, in that regard, is an interesting city, as it’s a city very much steeped in Germanic scholarship, etc. So one of the big institutes for German Studies in Italy is actually in Trieste.

And well, one guy who's also connected with Locarno saw quite a few of the films there. Now, somebody else—I won't reveal now who that was—was talking to Carlo, the director of Locarno, and basically said, “Well, you know, you should do a program on postwar German cinema. We have actually, really no interest in doing this, but it would be really good for your festival.” Actually, the director of a cinematheque. Which is quite revealing, that he– Actually a one of the German-language cinematheques. And it was quite revealing that he immediately: “We are not really interested in this, but it might be interesting for you.” Now, the curious thing was that for the Locarno people, the idea of German postwar cinema was highly unclear, because one of the first things they were asking me is, “So, will you also show films by Wenders?” I was like, “No. That's, like, two generations later.”

So, it was actually almost a miracle that although, I think at some point, they understood that, they were hoping originally for something completely different, meaning, let's say, a little bit of old German cinema, and then lots of Young German cinema, they still stuck with things when they got my program suggestion. And well, it was, I mean, it was a very, very touchy thing. I had to fight very, very, hard for something that, in the end, proved to be one of the things people appreciated the most about the program, which were actually the short films. So they really had no interest at all in showing these industrial movies, animation films, avant-garde films. Oh, no, they didn't want that. Too much work! And they would have preferred, “oh, let's have just a few feature films.” I was like, No. If we want to understand this period properly, we have to look into the short film production. This is very, very, very, important. Well, I mean, I basically had then a way of kind of wrestling them down, because they wanted to have something to do with Edgar Reitz. And I was basically, “Yeah, you want to have Edgar Reitz?” I said “Yes, I totally understand that, my friends! And he made a few films in the 50s. But we can't show only films by Edgar Reitz, right? We need to have a little bit of context for that one.” So, I, I mean, I was hammering, I was pushing, I was arm wrestling, I was bitch slapping. I was doing a lot of nasty things so, in the end, get that program in the shape I wanted to, which was really this shape that was very all-encompassing.

Because, I mean, for me, the thing is, we forget, we have forgotten by now, how important this parallel existence of these things was in these days. That you would go to a cinema, and you would not just watch a feature. You would watch a short documentary, you would watch a newsreel. That you would basically, in major festivals, have long feature documentaries and fiction films side by side, so that these things were really coexisting and influencing each other back then, big time. So it was really important for me to stress how much energy the fiction film production did actually get out of the short film production.

So, and, well, one of the key things at the beginning, for me, was actually the idea of the international, because my dear friend, Rainer Knepperges, at one point, just said cheekily about postwar German film history, well, we started off cosmopolitan, and then we had to go really down into the provincial, with Young German Cinema. Once German cinema was really international, and then it just became totally provincial. And there’s a lot of truth to it. It’s of course, like everything Rainer says, it's full of things one can object to, but but he's quite accurate when he says that German cinema at that point in time is very international. It's very internationally recognized. The films did get sold to other countries like crazy.

Eric Rentschler

But I mean, one could argue that German features, at least, during the 50s, are rather underrepresented at the major festivals. No?

Olaf Möller

No, absolutely not!

Eric Rentschler

No?

Olaf Möller

No, absolutely not! We always had a film, at least one film, in Cannes.

Eric Rentschler

Okay…

Olaf Möller

We always had at least one film in Venice. And Berlinale had, usually, at least two or three. We were absolutely not underrepresented, and we won shitloads of Golden Globes. Between, I think, ’54 and ’58, we won a Golden Globe every year. I mean, this was the period when you, where always five, or four foreign films won a Foreign Film Golden Globe, but I think West Germany won five in a row.

Eric Rentschler

Well look, playing the devil's advocate even more here, I mean, conventional film history, historiography, would argue, though, that if you take the major figures of German film of the 50s, if you take Kurt Hoffmann, and Helmut Käutner, and Wolfgang Staudte, and Rolf Thiele, that these figures surely do not compare well with a Fellini, or a Satyajit Ray, or a Kurosawa, or a Andrzej Wajda. That, in a sense, there's a certain gap between what is considered high quality in Germany, and what is considered cutting-edge, otherwise, internationally.

Olaf Möller

Yes and no! On the one hand, yeah, sure. But I mean, this is a thing that really starts inside the country itself. I mean, West German cinema considered itself always in crisis. And we really didn't need those uppity youngsters of the so-called Young German film criticism to feel really bad about themselves. The old critics already had taken care of that, big time. I mean, what kind of, I mean, which other film culture do you know that after one year of existence, already publishes a book, We Are in a Crisis? Which is what happened with West German cinema. I mean, the first book about postwar cinema as a cinema in complete crisis, is published in 1950. So, I mean, it's, I mean, the famous book by Joe Hembus, Der deutsche Film kann gar nicht besser sein. Hey–

Eric Rentschler

“German film couldn’t be any better.” Yeah.

Olaf Möller

Which was–

Eric Rentschler

Meant ironically.

Olaf Möller

It's basically, I mean, there was already lots of other writing before that. I mean, Joe Hembus became famous as a member of this Young German film culture, but the old guys had already written about that. And if you really read your way through the reviews of the day, I mean, there is barely–, I mean, the big critics that we were talking about, like Groll, Kirst, Luft, etc. They were rarely completely, wholly, complimentary. I mean, I remember that, I think, Groll goes out on a limb with the film by Victor Vicas that we also had here, where he said, “This is actually better than The Third Man.” Which in that period is almost heresy, because The Third Man was a film that was kind of the gold standard, in certain circles, for a great movie. He said that about Weg ohne Umkehr, but this is a very, very rare instance. Otherwise, you would read like,”Yeah, interesting attempt, but….” “He tries to do this, but….” “By German standards, this is really remarkable, and yet….” So, I mean, Germans didn't like their cinema, I mean, at least the intellectual Germans did not like their cinema. The audiences liked it, yes. But the critical establishment? No. No, no, no! We, as I said, we didn't really need the youngsters to hate ourselves. We were already big time world champions in hating ourselves.

Eric Rentschler

Okay. Well, you have a journal, a major journal, done by cinephiles, done by cineastes, Filmkritik. Comes out of Munich starting in 1957. Very smart editorial board. I mean, these are quite savvy, well-schooled people. And yet, they are slamming one film after another.

Olaf Möller

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler

Films that you're showing in this series, in a way. And I guess I would wonder how you account for that. I mean, what, what kind of preconceptions, sort of made for such a denunc-, I would say denunciatory criticism?

Olaf Möller

Well, I guess I mean, look. I wasn't joking when I was saying, I mean, the country was really big time into hating itself. Certainly when it comes to film culture. I mean–

Eric Rentschler  29:00 

What about the generational dimension, though?

Olaf Möller

The generational dimension is in a certain way, quite simple. Okay, you've got the generation that was involved in World War Two. I mean, as a combatant, and the people who were old enough. So you do have these people also with the directors, and all the craftspeople, who were also involved in that. I mean, let's face it: what did the Nazi period produce, in terms of art, that had any lasting value? It’s cinema, and maybe a little bit of sculpture. Maybe. I mean, the literature sucks [?UNKNOWN?]. Music is even worse. Painting is unbearable, that's done in that period. But the films are great.

I'm sorry! It was a good filmmaking culture. And I'm afraid that this was something that was really nagging at everybody. The knowledge that the one thing that the Nazis were good at had been cinema. And the other thing is, I mean, this is the period of the myth, so to speak, that people were all entranced by the propaganda machinery etc., etc. Which was a very convenient myth, because it basically said, “hey, we sit in the movies, and we are influenced and we couldn't do anything about it.” Bullshit [?UNKNOWN?]. But this was the current myth then. So cinema was really the main guilty one. So I think this is also one reason why it was so easy to basically hammer down on cinema, and in that, also hammer down onto a certain quality.

Eric Rentschler

So there's a kind of Oedipal revolt at work here, in a certain way, in this generational–

Olaf Möller

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler  30:47 

dismay.

Olaf Möller

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler

Or what was called the cinema of the fathers, and actually grandfathers. I mean, one of the reasons for that, though, would be also that the films made during the 50s were, by and large, made by people of an older generation.

Olaf Möller

Yes.

Eric Rentschler

There wasn't much renewal. There weren't film academies that would have allowed younger people to get trained, and to get into the film industry. So things had stayed pretty steady. I mean, you know–

Olaf Möller 31:17 

But this is an international phenomenon. I mean, this is something we should not forget, that, I mean, the war had a very profound effect on film production, and actually the employment possibilities inside film production. And I mean that you had all of these older directors. Yes! I mean, look, I mean, the last time I spoke with Edgar Reitz, he actually confessed that basically, yeah, one of the reasons why they came up with this whole Young German Cinema thing, was that they didn't find any kind of employment. So they had to create an employment opportunity for themselves. Because the natural, let's say, employment opportunity, how many films to get, get produced per year. How much space is there for a younger person to actually get hold in the industry, was minisculous. So I mean, it's one way of also looking at Young German Cinema as really, as people, in a very violent fashion, creating job opportunities for themselves.

Eric Rentschler  32:23 

Well, I mean, if you go back, you talked in your introduction about the Oberhausen Manifesto of 1962 where twenty-six young German filmmakers, all of whom were men, you know, wrote this Manifesto, declaring the death of the conventional German film, declaring, likewise, their not only desire, but their will, to create a new German film. And this became the founding myth that gave rise to what would later become the New German Cinema. That cinema we know well, of Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, Kluge, Schlöndorff, Von Trotta, many others. So that, you know, you’re declaring a certain cinema dead. And I think what your series is trying to suggest was that, that heart was still– They weren't zombies; that heart was still ticking quite well. And actually, there was nothing moribund or dead about this cinema. I mean, there's a way in which you're re-reading– I mean, the Young German filmmakers claimed they wanted to redeem German cinema.

Olaf Möller

Yup.

Eric Rentschler

You're, in a sense, trying to redeem this past that was considered, let us say, unredeemable. Right?

Olaf Möller

Absolutely. I mean, we should also say that, I mean, the industry itself understood that it was time to change a little bit. And there were attempts to do that. I mean, there is this film that not that many people have seen—and in certain ways, this is a good thing—called Maya. An omnibus project, which was an attempt from people connected to, actually, Bavaria Film, in Munich, to kind of create an atmosphere of a different German cinema. The film was suggesting that the industry was trying to rejuvenate itself. And it's quite interesting who was involved in that project, because it was, on the one hand, several people who were undersignees of the Oberhausen Manifesto, who were, at that point in time, thinking, “oh, yeah, let's try this,” but then were totally revolted by the whole thing. But also somebody like Franz Schömbs. One of the films that you're also seeing here, Die Geburt des Lichts, is basically screened also in Maya. But then also, some older guys from the amateur film world, who were the, kind of the organizing force behind it. So the industry did understand that something had to change, and they did have their new generation. I mean, this was this weird intermediate generation that came from television. There we have a parallel with American cinema. So you do have, between the new Hollywood, so to speak, in its very complex, let's say, layerings, and generational disputes, and the old Hollywood, you have this intermediate generation, which was basically often referred to as the TV generation. And you have the same in Germany. So you've got people like Franz Peter Wirth, whom those of you who have been here yesterday and seen Das magische Band, there’s this scene in a TV studio, with the actress watching herself on a TV set, or whatever you want to call it. The guy who's directing her, that's actually Franz Peter Wirth. And there were like five, six other directors at that point in time. And well, but they, again, already had a cynical attitude towards cinema, because they were essentially saying, cinema was for big paychecks, but the great art was done on television. Which actually, also, for example, the father of my friend Dominic Graf, Robert Graf, one of the great actors of this period, was saying, you know, Dominic often told me that his father was thinking, yeah, he did really artful things on the stage, and for television, but cinema was just a joke. So even the people who were doing this were, among themselves, talking about it as if this was a joke. I mean, I'm really wondering where all of these people did take the energy to make pretty serious films, if they were constantly thinking it was a joke. So somebody is lying to her- or himself at some point here, pretty big.

Eric Rentschler 

You know, looking at this younger generation and the films it became famous for. I mean, it was, there was this notion internationally that German films were problematizing the Nazi past. Looking, taking a look back, and very much in anger, and producing a socially critical cinema. Seems to me that what your series is showing, is actually that cinema of the 50s is full of anger, full of, actually, I mean, if you think of tonight's film, think of last night's film, The Eighth Day, there is a way in which these films are socially critical and actually very disturbing, in that way, and surely films that are rocking the boat. And I mean, I'm wondering to what degree that may well explain the trouble that many of these films had at the box office and with popular audiences,

Olaf Möller

Oh very much so. And I mean, the thing is, if you really go much deeper into the subject, it's surprising what you can find. I mean, there is, for example, one film I’ve now for two years been desperately looking for r a print, called, I mean, the title in German is fantastic [GROWLS]: Weil du arm bist, mußt du früher sterben. “Because you are poor, you have to die earlier!”

[LAUGHTER]

Yeah! And can you imagine what, what this movie is about? It's actually about health insurance! It's a pretty crazy, full frontal attack on the Germanhealth insurance system of the period, directed by Paul May, the director most people only associate with the Null-Acht/Fünfzehn series of war movies. And this is actually not the only film May did in this vein. As I said, the film is almost impossible to find as a film print. Most people cannot even remember this film. And so this was really just a piece of genre cinema, kind of agitational genre cinema. And it's really surprising where you find, suddenly, this kind of anger, this kind of neurosis. If you study Heimatfilm as a genre that's usually accused of being so goddamn harmonizing. No! I mean, this is a battlefield. If you really look at it, all the problems of the period are discussed in this genre. Not in all of the films, but certainly in the really intriguing period, which is from ’49 to ’53, roughly. Those films, I mean, those films are often surprisingly bleak. I mean, a film like Das Dorf unterm Himmel, which is a film that barely anybody has even on their radar, but it exists, is really a Heimat noir mountain movie, about a woman killing her abusive husband. And it features full frontal nudity. Also something we would not expect in that period. It features everything you do not expect to see in a movie like that. And I mean, also even stuff like labor disputes. There's a film called Das Lied der Hohen Tauern, by Anton Kutter, which is a film about the construction of the Hohen Tauern energy, what do you call it? Kraftwerk?

Eric Rentschler

Factory, yeah.

Olaf Möller

Yeah. And that's a film that's very much, really, about labor disputes in the period. So all of this is stuff that you don't–, I mean, that conventional wisdom would say, you don't find in these movies, but it's there. It's very much there.

Eric Rentschler

Well, let's take tonight's film. Which as you said in your introduction, was roundly hated, when it was shown at the Berlin Film Festival, was considered to be one of the two worst films of that year, or was it–

Olaf Möller 

No, no, Schwarzer Kies. Schwarzer Kies was the Schwarzer Kies, another Käutner film. Der Traum von Lieschen Müller.

Eric Rentschler

Käutner’s stock was not high at that point.

Olaf Möller

No!

Eric Rentschler

And this is a filmmaker with a very, I think, venerable filmography, that went back, you know to the 1930s. But here's a film that is roundly hated by the film critics. It surely flops at the box office, as you had noted. It was roundly hated by the author of the novel on which it was based. So what is unsettling about this film? I mean, I think it's interesting just to begin with the kind of point of departure: a woman is tired of her life, of her nowhere, nothing, life in West Germany, and takes leave. And her goal is, well, anywhere. Anywhere but here, right?

Olaf Möller  41:54 

Yeah. And then we go to Italy.

Eric Rentschler  41:56 

Right. And of course, there is that German myth of going to Italy and somehow becoming a different person. And you know, in a way, escaping your past. It becomes a site of perpetual reinvention. You know, that's an old, old sort of a trope within German literature.

Olaf Möller 

And what do we find in Italy? Nazis!

[LAUGHTER]

You can't escape them.

Eric Rentschler  42:16 

It's interesting that Käutner wanted to cast Orson Welles in the role of Kramer.

Olaf Möller 

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler 

Initially, right? Sort of going back to The Third Man.

But right, you go to Italy, and you find Nazis. You go to Italy, and you become enamored of a man who is, you know, because he can't make enough money from the books he's writing, from the novels he's writing—he's writing about historical murders in the 14th century, in Venice. So a whole history of violence there is sort of already etched into the film. They sort of rhyme, the two.

Olaf Möller 

No, and I mean, I think one of, one of the reasons, also, that people hated the film was, essentially, you know that the director of photography is the director of photography of Fellini. I mean, that Käutner had ambitions here. And that the film is extremely stylish.

Eric Rentschler

Well, I mean, you know, you've got the, probably, representative, cinematographer of neorealism, Otello Martelli.

Olaf Möller 

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler

Right? I mean, we know him from Paisan. We know him from Stromboli. He worked with Fellini an awful lot.

Olaf Möller 

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler

He worked with Pasolini. He also, you know, worked further back in Italian film history, with Blasetti. Also, I think did Bitter Rice with De Santis, as well. So, I mean, he is the signature director of neorealism. And clearly, you know, in working with him, I mean, Käutner is very– It's very apparent that he's obviously trying to move in a certain kind of direction.

Olaf Möller 

And we should say, I mean, as you were mentioning with Filmkritik, neorealism was really the big thing for them. I mean, Theodor Kotulla couldn't get enough of Francesco Rosi, for example. I mean, for Kotulla, it must have felt like a slap in the face that Käutner would dare to use someone from that context for a film. So I mean, let’s put it like this. Also, neorealism, realism was grossly misunderstood at that period, due to the fact that it's usually not understood as—at least the Rossellinian neorealism—as an art that is essentially rooted in Italian fascism. I mean, you've got the Rossellinian neorealism, and you've got the De Santian neorealism. But most people, when they think of the cinema of neorealism, they are thinking of Rossellini. And that is very much an art anchored in Italian fascist modernism. But that's, just as an aside, that basically, this would be something, if you would tell it Kotulla, he would basically, back then, would have died with embarrassment, hearing this. Or I mean, neorealism was the art of liberation, so to speak. It was not conceived of as an art of continuer, of continuity, so to speak. So there is also this whole myth of what is actually, back then, neorealism. A myth that has very little to do with that, if you start really researching the subject a little bit, could be said to be a little bit closer to historical truth. So yeah. So I mean, there's a lot of mythmaking involved in all of this. And I mean, let's say, they are sometimes necessary myths. Myths with which people were trying to keep going. I mean, for me, one of the most intriguing periods in world cinema is actually the years between ’45 and ’48. Because this is a period when people were still able to say a lot of things that from ’49, or as late as ’50 on, they could not say anymore, and they would not say anymore. The 50s are a period of willful mythmaking and belief in myths.

And one has to really think of this. I mean, it's, I think, actually, internationally, an extremely schizophrenic period, where people are desperately believing in certain things, knowing that they are not true. And it's the same going on here in German cinema, actually, in German culture, where people were actively believing in things to keep going, to basically build up something that they actually knew was simply not the case.

Eric Rentschler  46:48 

Well, I mean, I think that situation is mirrored very much, you know, in this figure played by Ruth Leuwerik, who is floundering, who really doesn't have a goal, who really, in a sense, is placeless. And actually, the film ends in a way that the first version of the novel did not. That is to say, it's an utterly open end, and where is she to go next, utterly unclear.

Olaf Möller 

Connections everywhere.

Eric Rentschler

I mean, there are a couple of interesting changes that Käutner made to the novel. In the novel, the protagonist was pregnant, and she has an abortion.

Olaf Möller 

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler

In the novel, when she goes to a pawnbroker, that pawnbroker is clearly marked as Jewish.

Olaf Möller  47:35 

Käutner had a few problems with Jewish associations in Schwarzer Keis. I think it's quite understandable that he did not want to have that one again. Okay, in the film Schwarzer Keis, there’s a scene, I mean, that film is set in a tiny German hamlet that's essentially living off a US Air Force Base that's nearby. So one of the key spaces of the film is actually a pub that’s more or less a brothel. And the owner of that pub brothel is a Jew who has survived a concentration camp. And there is one scene when a drunken guy wants to hear his Germanic oompah-oompah music, and suddenly attacks the bar owner, and just calls him “filthy Jew.” And you see, actually, his tattoo, the number that’s tattooed on his arm. And what makes the scene really remarkable is the fact that it's played out in front of a group of African-American soldiers. And they look horrified and aghast. I mean, it's really intriguing, actually, just to see how Käutner, in this film, uses African-American soldiers as almost like reverberation boards for what is going on in the foreground. But so, this scene became such a monumental scandal that it was, after the film's premiere, taken out of the film and, together with some other stuff, and normal audiences never got to see it. They only had to read about in the media, but the release print did not contain that scene.

Interestingly enough, among the many things that Käutner changed in the process of just taking out this one scene, he actually also changed the ending of the film and I'm afraid I have to say, the ending of the release version, which is much more ambiguous, is much better than the original ending, which is very melodramatic and very open, it's very obvious. Great, but the second ending is much better. It's actually much more in line with this ending, curiously enough.

Eric Rentschler

So, I mean, the point you're making here is it's interesting that in calling attention to the existence of lingering and unbroken anti-semitism, Käutner himself was charged with being anti-semitic.

Olaf Möller

Yes, yes. Yes. But I mean, this is, you could basically say, this is, in many ways, the Federal Republic in a nutshell. I mean, the, let's say, the problematic parts of the Federal Republic of that period in a nutshell. So, basically saying something that's really a hurtful truth. And I mean, it's interesting that around this time, actually, there were attacks on Jewish– actually, on the synagogue in my hometown, which made news all over Germany. So this is a period of time when anti-semitism is becoming, again, visible in the Federal Republic. I mean, as you had asked me, so what was a good book about the Adenauer period. Where I always say the collected essays of Heinrich Böll, from the years ’45 till ’63. That's a good book about the Adenauer period. Adenauer wrote about extensively about that. And so, as I said, these kinds of weird double-takes that people were taking, together with this desperate attempt at regaining some kind of international footing, that on the one hand was done, really, with extraordinary brutality and ruthlessly by Adenauer. But, on the other hand, people were also yearning for, they wanted to go back into the world.

I mean, to just mention some things. I mean, the Federal Republic of Germany was blocked from many international events after its founding. So, for example, the 1950 World Cup in football was basically done without Germany. The 1948 Olympics were– there wasn't a German team, etc. So Germans were really kind of held at bay, hmm? So people wanted to get out as well again. So on the one hand, you've got Adenauer’s very brutal way of basically anchoring West Germany in the NATO context. And in, let’s say, in the European Union context. It's actually also curious, that probably the first contract that you could call a foundation contract for the founding of the European Union was actually an anti-German contract between the Benelux nations England and France, kind of a security treaty against Germany. Followed very quickly by, then, economic treaties that were then also embraced by West Germany. So it's, again, lots of schizophrenic stuff going on there.

Eric Rentschler

I think that one of the real important dimensions of this series you've done, and the way you've put it together, is the way in which these very disturbances, this backdrop that is anything but heartening at times, it's a very serious, difficult moment. That they become enacted, and they become legible in these films. In a sense, these films become chronicles of these very vicissitudes that you're talking about. But, I mean, that's the last place I think, conventional film histories thought we should go to find them. That, you know, again, these films are seen, as, you know, it's the age of the Heimatfilm. Three hundred of the twelve hundred features made between ’47 and 1960 in Germany are in this vein of the “homeland film,” with its flora and fauna, and these people strolling through the mountains singing. You're going back and looking at these films, and finding dimensions there that are utterly unsettling, that, in a way, suggest– I mean, and speaking of Käutner, once again. Käutner has gone down in film history, I mean, there was an article in 1957 in Cahiers du Cinéma by Louis Marcorelles called–

Olaf Möller

“Käutner, le dandy.”

Eric Rentschler

Yeah, “le dandy.” You know, I mean, and it's not to say that he was only a dandy. He’s also known as being someone who made films that inveighed against, let us say, the German past. I mean, safe kinds of films, that way. The Devil’s General.

Olaf Möller

This is actually one of the tragic things. I mean, Käutner is mainly remembered as a political figure, with films like The Devil's General and The Captain from Köpenick, which are probably his politically weakest films. Which were really, like, almost representational state movies. But for the really, really tough movies that he made about German history. I mean, like Schwarzer Kies, but also like Der Rest ist Schweigen, his adaptation of Hamlet set among the Krupp dynasty, so to speak. For that he was, I mean, people were still kind to Der Rest ist Schweigen. But Schwarzer Kies, oh my god, did they hate that! And quite a few other films that were really ballsy. I mean, Epilog, for example. A film again, back then completely vilified. And a film in many ways a mess. But, I mean, what kind of a brilliant mess! A mess that's really a perfect reflection of the mess that is the world in 1949.

Eric Rentschler  55:37 

Let's talk a little bit about Käutner as a stylist, and sort of the look and feel of a film like Die Rote. I mean, if you think about Alfred Andersch. Alfred Andersch really thought he knew something about cinema.

Olaf Möller

[CHUCKLES]

Eric Renstchler

You know, I mean, you remember the sequence where Joachim is talking about Antonioni’s Il Grido? And talking that up? That's a film that Andersch utterly adored. Andersch wrote essays on the Nouvelle Vague, he wrote an essay in Merkur, I think in 1961, on film authorship. He was someone, I think, who had seen art films and thought he understood cinema.

Olaf Möller

Yeah, yeah.

Eric Rentschler  56:25 

And, I mean, the novel itself, Die Rote, is one that I think is a studied attempt to emulate the French nouveau roman.

Olaf Möller

Yeah, absolutely.

Eric Rentschler

I mean, he's really trying to be Robbe-Grillet, or, and, you know, I think, not fully succeeding. But there are certain, certain things that carry over, I think, in terms of what you would find, say in an Antonioni film, as well. I mean, the love of the world of objects, for instance. These aimless walks through the city. It's funny. I mean, that's one thing I wanted to ask you about. One of the things that critics really, I think, could not abide with the film, was the use of voiceover.

Olaf Möller

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler 

I mean, would you defend that? That aesthetic choice.

Olaf Möller

I always defend voiceover. I'm a total fanatic when it comes to voiceover, and I think cinema could do with much more voiceover. We need more voiceover. And we also need more intertitles. Intertitles are really great! I mean, it's one of the things that always, that I was so extremely fascinated with Soviet cinema. That is probably the only cinema that really actively worked with the written word for– you see it comes from the intertitling of silent films, but they worked with it till the 50s. And I really like that they are suddenly writing in the movies, “And on the next day, something else happened.” “Three weeks later, on a sunny afternoon.” Stuff like that. Very good! Everybody should watch Soviet films from that period, and learn to appreciate the intertitle. Anyway! No, I very, very much like the, the use of the voiceover for one very simple reason.

We do have an obsession with voices in modern German cinema. If you look at, I mean, a film like Jonas, which is mainly a voiceover movie. If you look at many of the, let’s say, experimental shorts made by the Oberhausen Manifesto people, they use, excessively, voiceover. Voices are heard in modern, let’s say, in this early modernist attempts in West German cinema, a lot. Käutner is very obviously connecting with this kind of stuff, with this voicescape of the alienated modern person.

Eric Rentschler  59:00 

Okay. But if Antonioni is, in some ways, you know, lurking here as something of a model, although not the only model, one could say, “Well look at Antonioni films. Look at a film like La Notte. When we see Giuliana walking through the city, we see her responding to buildings, and streets, and shapes and objects. No voiceover.”

Olaf Möller

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler

Right? I mean, obviously, there's an altogether different dynamic going on, in what Käutner is doing here. And in the way in which, this is giving voice to the way in which she's overwhelmed. And that inner turmoil is not enacted, it's, rather, expressed.

Olaf Möller

Yeah. Well, but on the other hand, he's really giving voice to a woman. I mean, we could basically say that, with Antonioni, there's a lot of objectifying going on. And Käutner, ever the man interested in what women have to say, really lets the woman speak her mind. Really lets her vocalize her alienation. Maybe not to the people around her, but to the audience. So, I mean, it's very much him. And he hasn't done this in this kind of fashion before. But it fits perfectly into his frame of mind, I think. And as I said, again, if you look into, let’s say, this kind of modern cinema of that period, voices are very, very important.

Erik Rentschler  1:00:39 

I mean, what is striking about Käutner, and I think that also comes out in the choices you've made for your series is, I mean, he was not like an Antonioni, insofar as he made films that had a readily legible kind of signature and impetus. He traveled a lot, in terms of the narrative and generic territory, and the formal territory, that he was negotiating. He was a filmmaker, I think with an inordinate range. Right? And, I think one way of looking at that, is to take certain films that are formally more ambitious, take them more seriously, and say that they’re more important. Or else somehow to look at this body of work, and to find, you know, some sort of inherent way of making sense of someone who is so reaching and so vast in the different directions he's working.

Olaf Möller

But where we actually also come to this problem with comparisons, with saying, oh, how much more interesting is, were Wajda and Kurosawa, yeah, well. I mean, people are referring usually to maybe three films by each, and are completely ignoring what they were doing otherwise. I mean, Wajda is a director of an almost mind-boggling vastness. I mean, this guy tried so much. And, I mean, he was messing around with so many different genres, etc. The same goes for Kurosawa. But then again, you always have, basically, people saying, oh, a film like Ikimono no kiroku, The Record of a Human Being. [IN DISPARAGING TONE] “Muhhhhhhhhh. Muhhhhhhh. Wimpy humanism.”

Eric Rentschler

Well, same goes for many other masters. I mean–

Olaf Möller

Exactly.

Eric Rentschler

Satyajit Ray.

Olaf Möller

Yes.

Eric Rentschler  1:02:23 

Very, very wide range of possibilities.

Olaf Möller

Exactly. So basically, these directors were kind of, kind of considered as masters, based on certain ideas and ideals people had. And yeah, and I mean with people like Käutner,

maybe, actually, because, at least in Germany, people knew all of the films, it was basically easier to call Käutner, well, a good craftsman, or whatever. If people had seen stuff like The Philosopher's Stone, by Satyajit Ray, they might also think twice about going for the auteur label. (And actually, Philosopher's Stone is pretty great.) But so, again, it's really a lot about mythmaking, so to speak. Kurosawa, the humanist, the masculine humanism. Wajda, Young Polish cinema, romanticism, war memories. I mean, we are chopping constantly up these poor oeuvres, because, I mean, because if we look at oeuvres as such, there's something very humbling, normally. Filmmakers are people who actually do try a lot of stuff. They like to do different things. I mean, look, let's basically get the cards on the table. I mean, one of the reasons why I despise Michael Haneke in the last twenty years is because he's constantly making the same fucking movie, and it’s getting worse and worse. He was a great filmmaker when he was working for television, and had some kind of responsibility towards an audience. Since he's working only for cinema: bluhhh. But I mean, he’s really an example of somebody who stylizes himself constantly towards a certain image. Somebody like Käutner, in a certain way, could not afford that.

We also have to remember, these people were making money! They were making movies that were supposed to actually get audiences into the theaters! So, I mean, yeah. I mean, for making something like Die Rote, he would then make Lausbubengeschichten, so to speak. So these are people who are involved in actually generating the money that they are basically then spending on their art. This is a very different attitude towards filmmaking than you have today. I mean today, you have to almost stylize yourself into this monolithic thing, and you can't really divert from it. I mean, somebody like Olivier Assayas is in that regard totally remarkable, as he constantly experiments around, and then does one of those signature films, where he knows, Okay, everybody will buy that. And it's great. And basically, it's bankable, and then continue with this weirder stuff. These people couldn't do that. And neither could Wajda or Kurosawa, by the way. They also had to put some bread on the table. Kurosawa was lucky insofar that his samurai movies were wildly successful. But, Wajda was lucky that some of his stuff was successful. But they were trying, they were looking for opportunities to make movies. And, I mean, this leads to very diverse oeuvres. And so far, I mean, classical auteurism is still the thing. Look at the whole oeuvre. Do not look only at some parts. Look at the whole thing.

Eric Rentschler

Well, I think that resolve truly essentializes that wonderful encyclopedic impetus behind your work. I mean, it reminds me of a phrase by the German poet, Paul Wuhr. In German, it’s something like, “Man müsst die ursprüngliche Unordnung wiederherstellen.”

Olaf Möller

Yes!

Eric Rentschler

“One has to restore the original disorder and messiness.”

Olaf Möller

Yes, very much so!

Eric Rentschler

And in a sense, I mean, I think that that is the resolve behind this series. And I think it really is something that, at least for me, is a, is a model of how one could think of film history that doesn't allow itself simple paradigms, neat cubbyholes, codified overstatements, that try to characterize a filmmaker, or an epoch, or a genre. I mean, I think that messiness is important and intriguing and in a number of ways, I think it's why we love cinema so much.

Olaf Möller

Yeah.

Eric Rentschler

Because it is so ungainly, so surprising. And in a sense, you never really know what you're going to get.

Olaf Möller

Exactly. I mean, we don't go to the movies to be the same person that we were when we entered the cinema. I mean, that's what Klaus Lemke always says. “When I go to the movies, I want to come out a different person.” And I mean, how do we become a different person by being surprised?

Eric Rentschler 1:07:29 

Okay. Well, I surely have come out of this series an altogether different person, in terms of my fix on a period that I thought I understood well. I'm very thankful to you, Detlef. Olaf, I'm sorry!

Thank you, tonight, for coming.

[APPLAUSE]

Olaf Möller

Thank you!

[APPLAUSE]

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