“Poverty and misery, vice and alcohol turn people into what is called the fifth estate. People who cannot escape their fate. A world of its own which we attack rather than fix.”
Weimar cinema is fascinating on so many levels,
stylistically and technically but most obviously because – historically - we
know what’s coming next. For too long one could lazily assume that there was a
failure to address the concerns that would later fuel totalitarianism and yet
so many films are concerned with the dangers of a society that was no longer
working for the many. In this era of cracked actors trying to reclaim un-historical
discourse and myths of nationhood, it’s chilling to view the commitments of
those who we know now went on to lose the fight if not the argument.
Gerhard Lamprecht was the son of a prison padre and a
humanist committed to moving society forward, a forward-thinking agenda that
it’s all too easy to shake your head at: the rise of the most
socially-destructive regimes was never inevitable and that is precisely why the
recent history is so widely recognised in Germany and why Britain needs to
take note.
Slums of Berlin (Die Verrufenen) is the story
of an honourable man who through perjuring himself to save the reputation of
his fiancé, falls from grace into the realms of the underclass where most
cannot afford good manners and easy moral choices. It shows a depth of concern
beyond an alarming amount of modern thought and whilst virtue is rewarded for
some, for others there is no “levelling up”.
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| Bernhard Goetzke |
Bernhard Goetzke – formerly Death in Fritz Lang’s Destiny
– plays Robert Kramer the engineer who takes the fall for his high society girl,
Gerda (Hildegard Imhof). We see him on his release from prison, granite features
set in painful acceptance of all he has lost and even as he rejects the
friendship of fellow con, Gustav (Arthur Bergen) so do his parents reject him
in shame, his father refusing him entry as there is no place in his house for
and ex-convict. Worse still, the woman he sacrificed everything for has moved
on and married a wealthy man.
Lacking anyone to stand by him Robert’s only refuge is
the doss house and banishment to the slums. Lamprecht depicts the life of the “fifth
estate” with inspiration drawn from Heinriche Zille, a German illustrator,
caricaturist, lithographer and photographer who was the first to portray the
desperate social environment of the Berlin Mietskasernen, the crowded tenements
filled with the poor, and he did so in cartoons that we both horrific and humorous.
The film has some of this spirit, dropping the viewer into packed single rooms
full of mothers and children or penniless men whilst also providing energy and
wit chiefly from Gustav who seems to smile at triumph and disaster just the
same and finds humour with the children on the street.
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| Arthur Bergen and Aud Egede-Nissen |
Talking of which there’s a nifty scene with a young girl
talking to a young boy who is ostentatiously smoking a cigarette. Unimpressed
she says, “you’re good at taking a drag but have you ever been really drunk?”
They grow up quick in the slums and we laugh but we sigh.
Goetzke’s intensity dominates the film and he carries the
weight of his character’s desperation so convincingly it’s quite a shock to see
his features transformed by a smile in one of the flashbacks. He wants to work
and rebuild his life but finds nothing and friendless, he climbs onto a bridge
to throw himself to death only to be pulled back by a local “working girl”,
Emma played by Aud Egede-Nissen, who will go on to provide much of the light to
Goetzke’s shade with a distinctly Clara-esque energy.
Emma takes him back to her tiny apartment where he meets Gustav
again as the three share a basic meal. Emma is earning enough to keep Robert as
well but he is determined to work even if it’s only sewing, using the skills
learned in jail to make cloth bags using a Singer sewing machine liberated by
Gustav during a raid on the local fortune teller’s house… there’s so much vibrant
detail.
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| Gerda's husband ridicules the weakness of the poor... |
The film has a series of pointed juxtapositions one as Robert
is taken by Emma to the dive-bar dance, where the record table spins him round,
round, round… until he’s back in a fancy ball with Gerda. In another telling
scene, cutting to and from Robert and Emma’s humble meal, Gerda’s pompous husband
scoffs at their dining table at the story of a man who had killed himself rather
than face starvation, blaming victim for poor choices as… If someone really
wants to work, he can always find something. Fine dining and ignorance, the
“undeserving” poor and their lack of strategic thinking.
Robert meets a photographer called Rottmann (Eduard Rothauser) on the stairwell of their tenement and, after saying he was an engineer, the older man enlists his help in the business of taking shots of Berliners at play. At one theatre he encounters Gerda and her husband and, she makes her way to his apartment intent on getting him to accept the money to go to America – a new start for him and the end of any “embarrassment” he may cause those who knew him. He refuses and pushes the money back just as Emma returns and – sure of her man – the latter kicks Gerda out.
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| Bernard Goetzke and Aud Egede-Nissen |
Robert has not lost his dignity and, with Emma’s help, he
can move forward but good fortune is in short supply in the slums and if it
wasn’t for bad luck, they wouldn’t have any luck at all. Robert eventually gets
work on a production line in a factory run by Regines Bruder (Christian Bummerstaedt)
and his kind, elegantly pretty, sister Regine (Mady Christians). There may be a
chance of recovery for the engineer but fate is set by the harsh realities of social
indifference and a class system based on self-perpetuated misery. To this
extent Lamprecht uses Robert’s journey as a moral challenge for the audience;
how are we to feel relief if this educated and decent man is “saved” when all
those he leaves behind are doomed to remain. As the children play in the street
near the end of the film, we know how fatuous their joy will be but in the
context of the time and story, it didn’t need to be.
I watched the Edition Filmmuseum two-disc DVD which comes
with Die Unehelichen/Children of no Importance (1926) which carried forward
his concerns. Accompaniment for both is provided by the expert hands of Donald
Sosin who enhances the emotional depth with some lovely lines and a firm grip
on the emotional narrative. The set is available direct from their website.
The director is quoted in the booklet essay as wanting to
use film as a social corrective but one critic at least, the educational
reformer Siegfried Bernfeld, accused him of creating “a moving entertainment…
(that) exhorts tears without obligation…” yet surely it is for the audience to
decide how to progress their response to his work? That challenge is there now
as much as it was in 1925.
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| Kids, yesterday... have you ever been really drunk? |
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| Heinriche Zille |
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