In the pre-screening Q&A with Bryony Dixon, composer Olga
Neuwirth mentioned that she had just heard Theresa May say that political leadership
wasn’t about the “easy task” but about “the right task” in response to the people’s
will. It’s a phrase that the Austrian felt chimed very much with the decision
by the Chancellor in this film’s fictitious country of Utopia when, responding
to the electorate’s constant blaming of the Jews for their every ill, he
decides to exile them all even against his better judgement.
Populism is nothing new and neither is religious
intolerance and this film and Hugo Bettauer’s book upon which it is based, are excruciatingly
prescient and so very relevant now as then and much in between. Shortly after
the film was released Bettauer was murdered by a former member of the Nazi
Party… a man who was released after spending just two years in a psychiatric hospital:
justice was poorly served in 1920s Austria and there was, of course, far, far
worse to come.
What began as a comedy satire thus ended up almost
immediately as tragedy and is now imbued with the unbearable weight of a history
with no sign of let up. Today, as the British government squabbled over Brexit
and our relationship with the European Union, a politics founded in defining
our commonality by rejecting “otherness” once again took its toll: it’s the
oldest trick in the book and it works a charm in extending human misery.
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| The Chancellor |
Olga Neuwirth is an Avant Garde composer from Graz in
southern Austria, she is of Jewish heritage and has witnessed a rekindling of racial tensions throughout her
life in this mainly Slovanian area. The Austro-Hungarian Empire declined
throughout the Nineteenth Century leaving a power vacuum and messy local
conflicts one of which led to the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand.
She has worked on film before and developed an opera
based on David Lunch’s Inland Empire:
she knows her films and her music and felt a specific responsibility with this commission.
The result was uncompromising and nothing like we would normally hear for a
silent film score but she wanted to present musically the enduring socio-political
context this film already has.
Using a live orchestra of nine musicians and a
pre-recorded backing track she produced an unsettling score that was hand-in-glove
with the action on screen but which mixed jarring atonality with skilfully-twisted
lines designed to disrupt and disturb. At one point a drunken, disjointed Land
of Hope and Glory appears when some characters are in London, it was stretched
almost beyond recognition but gave a hint of how the other themes used
might sound to Austrians familiar with them: most of tonight’s audience didn’t have
that context.
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| The people and their will |
She used songs which were popular at the time and tunes
which are contemporary symbols of the far right in Austria and always, wanted
to convey “the creepiness, the
uncertainty that everything can happen again… the past and the future are the
same; it can always happen again…” and the music plays a major part in the
connection.
The composer was already very familiar with the book and
the film and when the missing footage was rediscovered in a Paris flea market
in 2015… she was the natural choice even though she resisted at first and had
to be persuaded by the head of the Viennale
She believes that the book should be taught in Austrian
schools – Austria denied they were part of the Nazi programmes even until the
80’s – and feels it’s “already too late” to show the film given the rise of anti-Semitism
again in Austria. It’s a depressing point of view but it is her truth and this
is precisely why her score felt so angry; the more combative score I’ve ever
heard for a silent film, a call for action and attention beyond the prime
directive of accompanying this remarkable film.
This book is a satire but she didn’t feel that Bettauer
felt he was any way in danger – he was playing with forms, even he didn’t want
to recognise the seriousness… in the end it caught up with him as it has with
millions. So, quite logically, Neuwirth’s score is as close to a red flashing
light as you’ll get.
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| A thoroughly disturbing poster from 1926 |
Now the film… Directed by H K Breslauer this is often
described as an Austrian expressionist film and yet, short of one great scene
when an antisemitic parliamentary representative Bernard (Hans Moser) is jailed
in a room full of twisted shadows and stars of David, it’s not going to pass
Lotte Eisner’s test. It is very expressive and directed with skill but it’s
tone – in sharp contrast to the score – is lighter given the expectation that the
scenes in the film would not come to pass (although in this respect the film is
more optimistic than the book).
Utopia is suffering from a devalued currency and post-war
economic strife and new chancellor, Dr. Schwerdtfeger (Eugen Neufeld) responds
to the ease as many voters blame Jews the hardship with their intelligence and
general association with finance and the “arts” (what reasons do you need?).
Gradually he accepts the unthinkable and passes a law banning Jews who must
leave the country by 25th December – and a Happy Christmas to you
too.
This impacts two lovers, Lotte (Anny Milety) who is the
daughter of one of the members of the assembly who approves the law, and a Jewish
artist Leo Strakosch (Johannes Riemann). She will never be able to see him as
strict laws define who is and who isn’t a Jew.
A rich American anti-Semite (goodness me…) helps give the
economy a lift and for a while, things improve for the Christians at least… but
soon Utopia suffers as other countries refuse to do business with them and
then, shock horror, their Yankee benefactor marries a rich Jewish girl.
At the same time the cultural life of Utopia suffers
without the creativity of the Jews, their plays and their music whilst café become
beer halls and a culturally-impoverished society becomes an intoxicated one.
As hyper-inflation kicks in – an all-too familiar
experience – jobs are hard to get and Utopia is heading for disaster. Luckily,
Leo, who has snuck back into the country disguised as a Frenchman, helps to
organise counter propaganda to get his people back.
There’s a sardonic laugh from the Brits as a title card
reveals they need a two-thirds “super-majority” to change to constitution in
order to allow the Jews back – imagine that Mr Cameron?! There’s just one man
in the way and Leo has a plan to deal with the troublesome Councillor Bernard…
City Without Jews
(1924) on its own merits is a well-made film with good comedy moments and
an excellent cast but in combination with Olga Neuwirth music it became something
else indeed. The process of watching silent film normally involves re-connection
with the sensibilities of the time and yet this performance did not allow that
and who am I to say that, this time at least, that wasn’t exactly the right
thing to do.
Whatever Albert Camus said about all art being an attempt
to reconnect with those things that first “moved you”, sometimes its purpose is
to agitate and to discomfort and to make you think. In which case job done.
A tip of the hat to the PHACE Ensemble as conducted by Nacho
de Paz who were fascinating to watch at work.
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