“So, who will change the World?
Those who don’t like it as it is!”
There are some films that just chill you to the bone with
a combination of context, hindsight and the present. Who Owns the World?
or Kuhle Wampe oder: Wem gehört die Welt?, to give it its full German
title, is just one of those films for a whole range of reasons, chiefly its
sense of pride, optimism and resolution all impossibly poignant given the time
of its production. Released in early 1932 when Germany had five million
unemployed, a mass of debt and extremists promising a solution that, as we now
know, would hit the country sooner and harder than they could ever expect, its
message that the World must change and it will be changed for the better is
heart-breaking.
This was Bertolt Brecht’s follow up to the enormously successful
Threepenny Opera (1931) and he took far more control over proceedings
with director Slatan Dudow, who was easier for him to work with than the
powerful Herr Pabst. It’s almost a silent film with sparse dialogue leaving the
focus on the songs with Brecht’s lyrics and Hanns Eisler’s music with the
Solidarity Song still a powerful reminder of the forces that divide us: “Forward
– and never forget our solidarity!”
The film contains some magnificent shots, courtesy of
cinematographer Günther Krampf (who shot Nosferatu) and feels more like People
on a Sunday than the studio-bound Opera. Brecht said that a quarter
of it was filmed in just two days and it does feel naturalistically rough and
ready, like Ken Loach four decades before his time along with what feels like
improvised dialogue and the actors working off situations.
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| The image of men on two wheels recurs throughout the film: collective motion |
The most scripted part of the film – co-directed by
Brecht - feels like the final sequence on the commuter train where people from
all walks of life discuss the state of things and the way forward. Everyone is
here, whether from Weimar Berlin or modern day America and Britain, the
middle-aged, the old and the young all seeing different things as eternal
truths are exchanged – comfortable conservatives and struggling youth in
opposition about to be outflanked by a pernicious mix of twisted nationalism
and ruthless state control that generated an incredible pace of change and used
that as its justification.
Equally powerful are the opening sequences in which young
men on bicycles scour the city for work, waiting in groups to hear of possible
vacancies before racing to find nothing. Feet peddle hard, the young men are
determined and fast but not quick enough. This is one of a number of Brechtian
ironies pointed out by writer Andrew Hoellering whose father produced the film.
He’s interviewed in one of the extras, dating from 1999 and, this, together
with the new commentary from film scholar Adrian Martin, adds a lot of context
to the film.
Brecht rescripted the film after earlier work from writer
Ernst Ottwalt and Slatan Dudow who had found a newspaper article detailing the
suicide of a young unemployed worker. Brecht split the film into four sections
according to Martin, of which this incident formed the basis of the first
following on from the desperate search for work and entitled: One less unemployed man, a pointedly brutal take on the tragedy.
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| Defeated. Adolf Fischer's Karl has no fight left on his own. |
Brecht was interested in showing how petit bourgeoise
attitudes of individual responsibility fail to take account of structural
issues that can only have collective solutions. Back home in a tenement block,
one of the young cyclists, Karl (Adolf Fischer) is chided by his father for
being useless, he’s been unemployed for seven months and with the family
struggling he needs to pay his way. His sister Anni (Hertha Thiele, who was also in Mädchen in Uniform (1931)), is the only one employed
and her pride shines through as her brother’s silence reveals his desperation. In
another of those Brechtian ironies, the father and mother are also unemployed. All
are at their wits’ ends though and the second Karl stands up and removes his
watch, we know exactly what he’s going to do, and, with everyone else out he
walks to the window and dives to his death four storeys below; at least they
can sell his watch.
This section is played out with Soviet-style montage and
rapid cuttings, the filmmakers were not just influenced by communism but by the
cultural output of the soviet regime. The second section begins with a montage
of industrial settings as the family are about to get further crushed by the
capitalist machinery. Unable to pay their debts the family is evicted and
humiliated in part two, ironically entitled, The most wonderful life for a young person.
A solution arrives with them all moving in with Anni’s
boyfriend Fritz (Ernst Busch) in his tent at Kuhle Wampe, a former holiday spot
on the Müggelsee in Berlin. Anni gets pregnant but Fritz doesn’t want to lose
his freedom in a sequence that has clearly gaps left by early censorship.
Abortion, then as now, was a hot topic and any direct discussion has been lost.
The initial decision is to keep the baby and an engagement is announced and
there’s another lovely set piece as everyone gets drunk during an eight-minute-long
engagement party. Everyone that is except for a miserable Fritz who feels he
has been trapped and is not ready to commit. A resigned Anni walks off to go
stay with her pal Gerda (Martha Wolter).
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| Headed in different directions? Hertha Thiele and Ernst Busch |
Gerda and her boyfriend are
members of a left-wing group that gathers at the weekends to compete at sport –
swimming, rowing, motorcycle racing… all of which goes perfectly well with
discussion about Hegel and a socialist solution. Their unity helps give Anni
the courage to abort her child and then Fritz finally comes around… there is
strength in unity even after he too loses his job; there is hope. As Martin
points out, Brecht was less concerned about “centering” the young couples’ story
arc than the messaging about collective action and solidarity; their personal
solution is as unspecific as that for the “world” and the people.
The scenes of the “Worker Athletes” festival at the park
are superbly cross-cut, women rowing, men swimming, motorbikes – not pushbikes –
being flung hard around the muddy circuit. Dziga Vertov was clearly an
influence. Then there is the marvellous Red Megaphone Group who, literally, amplify
the concerns of the film and its core family: “forward, without forgetting
what it is that makes us strong!”
Then we have that final scene on the train as they head
home as a good cross-section of German society tries to think its way out of
the misery… leading to the question only the young can answer, in the form of
Gerda. As they descend into the darkness of the station corridors as the end
our knowledge of what comes next makes it almost unbearable.
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| Strength through harmony |
There’s welcome commentary on what became of the main
cast and crew with most escaping Germany fairly soon after and Brecht being exiled again after the McCarthy blacklisting of the late 1940s, moving back to East Germany. How close America
came then and how close is it now?
As Brecht wrote, “whether your belly’s full or empty,
go forward without forgetting…”
There are the usual excellent special features:
- Presented in High Definition and Standard Definition
- Newly commissioned commentary by film scholar Adrian Martin (2022)
- Introduction and Q&A by Andrew Hoellering (1999, 36
mins + 14 mins): the writer discusses his father’s work on Kuhle Wampe
- Bread (1934, 12 mins): a short political film made in protest against social inequality, poverty and unemployment
- Beyond This Open Road (1934, 11 mins): modernist short by B Vivian Braun and Irene Nicholson, with poetic images of workers’ leisure time
- Housing Problems (1935, 16 mins): Arthur Elton and Edgar Anstey’s powerful documentary about slum housing
- Eastern Valley (Donald Alexander, 1937, 17 mins): a documentary about a Welsh co-operative scheme run by unemployed miners
A lush, illustrated booklet with essays by Martin Koerber
and Henry K Miller, an archival review by Jill Forbes (Monthly Film Bulletin,
July 1978), notes on the special features and credits - first pressing
only, so be quick!
Another wonderful – historical – release from the BFI and
every cineaste’s home should have one. You can order direct from their online shop and express your solidarity in person on the Southbank too!
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| Martha Wolter tells the train some truths |
