We have already looked at a lot of Nazi films in the archive for closer inspection, but left-wing cinema from the 1930s has been missing up to now. We care with Slatan Dudows Good for him (1932) for remedy. For the necessary left street cred we also have a script by Bertolt Brecht and music by Hanns Eisler on offer. On the very rudimentary level of action, it is about an impoverished Berlin family who lose their apartment and end up in the tent slum Kuhle Wampe. But the indoctrination strategies of the film are far more fascinating: avant-garde image and sound montage and alienation effects, but also semi-documentary realism. We talk about how well Brecht has made the leap into such a visual medium. And even days after recording this episode, we can’t get rid of the Hanns Eisler catchy tune: “Forward! And do not forget! Where our strength consists of! “
Dates & availability
Kuhle Wampe, or: who owns the world? , D 1932, directed by Slatan Dudow
We saw the Blu-ray from Atlas Film – an absolutely exemplary edition with a very nice picture and historical accompanying material. More than recommendable!
Legal
For the podcast, sound effects were added to the site Freesound.org used (descriptions in English):
Thanks to all creators and the community of freesound.org!
NOTE: the passage from the solidarity song at the beginning of the episode is a quote directly from the film, Blu-ray copyright: Atlas Film, 2020.
Special Thanks
A special thanks goes to Florian Hoffmannwho made our humble intro text sound like an event. Fortunately, all of our attempts to bring it down to our level with post-processing have failed.
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