Olaf Möller
Olaf Möller may be the most celebrated torchbearer among the sharpest new wave of international critics who have slowly taken their place beside (as well as ahead of) more traditional critics. His texts are published on all levels, in print (in many of the world’s most important film magazines), online, and in the catalogues, from the biggest to many of the smallest yet still prestigious, of various film festivals (where he is also a valued idea man and charismatic presenter).
Möller is a brilliant expert of film cultures and the cinema of even the most remote countries. He lives in Cologne, but has only a few days a year to spend there: his rare ability to tie together cinema tradition (of which he is brilliantly knowledgeable) and the impetus of new film keeps him on the road – always by boat or train – almost constantly. In Sodankylä, Möller has reached a cult status long ago, and one of the main reasons for it has something to do with his unique talent to lead us into new, surprising and fascinating film themes that no one else would be able see so clearly. Möller also teaches cinema history at Helsinki’s Aalto University.
In 2016, Möller, a true "honorary friend" of Midnight Sun Film Festival, focuses on late-1950s film from his native country of Germany. Möller provides deep insight into films starring Romy Schneider, Maria Schell, Hardy Krüger and Daliah Lavi, some of them directed by the famed Helmut Käutner.
OLAF MÖLLER'S INTRODUCTION TO HIS MASTER CLASS OF 2016
The Murky Happiness of Not Adding Up
In a 1960 essay for the magazine labyrinth, Heinrich Böll describes the difficulties of explaining the Federal Republic of Germany to a friend from abroad. He uses a rather intriguing adjective in this piece: ungenau = inexact is what he calls the young nation. He meant: that the FRG was characterized by contradictions and paradoxa; or to put it more casually: things refuse to add up. Why? – Because nothing changed completely after May 8th 1945; the Zero Hour is simply a myth (that some might call benign); and yet, it seems, so many thought or at least hoped that the FRG would be fundamentally different from what was before. And it was – just in a different way, one that was less easy to narrate while maybe more human.
Yet, for things cinema and FRG, the Zero Hour-myth worked, although that decisive moment came almost two decades later, in 1962, on February 28th, at the 8th West German Days of the Short Film, where 26 filmmakers proclaimed: The old cinema is dead. We believe in the new one.
One of the Oberhausen Zero Hour’s film cultural legacies is a vast blank space: By now, the FRG cinema of the nation’s early times, the troublesome era of chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the Bonn Republic’s decisive years, is essentially unknown abroad while at home considered a special pleading case. In fact, even those of us who believe in the genius not only of Wolfgang Staudte (Rose Bernd, 1957) and Helmut Käutner (Monpti, 1957; Der Rest ist Schweigen, 1959), the official greats who indeed are great (greater perhaps than we thought), but also that of little-researched and -lauded masters like Radványi Géza or Frank Wysbar – even we are still taken aback when friend from afar tell us how much they liked, say, Der Arzt von Stalingrad (1958) or Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen (1959). We feel strange – which might be just the proper way of reacting to a culture that is so much about strangers, estranged or displaced people, refugees...
Maybe its high time for all of us to watch some films from those years together, to get rid of many a prejudice, start filling that blank space, and discover the contradictions-riddled beauty of the young Bonn Republic’s cinema. (Olaf Möller)
MONPTI
LÄNSI-SAKSA/WEST GERMANY, 1957
Ohjaus/Director:Helmut Käutner
Käsikirjoitus/Screenplay:Helmut Käutner, Gábor Vaszary (myös romaani/also novel), Willibald Eser (lisämateriaali/additional material)
Kuvaus/Cinematography:Heinz Pehlke
Leikkaus/Editing:Anneliese Schönnenbeck
Lavastus/Set Design:Albrecht Becker, Herbert Kirchhoff
Puvustus/Costumes:Margot Schönberger
Ääni/Sound:Hans Wunschel
Musiikki/Music:Bernhard Eichhorn
Näyttelijät/Cast:Romy Schneider, Horst Buchholz, Mara Lane, Boy Gobert, Olive Moorefield, Bum Krüger, Iska Geri
Tuotanto/Production:Neue Deutsche Filmgesellschaft (NDF), WFA
Tuottaja/Producer:Harald Braun
Esityskopio/Print Source: KAVI
Esitysformaatti/Format: 35 mm.
Kieli/Language: saksa/German
Tekstitys/Subtitles:
Kesto/Duration: 96 min.
By the Mid-50s, the axis Bonn-Paris had successfully been established as the defining political force of the slowly uniting Europe. Accordingly, German cinema was looking closely at the erstwhile Erbfeind (= hereditary foe) turned best friend by the tides of the ages, resulting in several films where the locals played French – as if to try and feel what it means to be that particular other; usually, this ended in splendid caricatures and whimsical fantasies – rare is the hint of feelings more darkly.
In this general spirit of playfulness, Monpti opens with a cheeky meta-film-joke: Horst “Hotte” Buchholz and Romy Schneider are introduced speaking French for they play a French couple in love (of course) – only to start speaking German the moment the omniscient narrator explains the movie miracle of dubbing; things is: the moment the film claims that foreigner were made understandable for German-only speakers, it’s un boche and une autrichienne using their own voices.
Topsy-turvy, hurly-burly everything goes – but then, what else to expect from a film whose title is a corruption of mon petit (pronounced MONpti and not monP’ti by just-about every German-speaker…), and which imagines a Paris to end all visions of Paris: totally stylized, idealized, etherealized the way only a German melancholic could on the basis of a theatre piece by a Hungarian cosmopolitan of the old Hapsburg school? Dreams are their reality… (OM)
THE SINS OF ROSE BERND
LÄNSI-SAKSA/WEST GERMANY, 1957
Ohjaus/Director: Wolfgang Staudte
Käsikirjoitus/Screenplay:Walter Ulbrich, Gerhart Hauptmann (näytelmä/play)
Kuvaus/Cinematography:Klaus von Rautenfeld
Leikkaus/Editing:Lilian Seng
Lavastus/Set Design:Hans Berthel, Robert Stratil
Puvustus/Costumes:Lilo Hagen
Ääni/Sound:Hermann Storr
Musiikki/Music:Herbert Windt
Näyttelijät/Cast: Maria Schell, Raf Vallone, Käthe Gold, Leopold Biberti, Hannes Messemer, Arthur Wiesner, Krista Keller
Tuotanto/Production:Bavaria-Filmkunst
Tuottajat/Producers:Hans Abich, Gottfried Wegeleben
Esityskopio/Print Source: KAVI
Esitysformaatti/Format: 35 mm.
Kieli/Language: saksa/German
Tekstitys/Subtitles:
Kesto/Duration: 98 min.
FRG cinema of the 1950s and 60s saw several cycles of literary adaptations by the same writer. It might say a thing or two about the audience of those years that among those authors were two of the highest possible literary distinction: Thomas Mann and Gerhart Hauptmann. The former had been vilified in the first years after the end of WWII by the conservative and reactionary forces in Germany due to his emigration US-wards (as well as his unsparing comments about the German’s willing support of the Nazis…); the latter, on the other hand, had stayed in fascist Germany and quietly accepted that the Nazis (ab)use his name – resulting ao. in one of the more notorious films of the period, Veit Harlan’s Der Herrscher (1937).
Considering the politically extremely ambiguous status of Hauptmann, it’s fascinating that his works should inspire several of the 50s most outstanding films. The still most celebrated one is remigrant Robert Siodmak’s FRG-debut Die Ratten (1955). That said: Those that followed often proved more daring, complex, twisted – none more so than Wolfgang Staudte’s terribly underappreciated, expressive and unruly Rose Bernd that like all other 50s Hauptmann-adaptations re-imagined the original work in a contemporary setting, with the titular character being turned into a refugee. The atmosphere is doom-laden while full of wild-going-mad emotions – brought to the fore as much by the furious acting of Maria Schell as by the film’s eye-popping colours. (OM)
DARKNESS FELL ON GOTENHAFEN
LÄNSI-SAKSA/WEST GERMANY, 1960
Ohjaus/Director: Frank Wisbar
Käsikirjoitus/Screenplay: Frank Wisbar, Victor Schüller
Kuvaus/Cinematography:Elio Carniel, Willy Winterstein
Leikkaus/Editing:Martha Dübber
Lavastus/Set Design:Walter Haag
Puvustus/Costumes:Irms Pauli
Ääni/Sound:Heinz Martin
Musiikki/Music:Hans-Martin Majewski
Näyttelijät/Cast: Sonja Ziemann, Gunnar Möller, Erik Schumann, Brigitte Horney, Mady Rahl, Erich Dunskus, Willy Maertens
Tuotanto/Production:Deutsche Film Hansa
Tuottajat/Producers:Otto Meissner, Alf Teichs
Esityskopio/Print Source: KAVI
Esitysformaatti/Format: 35 mm.
Kieli/Language: saksa/German
Tekstitys/Subtitles:
Kesto/Duration: 99 min.
On the night of January 30th 1945, the Soviet submarine S-13 sunk the Wilhelm Gustloff, a former KdF (= Kraft durch Freude) cruise ship turned refugee transporter in the last stage of WWII. S-13’s Master and Commander, Alexandr Marinesko, can’t be blamed for ordering the attack, for by the laws of naval warfare, he had done absolutely nothing wrong: The Wilhelm Gustloff had the markings of a navy vessel, been fitted with anti-aircraft guns, and was convoyed by a torpedo boat, the Löwe – nothing in the scene’s appearance suggested that this was a rescue undertaking. More than 9300 people, mainly civilians, died that night in the Baltic Sea; so far, it is considered the biggest maritime disaster ever.
The Wilhelm Gustloff-victims were among the very few war dead on the German side whose demise citizens of the FRG (as well as the GDR, theoretically) could mourn publicly, as there was nobody really to blame for had happened (except that the evacuation operation Hannibal was launched far too late …).
And yet, Frank Wisbar, the commercially most successful of all remigrant auteurs (and one of the most urgent cases for serious film cultural re-evaluation!), refuses to play it easy: Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen is a sober, sombre, and sometimes unrelentingly grim work genre-wise difficult to place – sometimes it plays like a realist melodrama, at other times like a combat picture where the action never seems to happen – till it turns into all-out Armageddon. (OM)
THE REST IS SILENCE
LÄNSI-SAKSA/WEST GERMANY, 1959
Ohjaus/Director: Helmut Käutner
Käsikirjoitus/Screenplay: Helmut Käutner, William Shakespeare (näytelmä/play)
Kuvaus/Cinematography:Igor Oberberg
Leikkaus/Editing:Klaus Dudenhöfer
Lavastus/Set Design:Albrecht Becker, Herbert Kirchhoff
Puvustus/Costumes:Anneliese Ludwig, Erna Sander
Ääni/Sound:Werner Schlagge
Musiikki/Music:Bernhard Eichhorn
Näyttelijät/Cast:Hardy Krüger, Peter van Eyck, Ingrid Andree, Adelheid Seeck, Rudolf Forster, Boy Gobert, Rainer Penkert
Tuotanto/Production:Freie Film Produktion GmbH & Co. (Hamburg), Real-Film GmbH
Tuottajat/Producers:Helmut Käutner, Harald Braun, Wolfgang Staudte
Esityskopio/Print Source: KAVI
Esitysformaatti/Format: 35 mm.
Kieli/Language: saksa/German, englanti/English
Tekstitys/Subtitles:
Kesto/Duration: 103 min.
Slowly, the emigrants (far from all, but still quite a few) returned. Although that’s technically the wrong word: returned – for the country they now came to didn’t exist when they were forced (or felt the political necessity, compulsion, need) to leave. Many things indeed changed since, but quite a few remained the same from the Weimar Republic through the “Third Reich” and the post-war wasteland of total occupation to the relative independence of the Bonn Republic – one of those being the economic empires of the Ruhr region where most of the nation’s heavy industries could then be found.
Those dynasties of money and merit (the industrialist way) are the world in which Helmut Käutner set his modernised and quite noir’ish Hamlet, with Hardy Krüger as the scion who here returns to the family estate after years abroad, in exile. Few and far apart are the Shakespeare-modernisations that equal this in intelligence – incl. some radical changes that forcefully speak of the era’s particular problems and needs. Never before and never again looked the iron foundries and collieries of the Ruhr region more majestic, impervious almost – in all that stunningly beautiful.
Der Rest ist Schweigen, just like Monpti, had been vilely overlooked in its own days, probably because the critical establishment didn’t know how to deal with the very unique brand of FRG-Modernism masters like Käutner, Staudte or Rolf Thiele started to develop – too home-grown for comfort, one is tempted to quip… (OM)
THE DOCTOR OF STALINGRAD
LÄNSI-SAKSA/WEST GERMANY, 1958
Ohjaus/Director: Géza von Radványi
Käsikirjoitus/Screenplay: Werner P. Zibaso, Heinz G. Konsalik (romaani/novel)
Kuvaus/Cinematography: Georg Krause
Leikkaus/Editing: René Le Hénaff
Lavastus/Set Design: Willy Schatz, Robert Stratil
Puvustus/Costumes: Claudia Hahne-Herberg
Ääni/Sound: Helmut Ränsch
Musiikki/Music: Siegfried Franz
Näyttelijät/Cast: O.E. Hasse, Eva Bartok, Hannes Messemer, Mario Adorf, Walther Reyer, Vera Tschechowa, Paul Bösiger
Tuotanto/Production: Divina-Film
Tuottajat/Producers: Walter Traut, Ilse Kubaschewski
Esityskopio/Print Source:
Esitysformaatti/Format:
Kieli/Language: saksa/German, venäjä/Russian
Tekstitys/Subtitles:
Kesto/Duration: 110 min.
Spätheimkehrer (= Late Returnees) was a legal term for all those POWs German or fighting for the Reich who hadn’t been released by December 31st 1946. It should take till ’55, the so-called Heimkehr der Zehntausend (= Return of the Ten Thousand), for the process of “repatriation” to find some kind of end (the fate of many remains unclear; they’re formally considered MIA). Anyway: By the time Heinz G. Konsalik, a war correspondent ao. at the so-called Eastern Front (with a “not hostile’ disposition towards the Nazis, at least according to his attempts at getting accepted in the Reichsschrifttumskammer…) and arguably the most (in)famous of all Bonn republic pulp writers, published Der Arzt von Stalingrad (1956) the subject was one of the past. Now began the time of myth-making – and few and far apart were the subjects more stories circulated about than that of the Soviet-run prison camps with their invariably brutal jailers and wardens, as well as the impossibly beautiful and fundamentally unreadable Russian women...
In 1958, two films about Germans in Soviet POW camps hit the local screens, both rather surprising and quite special in their respective ways: Wolfgang Liebeneiner’s curiously melancholic melodrama Taiga and Radványi Géza’s ballsy, slightly noir’ish and certainly mighty claustrophobic Der Arzt von Stalingrad which takes the disappointed-going-disgusted perspective of a returnee as its starting point. A true gem, and a most worthy work of his auteurs, a modernist maverick if there was one in FRG cinema at that time – a genuine case for critical re-evaluation on an international scale. (OM)
