Hangmen also die! Fritz Lang, Brecht and Hanns Eisler

Reissued last year on DVD in a restoration by the BFI, Fritz Lang's Hangmen also Die!. (1943).  Lang worked with Bertolt Brecht on the script, which loosely recounts the reprisals that followed the assasination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in May 1942. The score was written by Hanns Eisler. The producer was Arnold Pressbuger.  Some of the actors were émigrés, too.  In theory,  the co-operation of so many Weimar exiles could have made the movie quite something. The film isn't quite a masterpiece though it's good and gripping. Its value lies in its political significance. It ends with the word "Not" held on screen for several moments. Does this mean "Not" as in German? Could be. But the words "The End" follow, reminding the audience at the time that the Reich was still in power, and that the struggle against Hitler must continue.

Although Hanns Eisler received one of his Oscar nominations for the soundtrack, there isn't a lot of music in this movie, which is fair enough. The subject is grim, the mood too tense for background diversion. Eisler writes a stirring introduction, heard as the camera pans over mock-up scenes of Prague. When his music does enter, it's atmospheric. In the scene in a restaurant, the music suggests dance music, though it comes over slightly distorted. No-one is really in the mood for dancing when hostages are being taken and suspects hunted down. Later there's a scene when arrested people are taken off in trucks to their deaths. It's oddly clean and antiseptic: it's Hollywood, after all.  The final screenplay used wasn't echt Brecht or Lang. The men start singing a maudlin rhyming song which ends with the cry "No surrender!". It's a far cry from Solidaritätslied but could be the kind of song ordinary people might sing, which is part of the purpose behind making the movie, which was to inspire the masses. Luckily, there's plenty of really top notch Eisler elsewhere.

By Hollywood thriller standards, Hangmen also Die! is a  movie that keeps you on your toes. I first saw it as a teenager, fascinated by Weimar and its aftermath though I didn't yet know who Hanns Eisler was, but I vividly remember the atmosphere.

Kurt Weill collides with Fritz Lang

Kurt Weill collides with Fritz Lang and both come crashing down. It might have seemed a good idea in theory to pair the creator of brilliant films like Metropolis (more here) with the composer of The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny (more here)  in a film about capitalism and crime, but You and Me is a disaster flick, despite superb acting by George Raft and Sylvia Sidney. On the other hand, we can learn from mishaps like this, so it's worth looking at. If nothing else, it prepares us for the tragedy that is Weill.

The film begins with a song that should belong to Weimar cabaret, except that it's scored for Broadway camp.  We see a chic department store selling jewels., perfumes, cars and expensive toys, way beyond the dreams of those actually working on the shop floor. A metaphor for capitalist consumerism, if ever there was one.  But the song is pure ham.  The singer says "You have to buy" then mentions things that money can't buy, while the screen shows diplomas (which can be bought). Rhyming couplets, which work in German folk tradition, sound corny in English. Without the intellectual edge of Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill turns to tacky hack.

You and Me works, as a drama, because the plot, though implausible, is audacious. Mr Morris, who owns the department store, employs ex cons incognito, giving them a chance to go straight. No-one knows who they are. Helen (Sylvia Sidney) looks so pure and innocent that when Joe (George Raft) falls in love with her he tries to run away. But she loves him too and they marry. Helen tells the landlady that no-one must know they're married  because it's store policy, but Joe begins to twig that something's not right.  It turns out that they are both ex cons, and marriage would be a breach of probation. Joe's mates plan a heist, raiding Morris's department store. Helen tips Mr Morris off and then gives the men a long speech about the economics of crime. This is worth seeing! So the men stay straight. Joe, however, is livid that Helen lied to him, so this time, it's she who runs away, though she's preganat.  Many months later the ex cons track her down in hospital. This time Helen and Joe can have a real wedding, with howling baby for company.

You and Me has the makings of a very good film, but the attempt to bolt  on pseudo Weimar agitprop blows it off course. The song sequences aren't well written and don't integrate into the drama. There;'s political depth aplenty in this plot, but Weill's contribution dilutes the message, turning it into maudlin sentimentality.  The Rise and Fall of the City of  Mahagonny works because the songs are part of the story. The songs are pastiche, just like the cheap falseness of the city itself. The opera is supposed to sound like it's held together by ramshackle plasterboard. London audiences could not get past the opulent ROH setting enough to realize that that was part of the irony.

Siegfried not Wagner but Lang

To get us in the mood for Wagner Siegfried with Barenboim, Prom 18 tonight, Fritz Lang's Siegfried from 1924, four years before he made Metropolis.(read more about that HERE). "Farewell, Siegfried, son of King Siegmund, you will never get to Worms!" 

This Siegfried is a golden prince who for some reason lives under a World Ash tree on good terms with a community of trolls. They're quite endearing. When they walk they stomp. legs wide apart.  One guts fish while three childlike trolls (ugly Rhinemaidens?) scamper about.  Siegfried forges a powerful sword. "Siegfried, son of King Siegmund", says Mime,"ride home to Xanten. Even I cannot teach you any more!"  In the woods, Siegfried meets an amazingly realistic reptile, constructed in an era when special effects weren't done by computer, but made by hand, and moved by machines. Fantastic scene! A less convincing mechanical bird tells Siegfried to bathe in the dragon's blood to become invincible..He gets the "Wonder Cap"  from Alberich and steals the Nibelungen Treasures.

Siegfried, now with 12 Knights of his own, arrives in Worms, where King Gunther of Burgundy and his sister Kriemhilde reside in stylized art deco medievalism.Study the sequences, they're a visual delight. Hagen, who wears a magnificent winged cap, tells Gunther to fetch Brunhild, Queen of The Northlands. She lives in a castle surrounded by flames with a regiment of amazons. Defeated in a tournament she is taken back to Worms. More spectacular art deco designs!  "Traditional" costumes were never as audacious as these. The set is immense, allowing dramatic panorama shots, not easy to achieve with early camera technology. This is medievalism as modernity, done with great style. Please read what I wrote about Fritz Lang's four hour Die Nibelungen saga HERE .

Not Wagner Siegfried Fritz Lang 1924

Before Fritz Lang made Metropolis, he made Die Nibelungen, the blockbuster of its time, on a scale so elaborate that the film took two years to make. The script was by Thea von Harbou, based very loosely on early German legends, not Icelandic saga and most pointedly not Wagner.

Fritz Lang's Siegfried (Paul Richter) forges his own sword, and gets on fine with Mime. He sets off for Worms because he's heard of Kriemhild, sister of King Gunther. She's a devout Christian. Cue: Mass, crucifixes, altar boys, etc making you realize just how non-Christian Wagner was.

 On the way, Siegfried kills a remarkably realistic dragon. What Wagner would have given for this snake-like serpent that walks and watches Siegfried with soulful eyes! When the dragon is killed, a clear stream flows from its wound, and Siegfried is made invincible, save from where a linden leaf falls on his naked torso. Alberich more or less hands over the magic sword (not Nothung) and treasure before turning to stone. Siegfried becomes a temporal ruler, with 12 kingdoms as vassals.

The palace at Worms is an art deco fantasy. Geometric patterns, as much Bakst or Red Indian as medieval, perhaps connecting to "primitive" and "tribal" archetypes. Watch out for Hagen Tronje's helmet, with eagle wings on each side half a metre high! Significantly, Hagen is blinded in one eye, like Wotan.
 
Siegfried defeats Brunhild, Queen of the Northlands,  in battle, bur she's no prize. Siegfried and Kriemhild are blissfully happy, but Brunhild berates Gunther til he does her will. Oppressively sinister, bristling with hate,, she's much more like Ortrud, plotting to destroy the kingdom. What a dominatrix! Like Ortrud, she tricks Kriemhild into revealing Siegfried's weak spot, so he's killed

Kriemhild swears total revenge. on everyone.  Part 2 of this six hour saga is titled Kriemhilds Rache, and in many ways it's even better than Siegfrieds Tod.  Kriemhild gets herself married to Attila the Hun, no less, and lives in a huge castle in the desert, surrounded by yurts. The castle (vaguely like the Tian An Men) has a magnificent semi-circular door - the same set used in  Gunther's palace. Obviously, this was  cheaper than building a new set, but this has symbolic meaning, too. Panoramic shots, fabulous crowd scenes, an art deco riot in the place.

Attila the Hun is an ugly dwarf, much like Alberich, but benign.  He doesn't sack the churches of Rome because he's "with the white woman" as his soldiers say. Yet Lang doesn't portray him as a demon.  This Attila. ugly as he is, adores the blonde, curly haired baby son he has with Kriemhild while she hates the kid. It's cute how the baby actor gurgles with laughter at the Hun - less prejudice than Kriemhild.

Gunther, Hagen, Nibelungs, Burgundians and assorted European vassals come to visit.  Attila refuses to harm them. Hospitality and honour are sacred to him, he says, almost the same words as Gunther long ago used to welcome Siegfried. 

Once Kriemhild was a sweet, meek Christian maiden. Now she's a robotic monster bent on destroying all in her wake. Aren't you human?! pleads Attila the Hun. "Not since Siegfried died," she answers. Neither Brunhild nor Ortrud were as mad as this. Secretly Kriemhild bribes the Huns to attack her brothers. The rebels invade Attila's grand feast and somehow Hagen kills the baby boy. Attila's devastated with grief yet cannot stop the mayhem bursting out all round. Huns massacre Nibelungs, and the palace is burned. Fantastic special effects and crowd scenes.

"We were not united in love, but now we're united in hate" cries Attila, horrified by Kriemhild's insane intransigence.  At last almost no-one remains alive. Hagen Tronje turns out to be a kind of hero, refusing toi reveal the Nibelung treasures, and offers to die to save what's left of the kingdom. Kriemhild stabs and kills him, but drops dead herself.  Total carnage. To what avail?

Throughout these two films, the themes of honour and loyalty recur.  Kriemhild just takes them to an extreme degree, her loyalty to Siegfried destroying all logic and decency.  Perhaps that was deliberate.  Germany had just come through the First World War, where nations tore each other apart for honour and loyalty. Millions had died, not only in battle but in the famines and revolutions that followed. Von Harbou later became a Nazi but here she's intensely anti-war, anti-power games.

Please read about Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) HERE on this site. there's lots here too on other Weimar movies, some full downloads, too, like Faust and Nosferatu.

Fritz Lang Metropolis (1927) restored

Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece Metropolis has been restored with 25 minutes of new footage and extra intertitles, and original soundtrack (once played live by an orchestra in the cinema). This is big news because it reveals a tighter, tougher vision behind the film than the neutered version currently available.  Lang's Metropolis is not science fiction, it's a parable on modern society.How amazing those opening shots are! They're painted, sophisticated mega-cartoon, at a time when Disney was producing  primitive stuff. It's Futurist, high art like so much else at the time. Bauhaus in the movies.

The Metropolis exists as a multi dimensional, self contained world where vehicles travel in the space between art deco towers that rise endlessly upwards. The Tower of Babel, as the movie makes explicit. This glory comes at a cost. The workers who make the whole thing function are dehumanized, reduced to regimented automatons. Look for the amazing scene where naked bodies are thrown into a fiery abyss in the mouth of a gigantic Moloch. And the immortal scene where the worker has to keep turning the hands of a clock, so the whole edifice doesn't blow up.

 
One "new" scene shows the paradise the young men enjoy - quite deliberately Venusberg, where men paint black lipstick on pretty women. In this restoration, we get more of the male-female power politics that meant so much to Thea von Harbou. Now at last I understand why Peter Gay denounced the film in his seminal Weimar Culture (1968). Gay was disturbed about the feminization of the hero, who throws himself on the bosom of the Eternal Feminine, named Maria, (wehat else?), instead of being a "man".  It says more about him than was apparent to us 40 years ago. For that was von Harbou's whole point. Fredersen's son rejects his father's ways because they aren't right.  The dialectic of this film contrasts "male" power which has created militaristic, mechanized systems with "Female" power which replaced the machine with something more nurturing and positive. The theme "Between the Hand and Brain there must be the Heart" recurs throughout the film.

It's clear: uncontrolled capitalism and industrialization is not good unless it's tempered by something softer and more humane. Much has been made of Maria's depiction as a prophet in the catacombs, preaching goodness to the workers. She's not a Virgin Mary, rather a throwback to the holy mystics of the ancient European past. Lang reinforces this with images of medieval sculpture, Death surrounded by the Seven Deadly Sins.  This isn't a Christian parable by any means, it's much more complex. It's international, too. The red light district in the Metropolis is called Yoshiwara. In the mindset of the time, oriental meant dangerous and exotic. Similarly there are references to Eygptian slaves building pyramids. Metropolis is all places at all times.

One of the new scenes shows the paradise garden where the Sons (of the rich) cavort. It's Venusberg or should I say, Venusburg, another kind of factory where the women are dehumanized like the workers below, though they're more decorative.  Later the Robot Woman cavorts in the nightclub, taunting the Elegant Gentlemen.  Venusberg again, the men automatons though they wear monocles and tuxedos.  Wonderful new shots of the Robot Woman, and her disintegration.

The actresss who plays Maria is Brigitte Helm, a girl who was approached in a street in Berlin, who didn't set out bto be a starlet. In fact, after Metropolis she became typecast as a dangerous, unemotional temptress, which was far dfrom herv reeal personality. At the height of her career she suddenly quit and became a Hausfrau in Switzerland and refused ever to speak of the movies again. In her life, Helm was re-enacting an image of Womanhood from Metropolis. Spooky.

The mad scientist, Rotwang, lives in a primitive hut surrounded by Fredersen's Metropolis, another connect to a medieval past. The hut has no windows but opens onto the ancient catacombs beneath the city.  Rotwang is a strange interface between Head, Hands and Heart, an amazing character to interpret. Luckily this restoration gives us more to go on. The actor, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, was immortalized  as The Gambler and the Testament of Dr Mabuse, one of my top movies of all time. Dr Mabuse uses mind control, shaping others to his will.  The film  was made in 1933. Go figure.
Metropolis explores ideas of mass manipulation,  unquestioning obedience and mob behaviour  Though Fredersen controls the Metropolis, the workers are complicit because they mindlessly follow. Individual workers are depicted, like G11811 but they're like cogs in a machine.  Maria is a charismatic leader with pseudo-religious powers to hypnotise the workers. Thus Fredersen and Rotwang try to harness her image to control the masses. Metropolis shows how appearances can be twisted, and people easily fooled.

Freudians might find something in the fact that Fredersen's son is called Freder, a rather effeminate wimp, whose Goth makeup is extreme. The other male actors didn't need it and  by 1927 film techniques had improved so it wasn't strictly necessary any more. These hints of bi-sexuality may have bothered Peter Gay. Nowadays that's no longer an issue, so Metropolis is prophetic on one issue at least.
The deeper you go into Metropolis the weirder it gets.  Thea von Harbou was married to Klein Rogge but divorced him for Fritz Lang yet they happily worked together. Von Harbou was a feminist and ultra modernist, yet became a Nazi as soon as Hitler came to power. The film represented everything the Nazis hated, because it was so avant garde. Yet some of its themes fitted their values.The Brown Shirts were "national socialist" after all, resentful of anyone more cultivated and upper class than themselves. The triumph of the will, the power of the mob. Totalitarianism, both Left and Right. Order versus disorder. Oddly, the film with its Tower of Babel imagery, was made in Babelsburg studios  The vision isn't coherent but still powerfully evocative, asking questions, noit giving answers.  Metropolis could be interpreted in many different ways, both as commentary on its time and on ours. That's what makes it so intriguing. We still haven't sorted the dilemmas of modern society.
PLEASE see my piece on Fritz Lang and von Harbou's Die Nibelungen There is a LOT on this site about Fritz Lang, Weimar, early movies, social issues, etc and many FULL DOWNLOADS
This is also one of the few sites about early Chinese film in English. Full downloads, too.

F-X Roth, Rameau, Canteloube, Henry Wood Prom 63

François-Xavier Roth is creating waves because he's such a forthright personality, so individualistic. France seems to produce pioneers like this who follow their artistic integrity. Very different from the increasing conformity of the Anglophone world. France and Germany are where it's at. Roth's exciting because he's eclectic, passionate about early music and new, with a special interest in voice. This may be the "next generation" in music, where ancient and modern  fertilize each other. Genre's no barrier to the creative spirit.

Barely 40, Roth  has conducted Ensemble Intercontemporain, worked with John Eliot Gardiner's's Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, and is just about to become chief conductor at SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden, Hans Rosbaud's old orchestra.

Watch the TV broadcast of Prom 63 if you can, though the audio only is just as vivid, because Roth's got presence as well as vision. Conductors have to be communicators, spreading their enthusiasm to inspire the listener. Nonetheless, it's certainly not for show that Roth conducts the suite of  Rameau's Dardanus with an antique drum. That's historically informed. Lully died beating percussion into his foot. The opera Dardanus is a series of tableaux with dance, so rhythmic stability is essential.  Percussion is fundamental to dance and to many forms of music that have grown from folk roots. How vivacious Roth makes the BBC National Orchestra of Wales sound! Totally contemporary, yet connected to ancient traditions, even to non-western form.  Late 19th century style isn't by any means the only way to go.

Perhaps that's why Roth followed Rameau with Joseph Canteloube's Songs from the Auvergne. Canteloube was interested in the Auvergne because it was so different,  less "civilized" than the rest of France, with a singular regional identity. In the mountains, life's harsh. Peasants have to make their own music, so it's timeless. I've long loved Véronique Gens and Sandrine Piau in this repertoire, rather than opera singers who turn to it when their voices age. Now, Anna Caterina Antonacci joins the illustrious.  She's excellent because she sounds youthful and vigorous, as befits simple songs about peasant life and the open air. No unnecessary decoration, but pure and direct, and beautiful for that very reason.

Again, genres blur. Canteloube wasn't writing faux medieval. He was writing modern music inspired by the unique Auvergne dialect and character. Not so different, really, from Ravel's Basques or Cezanne's rugged landscapes. Or, for that matter from Ferneyhough's response to early polyphony ( PCM 5) or Luke Bedford's Or voit tout en aventure.

Again, Roth's musical adventure leads to Martin Matalon's Lignes de fuite ("convergence lines").  It  moves like a series of visual images - Pictures at an Exhibition, already! Each turn is vivid and colourful, music that's fun to grasp. Immediately I thought, this guy should be writing for film, and sure enough he does. Matalon's wrote a new score for Fritz Lang's Metropolis, commissioned by IRCAM.  Since then the film has been restored with newly-discovered footage. This is being screened (with original score) at the ICA from 10th September. I've already seen it and will be writing about it in more depth. It's seminal.

Just as Roth started with Rameau's tableaux, he ended this very intelligent porogramme with Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. But not the familiar Ravel version, but Sir Henry Wood's, created 7 years before Ravel.  This was fascinating,  ornamentation like heavy gilding, edges neatly smoothed over. The sensibilities of a confident British Empire applied to Mussorgsky's untamed Russianness. The Great Gate of Kiev as the Royal Albert Memorial. And why not? Each era remakes in its own forms, and we learn from hearing things in different ways. Roth's logic works. Mix genres and make more of what you hear.

photo credit :  Céline Gaudier

Mosolov The Iron Foundry Prom 46

Quirky highlight of this week's BBC Proms adventures in Russian repertoire is The Iron Foundry by Alexander Mosolov, in Prom 46.

The Iron Foundry was written in 1926-7, before Stalin's dead hand set in, the Soviet Union still supported Revolution in the arts, so its avant garde modernity fitted right into the Soviet mentality at the time. Workers glorified, not effete upper-class dilettantisme.

Nowadays, The Shock of The New may not be so unsettling, but in 1926-7 the world was agog with the idea of The Brave New World and visions of a future transformed by mechanical processes and technology. Extremely relevant to our world, revolutionized as it is by information and communications technology. What connects Mussolini to Bertolt Brecht, Afredo Casella to George Antheil, Legér to Duchamps to Fritz Lang? In September, Lang's Metropolis will be reissued in a new, clean print. I've seen it already and am going to write lots more. But here is a clip of the original, Watch it while listening to Mosolov's The Iron Foundry tonight. Why do they bother to write ersatz music when authentic 1920's music like this exists? (The picture is by Adolf von Menzel, painted in the 1880's, expand for detail) I will write about this Prom and even more interesting Prom 47 which connects to it later - Lucerne Mahler 9 Abbado is just up, then Wagner from Bayreuth ! Please come back, subscribe, bookmark.