Brecht on Film and Radio

Other Bertolt Brechtpublications by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

Brecht Collected Plays: One

(Baal, Drums in the Night, In theJungle of Cities, The Life of Edward II of
England, A Respectable Wedding, The Beggar or the Dead Dog,
Driving Out a Devil,Lux in Tenebris,The Catch)

Brecht Collected Plays: Two

(Man EqualsMan,The Elephant Calf,TheThreepenny Opera,
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, The Seven Deadly Sins)

Brecht Collected Plays: Three

(Lindbergh's Flight,The Baden-BadenLesson on Consent, He Said
Yes/He Said No,The Decision,The Mother,The Exception and
the Rule,The Horations and the Curiatians, StJoan of the Stockyards)

Brecht Collected Plays: Four

(Round Heads and Pointed Heads, Fear andMisery of the Third Reich,
Senora Carrar's Rift es, Dansen, How Much Is Your Iron?,
The Trial ofLucullus)

Brecht Collected Plays: Five

(Life of Galileo,Mother Courage and Her Children)

Brecht Collected Plays: Six

(The Good Person of Szechwan,The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,
Mr P untila and HisMan Matti)

Brecht Collected Plays: Seven

(The Visions of SimoneMachard, Schweyk in the Second World War,
The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Duchess of Malfi )

Brecht Collected Plays: Eight

(The Days of the Commune, The Antigone of Sophocles,
Turandot or the W hitewashers' Congress)

Berliner Ensemble Adaptations -publishing2014

(The Tutor, Coriolanus, The Trial ofJoan of Arc at Rauen 1431,
DonJuan, Trumpets and Drums)

Bertolt BrechtJournals, 1934-55

Brecht on Art and Politics
Brecht on Film and Radio
Brecht on Performance
Brecht onTheatre
Brecht in Practice
The Craft of Theatre: Seminars and Discussions in Brechtian Theatre
Brecht, Music and Culture
Brecht in Context
The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht
Brecht: A Choice of Evils
Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life
A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht
Brecht on Film and Radio

Original work entitled:

Bertolt Brecht Werke. Grosse Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe
(vols. 19, 21, 23, 24)

translated and edited by

MARC SILBERMAN

Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA aud the Diana logo are trademarks ofBloomsbury Publishing Pic

First published in the United Kingdom in 2000 by Methuen Publishing Limited

Methuen Drama series editor for Bertolt Brecht: Tom Kuhn

Original work entitled

Bertolt Brecht Werke. Grosse Berliner und
Frankfurter Ausgabe (vols. 19, 21, 23, 24)

Translations and Brecht material copyright© Brecht Heirs

Introduction and Commentary copyright© Marc Silberman

© Suhrkam p Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988 and Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und
Materialien edited by Wolfgang Gersch and Werner Hecht
© Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1969
© © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben I Suhrkamp Verlag

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be re produce d or transmitted in any form or by any means,
e lectronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action
as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

Br itish Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: PB: 978-0-4137-2760-2

ePD F: 978-1-4081-7128-8
ePub: 978-1-4081-6987-2

Library of Congress Cat aloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Series: Diaries, Letters and Essays

Typeset by SX Composing DTP, Rayleigh, Essex

 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vn
Introduction IX

Acknowledgements XVI

Part 1: Texts and Fragments on the Cinema (1919-55)

On Life in the Theatre 3
On Film 4
The German Chamber Film 5
Less Certainty! ! ! 5
From the ABCs of the Epic Theatre 6
Mutilated Films 8
The World is Yours 9
Intoxicating Effect 9
V-Effects of Chaplin 10
The Veifremdungseffekt in the Other Arts 10
On Film Music 10
Wilhelm Dieterle's Gallery of Grand-Bourgeois Figures 19
Efforts to Save the Film The Axe of Wandsbek 20
On the Filming of Literary Texts 21
On the Courage Film 22
Questions [about the Courage Film] 23
File Note [Courage Film] 24
The Film Mother Courage 26
On the Puntila Script 27
The Storytelling Women in the Estate Kitchen [Puntila Film] 28
Billiard Room in the Hotel Tavastberg [Puntila Film] 29

Part II: Texts on Radio Broadcasting (1 926-1932)

Young Drama and the Radio 33
Suggestions for the Director of Radio Broadcasting 35
Radio - An Antediluvian Invention? 36
On Utilizations 38
Explanations [about The Flight of the Lindberghs] 38
The Radio as a Communications Apparatus 41
Part III: Early screenplays (1921)
The Mystery of the Jamaica Bar 49
The Jewel Eater 79
Three in the Tower 1 00

Part IV: The Threepenny Material (1930-1932)

The Bruise A Threepenny Film
- 131
N o Insight through Photography 1 44
On the Discussion about Sound Film 1 44
Meddling with the Poetic Substance 1 45
The Experiment is Dead, Long Live the Experiment! 1 46
The Threepenny Lawsuit 1 47

Part V: The Kuhle Wampe Film (1932)

Film without Commercial Value 203
The Sound Film Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World? 204
The Film Kuhle Wampe 206
Short Contribution on the Theme of Realism 207
Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World? [scene segmentation] 209

Translator's Notes 259

Index of Works by Bertolt Brecht 269
General Index 27 1
 List of Illustrations

1 . Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush. Courtesy of the Wisconsin

Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison (United Artists
Collection) .
2. Lotte Reiniger's Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed. Courtesy of
Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin.
3. Still from Youth of Maxim by Kosintzev and Trauberg. Courtesy
of Kristin Thompson, Madison.
4. 'Rotting meat' sequence from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin.
Courtesy of Kristin Thompson, Madison.
5 . Lars Hanson in Mauritz Stiller's Saga of Gosta Berling. Courtesy
of Kristin Thompson, Madison.
6. Alfred Kerr, Bertolt Brecht and Ernst Wiechert broadcasting 'The
Crisis in the Theatres', April 1 928. Courtesy of the Bertolt Brecht
Archive (Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Kiinste, Berlin).
7. Erik Wirl, Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler, 1 93 1 . Courtesy of the
Hanns Eisler Archive (Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Kiinste,
Berlin) .
8. Cover page of Illustrierter Film-Kurier. Courtesy of Stiftung
Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin.
9. First page of the contract between Bloch-Erben and Nero-Film for
the Threepenny Opera film. Courtesy of the Bertolt Brecht Archive
(Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Kiinste, Berlin) .
1 0. Production still from Kuhle Wampe with Adolf Fischer, Bertolt
Brecht and Martha Wolter. Courtesy of the Bertolt Brecht
Archive (Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Kiinste, Berlin) .
1 1 . Kuhle Wampe publicity poster. Courtesy of the Bertolt Brecht
Archive (Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Kiinste, Berlin) .
12. First page of the score for 'Solidarity Song' by Hanns Eisler for
Kuhle Wampe. Courtesy of the Hanns Eisler Archive (Stiftung
Archiv der Akademie der Kiinste, Berlin) .
13. Outdoor location shot of Kuhle Wampe. Courtesy of the Bertolt
Brecht Archive (Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Kiinste, Berlin) .
1 4. Bertolt Brecht and Sergei Eisenstein in 1 932. Courtesy of the
Bertolt Brecht Archive (Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der
Kiinste, Berlin) .
1 5. Fritz Lang. Courtesy of the Wisconsin Center for Film and
Theater Research, Madison (United Artists Collection).

Vll
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

Few readers of Bertolt Brecht (1 898-1956) are familiar with his

writings about and for the cinema or radio broadcasting. Even in
Germany, where he is one of the most produced dramatists on the
contemporary stage and his poems and stories are regularly
anthologized in school readers, his work on these media is per­
ceived to have been scattered and intermittent. Similarly, in the
English-speaking world Brecht's reputation is based on his contri­
butions as a great dramatist and notable theorist of the theatre.
This volume gathers together for the first time in English trans­
lation the pertinent writings of a creative artist and trenchant
thinker who also turned his attention to new technologies that
marked the first half of this century.
Brecht's engagement with the movies and radio constitutes only
one dimension of his work in various other media, including
theatre, opera, music recording, photography, fine arts, ballet and
book printing. One might best understand his entire artistic career
as an ongoing and explicit experiment in how to reach an audience
by using the specific advantages of different presentational modes.
The fact that his 'experiments' often did not succeed led him to
reflect time and again on the possibilities and limitations of such
endeavours. Similarly, the boundaries between his experimental
projects should not be drawn too starkly, since they all belong to a
larger learning process and often were undertaken in parallel with
each other. Brecht never produced a theory or systematic critique
of the media, but both his practical work and his commentaries on
it were devoted to articulating media-specific modes of representa­
tion and reception. As an experimenter, then, he was more
interested in the challenges presented by the changing demands of
technology and history, making the familiar strange - as he did in
his plays too - so that the audience perceives the principles
governing reality and learns how to manipulate them.
Although it is generally known that some of Brecht's early
Lehrstiicke (literally 'didactic plays', but it has become common to
refer to them as 'learning plays') were conceived for radio broad­
cast, or that he co-authored and co-directed a major film project,
Kuhle Wampe (1 932), or that he struggled to break into the
Hollywood movie industry during his exile years in the United

IX
 INTRODUCTION

States, the overall picture of his activities in this area is muddled.

For example, Brecht participated directly in several live radio
broadcasts and tapings of radio play adaptations in the second half
of the 1 9 20s. He then went on to develop a critique of public radio
institutions based on this experience. In addition, he worked
collaboratively on screenplays for major movie productions,
including the early sound-film adaptation of The Threepenny Opera
(Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1930) and the Hollywood feature Hangmen
Also Die (Fritz Lang, 1 943) . Yet, in his own eyes these works in
their final form compromised his artistic integrity, so much so that
in both cases he sought, unsuccessfully, to protect his contribution.
Numerous other scenarios - some elaborately worked out and
others only short exposes - were never realized as motion pictures
during his lifetime. Moreover, the many essays and notes on the
cinema and radio have appeared, even in the German editions of
his works, scattered among his other voluminous writings on
theatre, literature and politics. Hence the need for a volume that
aims to present the reader with a clearer view of Brecht's varied
attempts to engage with the popular media.
There is no question about Brecht's enthusiasm for new modes
of communicating with the mass public. His diary and journal
entries, as well as reminiscences by friends and acquaintances,
testify to frequent excursions to the movies and his enjoyment of
film entertainment. In fact, Brecht's scenarios, film notes and plans
for the movie industry or radio broadcasting accompanied his
entire career, and though neither their quality nor their frequency
remained constant throughout his life, his work on such projects
typically sought unconventional solutions.
In his earliest writings on the cinema after the First World War,
Brecht criticized the practice of marketing a false ideology to earn
profits, but he also recognized that the sensationalism, suspense,
grotesque humour and the documentary quality of showing events
and objects were cinematic effects that appealed to a broad public.
Moreover, the movie industry represented an outright challenge to
prevailing forms of high-culture production and reception, a
development that the young iconoclast appreciated. These became
the themes that dominated his commentaries on the cinema during
and after the Weimar Republic (see Part I).
While his diaries of the early 1 9 20s indicate that Brecht was
thinking about numerous possible movie projects, he completed
only three scripts (see Part III) , probably motivated more strongly
by financial need than commitment to the medium. The scripts
adapt genre conventions of the silent cinema- eccentric characters,

X
 INTRODUCTION

mysterious events, intense suspense - but transform the

metaphysical soul-searching and melodrama of the Expressionist
period with humour and irony. The depiction of narrative events is
sometimes visually striking, including descriptions of visual
structures and details about image composition and editing. Of
course, the scripts are only preliminary sketches of films that never
materialized, but they do reflect a real fascination with questions of
the medium and film genre that would continue to interest Brecht.
With the introduction in Germany of the broadcast medium in
1923, and the establishment of public radio in 1926, Brecht
recognized another new technology for introducing his plays and
adaptations to a broader public. His practice of cutting and
sharpening the dialogue for his radio plays undoubtedly influenced
the development of his 'epic theatre' form: characterizing the
figures by means of language and tonal quality, revealing attitudes
among the figures through language and sharpening awareness
about the different possibilities of one-dimensional (radio) , two­
dimensional (cinema) and three-dimensional spatial relations. In
his sporadic commentaries he began by using the new medium as
a point of departure for criticizing the status quo in the theatre that
was unreceptive to new plays. Brecht also did not hesitate to
criticize middle-brow programming tendencies and to call for
innovations that would use the new technology to document
topical issues and to create original forms of public accountability.
Soon the tension between the two media led him to experiment
with new forms of staging, especially for the radio broadcasts of the
early Lehrstilcke, which could alter the collective process of
audience reception (see Part II) . Brecht's insistence on the
disparity between new technology and old content - that is, on the
inappropriate use of the broadcast institution to reproduce or
imitate other arts (theatre, concerts, opera, etc.) rather than
producing its own media-specific programming - is symptomatic
of his approach. For Brecht, radio broadcasting offered a potential
model for transforming the listener from a consumer into a
producer by making maximum use of the communicative function
inherent in the technology.
Among the cultural critics of the Weimar Republic, Brecht was
unusual in that he did not fear the entertainment industry. On the
contrary, he sought out opportunities to use its mechanisms against
conservative and progressive intellectuals alike who held on to the
elitism of traditional art forms. Nothing illustrates this practice
better than the fate of The Threepenny Opera in its metamorphosis
from the most successful stage production of the Weimar Republic

xi
 I N T R O D U C TION

(1928) , to the screenplay, 'The Bruise' ('Die Beule', 1930) , that

was commissioned for a commercial film adaptation, to the actual
film by Georg Wilhelm Pabst (1930) , to the fragmentary Threepenny
Novel (1934). Accompanying these were the lawsuits initiated by
Brecht and the composer Kurt Weill against the film production
company for copyright infringement (1930) and the book-length
essay 'The Threepenny Lawsuit' ('DerDreigroschenprozess', 1932) ,
Brecht's most incisive and sustained reflection on the conditions of
cultural production under capitalism (see Part IV).
If the 'Lawsuit' essay is Brecht's most sophisticated contribution
to media theory, then the contemporaneous film project Kuhle
Wampe is his most important legacy to film history, the only
example of his practical work that came close to realizing the idea
of de-individualizing (aesthetic) production in the cinema (see Part
V). Not only the film's planning and shooting, but also its themes
and structure integrate the collective experience with new ways of
representing reality. In a self-conscious attempt to counteract the
hierarchical studio arrangements in the commercial industry,
Brecht brought together a production team consisting of the
Bulgarian emigre Slatan Dudow, novelist Ernst Ottwald and
composer Hanus Eisler, as well as well-known actors from the
workers' theatre movement and thousands of enthusiasts organized
in workers' sports clubs for the film's finale. For Brecht the
successful completion of the shooting was a significant public event
because it had engaged leading Leftist intellectuals with workers'
organizations in a creative process. The entire project was also an
exceptional example of how to link questions of representation,
social change and the subject who will effect that change - issues
that preoccupied Brecht during the early 1930s.
Brecht was among the first writers to leave Germany in 1933
under the threat of Hitler's accession to power. Yet he continued
to pursue cinema projects, undoubtedly both for financial and
political reasons. During the exile years in Scandinavia he sought,
through fellow emigres such as Erwin Piscator in Moscow and Leo
Lania in London, opportunities to place original exposes, to
negotiate contracts for film adaptations of his plays or to obtain
commissions for film scripts. Despite promising leads with
directors such as Alexander Korda, Joris Ivens and Hans Richter,
nothing materialized, other than the lame project for a British film
adaptation of Leoncavallo's opera I Pagliacci in 1936, for which the
exile actor Fritz Kortner secured Brecht a contract to help write the
dialogues. He was paid for the contributions, but his texts were not
used. Generally the film plans receded behind more intensive work

xu
 INTRODUCTION

on projects in other media (plays, novels, stories, poems and

political and literary essays) .
Brecht arrived with his family at the port of Los Angeles in July
1 941 . He decided to settle on the West Coast rather than in New
York, where he also had an invitation, because of its large com­
munity of German emigre artists and because of his potential
contacts with the movie industry in Hollywood. He was
encouraged by reports that German screenwriters actually enjoyed
a good reputation in the industry and during his six years in
Hollywood he rubbed shoulders with many of the most important
studio personalities. Yet obviously Brecht in no way conformed to
the pattern of Hollywood movie-making. He held its formula
writing in contempt, criticized its immense waste and shared none
of its sensitivity to serious criticism. While Brecht still considered
the script to be a literary text, Hollywood practice had already
broken it into a series of separate responsibilities (idea, treatment,
scenario, script, shooting script) . And his notion of collective
production did not fit the studio model of industry specialization
and rationalization. At the same time, Brecht's reputation in the
United States was not established, so he was dependent on friends
and acquaintances to open doors for him. Brecht never lost his
fascination for American movies, however, as the many entries
about screenings in his journals from these years indicate. That he
mentioned or actually brought to paper at least fifty film projects
evidences his determination to break into the industry, especially in
view of the fact that his hopes were hardly fulfilled. Not one of the
projects actually became the film he envisioned, few found their
way into more than fragmentary textual form and they occupied
Brecht's time as much to earn income as to reach the mass
audience with an anti-fascist message.
Brecht did have two qualified 'successes' in Hollywood. The script
collaboration with John Wexley for Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die
about the assassination of Hitler's henchman Heydrich was ulti­
mately taken out of his hands (working titles were 'Never Surrender'
and 'Trust the People'). In an appeal Brecht brought before the
Screen Writers Guild contesting the movie's credits, Wexley was
ruled to have been the sole scriptwriter, based on Brecht's and
Lang's original story. Brecht was paid well by United Artists for his
intense work on the script during 1 942 (see his many journal entries
during the second half of 1 942) , but the final cut reflects few of the
distinctive qualities associated with his name. Although it counts
among Hollywood's best anti-fascist features, the sensationalist
gangster and action effects mark it as a Fritz Lang classic.

Xlll
 INTRODUCTI O N

Brecht was also able to sell indirectly the idea of his play The
Visions of Simone Machard. His fellow exile author Lion
Feuchtwanger had written a novel based on Brecht's 1 942 play
about a modem-day Jeanne d'Arc in the French Resistance for
which MGM purchased the story rights in 1 943. Feuchtwanger
split the sizeable sum with Brecht, but the film was never made
because the lead actress became pregnant and by the time shooting
was again possible France had been liberated by the Allies.
Brecht's many other film projects during these years disclose a
curious mixture of willingness to adapt to the demands of the
movie industry and refusal to compromise on its terms. His plans
for cinematic adaptations of classical as well as modem literary
texts emphasized the contemporary, everyday familiarity of the
conflicts rather than literary 'quality'. The exposes for bio-pics
avoided heroism and sentimentality in favour of portraying the
social conditions behind historical figures. The ideas for topical
films conformed to established genre conventions while seeking
every opportunity to sharpen the social contrasts. Towards the end
of the war, Brecht became active in the 'Council for a Democratic
Germany', an emigre organization formed to prepare for the post­
war transformation of the country. However, his plans to produce
agitational and didactic films for re-educating Germans did not
gain the support of the American government. Quite to the
contrary, on 30 October 1 947 Brecht was called with other motion
picture personalities before the congressional House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC) where he could state with a clear
conscience, but not without irony: 'I am not a film writer and I am
not aware of any influence I have had on the film industry, either
politically or artistically. '
Brecht left the United States for Europe following his HUAC
hearing and, after almost a year's wait in Switzerland for the
necessary visa papers, arrived in East Berlin prepared to form a
theatre ensemble. This meant the opportunity at last to produce
plays under congenial conditions, to continue the theatre experi­
ments broken off in 1 933 and to see his own plays come to life in the
context for which they were written. It is all the more surprising,
then, that he found any time for the film projects that continued to
preoccupy him until he died, including supervision of screenplay
rewrites for the Mother Courage and Puntila plays (see Part I).
Ironically, though, under the socialist regime in East Germany,
Brecht found himself once again confronted with the limitations of
an industrially and ideologically conservative production apparatus
at the newly established East German DEFA film studios.

XlV
 INTRO D U C T I O N

Brecht's practical and critical interventions in the cinema and

broadcast media spanned his entire artistic career. The selection
here is intended to provide English-language readers with an
overview of his writing in these areas from 1919 through to the
mid-1950s as well as with a sense of the textual diversity it
encompasses. Except for the scene segmentation of the film Kuhle
Wampe, the material is drawn exclusively from the thirty-volume
edition of Brecht's works published by Aufbau Verlag and
Suhrkamp Verlag ( Werke, Grosse kommentierte Berliner und
Frankfurter Ausgabe, 1988-1 998). The volume and page numbers
are indicated (GBFA volume/pages) at the beginning of each
commentary (in square brackets after each text) . Some of the
commentaries have also been adapted from this same edition.
Entries in the Diaries 1 920-1 922 (edited by Herta Ramthun and
translated by John Willett and Ralph Manheim, Methuen, 1979)
and Journals 1 934-1955 (edited by John Willett and Ralph
Manheim and translated by Hugh Rorrison, Methuen, 1993)
concerning the cinema in general and specific film projects have
not been included, since they are readily available in English
translation. Similarly, the film exposes Brecht wrote in English
during his American exile are available in the original version in the
edition mentioned above. These include:
'On the Eve of Their Marriage' (1941 , GBFA 20/1 7-20) , co­
author Ruth Berlau, in an earlier version under the title 'Safety
First'.
'The King's Bread' (1941 , GBFA 20/30-9 ) , co-author
Ferdinand Reyher.
'The Senator's Conscience' (1942, GBFA 20/88-9 ) .
'Henry Dunant: The Founder of the Red Cross' (1942, GBFA
20/527-32).
'Silent Witness' (1944, GBFA 20/97-1 20) , co-authors Vladimir
Pozner and Salka Viertel.
'The Goddess of Victory' (1944, GBFA 20/1 20-40).
'Lady Macbeth of the Yards' (1945, GBFA 20/143-62) , co­
authors Peter Lorre and Ferdinand Reyher.
Since no textual evidence for Brecht's own version of, or his contri­
butions to, the screenplay of Hangmen Also Die ('Never Surrender')
is extant, it is not included here. Archival copies can be found at the
Wisconsin State Historical Society at the University of Wisconsin
(Madison, John Wexley's copy) and at the Rare Books Library of the
University of California (Los Angeles, Fritz Lang's copy).

Marc Silberman
Madison, March 1999
XV
 Acknowledgements

I wish to thank John Willett in London, who was an enthusiastic

supporter of this project from the very start. His own volume of
translations, Brecht on Theatre (Methuen, 1964) , was my model. In
fact, short excerpts from three selections that I present here in fresh
translation appeared previously in that anthology: 'An Example of
Paedagogics', taken from the Notes to The Flight of the Lindberghs;
'The Film, the Novel and Epic Theatre', taken from sections III.l
and III.6 of 'The Threepenny Lawsuit'; and 'The Radio as an
Apparatus of Communication'. Similarly, I wish to thank Tom
Kuhn at Oxford University - who now co-edits the Methuen
Brecht edition with Willett - for his unusually collegial
encouragement and his truly selfless suggestions for improving the
translations. I also wish to acknowledge the help of]erold Couture
in New York City, who at the outset facilitated communication
with Stefan Brecht regarding the English-language rights to
Brecht's works, and of Helene Ritzerfeld at Suhrkamp Verlag,
Frankfurt, who advised me on questions of copyright. Dr Erdmut
Wizisla, director of the Bertolt Brecht Archive at the Academy of
Arts in Berlin, and his staff were especially helpful for biblio­
graphical references and in locating visual material. Finally,
without the financial support of the Wisconsin Alumni Research
Foundation (WARF) and the College of Letters and Science at the
University of Wisconsin, which granted me a sabbatical leave, I
would not have been able to complete these translations in a timely
fashion.

xvi
 Part I
Texts and Fragments on the Cinema
(1919-1955)
This page intentionally left blank
 On Life in the Theatre

If the cinemas continue to be permitted to show the smut they do

now, soon there will be no one going to the theatres any more. As
soon as republican freedoms blossomed for the cinema people, they
discovered their sympathy for poor girls and their obligation to open
the eyes of the Republic: they made sex education films. The goods
were not new because they had to be profitable. Yet the police, who
were not particularly well disposed toward the whorehouses, had
previously prohibited this kind of sex education. Now, however, it
earned a lot of money and everyone learned that the destiny of the
fallen is certainly pitiable, but therefore all the more splendid. The
career of a lost soul leads in the cinema from the narrow, sparsely
furnished back room to glittering nightclubs, where the poor fallen
angels, exhausted by the dancing, guzzle champagne and rock back
and forth on the knees of intoxicated, paying and corrupt cavaliers,
right on into pompous houses of joy furnished like the sets in the
film The Jewels ofthe Duchess. 1 There is no turning back on this path.
The poor victims of male desire are thrust down by their fellow
human beings and the police into the merry mirrored rooms. The
young girls sitting in the cinema, usually next to the young man who
has paid for the ticket, learn that all resistance on the part of the
fallen only leads further downward and even the most desperate
struggle to return to the high road is useless and only leads to deeper
misery. All bosses are afflicted with male desire and offer wine to
their secretaries; there can be no refusal. If the wanton girl has a
baby, then the poor worm starves, and the baby is not saved by
placing it in an orphanage, but rather the unhappy mother sacrifices
herself and proceeds to the whorehouse, accompanied by organ
chords, although the sentimental sobbing in the cinema, thank
God, almost masks the organ. The young girls are tickled by the
fantastic pleasures the world offers and imagine with horror the
mirrored rooms from The Jewels of the Duchess behind the walls of
the houses of ill repute. The young men watch with pleasure how
'easy it is', how even distinguished gentlemen do it, how small the
risk is, if you are as devilishly clever as the cavalier on screen. Thus,
they all get their money's worth, the business flourishes, the film
Prostitution is extended often 'by popular demand', 2 and freedom is
the best of all conditions.

3
 TEXTS AND FRAGMENTS ON THE CINEMA ( 1 9 1 9- 1 9 5 5 )

[GBFA 2 1 /40-1 . Printed in the newspaper Der Volkswille (Augsburg), 7

November 1919. This is Brecht's first published commentary on the
cinema, written for his home town's newspaper. After Germany's defeat in
the Great War, there was a loosening of censorship regulations, which led
in turn to a flood of prurient films, marketed under the guise of moral
education.]

On Film

Here are the obstacles that in my opinion stand in the way of

working on a screenplay:

1 . The screenplay is a kind of improvised play. The writer stands

outside and does not know the needs and means of the various
studios. No engineer draws up plans in advance for a complicated
water treatment plant in the hope that someday a company will
come along that urgently needs just this design.
2. The fellows who sit at the source have a deep aversion towards
the fellows who want to sit at the source. This aversion is shared by
the fellows who sit near the fellows, etc.
3. Competition among the films themselves resembles horse­
carriage races, where most attention is focused on the purple
caparisons and the horses' ornamentation. Writers cannot main­
tain this tempo.
4. If the film industry believes that kitsch tastes better than good
work, it is an excusable error, called forth by the public's infinite
capacity to consume kitsch (in this case the devil bites the dust) as
well as by the writers who consider higher art to mean boredom, by
those 'misunderstood writers' who exclude the public from their
readings. The error of those writers, however, who consider films
to be kitsch and yet write them, is inexcusable. There are
accomplished films that have an impact even on people who
consider them to be kitsch; but there are no accomplished films
produced by people who consider them to be kitsch.
5. We would have achieved a lot if at least the distribution of
artistically acceptable film stories were to be organized.

[GBFA 2 1/100. Berliner Borsen-Courier, 5 September 1 922. This Berlin

daily newspaper began a series under the title 'German Writers on the
Cinema' with this contribution by Brecht, who was introduced as an
important writer of the younger generation.]

4
 The German Chamber Film

In order to interest the export market, one must produce different

films from those made in foreign countries. What constitutes the
really effective qualities of a film is what all Nordic countries share.
The timing of the good American films can be had anywhere on the
Continent where the screenplays are inspired by natural and
modem life and where the directors and actors are matter-of-fact
and honest in their work. The truthfulness of the most effective
Swedes derives from their ability to relate to people and to
understand something about psychology. 3 What we do not have,
though, are, for example, grotesque actors like Chaplin or the
natural talents like Hanson. 4 We must try to exploit in the cinema
the qualities of German actors. We must use internal motivation,
be oriented to strongly visual effects, compose every millimetre of
the screen and give the screenplay an individual tone. We must
recognize that film needs its own truthfulness, that just as in all
other successful enterprises, there must be in the cinema people
who count for something. And the most important thing: film may
be anything as long as it is not boring.

[GBFA 2 1 /105. Unpublished typescript written in 1 924. Kammerfilm or

chamber film mentioned in the title is a genre derived from the chamber
play, characterized by restricted space and a small number of characters.
Hintertreppe (Backstairs, directed by Paul Leni and Leopold Jessner, based
on a screenplay by Carl Mayer) is a good example from the German
Expressionist cinema.]

Less Certainty!!!

I saw Chaplin's film The Gold Rush only quite recently because the
music being played in the cinema where it now screens is so awful
and unartistic. But then the deep discouragement that seems to
grip all my acquaintances from the theatre prompted me to go. I
find their discouragement to be justified.
I do not hold the view that what this film achieves cannot be
done today in the theatre because it is incapable of it. Rather I
believe that it cannot be done anywhere - in the theatre, in
vaudeville, in the cinema - without Charlie Chaplin. This artist is
a document that today already works by means of the power of
historical events. But from the point of view of content, what the
film The Gold Rush achieves would be insufficient for any stage and

5
 TEXTS AND FRAGMENTS ON THE CINEMA ( 1 9 1 9- 1 9 5 5 )

for any theatre audience. There is, of course, a certain charm when
in such young arts as the cinema the joy in particular personal
experiences has not yet been displaced by a dramaturgy that has the
experience of an old whore. When Big Jim can no longer find his
gold mine because of his amnesia and meets Charlie, the only man
who could show him the way and they cross paths without noticing
each other, something happens that on the stage would irreparably
destroy any audience's confidence in the author's ability to resolve
a plot with vigour.
Film has no responsibility, it does not need to exert itself. If its
dramaturgy has remained so simple, it is because the film consists of
nothing more than a few miles of celluloid in a metal can. You don't
expect a fugue from a saw that someone bends between his knees.
Naturally the cinema today no longer poses any technical
problems. Its technology is advanced enough not to notice them.
Today the theatre is much more of a technical question.
The cinema's potential is to be found in its capacity to collect
documents. To present some philosophy or another, or the images
of life, by means of the sad fate of a once interesting actor of the
fantastic who has fallen victim today to that noble, measured
existence with which little Johnny imagines that Julius Caesar
crossed the Tiber, a noteworthy singer who inspires us through his
acting to meet him live on the theatre stage.

[GBFA 2 1 / 1 35-6. Unpublished text written in 1 926. Charles Chaplin's

The Gold Rush was produced by United Artists and opened in the USA in
August 1 925. According to a note by Brecht's secretary Elisabeth
Hauptmann, he saw the film in March 1 926. The last sentence is
fragmentary in the original typescript. For Brecht, Chaplin's non­
psychological acting style contrasted with the introspective habits of
German actors in the 1 920s and became a major factor in the economy of
expression that he later developed with the notion of gestic acting in the
epic theatre.]

From the ABCs of the Epic Theatre

'IJ17 Film
Film can be of great importance in the epic theatre. Yet it must be
used in a way that is appropriate to its artistic or scientific nature,
precisely as if it stood on its own. Film obeys the same laws as
graphic art. It is essentially static and must be treated like a series
of tableaux. Its effect must arise from the clear interruptions, which

6
 FROM T H E ABCS OF T H E E P IC THEATRE: FILM

would otherwise just be common errors. The tableaux must be so

composed that they can be taken in at a single glance like a sheet of
paper, but yet they must withstand separation into details so that
every detail corresponds in the larger scheme with the centre. This
fundamentally static aspect of film gives rise to the following basic
rule: film is limited to a vision which itself stands motionless but
into which each individual phase leads for greater effect. Thus, the
structuring of the individual sequences must exactly reproduce on
a large scale the structure of the smaller, discrete shots. Any kind
of imprecision is unartistic. This basic rule of the cinema, as strict
as any in the other domains of art, thus makes film resistant to the
logic of plot. Also the non-three-dimensional nature of film, which
creates this spiritual effect, defies plot in the dramatic sense. Not to
account for this rule seriously limits a film's life-span. Since film
has no capacity to emphasize one thing over another, it relies
entirely on this sort of selection of all the points in a plot which are
needed for its own time period, being utterly dependent on this
time. Moreover, fashionable taste is so important for its realization
that film quickly becomes laughable. And a final point: it cannot
simplify. What could it eliminate without becoming unnatural?
Film in its own right can be used in the epic theatre as a kind of
optical chorus. In this case it is a good idea to maintain realism -
that is, not to construct, let alone design something. For film in any
event already lacks substance vis-a-vis the word and therefore
needs the common stuff of reality. Obviously numbers, statistical
formulations, maps, etc., are pure objects of reality and suitable for
choruses.
In connection with the set or an acoustical chorus the sharpest
dialectic possible must be created and exploited. Since film can
represent reality in such an abstract way, it lends itself to con­
frontations with reality. It can confirm or dispute. It can recall or
prophesy. It can assume the role of those spectral phenomena
without which for a long time - even at the best times - there were
no great dramas. And yet here it plays a really revolutionary role,
for as spectre it causes naked reality to appear, the good deity of the
revolution.
If film is used only as decoration to create an environment, then
it must be artistically formed, that is, simplified. It must present
what is typical. In this case one can even design or construct. Most
importantly, however, the film - if it presents a real environment ­
must not be allowed to destroy once and for all the pleasure in the
dialectic between the three-dimensional and the non-three­
dimensional.

7
 TEXTS AND FRAGMENTS ON THE C I NEMA ( 1 9 1 9- 1 955)

(These rules are aimed less at the artists, who precisely in their
rejection of such pearls of wisdom perhaps produce something,
than at the viewers, who are perhaps preparing themselves for these
more progressive works of art precisely by accepting them.)

[GBFA 2 1 /2 1 0-12. Unpublished typescript written in 1 927. There exist

no other 'paragraphs' as would be indicated by '-,]17' at the top and
probably no others were written. Possibly this is one of several fragments,
most of which were written later, meant to describe the epic theatre.
Brecht is remarking here, of course, on the silent cinema, before sound
film was introduced in Germany. In a review of Robert Louis Stevenson's
complete works in a German edition, Brecht had already articulated briefly
his position on the cinematic nature of literature:
It is interesting to note that, as we can see quite clearly in Stevenson's
stories, the filmic perspective existed on this continent before the
cinema itself. Not only for this reason is it ridiculous to claim that
cinematic technology introduced a new visual perspective into
literature. On a purely verbal/eve! the regrouping according to the optical
perspective began long ago in Europe. Rimbaud, for example, is already
oriented in a purely optical way. But for Stevenson all events are
organized now visually.
(See Brecht, 'Glossen zu Stevenson', GBFA 2 1 /1 07, originally published
in Berliner Borsen-Courier, 1 9 May 1 925.)]

Mutilated Films

Recently Lotte Reiniger's film The Adventures of Prince Ahmed was

screened in the cinema 'Die Kamera' (Unter den Linden) in a
completely massacred version made silly by the ridiculous cuts. 5
This important film, produced with a lot of talent and an almost
Asiatic diligence by people who can by no means be counted as
belonging to the film industry, was screened in such a bizarre form
even at its opening in a UFA cinema that one can hardly escape the
feeling that it is being shown so that it can be canned. Whether the
cinema has not succeeded in making it a commercial run or whether
it has succeeded in not making it a commercial run, they have now
made cuts that were either very stupid or- an even more interesting
possibility - very clever, so that it has become a complete artistic
fiasco! Instigating a small investigation of such incidents would
possibly look foolish, since it is only a mere artistic matter, that is,
something extremely rare, unusual and not really of concern to
anybody.

8
 INTOXICATING EFFECT

[GBFA 2 1 /248. Berliner Borsen-Courier, 30 August 1 928; an editorial note at

the head of the article states: ' "Die Kamera", which deserves credit as the
first Berlin cinema to show a regular programme of outstanding older
German and foreign productions, unfortunately shows these films
sometimes distorted by cuts. We print here a letter from Bert Brecht that will
perhaps open the necessary discussion about the rights of film makers.']

The World is Yours

A stranger who sets foot in one of this continent's huge cities, let's
say New York, to attend to his business, perhaps not such
promising business, for example, the business of theatre, such a
man would undoubtedly speak of good fortune if one day - in the
circumstances in which he will inevitably find himself - he
discovers the importance of certain small and sometimes also larger
stores that are spread out over the entire city and sell 1 20 minutes
of entertainment, the cinemas. Together with a remarkable
number of other people, who apparently find themselves in similar
circumstances, probably because their business is equally
unpromising, he will be able, to his joy, to find some relief there.

[GBFA 22/ 1 68. Typescript written in November/December 1 935.

According to a note written by Brecht about a year later ('Begrenzung der
Illusion', GBFA 22/262), the title - in English in the original - refers to a
neon sign seen outside a window in an unidentified American gangster
play.]

Intoxicating Effect

It is an error that the 'boredom' of the villages and towns drives the
people into the cinema; they need it more in the large cities and
most in the largest cities. The hunger for substitute experience is
greatest where the gap between work and recreation is widest,
where the contradiction between the acceleration and retardation
of the pressure to perform is intensified. The atomization of life is
unbearable and demands integrative actions. It is the actions of
others which cause our powerlessness; our defence is to empathize
with these actions.

[GBFA 22/1 73. Typescript, 1935 (dating uncertain) .]

9
 V-Effects of Chaplin

Eating the boot (with proper table manners, removing the nail like
a chicken bone, the index finger pointing outward) .
The film's mechanical aids:
Chaplin appears to his starving friend as a chicken.
Chaplin destroying his rival and at the same time courting
him.

[GBFA 22/223. Typescript about 1936 (dating uncertain) . The scene is

from Charles Chaplin's film The Gold Rush ( 1 925) . Verfremdungseffekt or
V-Effekt refers to Brecht's notion of distancing or rendering the familiar
strange. It is variously translated into English as alienation, distanciation
or estrangement.]

The Verfremdungseffekt in the Other Arts

Joyce uses the Veifremdungseffekt in Ulysses.6 He alienates both the

way of representing (mainly through the frequent and rapid
changes) and the events.
The integration of documentary film material into theatre
productions also brings forth the Veifremdungseffekt. The on-stage
actions are alienated by juxtaposition with the more general actions
on the screen. 7
Painting alienates when it (Cezanne) exaggerates the hollow
form of a vase.
Dadaism and Surrealism use the most extreme kinds of
Verfremdungseffekt. Their objects never return from the alienation.
The classical Veifremdungseffekt produces heightened under­
standing.

[GBFA 22/223--4. Typescript, 1 936 (dating uncertain) .]

On Film Music

�1 Theatre's experience useful for the cinema?

The special nature of the experiments undertaken by the German
theatre during the time before Hitler enables us to use some of its
experiences for the cinema as well - assuming that this is done

10
 ON F I LM M U S IC

with great care. This theatre owes not a little to the cinema. It
made use of epic, gestic and montage elements that appeared in
films. It even made use of film itself by exploiting documentary
material. 8 Some aesthetes protested against this use of film
material in theatre productions, unjustly in my view. One need
not ban film in order to preserve theatre as theatre; you only have
to employ it theatrically. - The cinema too can learn from the
theatre and use theatrical elements. This does not mean that
theatre is simply filmed. In fact the cinema constantly employs
theatrical elements. The less consciously it does so, the worse the
effects. It is actually quite depressing how much bad theatre the
cinema produces! - The turn to discretion and the use of familiar
types, the rejection of enhanced expression (anti-hamming),
which grew out of the transition from silent to sound cinema, cost
the cinema much of its expressiveness without liberating it from
the claws of the theatre. It suffices to listen from the galleries to
these anti-hams to notice immediately how operatically and
unnaturally they speak.

� 1 Musical inflation in the cinema

The swamping of our films with music is easily understandable. A
sensible practice from the silent film period, when music played the
role it had already for a long time in mime, became a dubious habit
in the sound cinema, which has no more to do with mime than does
stage drama. Dialogue drowns in music. From the musical
perspective our actors become silent opera singers. The only thing
that one can say in defence of the domination of so much music in
films is basically that no one hears it anymore. If, as in the case of
the typical film, up to 7 5 per cent of the playing time has music,
inflation sets in and the music is completely devalued.

�9 Opportunity
On the other hand, society constantly develops in that it produces
contradictions. If each of its constituent parts is dependent on all
other parts, then each has the opportunity to influence all others.
The opportunities multiply to the extent that the constituent part
considers the entire situation. Cynics forget or sneer at this. To
accept a certain dependency is not to surrender but to take up the
fight.

'U 0 Prerequisite for collaboration on an unequal basis

The composer must orient himself to the storyteller film, not only
for technical reasons but also because as a popular entertainment

II
 TEXTS A N D FRAGMENTS ON THE CINEMA ( 1 9 1 9- 1 9 5 5 )

the cinema today has integrated music in a very limited quantity

and as a supplement or expedient. But this is no grounds for
defeatism. Here, too, changes are possible. The collaboration of
unequally strong partners depends fundamentally on the stronger
recognizing the weaker as an independent producer. If music's
intransigence is not possible, then the cinema as well does not gain
what it could by fully dominating music. Its hara-kiri, its total
dissolution, does not serve the cinema.

�10 Even limited elbow room is elbow room

On the other hand, society constantly develops in that it produces
contradictions. Entertainment might contribute to my livelihood,
but at the same time its specific form might threaten that liveli­
hood. I may need drugs to be able to live and at the same time I
may endanger my life with the drugs. General conditions might
force me to ask art to lend its achievements the character of a drug
and at the same time I may ask art to participate in the elimination
of these conditions. Thus, artists have a contradictory task and they
sense it more or less. Not only they but also the industry senses this
task, for its source is the victims, who are also the clients. Here is
an opportunity for the artist who deals with film, a small
opportunity but the only one. They should not engage in
speculation as to how much art the public is prepared to accept.
Rather, they must find out how little narcosis the public needs in
its entertainment. The lowest limit of the latter is also the highest
limit of the former.

� 11 Collaboration?
The division of labour in our industry is organized in such a way
that it not only guarantees the technical implementation of pro­
duction but also the system that regulates its commercial
exploitation. These two functions, which any team creating a film
must respect, contradict one another to a certain extent.
Composers, writers and directors sometimes serve the first
function better when they ignore the second one. Purely financial
calculations force the industry to organize innovations and
simultaneously to protect the status quo, to purchase progress and
simultaneously to purchase methods that liquidate progress; the
teams suffer and can also profit from this state of affairs.

�11 Situational music

The American cinema has not progressed beyond the stage of
situational comedy and situational tragedy. The average lover,

12
 ON FILM M U S IC

villain, hero, mastermind, moves through certain situational

settings. The accompanying music is consequently situational
music. In other words it expresses the feelings of the dramaturg.
His 'Oh, how sad!' and 'Oh, how exciting! ' is transformed into
music. Since there are no characters, there is an awful void for this
dramaturgical music. In contrast to the Americans, who are very
proud of their individualism but have no individuals in their films
(except possibly for those by Orson Welles, where damaged
individuals appear) ,9 the Russians have created, on their
admittedly collectivist basis, films with real individuals (Mother,
The Youth of Maxim, Baltic Deputy, etc., etc.) . 10 There the accom­
panying music also has dramaturgical character but has an easier
time of it, so it seems to me.

,1 1 Separation of elements
Perhaps it would be advisable at this point to mention certain far­
reaching experiments which, in the realm of film, have only been
attempted in the documentary, that is, in a relatively limited field,
but which have gained quite some significance in the theatre. I am
speaking of the separation of elements in the theatrical work of art
tested primarily in pre-Hitler Germany. That is, music and action
were treated as completely independent components of the work of
art. The musical pieces were recognizably positioned in the action.
The actors' performance style changed when songs or the musical
underscoring of a dialogue set in. Generally the orchestra was
visible and it was drawn into the set design by means of special
lighting when it played. 1 1 The set design itself constituted a third
independent element. Thus it was possible to construct scenes in
which music and set worked together without action, for example,
when in Man Equals Man a short serenade was played and images
were projected. 1 2 In the opera The Rise and Fall of the City of
Mahagonny the principle was implemented in another form. The
three elements, action, music and image, appeared together but yet
separated: in one scene - which shows how a man eats himself to
death - in front of a huge screen, on which could be seen a larger­
than-life glutton, the actor (who did not resemble the projected
glutton) mimed the suicidal gluttony, accompanied by a chorus
who chanted a description of the act. Music, image and actor
performed the same act independently. 1 3 These examples are
relatively extreme and I do not believe that they can be realized in
today's narrative films. I mention them mainly to show how the
separation of elements is to be understood. In any case the principle
made it possible to use music for its own value to heighten the full

I3
 TEXTS AND FRAGMENTS ON T H E CINEMA ( 1 9 1 9- 1 9 5 5 )

impact. Three of the best German composers, Eisler, Hindemith

and Weill, contributed to it. 14

� 1 2 Separation of elements in the narrative film

Used carefully, this principle of separating the elements of music
and action could provide the narrative film with some new effects.
This presupposes, however, that the composer would not be drawn
in only after the event, as generally has been the case up till now.
He would have to be integrated into the planning of the film's
effects from the start. For music can assume certain functions from
the start, but they must be reserved for the music. If, for example,
music is to be and can be used to express emotional states in
people, then many actions are no longer needed whose only
purpose is to express these emotional states. Making a decision to
do something, say, can then be performed by mime, that is, a man
can be shown by himself, walking back and forth, while the music
can take over the performance of his emotional curve. The less
miming on the part of the actor, the stronger the impact,
presumably. In this kind of a scene the music is completely
independent and represents a true dramatic complement. Let's
consider another possibility. A young man rows his girlfriend out
on a lake, overturns the boat and lets the girl drown. 15 The com­
poser has two choices. He can anticipate the audience's feelings in
his accompanying music, developing the tension, amplifying the
evil of the deed, etc. Or instead he can express in the music the
lake's serenity, nature's indifference, the event's everyday quality
insofar as it is a simple excursion. If he chooses this latter possi­
bility, allowing the murder to appear even more horrendous and
unnatural, he gives to the music a far more independent function.

� 1 2 Prerequisite for collaboration on an unequal basis

Within a team creating a progressive film the status of the
composer is weak precisely because he can most easily be exploited
'to render unto the industry that which is the industry's'.

�13 Question of quantity

If music can indeed say so much, it must be permitted to speak
relatively infrequently so that it is heard. Music can become more
important to the extent that it is used in smaller quantities. And it
will serve its functions better, the fewer those functions are. Most
importantly, those functions must be distinguished carefully. For
example, it would be wrong in the two scenes mentioned in � 1 2 to
apply the music in the suggested way if these scenes followed one

14
 ON FILM M U S IC

another. The music's function would be too different. The listener

would not be able to follow the divergence. Moreover, it is
necessary to realize that the potential advantage of invigorating
with music a weakly conceived dialogue scene entails the dis­
advantage that the music in a subsequent scene may fail. Music
shares this characteristic with other drugs.

'1[ 1 4 Can the emotional effects of music be standardized?

Composers know little about the effects of music. Generally they
leave their study to the barkeepers. One of the few research results
I have seen in the past decade was the notice of a restaurant
proprietor in Paris about the different drinks his guests ordered
under the influence of different music. He claimed to have found
that certain beverages were always consumed with music of certain
composers. Undoubtedly the cinema would benefit much if
composers were in a position to deliver music that could influence
the audience with more or less precisely determined effects. Then
we could have musical backdrops, emotional platforms and if they
were sufficiently atonal, they could even be standardized. Their
constant usage would probably not diminish the effect, but rather
strengthen it. Associated time and again with exciting actions,
these backdrops would probably also transfer the special excite­
ment to the new actions with which they were connected. The
Chinese theatre produces these types of effects with masks.

'1[ 1 5 Tempo
For the invention of patterns as well as original forms the composer
should free himself from all conventions because our conventions
do not favour patterns. For a chase scene, for instance, in general
simply a fast piece of music is written. Various considerations
suggest that the music should represent obstacles rather than
movement. Isolated note clusters every ten seconds produce a good
enhancement of the sense of tempo. In this way music works like a
clock.

'1[ 1 6 Natural moods

For natural moods naturalistic descriptions are not always the most
effective.

'11 Enhancing the pleasure of art through music

The total deactivation of the concert public reveals itself in the
glorification of the orchestra conductor. Here the public can still
consume the way in which music is produced. The act of pro-

15
 TEXTS AND FRAGMENTS ON THE CINEMA ( 1 9 1 9- 1 9 55)

duction becomes consumable. Moreover, this magician models the

effect he intends, he pretends to be shocked, enthusiastic, senti­
mental, sensitive, expectant, cheerful, filled with doubt, spiritually
cleansed, etc., etc. Music serves the cinema in a similar way. When
the ballet's rat king, known as the conductor, expresses with
gestures his sweet sadness, which in his opinion the score is
supposed to bring forth, he seems to be preoccupied with infecting
the musicians with his own sadness. In reality he is trying to infect
the public with it, directly, above and beyond the music. Similarly
film music anticipates what the actions on the screen are supposed
to bring forth. It pre-savours. It tries on its own to express the
storm of emotions which are supposed to be brought forth by the
filmed action (and are perhaps not being brought forth) .

-,r Art as 'phenomenon '

It is essential for hypnosis that the necessary manipulations are
made as unobtrusively as possible, at least after the hypnosis has
begun. The hypnotist avoids anything that might draw attention to
himself. In its attempts to produce a mood the Stanislavsky
Method makes the actor into a 'vessel for the word', an unobtrusive
'servant of art', etc. Sources of light and sound are hidden. The
theatre does not wish to be identified as theatre. It appears
anonymously. Under these conditions the set has no interest in
appearing as the set. It presents itself as nature, possibly as
enhanced nature. - It is apparent why the best film music is that
praised for not being heard.

-,r Feeling of logic

As mentioned, music is often used to 'drown out' a plot's
arbitrariness, breaks and absurdities. It is easy for the composer to
construct musically a kind of artificial logic, that is, to produce the
feeling of fatalism, inescapability, etc. The composer serves up
logic like certain cooks serve up vitamin tablets with their meals. In
fact the capacity of composers to bring out with a few artistic
flourishes, so to speak, the logic of the material's construction,
which is inherent in their musical pieces and thereby produce an
independent sense of logic, used properly, could be significant for
the cinema. This kind of music can be used to connect disparate
events, to point contradictory events in a particular direction.
Expressed differently, the film scriptwriter can portray the course
of events much more dialectically, i.e., in their real contra­
dictoriness and disjointedness, if the music places the public in the
constructive attitude of 'collecting details'. An example: a man is

16
 ON FILM M U S I C

shown to be influenced by (a) the death of his father, (b) share

increases at the stock market, (c) the onset of war. If the music is
responsible for drawing together these events, then the montage
can be richer, more complicated and also simply longer. - Eisler
and Ivens used such music in a documentary feature when they
combined two large processes in one film: land reclamation by the
construction of the Zuider Zee dike and the burning of Canadian
wheat for the purpose of fixing the price. 1 6

�Art as event
An example of 'art as event': in the parable Man Equals Man the
hero is a petty-bourgeois man who is enticed into a military camp
under the pretence of making a deal there. He spends the night
sitting on a chair. At this point the production showed him sitting
on his wooden chair while a short serenade was played. Three
elements came together here without really combining: set, story
and music. The set provided far more of a pure image effect than
an illusion, the story as experience receded and permitted medita­
tion, the music came forth not 'from the atmosphere' but from the
wings and retained its concert quality. Poetry, music and archi­
tecture appeared as independent arts within a clearly demarcated
event.

� Function of innovations
It has to be admitted that the attempts of the German theatre were
directed mainly against the narcotic function of art. It was not so
much an issue of making 'strong', 'lively', 'gripping' theatre, but
rather of making reproductions of reality so that the reproduced
reality became 'manageable'. Excitement - without which theatre
today can hardly be imagined - was also part of this. Yet it
resembled more the excitement of people who discover oil (or a
really reliable person) than that of children riding a carousel. And
music had the task of protecting the audience from a state of
'trance'. It did not serve the enhancement of existing or anticipated
effects but rather interrupted or manipulated them. So if there were
songs in a play, it was not as if the story 'dissolved into song'. The
people in the play did not break into song. On the contrary, they
openly interrupted the story. They assumed a pose for singing and
presented the song in a way that did not fully correspond to the
situation. They also conveyed in their musical performance only a
few, chosen aspects of the characters they were playing. In
melodramatic sections the music allowed the public to discover the
emptiness and conventionalism of certain events which the actors

17
 TEXTS A N D FRAGMENTS ON THE C IN EMA ( 1 9 1 9- 1 9 5 5 )

had played with unshakeable seriousness. The music was also able
to generalize certain sections of consistently played realistic scenes,
to present them as typical or historically significant. These
examples are mentioned here in order to make clear that it was not
the function of the innovations to promote the sale of trance to the
public.

� Mixing the junctions

In Dieterle's film Syncopation, a presentation of the history of jazz,
one sequence, which showed the trip of its heroine, a musician,
from New Orleans to Chicago, failed in its effect. 17 Travelling
through various cities, she hears certain characteristic songs
associated with them. The idea of a journey through various jazz
forms was not understood by the audience. The reason was that, at
the beginning of the film, scenes were accompanied by music in
such a way as to emphasize not the music but the scene. The
audience did not comprehend that now the scene (the girl's
journey) was meant to be less important than the music. The
audience had grown accustomed to hear the accompaniment with
only one ear and to consider it to be without meaning.

� Tempo. Music as clock

Music can be used in many different ways to produce the tempo
(just as it can in many ways put the audience in a mood to accept
certain necessary, long-winded descriptions) . In general, for a
chase scene simply a fast piece of music is written. Certain con­
siderations can lead, however, to the music representing obstacles
rather than movement. A musical clock or isolated note clusters at
least every ten seconds (perhaps this could be varied) produce a
good enhancement of the sense of tempo. Naturally music can in
some circumstances also have the effect that the behaviour of the
people in the film appears to be too slow, perceived as inadequate
for the necessary tempo. It will then have to develop the feeling of
haste.

[GBFA 23/1 0-20. Unpublished typescript written in April/May 1 942.

Hanns Eisler requested of Brecht that he provide him with some notes on
film music for the research project he and Theodor W. Adorno were
conducting at the New School for Social Research in New York City
(beginning in spring 1 940) . The theoretical evaluation of the research
data, completed in 1 944, was published under Eisler's name as Composing
for the Films (New York: Oxford University Press, 1 947). Adorno's name
was not mentioned, although he co-authored the text. The notes are here
presented with the section numbers Brecht used, including some
unnumbered and repetitive sections.]
I8
 Wilhelm Dieterle's Gallery of Grand-Bourgeois
Figures

Wilhelm Dieterle inaugurated a gallery of grand-bourgeois figures

with his film biographies Zola, Pasteur, Juarez and Ehrlich. 18 These
features - continued later in a much weaker vein (Edison, Mme
Curie, Mark Twain, Wilson) 1 9 - differ as much from the usual film
fare as do the Elizabethan history plays about feudal figures from
'action dramas'. The action film shows average people whose
exciting experiences can be appreciated without difficulty by the
average spectator, so that there is no need for character develop­
ment on the part of the actor. The actor is the a and b of algebraic
equations, for which any arbitrary number can be substituted.
Dieterle's gallery of above-average figures allowed the actor (Muni
and Robinson) to develop the characters, which meant a great step
forward. 20 The representation of average people as characters
seems to be impossible in the American cinema. Even Dieterle's
interesting attempts in this area met with resistance.
The element of conflict in these bourgeois biographies derives
from the opposition in which the hero stands vis-a-vis the dominant
opinion, i.e., vis-a-vis the dominant class. This is Ibsen's type of the
enemy of the people. Society views the mere growth in productive
forces as a cancer. Unforgettable the scene in which Zola is asked to
defend Dreyfus against the army's anti-Semitism. He hesitates,
refuses, becomes petulant as if confronted with an unfair demand,
showing that he is conscious of the penalty placed on the pursuit of
truth. Truth overpowers him, his sense of justice brings him round. A
bourgeois himself, he then turns against the bourgeoisie and towards
humanity. Pasteur is portrayed as a Galileo of medicine, he too risks
jail. If one thinks of the remarkable Soviet film The Deputy of the
Baltic Fleet, you can see how the series continues. Each film
represents a courageous deed on Dieterle's part. Each is the result of
constant struggles between the production companies and their
employee, who was the director/producer. One example of the
difficulties: a company planned a biographical film, The Life of
Madame Curie, based on a single scene. The Curies, who completed
their experiments while living in great poverty, refused industry's
offer for the patents for radium, so that the entire world could enjoy
unhindered access to the remedy. Several scripts were completed at
significant cost but did not satisfy the company, until finally it was
realized that precisely this scene ruined everything. Refusing millions
of dollars had something unnatural about it. It diminished the
plausibility of the entire film. And especially this: if the refusal was

19
 TEXTS AND FRAGMENTS ON THE CINEMA ( 1 9 1 9 - 1 9 5 5 )

glorified for its idealism, then wasn't the offer itself being somewhat
defamed? The companies' sensitivity makes the portrayal of grand­
bourgeois figures itself into a heroic undertaking of sorts.
Dieterle's film biographies, progressive and humanist and
intelligent - which alone marks them as a kind of rebellion within
the commercial movie industry in America - were also ground­
breaking in a dramaturgical sense. Films 'with historical back­
ground' had been made up until then with innumerable experts for
the details but without a thought about the social workings of the
relevant period. In Dieterle's films the historical background
moved into the foreground and introduced itself as the protagonist.
Even if a comprehensive representation, with full consideration of
the class struggle, was not possible under the pertinent circum­
stances, nonetheless entirely new emotional fields were opened up.
Previously a scientist's passion for his profession was used only as
a motive at most for a marriage spat, which then became the film's
main theme. Now it became among other things a matter of
dramatizing the microbes. The hero was a hero in the struggle against
them, just as he was a hero in the struggle against people. Yet it was
not the integration of science but its poetic and artistic treatment
that interested Dieterle.
In a cinema repertoire for a Europe liberated from the Nazis,
Dieterle's film biographies could be among the most valuable
features that the American movie industry could contribute.

[GBFA 23/42-4. Typescript from about 1 944, in the Wilhelm Dieterle

Estate Papers, held by the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin. The
German film director Wilhelm (William) Dieterle helped Brecht and his
family emigrate to the United States in 1941 and arranged for them their
first apartment in Hollywood, which led to a close friendship during the
American exile years. Brecht wrote the film script 'Caesar's Last Days' for
Dieterle in 1 942 and then transformed it into a short story published in
Tales from the Calendar. In 1 945 Dieterle and Brecht wanted to produce a
series of short agitational films based on scenes from his anti-fascist plays
for use in the American POW camps to re-educate German soldiers.
Immediately after Germany's capitulation, they also discussed plans for
longer didactic films that could be produced in Germany for the defeated
Germans. The American government refused to cooperate.]

Efforts to Save the Film The Axe of Wandsbek

The petty-bourgeois public, especially, cannot watch the bank­

ruptcy of a small business without deep empathy. Thus - and also

20
 ON T H E FILMING OF LITERARY TEXTS

because of the love he shows toward his wife - the butcher earns
much sympathy. Only brief passages should remain, the wife's con­
fession that she has pawned the linen, the neighbour threatening
the laundry, the suicide (but without the religious embellishments,
especially the 'as we forgive them that trespass against us').
Perhaps the butcher, while burying the axe, could also be shown
looking up and catching sight of the observer above. Then, after the
return of the axe, he could draw the Gestapo's attention to the
inhabitant in the attic in a brief scene. They could discover leaflets
during a surprise visit and arrest the young man. This denunciation
would make the butcher into an active Nazi and deprive him of all
sympathy. At the end he should only be shown standing at the
threshold, looking at the hanged woman. He would be made to
walk, drunk, to the Alster and be held back by some workers from
clambering over the wall. He would have to tell them his story and
his excuses would be met with stony looks. They could leave and
suggest to him coldly that he should jump into the river a little
further down. (Another version: he could go to a tavern and buy a
round of drinks for the workers. Then he tells his story, at which
point they reject their beers.)

[GBFA 23/153. Typescript written in late May 1 9 5 1 . Arnold Zweig's novel

Das Beil von Wandsbek (first published in Hebrew in 1 943, first German
edition in 1947) was filmed by the East German state film company, DEFA,
in 195 1 and opened in May 1 9 5 1 (director: Falk Harnack; scenario: Hans
Robert Bortfeld and Harnack; starring Erwin Geschonneck, Kathe Braun,
Sefion Helmke and Willy A. Kleinau) . There were harsh critiques, leading
to the film's withdrawal from distribution. Brecht's suggestions for an
alternative ending were an attempt to save the film, but they were not
accepted. Arnold Zweig noted in his diary on 3 1 May 1 95 1 :
Brecht's idea for the end of the axe film is exactly right, but because of
DEFA's political position on rendering justice, it is impossible. At the
end the 'Fuhrer' must enter in all his pomp and glory, the chief
hangman, the axe itself. (Arnold Zweig Archive in the Academy of Arts,
Berlin)]

On the Filming of Literary Texts

The Academy ofArts recommends:

The filming of plays like Brecht's Courage or Puntila and Wolf's

Professor Mamlock or Munzer; of novels like Strittmatter's
Ochsenkutscher and Renn's Adel im Untergang and Bredel's
Stortebecker. This is not aimed against original films that show the
21
 TEXTS Al\'D FRAGMENTS ON T H E C INEMA ( 1 9 1 9- 1 9 5 5 )

achievements of the GDR and move beyond primitive propaganda.

Concerning films with prescribed themes, the Academy of Arts
offers to evaluate the artistic quality of the scripts.

[GBFA 23/350- 1 . Typescript written in 1 955. Brecht's play Puntila and

His Man Matti was filmed by Alberto Cavalcanti for the Austrian producer
Wien-Film in 1 955. Friedrich Wolfs play Professor Mamlock ( 1 935) was
filmed by his son Konrad Wolf in 1 9 6 1 and Thomas Munzer: Der Mann mit
der Regenbogenfahne ( 1 953) by Martin Hellberg in 1 9 56, both East
German DEFA productions. Brecht became Vice-President of the
Academy of Arts in East Berlin in June 1 954.]

On the Courage Film

The irresponsibly sloppy preparations for the film production of

Mother Courage and Her Children as well as the astonishing mis­
casting have now caused DEFA to proceed with the film regardless
of any considerations of artistic and human demands. Helene
Weigel considered it impossible to play the main role under the
anticipated working conditions, which were moreover character­
ized as 'par for the course'. I object to a schedule which endangers
the artistic integrity and the health of artists of the German
Democratic Republic.

[GBFA 23/3 5 1 . Typescript dated 1 5 September 1 955. As early as

September 1 949 the state film production company DEFA in East
Germany had contacted Brecht about producing a film of Mother Courage.
Brecht rejected a first script version by Robert A. Stemmle as well as a
second script by Joachim Barckhausen and Graf Alexander Stenbock­
Fermor to be directed by Erich Engel. From autumn 1950 until autumn
1952, several versions of a new script were completed by Emil Burri,
Wolfgang Staudte and Brecht, but DEFA never signed a contract to obtain
the film rights, presumably because of Brecht's financial demands. Brecht
continued to push his plan for a film version, offering it through Ruth
Berlau to the Danish director couple Astrid and Bjame Henning-Jensen
and later to the Italian director Aldo Vergano (neither Luchino Visconti nor
Giuseppe de Santis showed interest in the Italian translation of the script
when approached in 1 954) . In late 1 954 a contract with DEFA was signed
and a final script version was prepared by Burri and Staudte in consultation
with Brecht, to be directed by Staudte and to star Helene Weigel, who had
played the role of Mother Courage in Brecht's production at the Deutsches
Theater (opened in January 1 949) . Casting problems (Staudte had
engaged Simone Signoret as Yvette and Bernard Blier as the cook from
France) and other controversies delayed the production start until mid­
August 1955. Then problems with DEFA and differences between Brecht
and Staudte led to the cancellation of the entire production in September,
22
 Q U E S T I O N S [ABOUT T H E C O URA GE FILM]

after ten days of shooting (see also the next three items). In 1 960 DEFA
produced a film version of Brecht's own staging at the Berliner Ensemble,
directed by his assistants Peter Palitzsch and Manfred Wekwerth.]

Questions [about the Courage Film]

1) How many shooting days were scheduled for how many shots in
Signoret's contract? Enough? How much margin?
2) How many shooting days were scheduled for how many shots in
Blier's contract? Enough? How much margin?
3) Were the shooting days sufficient if both normal and wide­
screen versions are to be produced, that is, with an untested
technology?
4) Would Signoret's and Blier's engagements have allowed us to
include more shooting days with them, or was this the maximum
and somehow we had to make do? If Signoret or Blier had been
able to begin earlier, could Mr Staudte have done so as well?
5) In case of illness or other indispositions, were opportunities for
later shoots anticipated for the French guests? What were they?
6) Why did the production manager, Mr Teichmann, establish a
shooting schedule that required Mrs Weigel to be available six days
a week, although his representative had been informed on _ June
in the office of the Berliner Ensemble that Mrs Weigel could only
shoot four and a half days a week because she was on stage two
evenings and could not film for the entire day before the Courage
performance and half a day before the Chalk Circle performance!
7) Why were costumes prepared that Brecht, Rodenberg,2 1
Kilger22 and even Staudte (who had seen the figurines) had
rejected, because they were operatic in the worst sense, when they
saw them a few days before shooting began? Was Staudte willing,
despite everything, to continue the shoot with these costumes?
8) Were the figurines shown to the French set designer? Did he
accept them? When?
9) Why were locations for intimate and emotionally difficult
scenes, which do not allow for post-synchronization, planned for a
hall that is well known for its echo effects and therefore necessitates
post-synchronization? Was sound sacrificed to the image?
1 0) Why, contrary to the contract, was the author's consent not
sought for the hiring of Blier? Why was a film with this actor, who
was unknown to the author, shown to him only after shooting
began and the hiring contract had been accepted?

23
 TEXTS A N D FRAGMENTS ON T H E C I NEMA ( 1 9 1 9- 1 9 5 5 )

1 1 ) Why does Mrs Weigel still have no contract? Why were the
working conditions never discussed (number of shooting days each
week, length of the shooting days)?
1 2) Why did Mr Staudte consider colour experiments necessary
but then began shooting the film, although he declared the results
of the experiments unsatisfactory?
1 3) Was the initial, well-reasoned decision to shoot practically the
entire film in the studio abandoned because 'it's faster outdoors',
as Mrs Weigel was told? Important because outdoors the sound is
less controllable and frequently post-synchronization is necessary.

[GBFA 23/35 1-2. Typescript written in 1 95 5 .]

File Note [Courage Film]

1. It seems to me that the film is not sufficiently prepared. The

director, Wolfgang Staudte, was unavailable for the entire summer
to prepare the film. Only in late July did he return from Holland.
The production manager, Mr Teichmann, was also still involved in
June with another film, although the shooting was scheduled to
begin on 1 8 August. For weeks my assistants tried in vain to get Mr
Teichmann to show the designs to me for the sets, costumes, etc.,
and they indicated that I would not allow the use of unrealistic
costumes and sets. This discussion did not take place until 5
August, in other words two weeks before the shooting began and
after the costumes were already being cut. I was appalled at the set
models. The costume sketches were beyond comment (operatic
and romantic) and entirely contrary to both the script and the
actors in the film.
2. I insisted from the beginning on black-and-white film stock.
According to the contract, the decision on colour or black-and­
white was to be mine. DEFA or Mr Staudte insisted on colour and
I consented only on the condition that the colour film stock tests
would satisfy me. The tests that Mr Staudte showed me on 5
August were unsatisfactory. Mr Staudte wished to undertake
further tests. Since Mr Rodenberg assured me in writing that I
could uphold my right to black-and-white film, we decided finally
that the shooting would be with two cameras: one for black-and­
white and one for colour.
3 . At the last moment it was also decided that the film would be a
wide-screen production, so that a third camera was included. This

24
 FILE N O TE [ C O URA GE FILM]

apparatus was completely unknown in the studio, arrived only one

day before the shoot and doubled the shooting time, since the
blocking for each camera had to be changed.
4. The scant timing already scheduled for the shoot thus became
even more precarious . The number of days scheduled for shooting
the French actors was especially limited because they had other
obligations in France immediately afterwards. As far as I know,
only ten days were allowed for Mr Blier, the actor for the role of the
cook, an inadequately calculated time for such a large role. It is
easy to establish whether the shooting schedule for the French
artists was maintained and whether the wide-screen option was
even figured into the schedule.
5. In this situation the film was to be produced no matter what.
Hence, Mr Staudte demanded of Mrs Weigel, whose workday in
any case lasted twelve hours (eight hours shooting plus putting on
and taking off make-up plus travel time), that she be available
continuously, including Sundays. I objected to this. Besides being
an inhuman demand on any artist, it was in no way artistically
defensible. In the cinema it is well known that every moment is a
premiere and shooting with exhausted actors is certain to be bad.
6. My objection was also caused by the contemptuous treatment of
Helene Weigel during the entire process. Both she and I had the
impression that she was being 'tolerated' because she had been
written into my contract. For the preliminary discussion about her
shooting schedule not the artistic director, not the director, not
even the production manager came to her but a completely
unknown production assistant. As a result, DEFA argued they
were not aware of the agreement that she would have the two
afternoons a week free on which she was playing at the Berliner
Ensemble in the evenings. Despite her requests she never was
shown her costumes. Although she requested to see the takes
during the first days so that she could make any necessary
adjustments, she was not shown them. There was never any
contract at all signed with Mrs Weigel. She was also not paid for
the days she was on the set.
7. Three days before shooting was to begin, the actress for the role
of Kattrin had still not been chosen.
8. After the shooting began, I learned that extensive post­
synchronization would be necessary, since the acoustic conditions
on the studio set where the film was being shot were not good. I
also learned the news that a major portion of the film was being
shot outdoors. Mrs Weigel made clear that she would not be able
to post-synchronize the delicate and emotionally demanding

25
 TEXTS AND FRAGMENTS ON T H E C IN E MA ( 1 9 1 9- 1 9 5 5 )

scenes and I suggested that a list of these scenes be prepared s o that

special attention could be paid to the sound. No one was at all
interested. This is an unartistic way to work that is unacceptable.
9. Just as the shooting began too precipitously, so was I suddenly
informed on 1 0 September of the suggestion that the project be
abandoned. Although the General Secretary of the SED,23 Walter
Ulbricht, has personally taken an interest in the project and
Wolfgang Staudte himself has had the opportunity to explain his
views on the matter, I have up until now not had the same
opportunity despite my requests.

In the interest of my internationally known play and in the interest

of the GDR film production, I consider appropriate working
conditions - whether usual or not - to be essential to make possible
the production of an artistic film.

[GBFA 23/352-5. Typescript written in 1 955.]

The Film Mother Courage

In my opinion the film Mother Courage and Her Children must

unquestionably be produced, if only for the prestige of the German
Democratic Republic.
The failure of Staudte's attempt demonstrates what is necessary:
A film for which not only the play but also the stage production
is internationally known demands the most careful preparation and
a generously measured shooting schedule. If foreign actors are to
play roles - which is naturally desirable - then the schedule cannot
be too tight and margins for reshooting must be calculated in.
From the beginning I was against colour film at this point. If a
colour film is to be produced, however, then extensive and
satisfactory tests must be undertaken in order to avoid making a
romantic and operatic version of the play. Also, sets and costumes
must be designed with special taste and in relation to each other.
For example, colour effects must not be allowed to endanger the
character of a realistic and poetic chronicle.
For a film like this, which is so dependent on the performers'
differentiated acting of intimate and emotionally honest scenes,
sound plays a larger role than in many other films. It is necessary
to identify those scenes which would be endangered by the usual
post-synchronization. They must not be shot outdoors or in

26
 ON THE PUN T/LA S C RI P T

acoustically unfavourable studio spaces. I have always emphasized

that a Courage film does not have to be especially imposing,
commercial and cast with well-known film stars. But it does need
taste, talent and diligence and of course good, that is, artistically
oriented, dispositions.
The first attempt failed because the most elementary artistic
demands proved to be incompatible with the technical and
contractual conditions.

[GBFA 23/355-6. Typescript written in 1 955.]

On the Puntila Script

In its current form the script does not seem right to me. To be sure,
it follows more or less the line that Pozner and I agreed on, but it
has now been implemented so that the Puntila story lapses into a
genre that is not comical, but ridiculous. It has become a refined
drawing-room comedy in which the play's crude jokes seem out of
place and simply crude. Nor is it clear who tells the whole story and
from what point of view. It appears to be the film company and its
point of view seems to be that of making a film. Naturally the
Puntila stories must be told 'from below', from the common
people's point of view. Then characters like Matti and Eva Puntila
are immediately seen as they should be. In the current script Matti
is a weak and undefined figure. It does not emerge that, despite and
because of his employee relationship, he stands in constant
opposition to his master in every line he speaks. Eva Puntila 'loves'
him not for his muscles - he doesn't need to have any at all - but
because he is a real man who possesses humour and authority, etc.
Naturally he may not believe for a second that Eva is the proper
wife for him or that Mr Puntila would actually give her to him. In
the 'test' he simply plays out Puntila's and Eva's romantic idea ad
absurdum. It must remain a game, otherwise Matti becomes an
idiot.
We immediately sketched out a new outline, since I am aware
that the studio cannot wait. Because the poetic material is already
at hand, a new script could be completed in no time at all. In the
case of the current script under no circumstances would I be able
to transcribe into Puntila-German the new dialogue passages,
which make up half of the total dialogue and are completely
naturalistic, because the situations are naturalistic and in my

27
 TEXTS AND FRAGMENTS ON T H E C INEMA ( 1 9 1 9 - 1 9 5 5 )

opinion not true. Under no circumstances could I let my name or

the name Puntila be used, if this script is accepted. I certainly do
not want to create difficulties, but neither do I want to damage my
reputation as a writer. You will certainly understand this .

[GBFA 23/356-7. Typescript written in 1 955. In September 1 953 Brecht

signed a contract with Wien-Film in Vienna, owned by the Soviet
Occupation authority, to produce his Mr Puntila and His Man Matti,
starring Curt Bois, who had played the lead role at the Berliner Ensemble.
Brecht commissioned Vladimir Pozner to prepare an expose in con­
sultation with him and on the advice of }oris Ivens he commissioned the
Brazilian film maker Alberto Cavalcanti to direct. Pozner completed his
French-language screenplay in summer 1 954, which was then translated
into German by Ruth Fischer and, based on comments by Brecht, revised
by Pozner and Cavalcanti in February 1 955. Brecht was unhappy with this
version, in particular with Matti's role, and insisted on a new screenplay
version, which Pozner and Brecht's assistant Isot Killian prepared under
his supervision. Cavalcanti then prepared a shooting script using Brecht's
dialogues and the production was completed in December 1 955. Despite
his interventions, Brecht was disappointed by the final cut with the new
musical score by Hanns Eisler. Meanwhile, the production firm had been
transferred from Soviet to Austrian hands and, to avoid counting the film
among the export contingent of Austrian productions, the company
refused to distribute it. Through Cavalcanti's efforts it was screened
publicly for the first time in Brussels three years later on 29 March 1 959.]

The Storytelling Women in the Estate Kitchen

[Puntila Film]

. . . have two functions in the script:

1 . they divide the story into 'the adventures of Mr Puntila'
2 . they filter the stories through the servants' perspective, who will
tell them many years later like popular legends.
They should have been:
1 . staged as conspicuously marked interruptions
2 . distinguished clearly from the 'legendary' stories.
A law of the cinema allegedly declares, however, that a film
requires continuity and tolerates no breaks . 'The audience should
not be pulled too far out of the narrative. '
In fact the estate kitchen is not used for separating but connect­
ing: providing gradual, hardly noticeable transitions. The women
do not begin again each time to contribute a new adventure, but
rather try to better the previous one. This is primarily a matter of
camera and editing technique. The director lacked the courage to

28
 B ILLIARD R O O M IN T H E H O T E L TAVA S T B E RG [PUNTILA FILM]

halt the editing rhythm and shift to another. The method of

photography also does not change noticeably. As everywhere else
in the film short, 'exciting', suspenseful editing is used that ends
before a situation can be calmly and broadly established. The
women's measured work, their exhaustion, the pleasure in telling
stories during their nightshift should have used much rougher,
calmer shots.
The costumes and sets are constructed in the same style as the
'adventures'.
The small roles of the storytelling women are in part cast with
minor actors who simply cannot develop a dialogue into a scene.
As it is, the kitchen keeps getting confused with the adventures,
which leads to some curious misunderstandings.

[GBFA 23/357�8. Typescript written in 1955.]

Billiard Room in the Hotel Tavastberg [Puntila Film]

The events are only comprehensible in the comic exaggeration of

their grandeur and importance. The loneliness plaint = Jesus on
the Mount of Olives, walking on aquavit = Christ walking on the
Red Sea, etc. 24

These major events appear for the film production only in the text.
They are not staged for the story but for a mobile, exciting camera
style:
While Puntila complains about being lonely, he constantly
dances around on the billiard table and is too busy rather than
forsaken. Moreover, the billiard room is just a billiard room and
not photographed with the grandeur (long shot) of a battlefield
with one lone survivor.
Matti does not enter like a chauffeur who has been waiting for
two days and two nights in the car but rather is shown immediately
as the film's hero: fresh, elegant, important, shaven (at least it is not
apparent that he is unshaven; the stubble is naturalistic and not
exaggerated) .
Puntila is shocked and falls off the billiard table when he catches
sight of the chauffeur. Matti rushes to him and catches him in his
arms. Because: the film needs movement. Puntila's motionlessness
in front of the 'stranger', the estate owner's mistrust ('Who are
you?'), the inspection as if at the cattle market, the invitation to his
new friend, in short, the discovery of a person, is sacrificed to
29
 TEXTS AND FRAGMENTS ON T H E C INEMA ( 1 9 1 9- 1 9 5 5 )

constant movement. For example, Matti carries Puntila t o the

table in his arms during the dialogue 'Who are you?' etc.
Similarly Matti's anger, his reticence, his annoyance at Puntila's
assaults on his humanity, Matti's urge to go to bed, are all lost. The
impression emerges: two people in a curious situation are joking
with each other.

Because the figures in the film are not established in a broad way,
because their respective social points of departure are not made
clear, the story lines break off already in the first scene.

It was a mistake to delete from the script Matti's long Pappmann

story because of concern for movement. Precisely the senseless,
impressionistic movement of the photography and editing could
have been prevented by this story.

[GBFA 23/358-9. Typescript written in 195 5.]

30
 Part II
Texts on Radio Broadcasting
(1926-1932)
[Radio broadcasting began in Germany in 1 923 and spread quickly
throughout the country with the systematic installation of public
broadcasting stations. Dramatic material was used, beginning in
1 924 with 'radio plays' produced for broadcast (Horspiele) and after
1 925 with 'broadcast plays' of theatre productions (Sendespiele) .
Brecht's own first broadcast took place in May 1 925 when he read
live from his works in the Berliner Rundfunk. Other plays by
Brecht broadcast on radio included in 1 926-7 The Life of Edward
II of England as well as his radio adaptations of Shakespeare's
Macbeth and Hamlet. In 1 932 he adapted his St Joan of the
Stockyards for radio broadcast.]
 Young Drama and the Radio

More important than good living is: living in good times.

For a generation whose passion consists in writing plays it is no
joy to be confronted with bad theatres, that is, ones unusable for
their plays. But the times are good when the production side, far
from supplying obsolete, worn-out and apathetic theatres, decides
to eliminate this kind of theatre. Indeed, our production for this
theatre is the kiss of death. On the other hand, today's theatre
distorts our plays to the point of incomprehensibility, even when it
works fairly well. Any other reproduction of our stage plays is
better for them than that of the theatre. Even a film version would
be more intelligible and persuasive.
Therefore the radio - a technical invention that still must create
for itself a mass need rather than subordinating itself to an
antiquated, exhausted need - is a grand, productive opportunity
for our plays.
What I am trying to say is that I anticipated with much greater
excitement the production of, say, Ostpolzug on the radio than in
the theatre. 1
It is said that our works are only meant for the few or at least they
are only suitable for a few. The first is untrue, the second
unproven. Our plays are meant for many people, but not for that
small elite of snobs who have already 'seen everything' and who
claim on every street corner that they are the ones intended. The
theatre has too long been the property of a small elite that claims to
be the nation. It is no accident that today, when this elite clearly no
longer represents the nation, the theatre is in decline and that an
invention like the radio, which in a manner of speaking has a long
way to go, is simply attending to the art that was previously the
theatre's obligation.
It is said that the radio needs courage to take on art. But if these
large, unencumbered, new institutions have no courage, who can?
It is obvious that you will get into an argument with someone
more quickly in a conversation about present-day concerns, about
some topical issue, than if you listen to transcribed conversations
from the past. It is in the nature of our plays that they must provoke
more opposition than those by people who provoked opposition in
other times.

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 TEXTS ON RAD I O B R O A D C A S TING ( 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 3 2 )

We also hear that the large number of listeners prohibits

anything but very general presentations about matters that have
already been decided. This sorely underrates the large masses.
Naturally it is easier to displease one person among a million than
one among ten.
But there are also more who are pleased. And in general it is
more important and ethical to please one single person than not to
displease one hundred. Usually the masses are considered to be too
stupid. They are not stupid. It is probable that only a small
minority of the masses understand, say, the theory of relativity. But
does that mean it should be communicated only to a few?
Whatever else art may have to rely on, it does not rely on
aesthetic training. And whatever else may be necessary to make
works of art, naive emotion is enough to appreciate them.

[GBFA 2 1 / 1 89-90. Written in late 1 926 and published in Funkstunde:

Zeitschrift der Berliner Rundfunksendestelle 1 (2 January 1 927) . Brecht wrote
this text, his first theoretical contribution on radio broadcasting, as he was
preparing his play Man Equals Man for radio broadcast, which was
programmed on 1 8 March 1 927 (director: Alfred Braun; music: Edmund
Meisel) . In a related article written several months later, 'On the
Performance on Radio' (GBFA 24: 36-7), and printed in the programme
magazine Rundfunk-Rundschau (Berlin, 1 3 March 1 927), Brecht begins
with the comment:
When my generation came on the scene after the War, the theatres by
no means rejected us. They tried on the contrary to switch their
suppliers immediately. For a time my generation saw in the theatres'
strong demand a real opportunity. In reality we were the opportunity for
the theatres; they had become old and uninspired and while they were
still able to exploit the public's habit of attending the theatre, they were
unable to justify it. The theatres were no longer able to exploit this
opportunity. They were simply too old. The radio is something else and
I believe it is better. It is certainly not too old to practise art, rather it is
at most still too young. If the radio is perhaps unable to realize some
dimensions of the new plays' impact, then - assuming some imagination
and a certain general interest for the times on the part of listeners - the
essentials can be grasped . . .
In a note written in 1 928 Brecht still considered radio broadcasting to be
an improvement over the 'old' theatre:
. . . The radio is a terrifying, living proof of the bad state of current
theatre. If the theatre were doing its duty, then you would find only one
person ready to sacrifice at least half of the pleasure of a play, which
consists of seeing and the feeling of immediacy, in order to get the other
half, listening, in a really cultivated way. (See 'Frische Stucke fiir
Theater und Radio', GBFA 2 1/263.)]

34
 Suggestions for the Director of Radio Broadcasting

1 . In my view you should try to make radio broadcasting into a

really democratic thing. To this end you would already achieve
much, for example, if you were to cease producing only on your
own for this wonderful distribution apparatus you have at your
disposal and instead allow it to make productive topical events
simply by setting it up and in special cases perhaps by managing it
in a skilful, time-saving way. 2 It is perfectly understandable that
people who suddenly get their hands on such a new apparatus
immediately want to organize something to provide material for it
and invent a new craft to provide them with artificial material.
Already in the cinema I have seen with some distress how the
Egyptian pyramids and the Indian Rajahs' palaces move to
Neubabelsberg in order to be filmed by an apparatus that a man
can comfortably slip into his backpack. 3 In other words I believe that
you must move with the apparatuses closer to the real events and not
simply limit yourself to reproducing or reporting. You must go to the
parliamentary sessions of the Reichstag and especially to the major
court trials. Since this would be a great step forward, there will
certainly be a series of laws that try to prevent it. You must turn to
the public in order to eliminate these laws. The parliamentarians' fear
of being heard throughout the entire country should not be
underestimated, since it is justified, but they must overcome it, just
like the fear that, I believe, various courts will express about having
to announce their judgments in front of all the people. Moreover,
instead of dead reports you can produce interviews right in front of
the microphone in which the interviewees have less opportunity to
prepare carefully thought-out lies, as they are able to do for the
newspapers. Debates between recognized specialists would be very
important. You can organize lectures with discussions in large or
small spaces. But by means of advance announcements you would
have to distinguish clearly all of these events from the run-of-the­
mill daily programming of family music and language courses.
2. As far as production for the radio is concerned, as mentioned
above, it should be a secondary concern but it should be much
intensified. One seldom hears of works by really noteworthy com­
posers for your institution. There is no value in having their pieces
played occasionally in concerts and using them occasionally as
background music for radio plays. Their works must be performed
on principle for their own significance and works must be com­
missioned by them exclusively for the radio. As for radio plays,
Alfred Braun has indeed undertaken some interesting experiments. 4

35
 TEXTS ON RADIO B RO A D C A S T I N G ( 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 3 2 )

The acoustic novel attempted by Arnolt Bronnen must b e tried out

and such experiments must be continued by others as well. 5 For
this only the best people should continue to be engaged. The great
epic novelist Alfred Doblin lives on Frankfurter Allee 244 in Berlin.
I can already tell you, however, that all these recommendations will
come to naught because of the laughable, miserable honoraria paid
by the 'Funkstunde' for such cultural purposes.6 In contrast to the
very respectable pay for actors and other speakers, the literary fees
are so low that in the long run work intended exclusively for the
radio will not be written. In time you will have to create a kind of
repertoire, that is, you will have to perform pieces at certain regular
intervals, say, annually.
3 . You must build a studio. Without experiments it is simply
not possible to assess fully your apparatuses or what is made for
them.
4. Especially for my last two points it is absolutely necessary that
you account publicly for the astronomical sums of money radio
broadcasting takes in and show to the last penny how these public
monies have been used.

[GBFA 2 112 1 5-17. Berliner Borsen-Courier, 25 December 1 927. Under the

title 'How can radio broadcasts become more artistic and topical?' Carl
Hagemann, the director of the Berlin Broadcasting Studio, published a
contribution under the title 'The Director Himself, followed by Brecht's
piece. Brecht's recommendations here were not particularly original but
rather shared the concerns of many left-liberal intellectuals involved in
discussions about radio in the mid- 1 920s.]

Radio - An Antediluvian Invention?

I can remember how I heard about the radio for the first time.
There were ironic newspaper accounts about a virtual radio
hurricane that was in the process of devastating America.
Nonetheless one had the impression that it was not just a craze but
something really modern.
This impression evaporated very quickly as soon as it was possible
to listen to radio here too. First of all, we wondered where these tonal
productions were coming from. But this wonderment was soon
replaced by another one: we were wondering what kind of offerings
were coming to us from the spheres. It was a colossal triumph of
technology at last to be able to make accessible to the entire world a
Viennese waltz and a kitchen recipe. An ambush, so to speak.
 RAD I O - AN ANT E D I LUVIAN INVENTION?

A phenomenon of the century, but to what end? I recall an old

story in which someone demonstrates to a Chinese man the
superiority of Western culture. He asked: 'What do you have?' The
answer: 'Railways, automobiles, telephones. ' 'I am sorry to have to
tell you,' the Chinese man responded politely, ' we have forgotten
those already.' As far as radio goes, I immediately had the frightful
impression that it was an unbelievably ancient apparatus, long ago
forgotten in the deluge.
We have an old custom of getting to the bottom of all things,
even of the most shallow puddles, if nothing better is around. We
consume an enormous quantity of things of which we can get to the
bottom. And we have very few people who are prepared, under the
circumstances, to take a step back. In fact, we usually let ourselves
be led around by the nose for the sake of possibilities. These cities,
which you now see rising around us, undoubtedly come as a
surprise to the fully exhausted bourgeoisie, used up by its deeds
and misdeeds. As long as the bourgeoisie holds them in its hands,
they will continue to be uninhabitable. The bourgeoisie judges
them only according to the opportunities it naturally can derive
from them. Thus the enormous overrating of all things and systems
which promise 'possibilities'. No one bothers with results. They
just stick to the possibilities. The results of the radio are shameful,
its possibilities are 'boundless'. Hence, the radio is a 'good thing'.
It is a very bad thing.
If I were to believe that this bourgeoisie would live for another
hundred years, I would be convinced that it will drivel on about the
tremendous 'possibilities' to be found, for example, in radio. Those
who appreciate the radio do so because they see in it a possibility
for which they can invent 'something'. They would be proven right
at the moment when 'something' is invented for whose sake the
radio - assuming it did not yet exist - would have to be invented.
In these cities every kind of artistic production begins when a
man comes to the artist and says he has a hall. At this point the
artist interrupts his work, which he has undertaken for another man
who has told him that he has a megaphone. For the artist's calling
is to find something which later can be used as an excuse for having
created the hall and the megaphone without thinking. It is a
demanding calling and an unhealthy production.
I strongly wish that after their invention of the radio the
bourgeoisie would make a further invention that enables us to f1X
for all time what the radio communicates. Later generations would
then have the opportunity to marvel how a certain caste was able to
tell the whole planet what it had to say and at the same time how it

37
 TEXTS ON RAD I O B RO A D CASTING ( 1 9 2 6- 1 9 3 2 )

enabled the planet t o see that it had nothing t o say.

A man who has something to say and finds no one to listen is in
a bad way. Worse off are the listeners who can find no one with
something to say to them.

[GBFA 2 1 12 1 7-18. Unpublished typescript from 1 927.]

On Utilizations

1 . The questions of how art can be utilized for the radio and how
the radio can be utilized for art - two very different questions -
must at some point be subordinated to the much more important
question of how art and the radio can be utilized at all.

2. If we are right or are judged to be in the right, then this question

will be answered in the following way: art and the radio must be put
to pedagogical purposes.

3.

The possibility o f implementing such a direct pedagogical

utilization of art does not seem feasible today because the state has
no interest in educating its youth about collectivism.

Art must intervene where the defect is to be found.

If seeing is not involved, it does not mean that one sees nothing,
but equally that one sees an infinity of things, 'whatever you like' .
The effects would o f course have t o remain o n the acoustic
plane, but precisely this, that the lack of sight into . . .

[GBFA 2 1/2 1 9 . Unfinished typescript from 1 927; part 3 includes no text,

while the last two sections are on a separate page and unnumbered.]

Explanations [about The Flight of the Lindberghs]

The Flight of the Lindberghs not a means of pleasure but of

instruction
The Flight of the Lindberghs has no value if it does not train. It has
no artistic value that would justify a performance not intended for
this training. It is an object ofinstruction and falls into two parts. One
part (songs of the elements, choruses, sounds of water and motors,
 EXPLANATI O N S [ A B O U T THE FLIGHT OF THE LINDBERGHS]

etc.) is meant to enable the exercise, that is, to introduce and

interrupt it, which is best achieved by an apparatus. The other,
pedagogical part (the Lindbergh role) is the text for the exercise: the
participant listens to the one part and speaks the other part. In this
way a collaboration develops between apparatus and participant in
which accuracy is more important than expression. The
participants speak and sing the text mechanically; they pause at the
end of each line of verse; they read along mechanically as they listen
to the text.

'In obedience to the principles: the state shall be richJ man shall be poorJ
the state shall be obliged to have many skillsJ man shall be permitted to
have fewJ where music is concerned the state shall provide whatever
requires special apparatuses and special skillsJ but the individual shall
provide an exercise. Unchecked feelings aroused by musicJ special
thoughts that may be conceived when listening to musicJ physical
exhaustion that easily arises just from listening to musicJ these are all
distractions from music. To avoid these distractionsJ the individual
participates in the musicJ thus obeying the principle: doing is better than
feelingJ by following the printed music with his eyes and adding the
passages and voices reserved for himJ by singing to himself or in
conjunction with others (school class). '

The radio not to be served but changed

The Flight of the Lindberghs is not intended to be of use to the
present-day radio but to change it. The increasing concentration
of mechanical means and the increasingly specialized education ­
trends that should be accelerated - call for a kind of rebellion
by the listener, for his mobilization and redeployment as
producer.

The Baden-Baden radio experiment

The utility of The Flight of the Lindberghs and the use of the radio in
modified form was demonstrated at the Baden-Baden Music
Festival in 1 929. On the left side of the platform was the radio
orchestra with its apparatuses and singers; on the right side with the
score in front of him was the listener, who performed Lindbergh's
role, i.e., the pedagogical part. He sang his part to the instrumental
accompaniment supplied by the radio. He read the speaking
sections without identifying his own feeling with that contained in
the text, pausing at the end of each line of verse; in other words, in
the spirit of an exercise. On the back wall of the platform was the
theory being demonstrated in this way.7

39
 TEXTS ON RADIO B RO A D C A S T I N G ( 1 9 2 6- 1 9 3 2 )

Why can 't The Flight of the Lindberghs be used as an object of

instruction and the radio be changed?
This exercise helps to teach discipline, which is the basis of
freedom. An individual will undoubtedly reach spontaneously for
means to pleasure but not for an object of instruction that offers
him neither profit nor social advantages. Such exercises only serve
the individual in so far as they serve the state and they only serve a
state that wishes to serve all people equally. Thus The Flight of the
Lindberghs has no aesthetic and no revolutionary value independent
of its application and only the state can organize this. Its proper
application, however, makes it so 'revolutionary' that the present­
day state has no interest in sponsoring such exercises.

Performance in a flawed concert application

The following example shows how the application determines the
text: the figure of a public hero in The Flight of the Lindberghs might
be employed to induce the listeners at a concert to empathize with
the hero and thus cut themselves off from the masses. In a concert
performance, i.e., a flawed one, at least the Lindbergh role must be
sung by a chorus, if the sense of the whole is not to be completely
ruined. Only collective ]-singing (I am Charles Lindbergh, I am
setting forth, I am not tired, etc.) can salvage something of the
pedagogical effect.*

[GBFA 24/87-9. Text written in 1 929 and signed by Brecht and

Suhrkamp. It was first published in Versuche 1 (Berlin: Gustav
Kiepenheuer Verlag, 1 930), introduced with the phrase 'parts of a music
theory'. Co-author Peter Suhrkamp was involved with school music and
school operas at the time and worked with Brecht as well on The Rise and
Fall of the City of Mahagonny, 1 930) .
Lindberghfiug: Bin Horspiel (Lindberg's Flight: A Radio Play) opened at
the Festival for German Chamber Music in Baden-Baden on 27 July 1 929.
The final rehearsal was broadcast on the Silesian Radio Hour (Breslau) on
27 July, followed by broadcasts on stations in Frankfurt am Main (28 July)
and Cologne (29 July) . Ernst Hardt (Manager of Western German Radio
Broadcasting in Cologne) directed the production, and Kurt Weill and
Paul Hindemith composed the music, played by the Frankfurt Radio
Orchestra. The radio play was developed as a report on the topical event
of Charles Lindbergh's pioneer flight over the Atlantic Ocean in May
1 9 27, documenting the event as the struggle of technology against nature
(personified in the elements fog, snow and ice) and as the achievement of
a collective rather than the triumph of an individual, heroic adventurer.
Brecht conceived of the radio play at the festival with the speaker and the

*See Versuche 2, The Mr Keuner Stories, 'Suggestion, if the suggestion is not heeded'
[the reference is to a Keuner story in the first volume of Brecht's Versuche (1 930)
 T H E RADIO AS A C O MMUNICATIONS APPARATUS

listener (playing the role of Lindbergh) entering into a conversation for the
radio audience. In other words, the fictional listeners were modelled as
active participants by demonstrating how they should listen to the radio.
He was not only thematizing the radio in a broadcast presentation but
suggesting how the medium itself can transform social communication
through its technological advantage: the ear is to become a voice.
Brecht revised the play for publication in 1 930 and altered the title to
Der Plug der Lindberghs: Radiolehrstiick; for republication in 1950 he once
again changed the title to The Ocean Flight (Der Ozeanfiug) and the name
of the character Lindbergh to the Flier owing to Charles Lindbergh's
expressions of sympathy with National-Socialism.]

The Radio as a Communications Apparatus

Lecture on the Function of the Radio

Our social order is an anarchic one, if one can imagine an anarchy

of orders, i.e., a mechanical and unconnected disarray of systems
of public life that are themselves to a large extent already ordered.
Our anarchic social order in this sense enables inventions to be
made and further developed, which must then conquer their
markets, justify their existence, in short, they are inventions that
have not been prescribed. Thus there was a moment when technology
was far enough advanced to bring forth the radio, while society was
not far enough advanced to accept it. The public was not waiting
for the radio, but rather the radio was waiting for the public. To
characterize more precisely the situation of the radio: the raw
materials were not waiting for methods of production based on
public needs, but rather production methods were looking around
anxiously for raw materials. Suddenly there was the possibility to say
everything to everyone, but upon reflection there was nothing to be said.
And who was everyone?
In the beginning one got by without thinking. One looked
around where somewhere something was being said to someone
and simply tried to butt in and compete by also saying something
to someone. This was the radio in its first phase, as substitute: a
substitute for theatre, opera, concerts, lectures, coffeehouse music,
the local pages of the newspaper, etc.
From the beginning the radio imitated practically every existing
institution that had anything at all to do with the distribution of
speech or song. In this Tower of Babel cacophony and dissonance
came forth that could not be ignored. In this acoustic department
store it was possible to learn to breed chickens in English,
41
 TEXTS ON RADIO B RO A D C A STING ( 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 3 2 )

accompanied by the strains o f the 'Pilgrims' Chorus' and the lesson

was cheap as tap water.8 This was the gilded youth of our patient.
I am not sure if it is finished yet but, if so, then this stripling, who
needed no certificate of competence to be born, will have to start
looking at least retrospectively for a purpose in life, just as a person
will ask himself in more mature years, after he has lost his
innocence, what he is actually doing in the world.
As for the radio's purpose in life, I don't think it can consist merely
in prettifying public life. For that it has not only shown little
aptitude, but unfortunately our public life as well shows little
aptitude for being prettified. I am not against the idea of installing
receivers in the refuges of the unemployed and in prisons
(apparently someone thinks this will prolong cheaply the life
expectancy of these institutions), but it cannot be the radio's main
task to place receivers under the bridges as well, even if that
represented an elegant gesture to provide those who wish to spend
their nights there at least with the minimum, i.e., with a per­
formance of the Meistersinger. 9 Tact is necessary. Nor is radio in my
view an adequate means of bringing back cosiness into the home
and making family life bearable again, whereby it might rightly
remain an open question whether what it cannot accomplish is
even desirable. But quite apart from its dubious function (he who
brings much, brings no one anything) the radio is one-sided when it
should be two-sided. It is only a distribution apparatus, it merely
dispenses.
And now to say something positive, that is, to uncover the posi­
tive side of the radio with a suggestion for its re-functionalization:
radio must be transformed from a distribution apparatus into a
communications apparatus. The radio could be the finest possible
communications apparatus in public life, a vast system of channels.
That is, it could be so, if it understood how to receive as well as to
transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring
him into a network instead of isolating him. Following this
principle the radio should step out of the supply business and
organize its listeners as suppliers. Hence, any attempt by the radio
to give a truly public character to public occasions is absolutely
positive. Our government needs the activity of the radio as much as
our court system does. If government or justice resist such activity,
they are afraid and suitable only for the times prior to the invention
of the radio, if not even prior to the invention of gunpowder. I
know as little as you about the obligations of the Chancellor. It is
the radio's responsibility to explain them to me, but among the
obligations of the state's highest official is the job of informing the

42
 T H E RAD I O AS A C O MMUNICATIONS APPARATUS

nation regularly by means of the radio about his activities and their
justification. The task of the radio does not end, however, with the
transmission of these reports.
Beyond this it must organize the collection of reports, i.e., it
must transform the reports of those who govern into answers to the
questions of those governed. Radio must make exchange possible.
It alone can organize the major discussions between business
sectors and consumers about the norms for consumer goods, the
debates about raising the price of bread, the disputes in
municipalities.
Should you consider this utopian, then I ask you to reflect on the
reasons why it is utopian.
Whatever the radio sets out to do, it must strive to combat the
lack of consequences that makes almost all our public institutions so
ridiculous.
We have a literature without consequences, which not only sets
out to have no consequences itself, but also does all it can to
neutralize its readers by depicting every object and situation
stripped of their consequences. We have educational establishments
without consequences, working frantically to provide an education
which has no consequences at all and is itself the consequence of
nothing. All our institutions that formulate ideology see their main
task in maintaining without consequences the role of ideology,
corresponding to a concept of culture in which the evolution of
culture has already ended and culture needs no ongoing, creative
effort. We will not examine here whose interests are served by
having these institutions remain without consequences, but when a
technical invention with such a natural aptitude for decisive social
functions is met by such anxious efforts to maintain without
consequences the most harmless entertainment possible, then the
question unavoidably arises as to whether there is no possibility to
confront the powers that exclude with an organization of the
excluded. The slightest advance in this direction is bound to
succeed far better than any event of a culinary kind. Any campaign
with a clear consequence - that is, any campaign really aiming to
intervene in reality, taking as its goal the transformation of reality,
even if at the most modest points, for example, in the awarding of
public construction contracts - any such campaign would secure
the radio a quite different, incomparably deeper impact and endow
it with a quite different social meaning from the current decorative
attitude. As for the technology that needs to be developed for all such
undertakings, it must work according to the principle that the
audience is not only to be instructed but also must instruct.

43
 TEXTS ON RADIO B R O A D C A S TING ( 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 3 2 )

The radio's formal task i s t o give these instructional under­

takings a degree of interest, that is, to make the interests
interesting. One part, especially the part oriented towards youth,
can even assume an artistic form. The radio's attempt to give
instruction an artistic form would support efforts on the part of
modem artists to give art an instructive form.
I explained an example of such possible exercises that can use
the radio as a communications apparatus at the Baden-Baden
Music Week in 1929 with The Flight of the Lindberghs. 1 0 This is a
model for a new application of your apparatuses. Another model
would be The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent. 1 1 Here the peda­
gogical role that the 'listener' assumes is both that of the airplane
crew and of the crowd. It communicates with the role of the
trained chorus provided by the radio, of the clowns, of the
announcer. I will limit myself deliberately to an explanation of the
principles because the confusion in the aesthetic domain is not the
cause of the unparalleled confusion about the functional principle
but rather its mere consequence. The error - for some a very
useful error - about the radio's actual function cannot be rectified
by aesthetic insight. I could tell you, for example, that the
application of theoretical insights about modem drama, i.e., about
epic drama, could bring about extraordinarily fruitful results in the
domain of the radio.
Nothing is less appropriate than the old opera, which aims at the
production of an intoxicated condition because it hits upon the
individual at the radio receiver and of all the alcoholic excesses
none is more dangerous than solitary tippling.
The old drama with Shakespearean dramaturgy is also hardly
usable for the radio because at the receiver the lone, isolated
individual rather than the integrated crowd is encouraged to
invest emotions, sympathy and hopes in intrigues whose only
purpose is to give the dramatic individual an opportunity for self­
expression.
Epic drama, with its episodic nature, its separation of the
elements, that is, its separation of the image from the word and the
words from the music, but especially its instructional attitude,
would provide many practical tips for the radio. But a purely
aesthetic application would lead to nothing more than a new
fashion and we have enough old fashions! If the theatre were to
capitulate to epic drama, to pedagogical, documentary representa­
tion, then the radio could furnish a completely new form of
propaganda for the theatre: real information, indispensable
information. Such a commentary, closely allied to the theatre, an

44
 THE RADIO AS A C O MMUNICATIONS APPARATUS

adequate, worthy complement to the play itself, could lead to

completely new forms, etc. Furthermore, direct collaboration
between theatrical and radio performances could be organized.
The radio could send choruses to the theatres, just as it could
transmit to the public from the meeting-like collective per­
formances of the learning plays the decisions and productions of
the audience, etc.
I won't develop this etc., deliberately not speaking about the
possibilities of separating opera from drama and both from the radio
play or of resolving similar aesthetic questions. I know that you
probably expect it from me because you intend to market art by
means of your apparatus. But in order to be marketable, art must
today first be purchasable. And I preferred not to sell you
something, but rather to formulate the fundamental suggestion
that a communications apparatus for the general benefit of the
public should be made out of the radio. This is an innovation, a
suggestion that seems utopian and that I myself admit to be
utopian. When I say the radio or the theatre could do so-and-so, I
am aware that the large institutions cannot do all they could, not
even all they want. They want us to supply, to renovate, to keep
them alive through innovations.
But it is simply not our task to renovate the ideological institu­
tions on the basis of the existing social order through innovations.
Instead our innovations must get them to abandon this basis. So:
for innovations, against renovation! By means of constant, never­
ending suggestions about better applications of the apparatuses in the
interest of the many, we must shake up the social basis of these
apparatuses and discredit their application in the interest of the
few.
These suggestions, unrealizable in this social order but realizable
in another, are nothing more than the natural consequence of tech­
nological development and serve the propagation and formation of
this other order.

[GBFA 2 1/552-7. Typescript written in summer 1 932, partially published

in extracts and together with other fragments from Brecht's 'Explanations'
about The Flight of the Lindberghs (see above) in Blatter des Hessischen
Landestheaters 1 6 (Darmstadt, July 1 932): 1 8 1-4. The typescript has
handwritten notations that indicate Brecht had prepared it for oral
delivery, but there is no record of when or where.
By this point Brecht's ruminations on the broadcast medium had
meshed with his reflections on experiments in other media. The analysis of
his radio experiments sustained his conclusions about the functioning of
cultural institutions in a class society. The indifference of bourgeois artists
to the changing modes of production contradicted the increasing

45
 TEXTS ON RADIO B R O AD CASTING ( 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 3 2 )

importance of technology for the maintenance and rationalization of

capitalist society. His unsuccessful engagement in the filming of The
Threepenny Opera provided the occasion to examine the implications of
this attitude in another medium (see 'The Threepenny Lawsuit' in Part
IV) .]
 PART III
Early Screenplays
(1921)
This page intentionally left blank
 The Mystery of the Jamaica Bar

Film in six acts

[See GBFA 1 9/53-84. Written between February and early April 1921
(with the work interrupted to complete The Jewel Eater), this is the first of
several major film script projects Brecht works on during this year in the
hope of earning money and providing roles for Marianne Zoff. At first he
collaborated with stage designer Caspar Neher, then sought help from the
Munich critic, scriptwriter and film agent Werner Klette.
The complicated plot of disappearing party guests, constructed around
a cumbersome, carousel-like set that allows the kidnappers to stage
mysterious disappearances, reveals Brecht's interest in maximizing the
cinematic possibilities by playing with motifs of appearance and reality and
cross-dressing. The Munich Stuart Webbs Company produced numerous
films with the detective Stuart Webbs in the early 1 920s and obviously
Brecht was aiming his screenplay at this series. The producer and main
actor of the Stuart Webbs series rejected the screenplay, however, and it
was never produced.]

Characters:
Paduk, gang leader
Hawk, gang member
Condor, gang member
Griffin, gang member
black servant boy
coat-check lady (Katy Smith)
Mrs Melvil
Mr Melvil
Gayo Perl, millionaire
Brown, coachman
second coachman
Mr Webbs, detective
two teenage girls
society ladies, policemen, servants, etc.

49
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Act I

'The honourable Mr Paduk invites you to his reception at the

Pier Plantation. '

Shot 1: Vestibule.
Half hidden behind a curtain 'Hawk' and Paduk watch a glass door
and the stairs leading up to it. Couples and solitary gentlemen pass
through the door; a black boy takes their coats. Paduk comments
on certain charms of the female guests with slightly exaggerated
gestures: a pretty foot, a deeply cut decollete in back, swaying hips
. . . A few times he mocks their flaws.

Shot 2: Close-up of the voyeurs.

Paduk rubs his hands . 'Hawk' pulls out his watch; 'Condor' and
'Griffin' join them, elegantly dressed in frock coats.

Shot 3: Same as shot 1 .

Hawk leaves quickly through a winged door that the servant closes.
Condor and Griffin exit at the side. Paduk enters behind his guests.

Shot 4: Pier.
Dark and slender with his collar turned up, Hawk walks on the
moonlit, white pier.

Shot 5 : Reception hall.

Paduk greets his guests too sincerely. Dissolve.
'Meanwhile the overture began at the Opera . . . '

Shot 6: Lobby for the box seats with the coat check.
A grotesque old coat-check lady brings Mrs Melvil to her box seat
in an overly obsequious manner. Then she waddles upstairs to the
public telephone and calls. Dissolve.

Shot 7 : Dining-room.
Paduk and his guests at the table. A black boy brings the table
telephone. Paduk writes something quickly on his cuff, leaves
quickly . . .

Shot 8: At the Opera.

On stage the ballet. Curtain closes, the auditorium is illuminated.
Hawk, standing near the stage, scans the box seats.

Shot 9: Close-up of the box.

'Mrs Melvil. '

Shot 10: Close-up of Mrs Melvil.

Nervously reads a note she removes from her handbag.

50
 T H E MYSTERY OF T H E JAMAICA B A R

Note: 'Use the enclosed ticket to the Opera and you will learn
where your husband spends his evenings . . . '

Shot 1 1 : Same as shot 9.

Hawk enters, bows. Mrs Melvil stands up, follows him. The coat­
check lady is waiting already with her coat. Dissolve.

Shot 1 2 : Plantation.
Guests standing at the window. View to the water. Fireworks. An
illuminated motorboat glides by. The ladies go into the garden, the
gentlemen into the club rooms. At the head is Gayo Perl, the fat
millionaire.

Shot 1 3 : Card room.

Card tables. Wide windows with thick drapery. Gayo Perl holds the
bank; the game begins . . . Vases shake. *

Shot 1 4 : Garden bench.

The ladies climb into the motorboat. Short tour. Paduk watches,
smiling ironically.

Shot 1 5 : Pier.
Condor walks on the pier with a turned-up collar.

Shot 1 6: Interior of a coach.

'Brown eating dinner. '
The coachman sits in the coach eating cheese and reading the
newspaper. Hawk's elegant silhouette appears in the coach
window. Brown is startled, packs up his things, crawls out. Mrs
Melvil appears at the coach door.

Shot 1 7: Motorboat.
Black boy steers. Ladies tease him: a foolish game. Dissolve.

Shot 1 8 : Elegant hall.

Condor has been gambling, stands up with a lady:
'Would you like to join me in the Jamaica Bar . . . ?'

Shot 1 9 : Shore.
Paduk waves broadly. The boat lands. Paduk:
'I just noticed that the club rooms are empty. The gentlemen
must have moved on to the next house. '

Shot 20: Stairs.

The ladies hurry eagerly up the stairs. They glance into the empty
club rooms. Amused, the ladies feign comic horror. Paduk strikes
his forehead and grins:

* First, gentle rotating of the revolving stage! See shot 19 for explanation.
51
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

'Perhaps a small, innocent orgy in the Jamaica Bar across the

way . . . !'
The ladies storm Paduk with questions, who smiles cunningly. He
motions to the boy, who precociously stands by, to keep silent and
holds back the ladies, who try to coax the boy away with them. All
exit except Paduk, who looks at his watch:
Watch face: Five minutes to eleven.

Shot 2 1 : Interior of a coach. Watch face:

Five minutes to eleven. Mrs Melvil and Hawk inside; the city glides
by nocturnally.

Shot 22: Pier.

The black boy leads the ladies, who are walking by threes, arm in
arm.

Shot 23: Interior of a coach.

The Jamaica Bar's many lights appear in the window. The door is
open, all windows lit up.

Shot 24: Club room.

Short scene of the inebriated gentlemen. Gayo Perl, completely
sober, wins.
'Why in the devil do you always win, Perl?'
'Why in the devil do you always drink, gentlemen?'
Perl pulls a card from his cuff, throws it on the table, and pushes
his winnings back to the centre. The gentlemen stare, Perl is
amused. The gentlemen drink on. Laughing. Dissolve.

Shot 25: In front of the bar.

The coach halts. A dispute between Brown and Hawk.
'Come back and fetch us in an hour, coachman!'
Mrs Melvil taps impatiently with her foot, then goes with Hawk
into the bar. The coach drives off.

Shot 26: Entry to the empty club rooms.

Paduk stands at the entry and pulls out his watch.
'Eleven o'clock.'

Shot 27: Same as shot 25.

A car drives up, Condor leads the woman into the bar.

Shot 28: Club rooms.

Vases shake, the gentlemen notice nothing, but Perl has noticed.
'Well, are the vases in this house drunk too? It already seemed as
if an earthquake . . . '
Exaggerated playfulness: the gentlemen pour whiskey in his

52
 THE MYSTERY OF THE JAM A I C A B A R

mouth. Paduk enters, plays at being excited, motions the gentle­

men out . . .

Shot 29: Same as shot 25.

The black boy and the ladies in front of the bar: the boy makes a
deep bow, the ladies enter. Dissolve.

Shot 30: Window with view of the lake.

Parallel to shot 1 9 : Paduk:
'The ladies have gone one house further . . . '
Drunk, the gentlemen look at the empty garden and the gently
swaying motorboat. They exit to the garden, Paduk remains where
he is.

Shot 3 1 : Lake.
The gentlemen are looking for the ladies, one falls in the lake.

Shot 32: Interior of the bar.

The ladies look through the window: the road is still visible.

Shot 33:
'Three hours later'
Street. A coach is driving along the street. Arrives at the place
where previously the bar was located. A wall is standing here
between trees on the left side and water on the right. The coach­
man's growing dismay: close-up.
'So where's the damned bar?!'
Drives on slowly, searching.

Shot 34: Plantation.

Completely perplexed, the gentlemen take leave in a momentarily
sobered state from the apparently uncomprehending Paduk, who
extends his hand to each one individually.

Shot 3 5 : Winter garden at the plantation.

Gayo Perl playing chess [with Paduk] : small in a large room. Later
Hawk will join him.

Shot 36:
The gentlemen meet up with the coachman - melancholy parallel
to shot 22, they interrogate him.
Dialogue:
'Have you seen six ladies, coachman?'
'Nah, but haven't you seen a bar?'
'You're already drunk, coachman!'

Shot 37: Mr Webbs 's morning outing.

Newspaper boy. Webbs reads a newspaper while riding his horse.
53
 EARLY S C RE E NPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Looks up suddenly: Mr Melvil has stepped in front of the horse. He

speaks excitedly:
'My wife has been missing since yesterday evening, help me, Mr
Webbs! '
Webbs points to the newspaper, where he reads:
Printed: . . . sensational disappearance of six society ladies . . . '
Webbs looks back and forth from Mr Melvil to the report. Close­
up of Melvil's knees, which begin to tremble.
'Mr Melvil, I'll be expecting you in one hour at my house!'
Webbs gallops off. Mr Melvil continues to tremble. Dissolve.

End ofAct I.

Act II

Shot 38: Winter garden.

Perl and Paduk are playing chess . Paduk feigns exhaustion, would
like to be alone, looks at his watch, goes to the window . . . Perl
doesn't let him out of sight. Hawk enters: surprised at Perl's
presence. Chess game; Hawk watches stiffly and indignantly.
Annoyed at Perl's obstinacy, in wild anger Paduk finally throws the
chess board in the air with the tip of his foot. Hawk calms him over­
zealously, Paduk grins with a forced excuse. Perl looks at Paduk ­
close-up - suspiciously and tensely. Fade-out.
Shot 39: Fade-in. Bar.
Morning in the - rotated! - bar. The drapes are closed. The six
ladies conclude with their hair arrangements a rather primitive
morning dress ritual, nonetheless worthy of a more elegant space.
The bar is a grimy tavern decorated with a trashy velvet sofa. The
black boy chases fleas in the comer. Movement when the door
opens and the coat-check lady from shot 6 enters. She waddles in,
mops the floor. Mrs Melvil is sitting apart, still sleeping on a velvet­
covered stool. The ladies watch her warily. They storm the coat­
check lady with questions, she threatens them grotesquely with her
mop. One of the ladies jumps over the wet spot on the floor to the
window, holding her dress up. She wants to look out. The coat­
check lady and the boy adroitly prevent her, but the pail of water is
overturned. The ladies storm over to the window. The boy and
coat-check lady cannot hold them back from all the windows.

Shot 40: Shot from the window of the pier and lake.

Shot 4 1 : Same shot as 39.

54
 THE MYSTERY OF THE JAMAICA B A R

The woman clasp their heads.

'Where are we?'
Mrs Melvil is awakened by the noise, calmly joins them. Dissolve.

Shot 42: The city.

Webbs rides through the city to the plantation. At the wall he finds
Brown the coachman, who is looking for the bar in front of it while
his horse is grazing. The coachman, unsure because of his
nocturnal adventure, addresses Webbs:
'Sir, I have to make a visit to the wall there . . . Could you please
keep an eye on the coach for a minute . . . '
With great contempt Webbs climbs on the coach-box, apparently
amused by the impertinence. The coachman marches over towards
the pier, glances around occasionally, Webbs nods to him.

Shot 43: Lobby of the winter garden.

The black boy greets the coachman distrustfully.
'Is this place a wine bar, boy, or is it not?'
The boy exaggeratedly mimics Paduk: throws with one eye a sharp,
distrustful glance towards Brown, marches out full of his own
dignity. The coachman tosses an insult after him.

Shot 44: Winter garden.

Unannounced, the coachman enters behind the boy. Hawk,
recognizing the coachman, disappears backwards. Perl toys around
with the goldfish aquarium . . . Paduk watches Hawk with surprise,
the coachman asks Paduk:
'Are you the innkeeper?'
Paduk shakes his head. The coachman says more impertinently:
'Hand over the woman or I'll call the police!'

Shot 45: Interior of the coach.

Webbs finds the note and the theatre ticket (cut briefly to the note
from shot 1 0), puts both in his pocket. Looks at his watch. Ties . . .

Shot 46:
. . . the coach to the wall, same as shot 42 after climbing out he
-

attaches a note to the whip, sticks the whip in the ground,

harnesses his horse to the coach horse, and drives off in a rush.

Shot 47: Same as shot 44.

Paduk shows the coachman out with an imperious gesture, follows
him.

Shot 48: Pier.

The coachman trots along in a straight line without looking round
while Paduk talks to him in an exaggerated but friendly way with
55
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

large gestures. They move into the distance.

Shot 49: Same as shot 44.

Perl moves dreamily around the winter garden. Discovers a door,
ascends a circular staircase, encounters the coat-check lady, goes
down a corridor with windows and suddenly halts to look outside
with great interest. Hawk follows him, watching closely.

Shot 50: Shotfrom above. Pier.

Interrupted by laughing cramps, Paduk continues to talk to the
coachman; then Brown discovers the whip stuck in the ground in
place of the disappeared coach.

Shot 5 1 : Close-up of the whip with the note:

'Don't have any room at home for your coach, expect you at 34
Long Street. Webbs'

Shot 52: From below, larger, same as shot 50: pier.

Paduk turns serious. Paduk fixes the coachman briefly with his
eyes, then deserts him, hurrying straight back to the plantation.
Perplexed, worried, the coachman watches him, turns round,
marches toward the city, scratching his head and turning the whip
in his hand, discouraged.

Shot 53: Staircase at 34 Long Street.

Melvil rings and rings. Dissolve.

Shot 54: Winter garden.

Paduk enters in a rush, rings, the coat-check lady enters and says:
'Quite relaxed now, the dove . . . '

Shot 5 5 :
Paduk interrupts her, gives an order. Gayo Perl and Hawk come
down the stairs from shot 49, Hawk and Paduk exchange looks.
The coat-check lady brings Paduk his hat and cane. Paduk leaves
with Perl.

Shot 56: Theatre.

Webbs drives up with the team of horses, disappears into the
theatre entrance.

Shot 57: Watchman's office.

Webbs shows the note from shot 1 0 . The watchman recognizes the
handwriting, shows and compares the receipt book, points to an
address.
'Kitty Smith, box-seat usher, 7 Pier Street. '
Webbs thanks him, exits. The watchman shakes his head.
 T H E MYSTERY OF T H E JAMAICA B AR

Shot 58: 34 Long Street.

The coachman and Melvil ringing . . . Melvil sits down on the
steps. Paduk arrives. Close-up of the three waiting for Webbs. The
coachman is meek and plagued by his bad conscience, Melvil is
reserved, reads his newspaper, Paduk is lost in thought. Then
Paduk attempts without success to appear witty:
'Funny to find here a coachman without a coach, and at the
theatre a coach without a coachman.
Mr Webbs, who lives here, seems to be a funny bird . . . '
The coachman stands up immediately while cursing. Paduk holds
him back:
'Your address?'
The coachman screams it out and stumbles off. They wait. Perl
appears as well. Dissolve.

Shot 59: Bar.

The sequestered women. The somewhat corpulent Condor treats
the ladies very circumspectly, takes a mirror from his pocket, which
one of the ladies uses first tentatively and then with great eagerness.
The others are won over after Condor elegantly serves morning
coffee. Mrs Melvil, who is the last to get the mirror, throws it
angrily away. It breaks. Condor thanks her with an ironic bow.

Shot 6 0: 34 Long Street, the far;ade.

Webbs drives up. Pats the horses. Enters the house, the stall boy
unharnesses the riding horse.

Shot 6 1 : Webbs 's workroom.

A formal scene: Paduk introduces himself as the owner of the pier
platform, Webbs introduces him to Mr Melvil, Perl introduces
himself with a bow to Webbs. Conversation. Paduk leads.

Shot 62: Close-up, split screen.

In the left half shots 50/5 1 repeat quickly in small format. Paduk
gesticulates wildly, Webb speaks: shot 46. Melvil listens silently
and aghast, then follows quickly shot 44 with the intertitle, then
Paduk says:
'I beg of you, Mr Webbs, please solve the disappearance of my
guests by any means . . . My entire fortune is at your disposal!
The coachman has already tried to blackmail me. The man looks
harmless, but . . . '
Perl protests.
'The man has an honest face, Mr Webbs!'
Webbs laughs:
'The arguments speak against him, Mr Perl!'

57
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Perl makes a disdainful gesture:

'An honest face is worth more than all the arguments in the
world. '
They both smile at each other obligingly. Fade-out.

Shot 63: Theatre square.

The coachman searches, the coach is not there, he turns back
desperately. A moving shot. He sees Long Street from afar, his
coach halts, he runs there . . .

Shot 64: Same as shot 62. Fade-in.

Webbs speaks, stops suddenly, rushes to the window.

Shot 65: From above.

The coachman is just charging off.

Shot 66: Same as shot 62.

Paduk nods meaningfully to Webbs. Webbs reflects a moment and
asks:
'Do you know the man's address?'
Paduk thinks a moment, shakes his head briskly, takes his leave:
'Then I can expect you at 9 Pier Street?'
Webbs looks at him more attentively for a second and accompanies
him politely out the door; he returns, thinks to himself.
'7 Pier Street . . . 9 Pier Street.'

Shot 67: Coin telephone on the street.

Paduk is calling.
'You simply buy his house. '

Shot 6 8 : The coachman 's apartment.

A miserable house. The coachman is discouraged, lost in thought.
A vision: alternately the wall . . . the bar . . . the wall . . . the bar.

Shot 69: Winter garden.

The police are searching the winter garden. Perl is directing them,
the police are not very enthusiastic.

Shot 70: Pier.

The coat-check lady waddles along the pier.

Shot 7 1 : Same as shot 69.

Paduk enters, looks at Perl hostilely, who introduces the men, Paduk
with a cold, exaggerated gesture: 'Search to your hearts' content!'

Shot 72: Pier.

Encounter between the unsuccessful police who are leaving, with
Perl at their head, and Webbs, who is just arriving. Handshakes.
 THE M Y S T E RY OF THE JAMAICA B A R

Shoulder-shrugging in the first instance and Webb's laughter as he

enters.

Shot 7 3: Entry hall.

Excited, Paduk greets Webbs.
'You see, now I am supposed to have stolen my own guests . . . '
Webbs calms him, looks around.

Shot 74: Coachman 's apartment. Same as shot 68.

The coat-check lady enters, lively conversation. Brown shows her
around apathetically, writes a note finally that says:
'I sell the house it costs eight thousan . . . '
The coat-check lady and he laugh slyly, she says:
'Much too cheap!'
Which the coachman then doubts. Webbs appears outside the
window.

Shot 7 5 : A comfortable room.

A lady and gentleman at breakfast. Among the morning mail a
letter with handwriting similar to that on Mrs Melvil's note.
'Do you have weapons? Protect your wife. At five o'clock
tomorrow climb into the coach at the theatre whose coachman is
wearing a white carnation in his hat. Arm yourself as much as
you can.'
The gentleman hides the letter, his wife exits, he watches after her,
crumples the letter, smoothes it out again, and reads it once more,
groaning.

Shot 76: Same as shot 68.

The coat-check lady waddles off pleased. Webbs climbs in through
the window. Interrogates the startled coachman, who shakes his
head, swallows, perspires. Webbs exits, smiling mockingly.

Shot 77: On the roof of the plantation.

Perl is smoking a water pipe under a huge umbrella. Giving in to a
sudden idea, Paduk kicks the chess board and rushes off.

Shot 78: Street.

The coat-check lady waddles down the street. She is smiling
broadly. The sun is shining. Webbs follows her, also pleased, he
also suns himself . . .

Shot 79: Theatre square.

The coat-check lady negotiates with a coachman.
'Be here at five o'clock and drive the gentleman who climbs in to
Road Fly. You must have a white carnation in your hat, so that
he recognizes you.'
59
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

She runs off quickly. Webbs approaches the coachman. Dissolve.

Shot 80: Same as shot 68.

The sorrowful coachman. Paduk enters. Conversation. Paduk
mockingly:
'Be at the platform at seven o'clock. Show me the bar that you
are talking about.'

Shot 8 1 : Street in the direction of the plantation.

Car. Inside, Webbs.

Shot 82: Market hall.

Perl follows the black boy, who is pulling a handcart. The coat­
check lady goes in, buys with intense enjoyment geese and beef
roasts, sausages and veal thighs, a lot of meat. The handcart can
hardly hold all the food. Perl is pleased.
'Does that old, scrawny Paduk eat all that? He must have
boarders!'

Shot 83: Plantation.

Webbs is greeted by Condor, masquerading as a house servant.
Shows his identification, searches the plantation. The camera
follows him around the winter garden (shot 35), full tour, Webbs
on the wall, the wall ledge breaks off, Webbs falls in the water.

Shot 84: In front of the wall.

Returning, Paduk sees Webbs's car. Sees Webbs in the water.
Fishes him out with Condor, handles him with great care, provides
him with dry but, of course, much too tight clothing.

Shot 8 5 : In the countryside.

Perl arrives at a farmhouse, negotiates with the farmer, pays.
'So what if it is only a shed - now I live right next to my friend
Paduk.'
Perl exits. The farmer rubs his hands together.

Shot 86: Same as shot 35.

Paduk and Condor confer.
'They must leave the house, otherwise we'll be in trouble.'

Shot 87: Bar.

The black boy enters with the handcart full of vegetables. The
ladies begin their feverish activities: peeling potatoes, cutting
beans, cleaning asparagus, peeling carrots, etc. At times, however,
a knife will lapse in a busy hand, then the yearning eyes focus on a
distant point . . . Dissolve.

End ofAct II.

6o
 T H E MYSTERY OF THE JAMAICA B A R

Act III

Shot 88: Webbs 's apartment.

He is gathering women's clothing from the cupboards and ties it
together in a bundle. Dissolve.

Shot 8 9 :
'Five o'clock.'
Theatre square.
Coachman with a white carnation in his hat on the coach-box of
coach 1, waiting stoically. Coach 2 comes round the corner,
coachman 1 becomes nervous: coachman 2 also has a white
carnation in his hat. An angry dialogue, threatening cracks of the
whips. Finally coachman 1 drives off cursing. Soon the gentleman
from shot 75 enters, climbs in coach 2, which drives off.

Shot 90: In front of the shed (across from the plantation).

A delivery car stops. Perl and a servant (in work clothes) unload a
huge number of books.

Shot 9 1 : Interior of the shed.

Both of them hand books through the window and pile up the
entirety of knowledge so hastily in the tiny, narrow room that
everything gets mixed up.

Shot 92: Country road.

Coach with the gentleman from shot 89 drives along. The
gentleman looks out.

Shot 93: Winter garden.

The coat-check lady gives Paduk the coachman's note, which is
inserted very briefly. The police are again there. Paduk shows the
note to the gentlemen.
'The man wants to come at seven. '
One o f the gentlemen nods 'aha', Condor (dressed a s a servant)
approaches, the other police officer laughs:
'He is fetching the ransom for holding his trap. '
Condor rolls up his sleeves threateningly.

Shot 94: Bar.

The ladies are bored. Chase fli es. Mrs Melvil taps the walls while
the others laugh at her.

Shot 95: Small room.

Condor changes his clothes: the servant becomes a cavalier.

61
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 9 6 : Bar.
Condor as cavalier sails in, bows to the ladies, who have already
become friendlier, a short round of roulette. Gaming. Condor
exits. Mrs Melvil opens a low, secret door while no one is observing
her and sneaks out, unnoticed.

Shot 9 7 : Room as in shot 75.

A lady sewing in front of a sewing basket. A maid lets in the
curtsying coat-check lady. The lady is surprised, somewhat
disgusted.
'Your husband has left? You don't know where. You will find out
at the Opera. You are an unfortunate woman. '
The lady's anxiety. She nods to the coat-check lady to wait, exits.

Shot 9 8 : In front of a rural inn.

Coach from shot 89 halts .

Shot 99 : Interior of the coach.

The gentleman cocks his pistol.

Shot 1 00: Same as shot 98.

The gentleman descends. The coachman remains sitting in his
box. The gentleman looks up quizzically:
'What now?'
The coachman's surprise. Conversation. The gentleman angrily
pulls his pistol. The coachman as well; he removes his beard with
the words:
'Allow me to remove my beard. '
To the gentleman's surprise, it i s Webbs. With consternation the
gentleman gives him the letter. Webbs reads, laughs, takes the
gentleman by the arm, looks at his watch, jumps on the box, drives
away at full speed. The gentleman remains standing there . . .

Shot 1 0 1 : Same as shot 9 7.

The lady puts on her coat, the coat-check lady wants to help her,
the lady coolly moves back. Dissolve.

Shot 1 02 : Forest.
On the way to the city Webbs glues back his beard while riding at
full speed.

Shot 1 03 : City. House front.

The lady leaves the house with the coat-check lady, Webbs and the
coach are just coming round the comer. The coat-check lady
waves, he halts, both climb in. Sitting straight and seriously on the
coach-box, Webbs drives off.

62
 THE MYSTERY OF THE JAMAICA B A R

Shot 1 04: Same as shot 68.

The coachman holds a lamp to the clock.
'Half past six.'
Puts on his hat and leaves.

Shot 105:
'Evening reception. '
Room in shed.
Perl has arranged things more or less comfortably. Greets friends
who look for seats in vain. They climb on the bookshelves.
Standing at the window, Perl throws an oblique glance now and
again at their sometimes unsuccessful climbing talents.

Shot 1 06: Winter garden.

Paduk once again greets the police. The gentlemen walk over to
the . . .

Shot 1 07 : Pier.
. . . wall side of the pier and hide in the bushes .

Shot 1 08 : Small ballroom.

Dancing course. Griffin is stuffing pralines into the mouths of two
teenage girls. They push their way to the door, giggling.

Shot 1 09 : Street at the pier.

The coachman is walking along. He weaves somewhat.

Shot 1 1 0 : Theatre square.

Webbs drives the coach up. The lady descends from the coach with
the coat-check lady. The lady pays, the coat-check lady rushes
ahead. Webbs:
'Be careful! Your mistrust towards your husband will get you in
trouble. When you are picked up, go first into the salon. '
The lady nods. Webbs climbs into the coach, draws the curtain.

Shot I l l : Box as in Act I.

The coat-check lady curtsies and lets the lady enter. Hawk
approaches the lady. Dissolve.

Shot 1 1 2: Interior of the coach.

Webbs changes his clothes: women's clothing.

Shot 1 1 3 : Plantation.
Narrow hallway. Mrs Melvil walks along, touches and taps the
walls. Then she climbs up a ladder leaning against the wall.

Shot 1 1 4: In front of the wall.

The coachman stumbles around. He has been drinking. From the
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

bushes the beam of a flashlight catches him, policemen approach,

he is arrested. Perl emerges from a bush at the side. Paduk looks at
him quizzically, he answers:
'From this evening on we are neighbours, Mr Paduk!'
The unimpressed Paduk plays along:
'Enchanted.'
Short interrogation of the coachman, who speaks in his drunken
state with large gestures. It is clear what he is saying . . .

Shot 1 1 5 :
. . . the moving wall, the bar, everything like visions in a fog . . .

Shot 1 1 6: Same as shot 1 1 4.

Paduk shakes the hand of the police commander; the police take
the coachman with them. Perl wants to stop them:
'He's not lying, he has an honest face.'
The men laugh loudly. Perl is insulted. Dissolve.

Shot 1 1 7 : Theatre. The salon in half-light.

The lady on the arm of the elegant Hawk.
'May I quickly have our coats brought?'
Hawk exits. Webbs (dressed as a woman, now Mrs Webbs) enters.
'Go home immediately. Your husband is waiting for you with
great longing. '
The lady nods, backs away. Webbs lets himself be helped into the
coat of the lady by the returning Hawk.

Shot 1 1 8 : In front of the theatre.

Mrs Webbs lets Hawk accompany her to a coach.

Shot 1 1 9: Perl's room in the shed.

Crowded with friends, drinking liqueurs. Perl, always at the
window observing, explains.
'The coachman is an honourable man.'
Laughter. Dissolve.

Shot 1 20 : Dancing club.

Griffin with the teenagers, his finger on his mouth.
'Really a wonderful bakery. Whipped cream and liqueur. But the
gentlemen should not notice a thing. '
Whispers. Agreement.

Shot 1 2 1 : Interior of the coach.

Mrs Webbs sitting stiffly next to Hawk in the coach.

Shot 1 22: A square.

The teenagers wait under a lantern. Griffin arrives with two cars,
 T H E MYSTERY OF T H E JAMAICA B A R

loads them in, drives off.

Shot 1 23:
'The theoretician. '
Room in the shed, same as shot 1 1 9.
Perl lectures.
'Simply observe, my dears, nothing but sharp observation . . . '
They tease him, pull him away from the window, he resists.

Shot 1 24:
'The practitioner. '
Interior of the coach. Framed in the window: fac;:ade o f the bar.

Shot 125: In front of the bar.

Mrs Webbs climbs out, enters the bar with Hawk.

Shot 1 26: Small room, same as shot 95.

Condor changes his clothes, becomes the cavalier.

Shot 1 2 7: Interior of the bar (side room) .

Webbs is immediately bound and carried to the corner.

Shot 1 28: In front of the bar.

Griffin's two cars arrive with the teenagers. Giggling they enter the
bar. Dissolve.

Shot 1 29: Room in the shed.

Perl detaches himself from his friends, runs to the window, the
friends follow him. They see . . .

Shot 1 30:
. . . the plantation wall. Dissolve.

End ofAct III.

Act IV

Shot 1 3 1 : Plantation. Low roof

Mrs Melvil clambers out of a roof window and looks around
observantly.

Shot 1 32: Room in the shed.

The friends, clearly showing the effects of the ample liqueur, are
taking leave. Perl shows them out and returns to his observation
point. He sees:

Shot 1 33: Same as shot 1 3 1 .

Mrs Melvil on the roof, waving with her long veil.
65
 EARLY S C RE E NPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 1 34: Small room in the plantation.

Paduk and Condor spy through a peephole in the wallpaper.
'Who is the long bean pole? A true cavalryman. '
-

Shot 1 3 5 : Bar.
The ladies and the teenagers are pressed closely together, the latter
still bound, like Mrs Webbs too, who towers over all of them by a
head. Griffin's pralines don't quite work any longer . . .

Shot 1 36: Same as shot 134.

Paduk makes a gesture to 'throw someone out', but Condor calms
him. Hawk enters hastily, reports something. Paduk exits quickly.

Shot 1 3 7 : Winter garden.

Perl is waiting, tells Paduk gently when he enters:
'A lady is sitting on your roof, Mr Paduk, and is waving and
screaming!'
Paduk is startled, controls himself, and smiles weakly. Hurries out,
brings Perl the wrong hat, in order to keep him there, then presses
him to sit down . . .

Shot 1 3 8 : Hallways.
Hawk hurries through.

Shot 1 3 9 : Same as shot 131.

Hawk sticks his head out of a roof window. Conversation with Mrs
Melvil.

Shot 140: Small room.

Hawk hurries in, hollers through the peephole.

Shot 1 4 1 : Bar.
Griffin listens, exits. Mrs Webbs breaks a mirror and rubs the ropes
with fragments of glass.

Shot 142: Roof

Hawk climbs out, chases Mrs Melvil, who escapes but then falls
into the water from the pier.

Shot 1 43 : Same as shot 107, the pier.

Condor and Griffin fish Mrs Melvil out. They bind her and pull her
into the bushes.

Shot 1 44: Winter garden.

Tired of the delays in shot 1 37, Perl puts a hat on Paduk and
accompanies him out. They see . . .

Shot 1 45 :
. . . the empty roof.
66
 T H E MYSTERY OF THE JAMAICA B A R

Shot 146: Pier.

Paduk shakes his head angrily, Perl unbelievingly.
'Do you often suffer from these hallucinations, Mr Perl?'

Shot 1 47 : Bar.
The young girls, released by Webbs, comb their hair. Webbs,
gathering up his skirts, leaves the room through the low, hidden
door.

Shot 148: Same as shot 1 .

Paduk alone, musing. Then Griffin enters from the club rooms.
They look at one another silently. Gambling. Condor and Griffin
bring the wet and bound Mrs Melvil. The coat-check lady,
waddling more quickly than usual, hurries in, cries out what must
be a warning, for Condor and Griffin pull Mrs Melvil hastily away.
The police enter. Dissolve.

Shot 149: Bar.

A lady sneaks behind Webbs through the hidden door. The coat­
check lady enters, the ladies hide the door like a flock of hens.

Shot 1 50: Winter garden.

Paduk, leading the police, gesticulates:
'The only person who lives in the area is a certain Perl . . . '

Shot 1 5 1 : Hallway, leading downwards.

The lady traverses it, finds herself in a small

Shot 1 52: cellar room.

Its door closes automatically behind her. Rats are crawling on the
floor, sniff at her; she pulls her skirts together, jumps with a scream
on a bed. Dissolve.

Shot 1 53 : Winter garden.

Paduk is becoming nervous, the police listen. Someone bends
down to the floor.
'Didn't someone scream there?'
Paduk smiles weakly, shakes his head slowly.

Shot 1 54: Bar.

The coat-check lady listens, rushes through the hidden door,
leaving behind terrified faces.

Shot 1 55 : Cellar room, same as shot 152.

With astonishing speed and grotesqueness the coat-check lady
masters simultaneously the rats and the screaming lady. She leads
her out while holding her mouth closed.
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 1 56: Winter garden.

The police are still listening. In vain. Paduk shows the men out.

Shot 1 57 : Room in the shed.

Perl at his post at the window, tired. There is a knock, the door
opens. Police. Perl is arrested, handcuffs.

Shot 1 58: Small room.

Paduk, the Paduk gang. Animated discussion. Paduk:
'I'd have to have too many people arrested. The whole bunch
must be gotten rid of. '

Shot 1 59 : In front of the shed.

A police car stops. Policeman load the bound, fat Perl.

Shot 1 60: Roof

Webbs's head emerges from the roof window. Looks around. He
sees:

Shot 1 6 1 : From above. The pier.

Condor and Griffin start up the motorboat.

Shot 1 62: From above. The shed, from afar.

The police car drives off.

Shot 1 63: From above. In front of the plantation.

The women are loaded into a zoo cage on wheels. Condor directs
the loading of the cage with a rifle, assisted by the coat-check lady.
The cage on wheels rolls on its own from the hill down to the
beach.

Shot 1 64: Close-up, concave mirror shot.

Webbs's face becomes longer and longer.
'And from the roof with sly and cunning
Looks Mr Webb, half-man, half-woman. '

Shot 1 6 5 : Beach.
The cage on wheels stops, the women are loaded into the
motorboat.

Shot 1 66: Same as shot 1 60.

Webbs sets the wig straight, climbs desperately out of the window
on to the roof, getting caught up in his skirts.

Shot 1 67 : On board the motorboat.

Condor and the women look up at the roof in horror.

Shot 1 68: Roof

Mrs Webbs's giant hulk. Waves violently with her white scarf.

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 T H E MYSTERY OF THE JAMAICA B A R

'By God, there is another one who wants to come along!'

Shot 1 69 :
The motorboat turns around, docks. The coat-check lady goes
back to the plantation.

Shot 1 70 : Beach.
Hawk and Griffin lead the weakly resisting Mrs Webbs to the arms
of the coat-check lady.

Shot 1 7 1 :
The motorboat taking off. Mrs Webbs towers over the other
women by a head and a half. Day breaks.

End ofAct IV.

Act V

Shot 1 72:
'It is dawn.'
Motorboat, the interior of the tiny cabin.
Through the window one sees the boat is moving. The kidnapped
women, pressed together, are wringing their hands, Mrs Webbs
wrings her hands as well.

Shot 1 73 : Same as shot 1 72, but shot from inside.

Consultation. Webbs:
'We can't get out, so we must tum back.'
Condor is piloting; while he looks away for a moment and the
women look at Webbs with astonishment and expectation, he
throws a mirror against the boat's back wall; Condor jumps to the
spot, from where he cannot see into the cabin. Webbs grabs an
anchor and slams it quickly and violently against the flooring.
Condor rushes in, Mrs Webbs points to the hole in the floor
through which water is already leaking.

Shot 1 7 4: Hallway at the plantation.

Paduk watches through a window the boat moving away.
'Thank God, they are safe . '
Suddenly h e i s shocked because he sees . . .

Shot 1 75 : Water.
. . . the boat is turning around.

Shot 1 76: Boat.

It fills quickly with water; the women surround Mrs Webbs, once
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

again wringing their hands. Condor gets the situation under

control:
'Don't scream so god-awfully! You will all be rescued! '
Webbs agrees and points straight ahead:

Shot 1 7 7 : Front of the plantation.

Very small above the surface of the water, but growing quickly.

Shot 1 78 : Look-out at the plantation.

Paduk's observation is interrupted by the coat-check lady, who
waddles in. He hurries out with her, she points through a window.

Shot 1 7 9 : The beach, from above.

Paduk sees from the window in the wall that the husbands of the
kidnapped women from Act I are marching towards the plantation.
He leaves with the small whistle in his mouth.

Shot 1 80: Motorboat is sinking.

Condor pulls off his jacket, the ladies are fighting for the only life­
belt.

Shot 1 8 1 : Harbour pier, from below.

Paduk greets the gentlemen with compliments, guides them
somewhat hastily into the house, enters last himself, looking back
at the water. He just catches a glance of

Shot 1 82: The motorboat landing.

Griffin and Condor, pulling their revolvers, force the women into
the cage on wheels.

Shot 1 83 : Winter garden.

Paduk guides his guests in. Gambling.

Shot 1 84: Interior of the cage.

Mrs Webbs whispers to Mrs Melvil:
'Wait for me on the roof. '
She nods. In front of the cage's bars the three 'birds' are
negotiating excitedly. Condor points to Mrs Webbs, who is fished
out somewhat more impolitely than usual.

Shot 1 8 5 : Winter garden.

The gentlemen want to leave. Paduk tries to stop them, sweating
profusely. The black boy brings in huge trays with liqueurs. They
push their way out.

Shot 1 86: A club room.

Mrs Webbs is being bound, rolled in a white sheet and tied to a
board.

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 T H E MYSTERY OF THE JAMAI C A B A R

Shot 1 87 : In the front room.

The gentlemen at the windows, where Paduk does not wish them
to be.
'What kind of wild animal cage is that, Paduky? Do you have
such large animals at the plantation?'
Paduk makes a face, trying to smile. He goes with the gentlemen ­
the camera travels along - through the hallway into the club room
of Act I.

Shot 1 88: Beach.

With great effort the 'birds' push the wheeled cage up the beach.
The coat-check lady at the shaft of the cage succeeds in steering
with abundant comical effects.

Shot 1 89 : Club room) same as shot 1 87.

The gentlemen lose patience and demand to be let out. Paduk
backs off through the glass doorJ outside a heavy drape falls down
and conceals him. The gentlemen tear away the window drapery
and see a smooth, white wall . . . Ceiling lights are turned on by an
invisible hand. The gentlemen look at each other. Dissolve.

Shot 1 90: Entry hall.

Paduk gives instructions to the 'birds', who are just dragging in the
women.

Shot 1 9 1 : Club room 2) same as shot 1 86.

Mrs Webbs unwinds herself from the linen sheet and ropes.
Takes off her woman's clothing, is now Mr Webbs again, bundles
up the clothes, goes to the window, passes through the glass
door.

Shot 1 92: Police headquarters.

Perl is being interrogated. He describes what he saw; vision of shot
1 33. The police laugh.
'Fraud, my good man! You are the suspect, not Mr Paduk!'
Perl is led out.

Shot 1 9 3 : Hallway.
Paduk sees with a shock that Mr Webbs is approaching him slowly
from behind.
'Ah, Mr Paduk, could you accompany me to the exit! You can
really get lost here! '
Worried, Paduk leads him first t o wall-hangings, but Webbs smiles
and pushes him on. Paduk looks through a window.

Shot 1 94: From above) the small entry.

The last women are being brought in by the 'birds'. The coat-check
71
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

lady is sitting on the wheeled cage and directs it down to the boat
storage.

Shot 1 9 5 : Docking point.

Relieved, Paduk leads Webbs out. Webbs examines the boat,
points to the leak.
'May I help you a bit with the repair?'
Paduk thanks him but shakes his head energetically. Webbs takes
his leave, the bundle under his arm. He leaves slowly, smiling.
Close-up of Paduk: hate, mistrust, satisfaction:
'Thank God, I have got rid of him!'

Shot 1 96: Bar.

The women are being pushed as quickly as possible into the bar.
Hidden behind a group of them, Mrs Melvil immediately crawls
through the hidden door.

Shot 1 97 : Pier.
Webbs strolls over to the pier, smoking.

Shot 1 98: Same as shot 1 96.

The coat-check lady pushes her way through the women, locks
with a murderously large key the hidden door. A smile lightens up
several of the women's tear-stained faces.

Shot 199:
Mrs Melvil climbs out of the roof window. Waves .

Shot 200: Pier.

Webbs looks around, goes to the water, wades, swims over to the
wall. Between the wall and the water a willow is growing on a
narrow piece of earth. Webbs climbs it and pushes himself up to
the roof where Mrs Melvil is waiting. He changes clothes with Mrs
Melvil, exactly as follows: Webbs steps behind the chimney, Mrs
Melvil crawls into the fireplace. The clothes fly in and out from the
top of the chimney, then Mrs Melvil steps out disguised as Webbs
and greets with great seriousness Mrs Webbs.

Shot 20 1 : Small room .

Paduk, the 'birds'. Rapid scene: consultation.
'As soon as the boat is clear, we'll beat it. The plantation will
blow up . . . '
The 'birds' exit quickly. Paduk alone, grins desperately, pockets
a revolver.

Shot 202: Split screen:

on the left Webbs - dressed again as Mrs Webbs - climbs as a lady

72
 THE MYS TERY OF THE JAMAICA B A R

back through the roof window, same as shot 1 99; on the right,
clothed as a man, Mrs Melvil jumps into the water and swims to
the pier.

Shot 203:
'That evening. '
The boathouse, interior.
The 'birds' repair the boat completely. Exit. The cage on wheels
opens, Mrs Webbs slips out gracefully. Seems not to take things so
tragically any longer and with pleasure drives another hole through
the boat with the anchor.

Shot 204: Beach.

The 'birds' are walking up to the house immersed m a lively
conversation.

Shot 205: Shed.

Perl's friends arrive, speak with the guard posted there, learn of
Perl's arrest, laugh uncontrollably.
'Arrested?'

Shot 206: Pier.

Mr Melvil crosses the pier.

Shot 207: Club room 2, same as shot 1 86.

Paduk enters, does not see Mrs Webbs, is startled, goes to the
window, sees from above:

Shot 208: Same as shot 204.

Mrs Webbs comes up the beach.

Shot 209: Hallway.

Paduk comes rurming, meets up with the 'birds', pushes them,
runs on, they follow.

Shot 2 1 0: Beach.
Webbs sees the four of them coming from the plantation running
towards him, turns round, goes to the right. Chase in the evening
dusk. Back to the boathouse, they follow, Webbs jumps in the
water, wades, swims. Hawk and Condor follow. He arrives at the
same place seen in shot 200, climbs the tree, jumps on to the roof,
which Hawk and Condor do not see because they are swimming
more slowly. They climb up on the pier:
'She couldn't have gone into the plantation! '
Consultation:
'She wouldn't dare!'
They stand on the pier, perplexed. Dissolve.

73
 EARLY S C RE E NPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 2 1 1 : Beach.
Paduk shakes Griffin by the shoulders, who plucks at his beard
while musing.
'I am sick and tired! Away with them! I'd rather guard a sack of
fleas than half a dozen women!'
They walk away.

Shot 2 1 2:
Mrs Melvil in Webbs' clothes walks along the wall toward the city.
Dissolve.
End of Act V.

Act VI

Shot 2 1 3 : Club room 1 .

The gentlemen are investigating the floor, walls and ceiling,
kneeling, crawling, climbing on each other's shoulders.

Shot 2 1 4: Boathouse.
The 'birds' want to float the boat, they see the leak, go back to work
cursing.

Shot 2 1 5 : A narrow shaft.

Following a complicated system of cables that she does not touch,
Mrs Webbs lowers herself on a rope.

Shot 2 1 6: Police headquarters.

Mrs Melvil enters in Webbs's clothes. Explains the situation
quickly.
'Webbs says that you are to land a police boat at the water's
edge. '
The police chief leaves with Mrs Melvil. Perl enters, led in b y a
policeman. He has been released! Looks around in amazement,
slowly exits, lost in thought.

Shot 2 1 7 : Same as shot 205.

Perl's friends drinking liqueurs with the guards, a car drives up.
Perl enters breathing heavily. They surround him, he shakes them
off, goes stiffly to the window, takes up his position there, looks
straight ahead out the window.

Shot 2 1 8: Wooden tunnels (travelling camera!) .

Dressed in Mrs Melvil's tom evening dress, Webbs crawls through,
hops over rolls of cable, comes to the control room.

74
 THE MYSTERY OF THE JAMAICA B A R

Shot 2 1 9 : Beach.
The coat-check lady and Condor are pulling the wheeled cage up
the beach again.
Shot 220: In front ofpolice headquarters.
A police car leaves. Mrs Melvil is seated next to the driver.
Shot 22 1 : Travelling shot: bar, hallways, winter garden.
The coat-check lady and Condor lead the girls out of the bar into
the winter garden. Suddenly there are too many: some of them
remain in the bar. Paduk joins those in the winter garden. The
following is seen through a mirror:
Shot 222: Same as shot 2 1 8.
Webbs sees Paduk with the girls through a telescopic mirror. He
pushes various levers.
Shot 223: Boathouse beach.
The 'birds' leave the boathouse, carefully lock the door and hurry
to the plantation.
Shot 224: Plantation wall.
The police car drives up. Police go to the pier. Mrs Melvil is not
with them!
Shot 225: Club room 2, same as shot 1 86.
The gentlemen break the window panes, find only white walls, are
shocked, begin to fight with each other.
Shot 226: City pier.
A police boat takes off. Next to the pilot stands Mrs Melvil, in
woman's clothes.
Shot 227: Telescopic mirror.
Webbs sees, as in shot 222, the 'birds' enter the winter garden.
They wave; like a school class the troupe of girls begins to move
together with the coat-check lady. Webbs smiles calmly, moves a
large lever. Dissolve.
Shot 228: Shed.
Perl at the window starts, looks more closely, waves his friends
over. Through the window:
Shot 229: Framed in the window.
The bar, rotating gently, appears. The illuminated windows pass
by and disappear, punctually like the blinking light of a lighthouse.
It is a majestic view.
Shot 230: Water.
The police boat shoots through the evening dusk.

75
 EARLY S C RE E NPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 23 1 : Winter garden (directly) .

Paduk suddenly stops in his tracks, then the 'birds' too. They grasp
their heads, stand motionless. Dissolve.

Shot 232: Club room 1 .

With shock the men watch the wall move away, a view of the front
room from shot 1 appears and then passes by.

Shot 233: The front of the plantation.

Police push their way in, and, reaching the entry hall, they see
how . . .

Shot 234:
. . . the illuminated club room glides by.

Shot 235: Telescopic mirror, same as shot 222.

Webbs watches the pillars of salt in the winter garden. Laughs.

Shot 236: Winter garden (directly) .

The ladies scream. Paduk rushes to the door. The 'birds' follow.
'The devil take it! That's Webbs! We'll never get out!'

Shot 237: Shed.

Perl runs out without his hat.

Shot 238: View from the shed window.

The plantation carousel turns faster. (Possibly from this point on
instead of a slowly turning trick shot, a model that also shows the
roof construction of the plantation!)

Shot 239: Beach.

The police boat docks. The police run to the plantation.

Shot 240: Hallways.

Everything is shaking, trembling, pictures are swinging on the
walls, fall off. The Paduk gang and Paduk himself stumble through
the hallways.

Shot 24 1 : Hallway between the front room and the carousel.

The police bump into each other.
'We can't go in as long as the carousel turns like this!'
They see:

Shot 242:
Behind the flying windows the Paduk gang runs by. Close-up - their
pale faces stare straight ahead.

Shot 243: Hallways.

Paduk and his gang rush through.
 THE MYS TERY OF THE JAMAICA BAR

Shot 244: Roof rim of the bar.

Wall ledge; the Paduk gang balances along it.
Shot 245: Deep in the tunnel.
Webbs is thinking to himself:
'Have the police arrived yet? This little carousel of mine is
running damned fast by now!'
Shot 246: Street in front of the plantation.
Perl runs in. He sees: the bar with the women sails by, club room
1 with the men sails by. He is startled when he suddenly feels a
heavy hand on his shoulder: coachman Brown is standing behind
him. Dissolve.
Shot 247: Deep in the tunnel, same as shot 245.
Yellow clouds of smoke are rising from the machines.
'The ball-bearings are overheating! ! '
Webbs grasps a t his collar, h e works the levers, h e i s frightened.
Shot 248: Small room.
Paduk is working feverishly at the control panel. It doesn't work!
His face is distorted.

Shot 249: Hallway between the club room and the front room.
Perl meets up with the police, confers and leaves with a small troop.
Shot 250: Deep in the tunnel.
Surrounded by yellow clouds, Webbs works like a possessed man
at the levers.
Shot 25 1 : Trick shot.
Short circuit! The fuses blow in the control room, the spark travels
along the cables, sparks fly from everywhere, there is crackling
throughout the plantation.
Shot 252: View from the shed.
The carousel turns more slowly.

Shot 253: Street.

Perl with the police. They see how the carousel slowly stops. They
hide in the bushes.
Shot 254: Hallway.
The police. The carousel has stopped!
Shot 255: Club room 1 .
The gentlemen, some frozen by fear in their club chairs, some
gesticulating excitedly, crawl out the broken windows as the police
at the same time push their way in.

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 E A RLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 256:
Webbs in the control room, almost suffocated.

Shot 257: Hallways. Bar.

The Paduk gang runs through; they are caught by the police as they
go outside. The women crawl after them out of the bar.

Shot 258: Winter garden.

As they exit, the women meet up with Mrs Melvil, who enters at
the head of the policemen. They explain something to her,
gesturing wildly:
'Webbs is in danger!'

Shot 259: Plantation.

Begins to fill up with smoke. Wild search of the rooms for Webbs.
The women compete with the police, that is, they get in the way.

Shot 260: Deep in the tunnel.

Webbs climbs up a ladder, half unconscious he keeps falling back.

Shot 261 : Side wing of the plantation.

Begins to smoke threateningly. The police boat sprays thick, short
streams that naturally do not reach.

Shot 262: At the bottom of the shaft.

Fighting for air, Webbs is showered with water by the women from
above, then pulled up by a rope.
'The women rescue their rescuer. '

Shot 263: Winter garden.

The men and women sink into each other's arms with laughter and
weeping. With a bright and a tearful eye they examine their more
or less ruined evening clothes. In the centre of the confusion
Webbs, the most ragged of all in the torn, dripping gown borrowed
from Mrs Melvil, shakes each of his female rescuers' hands while
half choking and coughing. The fat Perl comes towards him,
pulling coachman Brown with him, and says:
'An honest face is worth more than all the arguments in the
world!'
Brown grins.

Shot 264: Beach.

The cage on wheels rolls down, above the policemen, with the
worthy Mr Paduk and his 'birds' inside. Behind, however, led by
the largest policeman, the melancholy black boy trots along and the
coat-check lady waddles after, completely disconcerted.

The end.
 The Jewel Eater

[See GBFA 1 9/84-105. Written in mid-March 1 92 1 , when work on

another screenplay, The Mystery of the Jamaica Bar, was interrupted, this
is the first screenplay completed by Brecht. He probably borrowed the
motif of the swallowed jewel from Friedrich Hebbel's comedy The
Diamond ( 1 841), enriched by set pieces from adventure and gangster
genre films of the early 1 920s. The screenplay was never produced.]

Characters:
Stick, the orange seller
Anna, his girlfriend
Fatty, her brother
the innkeeper
Flophouse Fritz
Sticky Fingers Herman
Buttercup
Jezebel, an old slut
the young gentleman
the lady
the police commissioner
the over-dressed woman
police and hotel guests

The 'Crocodile' flophouse is an old, worm-eaten, wooden building

located on the canal of a harbour town. It has no wallpaper inside,
its hallways are narrow, slanting, uneven and crooked, and there is
almost nothing in the rooms except a table and a chair. The
vermin-wicked and coarse lads, rather crude and lazy - have their
fun with devilish seriousness. Nothing especially unusual happens
the night this story takes place - the brutal, disgusting joke of a sot
- there is no trace of exceptional horror. This is precisely the story's
uncanmness.

The introduction of the main characters as a prologue

1 . In front of a white-washed wall: Orange Stick, motionless, with

oranges on a plank buckled around his belly, on the plank is a sign,
'Orange Stick' . He fades out.

2. In front of the wall: a wooden bench without a back. Next to one

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 EARLY S C RE E NPLAY S ( 1 9 2 1 )

another, facing the camera - Anna, Flophouse Fritz, Sticky Fingers

Herman, Jezebel, Buttercup, the innkeeper, Fatty. Their names
hang like signs over them. They swill from a brandy glass, one after
the other, moving from left to right with rapid gestures. Then they
all fade out, except:

3. Anna and Fatty. The latter turns his head quickly and barks
something crude. They fade out.

4. A gentleman in a top hat, lighting a cigarette: from bottom left

to top right a series of rapidly moving letters spells out: The
gentleman who will be murdered. He looks as if he has been crossed
out. He fades out.

5 . The young gentleman and the lady, sitting on a bed, facing the
camera. On the headboard is written: The lovers. They fade out.

6. In front of the wall a commissioner and two policemen herd a

pack of barely dressed couples from right to left. The shot fades
out.

7. Orange Stick. Anna runs to him, embraces him. Fatty pulls her
away with a rapid grip.

The very first shot: Narrow, outlying road.

An elegant gentleman in a top hat comes forward. It is evening.

Shot 1 : Blue: parkway with bushy, high trees.

A lady dressed in bright colours with a white veil hiding her face
walks forward quickly. She looks back once in a while, as if she is
being pursued, she walks in a zigzag and stops for a moment in
mid-range with her hand at her eyes, searching. Then an elegant
car drives up, and a young, refined gentleman in a frock coat jumps
from the running board and helps the woman into the vehicle. Both
look back once again and the car leaves.

Shot 2: Narrow street of a harbour town.

An orange seller, Stick, a large, strong person with a mean look, is
selling oranges from a handcart. It is evening. The street lanterns
are lit.

Shot 3: Country road, frontal shot.

The car speeds by. It is possible to make out inside the young
gentleman next to the woman. He is holding her hand. Their faces
are somewhat immobile.

Shot 4:
A ragged lad, Flophouse Fritz, pulls Stick to the side, whispers
8o
 THE JEWEL EATER

something in his ear. Stick nods, sells oranges. Flophouse Fritz

runs off.

Shot 5: Another narrow street.

The elegant gentleman is mugged and beaten by three ragged
characters (Flophouse Fritz, Buttercup and Sticky Fingers
Herman) . They bend over him.

Shot 6: Street corner.

A policeman. Listens, looks around, whistles. Rushes out.

Shot 7: Another street.

Two policemen walk along slowly. They stop, listen. Walk on.

Shot 8: Street, same as shot 2.

Stick is selling oranges.

Shot 9: Street, same as shot 5.

The policeman appears, the characters flee. First, however, Flop­
house Fritz pulls a ring from the finger of the beaten man. The
lifeless body lies on the black asphalt. Dissolve.

Shot 1 0 : Canal bridge, at an angle.

The car drives over the bridge.

Shot 1 1 : Street, same as shot 2.

The three characters trot by Stick's handcart. Flophouse Fritz
appears to buy oranges but actually passes Stick the ring. He walks
on.
'Put the little jewel in an orange, Stick!'

Shot 1 2: Narrow streets.

The three policemen, two of whom are carrying the gentleman.

Shot 1 3 : Street, same as shot 2.

Alone for a moment, Stick breaks out (close-up) the jewel from the
ring, presses it into an orange, throws away the ring, pushes his cart
on.

Shot 1 4 : Street, same as shot 2.

The policemen walk by. One of them looks around and stares at
Stick, who offers him an orange with a grin.

Shot 1 5 : Street.
The car pushes its way forward, rocking.

Shot 1 6 : Other streets.

The three characters saunter homewards. They see

81
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 1 7 : in front of the Crocodile flophouse

a car stopping that fills the entire street. The two young people step
out of the car and sneak rather quickly into the flophouse.

Shot 1 8 : Telephone conversation.

Script on the image, thin and delicate, appearing word for word
between the police commissioner and an old man:
'My daughter Gertrude has been taken away in a car by a young
man unknown to me. '
The old man on the left fades out, the commissioner rings, a guard
enters into what only now comes into focus as a guard room.

Shot 1 9: Same as shot 1 7, in front of the flophouse.

The car drives off. The characters, snooping after them, enter the
flophouse making exaggerated gestures that mimic the pair.

Shot 20: In front of the police headquarters.

The commissioner climbs into a car with two policemen. Drives
off.

Shot 2 1 : Street.
Stick examines the oranges, one by one. He can't find the jewel.

Shot 22: Lounge in the Crocodile.

An old slut, Jezebel, tipples in the comer. Anna, the barmaid, goes
to the window. Fatty, her brother, gets up from the table cursing:
'If you don't sack that orange dandy, I'll knock out your teeth . '
Anna walks out muttering. H e follows slowly. H e bumps into the
three characters who are merrily trotting in. She pushes them aside,
exits.

Shot 23: Same as shot 1 7, street.

Stick at his cart is examining the oranges once again, but he finds
nothing. He has a scowl on his face. He whistles with two fingers in
his mouth.

Shot 24: Corridor in the Crocodile.

Anna enters and goes to the door on the left. Meanwhile the old,
fat innkeeper and the pair climb up the stairs. A wicker trunk
remains in the corridor.

Shot 25: Same as shot 1 7, street.

Anna walks toward Stick, who is impatient. She pushes the cart into
the corridor. Stick follows her, keeping a close eye on the oranges.

Shot 26: Same as shot 24, corridor.

Anna pushes the cart, Stick watches the pair, his hands in his
pockets. At the top of the stairs the lady turns round to look.
82
 THE JEWEL EATER

Shot 27: Close-up.

The lady's face.

Shot 28: Same as shot 24, corridor.

Anna speaks to Stick, who turns away:
'Why don't you just steal the jewel? Then we can get out of here! '
Stick, with an angry look:
'Do you think I know where it's hiding in this rotten fruit!?'
Anna grasps Stick's arm as Fatty enters. Stick turns to the cart
apathetically, shoves oranges in his pockets. He gathers the rest in
both arms and hands. Enters the lounge.

Shot 29: Same as shot 22, lounge.

The three characters at the table pound with their fists and feet for
the waitress. Jezebel holds her ears, protesting. Stick enters with the
oranges. Buttercup comes his way, embraces him emotionally. The
oranges roll to the floor.

Shot 30: Small room with an alcove bed in the Crocodile.

Small, white curtains on the alcove windows. Low ceiling. Electric
chandelier. Upholstered door. The innkeeper and the pair enter.
The cavalier gives the innkeeper money so that he keeps his mouth
shut. The innkeeper looks coldly, impassively at the comer of the
room. Takes the money and stomps out. The cavalier shakes his
head. The lady sinks on to the bed, sighing with relief. He goes to
her, throwing off his coat.

Shot 3 1 : Same as shot 24, corridor.

Anna leans the cart against the wall. Fatty intervenes, scolds her.
The innkeeper comes down, does not look at them, walks past:
'I don't like you playing around with the orange dandy. I'll get
the bucks even if l have to sell my skin. I'll get you out of here . '
Anna shakes her head, pulls herself away from him, runs into the
lounge. He stomps in angrily after her.

Shot 32: Lounge, same as shot 2 1 .

The characters ask Stick about the jewel. Exaggerated, with soft
gestures:
'Where is the little jewel?'
Stick plays ball with the oranges. They ask more impatiently. He
juggles. One of the oranges hits the innkeeper on the nose. Stick
grabs it with exaggerated quickness because Jezebel wants to take
it. Anna and Fatty enter.

Shot 33: Enter.

The police car driving along. It halts in front of a hotel. The
 EARLY S C RE E N PLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

commissioner goes inside.

Shot 34: Room, same as shot 30.

The cavalier stretches out both arms pleasurably. She smiles up at
him.
'Now the old man can take his time searching the hotels! The
boat tickets will arrive any minute now.'
He kisses her.

Shot 35: Lounge, same as shot 22.

Excited negotiations. Stick points to the oranges, puts them on the
table, examines one after the other, shrugs his shoulders.
Flophouse Fritz pulls a knife from his bag. Anna rushes over to
him, but Stick takes it from him calmly, looks him straight in the
eyes, looks sceptically at the knife, wipes it off on his jacket lining,
cuts into an orange. All of them stare greedily at him.

Shot 36: Hotel lobby.

Travellers at the porter's desk. The police commissioner walks up.
He takes the guest register, studies it.
'Hans Storm and sister No. 47'
The commissioner points to it, grins, walks with the porter to the
elevator.
Shot 37: Hotel room.
A half-dressed pair sits happily on the bed. There is a knock. Great
confusion. Finally he goes to the door. The police commissioner.
Exchange of words. The young man does not have his
identification papers in order, especially those of his sister. The
commissioner grins threateningly. He takes both with him.

Shot 38: Same as shot 33.

The pair climb in the car. The commissioner follows. The car
drives off.

Shot 39: Room, same as shot 30.

The young man leads the lady to the window. Pressed against each
other, they look out. They look at the

Shot 40: canal.

Shot 4 1 : Same as shot 39 and 30.

She wraps her arms around him. Dissolve.

Shot 42: Lounge, same as shot 22.

Still arguing. Then they grab the oranges, sit down along the wall,
and bite into the fruits. All chew on the oranges except the
innkeeper, who is leaning on the ceramic heating stove, and Anna,
84
 T H E JEWEL EATER

who is standing behind Stick. They throw halved oranges, peels,

seeds at Jezebel, crawl after rolling oranges under the benches.

Shot 43: Close-up.

Stick sees something.

Shot 44: Close-up.

Fatty blinks his eyes, swallows, looks around.

Shot 45: Lounge, same as before.

Everyone is eating and searching.

Shot 46: Close-up, same as shot 43.

Stick looks coolly, intensely at

Shot 47: Close-up, same as shot 44.

Fatty's body, and now Fatty has become transparent. The slightly
illuminated oesophagus appears, like a vision, with a black object
being swallowed. Then only the stomach is illuminated with the
object (black) in it.

Shot 48: Lounge, same as shot 22.

Fatty lays his orange aside, stands up slowly. He goes slowly to the
door. Stick watches him.

Shot 49: Lounge, same as shot 22, the door.

Fatty saunters toward the door, and his stomach is transparent.

Shot 50: Lounge, same as shot 22.

Stick stands up and follows him slowly. Anna watches both of
them. Upset, she brushes her forehead.

Shot 5 1 : Room, same as shot 30.

The lady half lies on the bed, the young man listens for sounds
from downstairs. He goes to the wall and opens an upholstered
door, looks out, shakes his head, looks then at the lady, who pays
him no attention. He closes the door quickly, returns.

Shot 52: Corridor, same as shot 24, dark.

Fatty, moving slowly, his stomach transparent, behind him Stick.

Shot 53: In front of a hotel.

The police car drives up.

Shot 54: Long, dark corridor, uneven, windows at back.

Fatty and behind him, as earlier, Stick.

Shot 55: Hotel corridor.

The police commissioner with the porter knocks at three doors one
after the other, enters the first.
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 56: Corridor in front of the windows.

Fatty opens the window, wants to lean out, dries the sweat on his
brow, hears Stick, turns round. They look into each other's eyes.
'Watch out that you don't get sick and vomit out the window!'
Fatty smiles painfully and vaguely. They go back.

Shot 57: Hotel lobby.

The police commissioner leaves the hotel with two pairs of lovers.

Shot 58: Room, same as shot 30.

The lady and the young man in an embrace on the bed.

Shot 59: Lounge, same as shot 22.

Flophouse Fritz thrusts his knife in the table. Tensely:
'Orange Stick stole the little jewel. '
Anna screams back a t him. The innkeeper brings whiskey.
Buttercup gets up slowly.
'Stick never steals, you steal . . .
'

They throw themselves at each other, fight. Fatty enters . Thin

smile.

Shot 60: Corridor, same as shot 24.

Stick meets up with a messenger boy dressed in red, takes an
envelope from him. Gives him a coin. Opens the envelope, holds
two tickets in his hand:
'The Kaiser Wilhelm II. Luxury cruise Hamburg - New York.
First Class Cabin No. 74.'
Stick looks up. He sees the wall fade out, and he sees

Shot 6 1 : the ocean.

Shot 62: Same as shot 60.
He speaks to the boy:
'Call a taxi. '
The boy lifts his cap, exits. Stick stands there musing. Goes into the

Shot 63: lounge,

where a real fight is going on. They throw orange peels at Stick,
who goes over to the innkeeper, takes several whiskey bottles from
him. Together with Anna he fills five or six glasses, pushes them
over to those fighting.
'Bottoms up for the digestion! The devil has taken the jewel! '
Buttercup drinks, lying under Sticky Fingers Herman, half
surrendering.

Shot 64: Streets.

Police car, illuminating house fronts with its headlights.

86
 T H E JEWEL EATER

Shot 65: Corridor, same as shot 24.

Stick pulls Anna into the corridor:
'Dance. Make them drunk. Help me get rid of them! I've got to
be alone with your brother, do you hear!'
She hugs him passionately. He pulls her roughly into the lounge.

Shot 66: Hotel room .

A couple in a double bed sit up, look at the door. The man climbs
out.

Shot 67: Another hotel room.

Ditto.

Shot 68: Dark, obscure, an entire series of hotel rooms.

Couples jump out of bed, one after the other.

Shot 69: Lounge.

The men are getting drunk. Stick pours more. Anna dances,
starting up the electric piano time and again. Fatty goes out, still as
if in a dream.

Shot 70: Corridor.

Fatty tries to spit into a basin. Suddenly Stick is standing behind
him. They return to the lounge.

Shot 7 1 : A bare hotel room, rather dark.

Filled with half-dressed pairs of lovers. More and more arrive. The
gentlemen hold their identification papers in trembling hands. In
front of the glass door, outside in the brightly-lit hallway, a large
policeman.

Shot 72: Stairway at the Crocodile.

Fatty ascends the stairs. Halfway up he looks round. Descends,
goes to the door. Stick is standing in front of it. Fatty looks at him,
ascends again. He is transparent again.

Shot 73: Lounge.

Wild dancing. Jezebel is dancing with Anna.

Shot 74: Row of windows from the exterior.

Fatty's sweating, pale face is visible peering out. It appears at one
window after another.

Shot 75: Corridor without a window.

Fatty halts, listens. He hears:
'He's crazy enough to send the police after us! Then the scandal
is sure - and goodbye New York!'
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 76: Room, same as shot 30.

The pair. He paces back and forth. She stretches her arms out
towards him.

Shot 77: Same as shot 75.

Fatty thinks. Goes to a window ledge. Scribbles something on a
piece of paper. Opens the window.

Shot 78: Street seen from above.

A young, somewhat over-dressed woman passes by, looks up.

Shot 79: Window seen from below.

Fatty makes hand signs, throws the notepaper down, the over­
dressed woman bends down.

Shot 80: In front of the hotel.

Car with spotlight. Couples swell forth from the brightly-lit interior
of the hotel. The police commissioner bends over to the chauffeur.
'Only love! No identification papers! '
H e stuffs papers in his breast pocket.

Shot 8 1 : Streets.
The over-dressed woman is running with the notepaper.

Shot 82: Lounge.

Stick takes Anna aside.
'I've got to deal with your brother alone. I'll get rid of your guys. '
Everyone i s pretty drunk. They smash a lamp, for which Buttercup
has to climb on the shoulders of Sticky Fingers Herman. They
organize a cockfight. Then Stick has an idea. He points upwards.
Everyone grins.
'A great trick. '
Everyone looks a t Anna, who leads the way. The others follow.
Stick moves to the window, looks out. He sees

Shot 83: the canal

and across from it a two-storey house with darkened windows . . .

Shot 84: Hallways in the Crocodile.

Anna goes upstairs, enduring the characters, followed in a wild
chase by Buttercup, Sticky Fingers Herman, Flophouse Fritz, the
innkeeper, and Fatty slowly stumbling behind them.

Shot 85: Lounge.

Stick looks out at

Shot 86: the canal

that flows by slowly and darkly.

88
 T H E JEWEL EATER

Shot 87: Anna 's small bedroom.

The whole gang spills drunkenly into the room. Sticky Fingers
Herman immediately discovers a picture of the Madonna above
Anna's bed. He breaks out in loud guffaws. Anna shows the others
a dressmaker's dummy lying under a pile of junk; they pull it out
and leave the room while hamming it up. Anna is alone for a
moment, looks forlornly at the wall with the picture, then Fatty,
who was standing by the wall behind her, moves toward her with
fear in his broad face. She moves away from him, he makes a half­
begging gesture so that she stops, somewhat touched, and twists up
her face. He says something, probably without making a sound.
She stares at his face with curiosity, but he points with his short,
bent index finger to his body, which becomes transparent where
the stomach is located. In the dimly-lit stomach lies the small,
black jewel. This does not last a second. And Fatty, his finger still
pointing to the body which is no longer transparent, talks on
soundlessly. But Anna turns away with disgust and walks out. Fatty
follows her quickly.

Shot 88: Corridor, same as shot 84.

Fatty grabs at Anna's arm, breathing fast. He says, close to her
face:
'See to it that you get to the Butchers' Bridge! The police are
already there! You have to get them, Anna. At least seven men,
Anna!'
He makes the gesture of cutting off his head. Anna stares at him,
uncomprehending.

Shot 89: Lounge.

They drag in the dressmaker's dummy, make a head from wadded
rags, Sticky Fingers Herman dances with her, Flophouse Fritz even
kisses her, but Stick pulls her from them and examines it with a
professional gaze. Stick sends Flophouse Fritz upstairs. Meanwhile
they give the dummy whiskey to drink.

Shot 90: Same as shot 88.

Anna and Fatty. Close to his face, she bends her own face back,
looks at him coolly, shrugs her shoulders, turns round, goes off
calmly. He watches after her with a stupid expression on his face,
leans back on the wall suddenly with a shiver, closes his eyes for a
moment. Dissolve.

Shot 9 1 : Room, same as shot 30.

The lady is lying on the bed, the young man is sitting on his wicker
trunk, his top hat lying in front of him on the floor. He loosens his
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

necktie and smokes. The upholstered door opens. Flophouse Fritz

stands there for a while and watches the idyll, quite touched. When
the young man notices him, he moves forward with an oily smile
and invites him downstairs.
'Sir, downstairs there is a boy with tickets! '
The young man follows him reluctantly, knotting his tie, while
Flophouse Fritz watches him with amusement. The lady asks the
young man not to leave her alone. He quickly reassures her and
hastily steps out, in front of Flophouse Fritz, who makes a most
obliging bow towards her.

Shot 92: Streets.

The over-dressed woman comes panting to the police station,
bumps into a policeman, who brusquely pushes her away,
intimidates her, and asks for her identification; then he pulls her
into the station, despite her sudden resistance.

Shot 93: Lounge.

Anna is collecting glasses. Fatty walks around restlessly. Sticky
Fingers Herman is dancing with the dummy, Jezebel moves the
chairs aside so that he has room, Buttercup pounds the beat with
his foot and claps his hands. The young man enters, led by
Flophouse Fritz with a deep bow. They all greet him with bows,
show him the dummy, which he notes with great amusement, then
Stick throws his arms around him from behind and pushes a gag
into his pretty mouth. The others grab him, as he courageously
defends himself, and tie him up like professionals, while Stick and
the innkeeper calmly exit.

Shot 94: Room, same as shot 30.

The lady is waiting at the window. Stick and the innkeeper enter
without looking at her. They look around a bit, then Stick points
with his chin to the trunk. At this point he and the innkeeper drag
the trunk out. When they have reached the door, the lady steps
forward, and Stick turns round to her, looks at her coolly.

Shot 95: Close-up.

The lady, very worried.

Shot 96: Same as shot 94.

Stick, bent over, looks past the lady, their profiles fade out quickly
and dissolve to

Shot 97: water (the ocean) .

Shot 98: Same as shot 94.

Stick controls himself, he points briefly with his chin towards the
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 T H E JEWEL EATER

door. They drag the trunk completely out. The lady moves
anxiously after them to the door. She sees from above

Shot 99: on the stairs, same as shot 24,

both of them dragging the trunk down and then Fatty going from
the wall to the door.

Shot 1 00: A corridor.

Fatty passes through.

Shot 1 0 1 : Anna 's bedroom.

Fatty enters, looks around with a blank expression, stomps out
anxiously.

Shot 1 02: Corridors.

Fatty looks through the window at

Shot 1 03 : the canal.

Shot 1 04: Police station, bare room.

Filled with pairs oflovers; the gesticulating commissioner examines
their identification papers. All the detainees are shivering, the girls
are crying, dissolved in tears, some barely dressed. The image is
cluttered and disorderly. The large policeman pushes the over­
dressed woman into the room, who, sobbing, hands the note to the
commissioner.

Shot 1 0 5 : Lounge.
They place the young man on his feet, hold his arms and pull off
his jacket and tie. Jezebel pours whiskey in his face, Anna stops her,
dries him off. Stick and the innkeeper set down the trunk. Stick
removes the key from the young man's vest pocket, opens it and
pulls out underwear, clothes, toiletries, the others join in the
rummaging, and Jezebel greedily collects the flying pieces of
underclothes. With hoots and hamming they bind the young man
and throw him in the trunk, which they close.

Shot 1 06: Room, same as shot 30.

The lady paces anxiously back and forth.

Shot 1 07 : Police station.

The commissioner pushes out the couples who are clustered around
the door. He is very excited, waves the notepaper. He looks at it:
'To the Commissioner!
If ya wanna catch a rich couple who's afraid of tha police, come
to the Butchers' Bridge right away, fast, at least seven men, I'll
meet ya there. '
Exits.
9I
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 1 08: Lounge.

While the characters try on the underwear, including fine women's
lingerie, Stick pounds a large nail in the trunk because he threw
away the key and cannot find it. He and the innkeeper drag the
trunk out again, up the

Shot 1 09 : staircase, same as shot 24.

Shot 1 1 0: Room, same as shot 30.

The lady hears the noise, opens the door. They place the trunk
back in the comer, exit without a sign of sympathy. At the door
they both tum their faces towards her. Then they leave. The lady
regards the nailed trunk with surprise.

Shot 1 1 1 : Same as shot 1 03.

Shot 1 1 2: Lounge.
The same commotion. Now the dummy is dressed in the young
man's tuxedo. Stick has entered and looks at the work of art.
Jezebel cheek to cheek with the handsome puppet-boy in a tuxedo
and flowing shirt. Stick leads them to the small windows at the
back. All of them look out, he explains something. They laugh
drunkenly. Stick looks around for something, leaves quickly.

Shot 1 1 3: Corridor, same as shot 24.

Fatty and Anna. Fatty desperately shakes the locked entry door.
Anna argues with him, her arms on her hips. She laughs
contemptuously for a moment. Suddenly Stick walks up to them.
Fatty, filled with fear, notices him. Stick, who says something to
Anna, looks at the door, through which the characters, the inn­
keeper and Jezebel drag the dummy. They have poles. Stick
informs them:
'I'll toss it! You can watch from outside. But fish the dummy
back out!'
Stick takes the dummy from them, nods to Anna, who takes from
her apron the door key and unlocks the door.

Shot 1 1 4: Close-up.
Fatty watches her. He dries the sweat on his brow, takes a step
forward.

Shot 1 1 5 : Corridor, as before.

Fatty stands in the middle of the entrance hall, cowering. The
characters stand at the door, when suddenly something occurs to
Sticky Fingers Herman. He pulls Buttercup over to the wall, climbs
on his shoulders and plays with the wires above.

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 T H E JEWEL EATER

Shot 1 1 6: Room, same as shot 30.

The lady listens at the door. The light goes out.

Shot 1 1 7 : Corridor, same as shot 24.

Stick grabs Fatty by the arm. Standing at the door, Anna looks
over, the others are now outside. Anna closes the door, turns the
key. Fatty walks alone to the lounge, surrendering to his fate, his
shoulders pulled in. Stick talks to Anna.

Shot 1 1 8: In front of the Crocodile, same as shot 1 7.

The whole gang (Flophouse Fritz, Buttercup, Sticky Fingers
Herman, the innkeeper and Jezebel) stagger drunkenly up the
street.

Shot 1 1 9 : Lounge.
Fatty enters. Halts. Goes to the window, as if in a dream, dries the
sweat on his brow, bends out of the windows, sees

Shot 1 20: the canal, same as shot 86.

Shot 1 2 1 : The canal dissolves and Fatty sees in a vision the police
car being driven by the policemen.

Shot 1 22: Lounge.

Stick comes in, behind him Anna. Fatty is startled, spins around.

Shot 1 23 : Same as shot 30.

The lady, almost desperate, rings violently, runs out, comes back,
sinks with sobs on to the trunk. The trunk becomes transparent.
The young man is lying in it in his shirt sleeves, dressed only in his
trousers. He turns his face, he seems to be listening. The trunk is
once again opaque.

Shot 1 24: Streets.

The police car at top speed.

Shot 1 2 5 : Lounge.
Stick approaches Fatty, not letting him out of sight. Standing in
front of him, he points imperiously but calmly with his hand to the
comer where Anna has placed a bucket. Fatty, completely cowed,
stares at him first full of hate. Then, trembling with fear, he shuffles
over to the bucket. Stick follows him with a wide knife in his hand.

Shot 1 26: Wooden bridge.

The gang pounds its way over the bridge.

Shot 1 27 : Lounge.
Stick and Anna tend to Fatty, who is trying to vomit, sticking his
finger in his mouth, etc. He bends over the bucket and sees
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 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 1 28 :
at the bottom of the bucket the Butchers' Bridge (in stone) on which
seven policemen are standing with their faces turned upstream.

Shot 1 29 :
Suddenly Stick grabs him brutally and drags him into the comer,
kicking the bucket away and pounding him on the head with his
fist. Anna tries to prevent him from beating Fatty, so that he is able
to pull himself away, making a stumbling jump sideways, and run
away as fast as he can. Stick turns in a rage towards Anna, lifts his
hand to strike, but angrily lets it fall, and runs after Fatty.

Shot 1 30: The Butchers ' Bridge.

The police car halts. The police jump out.

Shot 1 3 1 : Hall, stairs, corridors.

Chase. Stick is after Fatty.

Shot 1 32: Row of windows from outside.

Fatty's face, pale and sweaty, rushing by.

Shot 1 3 3 : A corridor.
Stick at a small window, Anna chases him past it.

Shot 1 34 : View from the window. Canal and earthen bank directly
across.
The five are standing on the bank, whistling and hollering, they
wave at him.

Shot 1 3 5 : Same as shot 129.

Stick returns, cursing, goes down the stairs.

Shot 1 36: Corridor.

Fatty runs into Anna's room.

Shot 1 37 : Anna 's bedroom, same as shot 87.

Fatty, breathing heavily, pushes up against the door.

Shot 1 38: Lounge.

Stick lifts up the dummy, drags it out.

Shot 1 3 9 : Same as shot 1 3 7.

Anna pounding at the door. The door gives way. She dashes in.

Shot 1 40: Room, same as shot 30.

The lady has heard the commotion. She goes from the door to the
window and from there to the door again. She stops in the middle
of the room, and now she listens.

Shot 1 4 1 : Canal and bank.

94
 THE JEWEL EATER

The five are whistling at the top of their lungs with their fingers in
their mouths.

Shot 142: Corridor in front of the room from shot 30.

With long strides Stick jerks the dummy along behind him.

Shot 1 43 : Same as shot 30.

The lady, cowering in horror, stares at the door flying open. From
the dark corridor Stick enters, dragging the dummy behind him.
The lady looks at it for a moment and collapses without a sound
because she recognizes the dummy as the young man. Despite his
haste Stick manages to toss the dummy out of the window with
calm and composure. He is standing two steps away from the
window, and the dummy shoots elegantly out of the wooden
window into the dark like a very slender torpedo.

Shot 1 44: Bank on the other side, same as shot 1 4 1 .

The raving five splitting their sides with laughter.

Shot 145: Canal.

The dummy flows downstream quickly.

Shot 1 46: Room, same as shot 30.

Stick roughly picks up the collapsed woman from the floor, drags
her to the window, shakes her; she begins to resist, he pushes her
towards the window and she screams because she thinks he wants
to push her out.

Shot 1 47 : Same as shot 1 4 1 .

The gang suddenly stops laughing, and then begins again because
they see

Shot 1 48 : at the front of the Crocodile towards the canal

the lady through a window, as if she wants to leap after the dummy
while Stick is holding her back.

Shot 1 49 : Anna 's bedroom, same as shot 87.

Fatty kneels before Anna, begging with raised arms. She shakes her
head, goes to the window in the background. He crawls after her
on his knees, all the time looking at the door. She looks out. She
sees from above the

Shot 1 50: bank of the canal

and the five who are drunkenly fishing for the dummy with their poles.

Shot 1 5 1 : Corridor in front of the room, same as shot 1 36.

Stick appears with a knife. He stops for a moment (close-up), presses
his lips together, looks at the floor, which disappears and sees

95
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 1 52: rushing water.

Shot 1 53 : Bedroom, same as shot 87.

On his knees Fatty points to the picture of the Madonna, Anna's
face becomes softer, she wants to pull him up by his arm. She says:
'Come!'
He half stands up, but suddenly turns round because Stick appears
at the door. Immediately Stick jumps (the image should be shot from
a different angle) on Fatty so that Anna falls back against the wall.
Stick fights with him, pushes him to the comer of the bed alcove,
and now he twists with his left hand the left part of the brown
curtain into a thick rope and strangles Fatty with it. At the same
time he pushes him back on the bed, and now, as he stretches out
his right hand with the knife, all the bed curtains fall over the two
of them. Anna rushes to them, but then stumbles back. Dissolve.

Shot 1 54: The bank of the canalfrom below.

The five pull the dummy out of the water.

Shot 1 55 : Bedroom.
Stick unravels himself ponderously from the drapery, stands
upright, throws the knife back on the bed, looks coolly at the jewel,
sticks it calmly but hastily into his vest pocket. Anna has half stood
up, looks up at him full of dread. He looks past her, and the wall
dissolves, and he sees in a vision

Shot 1 5 6: water.

Shot 1 57: The Butchers' Bridge.

The police waiting.

Shot 1 58: Corridor.

Stick drags Fatty's corpse behind him, wrapped in bed sheets.

Shot 1 59 : Room, same as shot 30.

In the dark room there is a white spot, the unconscious lady. Stick
appears as in shot 137 and drags the corpse to the window. He lifts
it up and sees through the window

Shot 1 60 : the house directly across the canal

light up.

Shot 1 6 1 : Wooden bridge.

Swaying drunkenly and howling the characters carry the dummy
triumphantly on raised arms over the bridge.

Shot 1 62: The house directly across the canal.

People in night clothes stare out of the windows.
 T H E JEWEL EATER

Shot 1 63 : House front of the Crocodile seen from the bank of the canal.
A heavy body is thrown out from the window. It falls with a splash
in the

Shot 1 64: canal,

while (camera turns) the people in the windows of the house directly
across the canal step back and (camera turns) the five disappear over
the bridge.

Shot 1 6 5 : Bedroom.
Bent over the bed, Anna sees the blood stains on the bed and the
knife on the floor. Dissolve.

Shot 1 66: Canal.

Fatty floats downstream.

Shot 1 6 7: Street in front of the Crocodile.

A car stops in front of the flophouse. The characters push their way
past it and enter.

Shot 1 68: Corridor, same as shot 24.

They arrive with the dripping dummy. They stumble into the
lounge just as Anna comes down the stairs, as if exhausted.

Shot 1 69 : Lounge.
Stick is sitting behind the bar, immobile and huge, he stares coolly
at those entering. They point with their thumbs back over their
shoulders, go to the window, point outside. Stick rises slowly, he
looks through the window and sees

Shot 1 70: in the street

the car.

Shot 1 7 1 : From the house directly across the canal

people with lanterns emerge and go first to the canal, then to the
bridge.

Shot 1 72: Lounge.

Making a joke, Stick pulls the jacket off the dummy, wrings out the
water, puts in on to the great mirth of the others when the people
from across the way enter. He shows the excited, gesticulating
people the dummy. They leave, and he goes out behind them,
swaying. The flophouse people throw orange peels after him.
Leaning on the door, too weak to stand on her feet, Anna follows
him with a tired gesture.

Shot 1 7 3 : The Butchers ' Bridge.

The police at the stone balustrade, seven faces, just as Fatty saw

97
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

them in the vision in the water bucket. Movement. The com­

missioner points impatiently at the note, he has pulled out his watch.
'I'll meet ya . . . '
Suddenly a policeman raises his arm, points to the water.

Shot 1 7 4: Canal.
Fatty floats by.

Shot 1 75 : Stairway.
Stick ascends.

Shot 1 76: The Butchers ' Bridge.

The policemen fish Fatty out of the canal.

Shot 1 7 7 : Lounge.
The characters sit along the walls and swill. Jezebel is sitting on
Buttercup's knees. And Anna is dancing with Sticky Fingers
Herman, cheek to cheek, slowly and apathetically.

Shot 1 78: Room, same as shot 30.

In the corridor (the door is still open) Stick appears in the tuxedo of
the young man, but scowling and threatening. Lying on the floor
with her upper body leaning on the bed, the lady looks up
impassively, almost without surprise. Stick picks up the top hat,
grabs the frock coat and looks around for her fur coat. Meanwhile,
she stands up as if sleepwalking and wraps herself, half-stumbling,
in the alcove drapery. But Stick has found the fur coat and
approaches her. He simply helps her into the coat. She submissively
lets it happen and exits submissively on his arm. Dissolve.

Shot 1 79 : Riverbank.
The policemen run upstream.

Shot 1 80: Stairway.

Stick drags the woman downstairs.

Shot 1 8 1 : Lounge.
The people are looking out of the window and, except for Anna
who is sitting at a table holding her head in her arms, they see

Shot 1 82: in front of the Crocodile

Stick and the lady (both from behind) climb into the car. It drives off,
pushing its way through the street.

Shot 1 83 : Lounge.
Turning back from the window, they see Anna rise calmly and go
out of the door, exhausted. She does not respond to the innkeeper's
call.
 T H E JEWEL EATER

Shot 1 84: A street.

Police peering from house to house.
Shot 1 85 : Corridor with stairs.
Anna, her head leaning on her chest, ascends.
Shot 1 86: Corridors.
Anna passes through.
Shot 1 87 : Bedroom.
Anna enters. She looks uncomprehendingly at the bed, exits. She
leaves the door open so that the muslin curtains on the window billow.

Shot 1 88 : Corridor in front of the room, same as shot 136.

Anna goes to the stairs, looks down, bent forward, returns, looks at
the open door of
Shot 1 89 : the room from shot 30
and goes in.
Shot 1 90: In front of the Crocodile.
Police ring.
Shot 1 9 1 : Lounge.
The characters, completely drunk, listen, Jezebel goes to the
window, looks out, looks back slightly, everyone freezes. Then a
wild chase to reach the door begins, through
Shot 1 92: the hall, stairwell and corridors.
Shot 1 93: Same as shot 1 90.
The police pound with their pistols on the wooden door. It is
forced open.
Shot 1 94: Room, same as shot 30.
Staggering in, the characters see Anna, lying on the trunk,
pounding on it with her fists as if demented, sobbing and weeping.
They fill up the dark room, they run to the trunk, tear it open, lift
out the bound and lifeless young man, stare uncomprehendingly at
his face. He opens his eyes and stares straight ahead. A large
policeman is standing at the open door.
Shot 1 95 : Bridge.
A car drives over. Inside, Stick is sitting next to the lady. Stick
twists up his face, he looks through the window (jade to)
Shot 1 96: the Crocodile flophouse.
It turns into water.

The end.

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 Three in the Tower

[See GBFA 1 9/ 1 6-35. Written in July 1 9 2 1 together with Caspar Neher,

the script probably reflects Brecht's jealous reaction to Marianne Zoffs
affair with Oskar Camillus Recht, Brecht's rival for her attention. The
dramatic situation was inspired by August Strindberg's Dance of Death
( 1 904), which Brecht saw in Munich in 1 9 1 9 . He adapted from it the
isolated tower, the militaristic milieu and the motifs of a bad odour as well
as the wife's estrangement from her husband, but he transformed the
marriage tension into a love-hate relationship between the lieutenant and
the woman. The screenplay incorporates traits of the Expressionist
chamber film with its restricted number of characters, the emphasis on
interior space (including corridors and winding staircases) and motifs of
tortured marriage relations. In fact it resembles more a self-consciously
amusing horror film that plays off the preoccupation with phantoms and
the disastrous psychological tension of the Expressionist cinema. In
November 1 922 Brecht saw an opportunity to get the script accepted at
the newly established company Kunst-Projektions-GmbH (Kupro), but it
produced only one film, Mysteries of a Hairdresser's Shop (Mysterien eines
Frisiersalons, 1 923), starring the Munich comedian Karl Valentin, which
Brecht ostensibly wrote and co-directed with Erich Engel. Lasting twenty­
eight minutes, it is a series of surreal, grotesque episodes of torture
perpetrated by barbershop employees on their customers.]

Characters:
Captain Gland
his wife
Lieutenant Seegers
young valet
Commander
soldiers, cavalry, officers
young cavaliers
the madam
three young men

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 THREE IN THE T O W E R

Act I

'Last supper of the crocodiles' or '3 - 1 = 2' or 'What's biting me?'

Shot 1 : Huge, massive tower, blue.

It is night. Fade to

Shot 2: upper room in the tower with low, wide windows, white drapes;
the windows are open.
The captain moves slowly to the window, dragging his feet, closes
it, lets the blinds down and looks around suddenly to his wife, who
is rocking like a child in the rocking chair. The young valet lights
candles on the table and sideboard, goes to the door, hears no
further orders and exits. Walking over to the sideboard, the captain
continues to read the newspaper.

Shot 3: Circular staircase.

The lieutenant quickly ascends, his left shoulder slightly pulled in.
He hangs his sword and belt on a hook (the camera moves with him)
and with lowered head hesitates in front of the glass door. It is
covered with a curtain, but flickering lights can be seen through it.

Shot 4: Same as shot 2 (dining-room) .

The captain heard something: he folds the newspaper, half closes
his eyelid, looks coolly at his wife, who is looking at her hand. He
walks calmly to the door.

Shot 5: Same as shot 3 (circular staircase) .

The lieutenant looks up, at this moment the curtain behind the
glass door is pushed apart and the captain looks at him: he
straightens up, they look into each other's eyes, the captain opens
the door, the lieutenant quickly enters, stooping again. Dissolve.

Shot 6: Same as shot 2 (dining-room).

The captain carries a candelabrum from the sideboard to the table
and looks into the faces of both, who are already sitting. He turns
round; goes very slowly to the window (his arms akimbo), opens
the blinds a crack with his finger, looks out, turns round, sees his
wife stroking the hand of the lieutenant sitting stiffly at the table.
The captain half closes his eyelid, turns round. The lieutenant
looks over at him, pulls back his hand abruptly, pulls at his collar,
he looks fixedly at the rigid face of the woman, who is afraid, and
he stands up abruptly, as if driven, and hits the table lightly with
the fiat of his hand. The captain has turned towards them again, his
arms still akimbo, he opens his eyelid and looks at his wife. The
lieutenant moves his head imperiously, the woman rises calmly,

101
 E A RLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

moves a little way towards her husband but then remains silent and
exits, with lowered head. The men follow her with their eyes; as the
white curtain closes behind her, the lieutenant bends forward and
says with a distorted face:
'You or I ! One of us must have her! We could ask her - if only
she knew . . . '
With his face twitching, the captain walks restlessly back and forth.
The lieutenant stands still and continues to speak.

Shot 7 : Same as shot 3.

The woman leans on the door, clasping her head in her arms.

Shot 8: Same as shot 2.

The lieutenant says no more. The captain has gone to a cupboard
with a curtain, bent over, fished out a pistol case (80 x 40 em) and
frowning, shrugging his shoulders, throws it on the table with both
hands. The lieutenant sets upright one of the knocked-over
candelabra, he has a helpless look, resists with his hands. He says:
'You or I! We don't need a casualty in the house . '
The captain has moved t o the glass door, h e stops, pulls a t the
curtain, thinks again, releases his hand, turns round, looks at the
lieutenant: the lieutenant closes the pistol case and glances towards
him. Then he makes the gesture of cutting off his head and appears
to say, holding his hand at his throat:
'Even if she doesn't know, she should decide. Fetch her! Whom­
ever she toasts first will simply disappear . . . '
The captain walks slowly to the window, looks out through a crack,
turns round and nods quickly towards the lieutenant. Relieved, he
then goes to the servant's bell (made of material, hanging on the
wall) and rings.

Shot 9: Same as shot 3.

The valet passes by the woman, who is leaning over the banister
and straightens up as he goes by. The door remains open, the
captain comes out, offers his arm to the woman, they go back in.
Dissolve.

Shot 1 0 : Same as shot 2.

The valet comes towards the two, holding the pistol case. The
woman is startled, she looks at the lieutenant, who bows. They
watch each other, waiting, the valet brings glasses and wine from
the cupboard.
Close-up of the three around the table.
The lieutenant pours, he pushes a glass to the woman, his hands
tremble, the captain steadies his hand. Then he suddenly stands up

102
 THREE IN THE TOWER

calmly, goes to the window while furtively glancing at his wife in

passing, opens it, breathes in the air, as one can see from his back,
he turns round and is startled: his wife has stood up after she once
again stroked the lieutenant's hand amicably and now she goes to
the captain with their two glasses. He drinks his glass in one gulp
while watching her and walks by her, coolly half closing his eyelid,
in order to put his glass on the sideboard. The woman turns,
follows him with her eyes, looks at the lieutenant, drinks to him as
well, the lieutenant smiles painfully. Meanwhile the captain has
taken a candelabrum from the sideboard. He holds it in his hand,
he stands indecisively at the door, the two drink to each other, they
do not look at him. He turns round and exits through the glass
door. They notice only as the curtain closes behind him.

Shot 1 1 : Same as shot 3, but seen from below.

The captain descends, but actually only the lights of three candles
are visible. They are trembling.

Shot 1 2 : Guard room.

Four soldiers are playing cards near the wall. They jump up. The
captain has entered. He has four bottles under his arms. The
soldiers stand at attention. One reports. The captain nods to stop.
He stands there calmly and seems to be looking into the distance
with cool self-control. Dissolve and fade-in.

Shot 1 3 : Same as shot 2.

The two are bent towards each other. The woman places her hand
on the lieutenant's. Dissolve.

Shot 1 4: Same as 12.

Slowly the captain comes to, attends to the bottles and pours a
glass of wine for each of his men, one after the other. He moves
from one to the next and they stand at attention. So he pours the
wine in their mouths. Then he places the three full bottles on the
table and slowly walks to the corner of the room. He says
something over his shoulder, at which point they stand at ease.
Turning round a second time after he has already reached the
corner, he says:
'Lie down ! '
H e looks a t the wall clock. I t i s eleven o'clock. H e bends over the
sofa and busies himself. Then he shoots into his body. There is
smoke, the soldiers jump up, run to him, place him on the table,
tear open his coat. Then one of them waves from the door, they exit
after him.

Shot 1 5 : In the courtyard

103
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

they fetch the horses.

Shot 1 6: Same as shot 12.

The valet, left behind, giddy at the door, walks fearfully over to the
lifeless body, looks at him, covers him with a guard's coat, exits as
if drunk. The coat moves. The captain stands up. He presses his
hand against his chest, with a jolt he straightens. Presses his
handkerchief between his teeth, exits.

Shot 1 7 : Same as shot 3.

The valet leans against the banister, does not dare to enter.
Shocked, he watches the captain walk by him into the room. Once
again he carries the candelabrum, from below the valet watches
him drift up the stairs.

Shot 1 8: Same as shot 2.

The two are drinking. The lieutenant listens, goes to the window,
sees

Shot 1 9 : in the courtyard

a rider galloping off.

Shot 20: Same as shot 2.

The captain is standing in the door. He takes the candelabrum, he
says:
'Good night! '
Turns round, steps through the curtain. They follow him with their
eyes, they look at each other. The lieutenant looks at the wall clock.
It is eleven o'clock.

Shot 2 1 : Com'dor.
The captain shuffles along, holding himself very upright, very
laboriously. He throws the handkerchief away, opens his jacket
collar. Then he has an idea. He removes his jacket, throws it over
the banister.

Shot 22: Guard room.

The valet is emptying the wine bottles, completely drunk.

Shot 23: The captain 's bedroom.

He enters slowly. He walks to the mirror. His image in the mirror.
Pale, uncharacteristically rigid. Still holding the candelabrum in his
hand. Near his heart a dark stain on the shirt:
'We don't need a casualty in the house. '
H e grins slightly.

Shot 24: Same as shot 2.

With her face lightly covered in perspiration, the woman reaches

104
 THREE IN THE TOWER

her glass half over her shoulder to the lieutenant, who is standing
behind her and kissing her neck, stops suddenly and turns very
pale. She stands up, seems to be listening, walks to the sideboard,
takes a candelabrum from the table and while the lieutenant pours
wine, drinks and clumsily touches her, she lights the candles, lost
in thought. The lieutenant blows out one of the candles, but she
goes to the door with it. Dissolve.

Shot 25: Entry hall below.

Enter two soldiers; they watch the woman with the candelabrum
come down the stairs. She immediately rushes over to the jacket
and grabs it. The soldiers drag out the drunken valet and watch the
woman run back up the stairs: she has the bloody jacket in her
hand.

Shot 26: Same as shot 23.

The captain moves towards the bed. He places the candelabrum on
the floor and lies down. (Goya.2)

Shot 27: Conidor as in shot 21.

The woman comes swaying along the wall.

Shot 28: The captain 's bedroom.

Stretched out on the bed, the captain lifts his head and listens. He
sits up and falls partly off the bed, overturning the candelabrum
that extinguishes. Night. Wind billows the drapes at the window.
The captain, visible in his white shirt (and the dark spot on it is
visible as well), crawls towards the clothes cupboard. Darkness
swallows him.

Shot 29: In front of the door

the woman is listening, wants to open it, becomes frightened, pulls
her hand from the door handle and goes back.

Shot 30: In the dining-room, same as shot 2,

the lieutenant is drinking while standing at the table, still listening.
Pulling apart the curtain on the door, the woman enters, stops,
almost collapses and stands there with the uniform jacket. The
lieutenant goes to her, pulls the jacket away, stares at it soberly and
walks out. The woman follows him with her eyes, completely pale.
Dissolve.

Shot 31: Bedroom, same as shot 28. Dark.

The lieutenant enters, lights the candelabrum on the floor, the
room is empty, the woman, standing in the door, sees it too. The
two look at each other. Dissolve.

10 5
 E A RLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Act II

'Toiletries in the house of death' or 'Lime is not enough' or 'A

corpse in the lovers' bed'

Shot 1 : The wwer, grey.

Morning, the sky is clearing.

Shot 2: Guard room.

The soldiers stand in a row at the white wall, facing the camera.
Above them the round clock with a swinging pendulum. In front of
them, astride a chair, the lieutenant with his arms casually swung
over its back. The woman, with drooping shoulders, bent forward,
staring at the floor, sits on a bench along the wall behind the
soldiers. She watches. The soldiers take their tum speaking. The
lieutenant shakes his head impatiently. The woman raises her face
and looks at him. The lieutenant stands up slowly, stretching. He
paces back and forth, arms akimbo, and gestures to the soldiers to
leave. He stops in front of the woman, he looks at her face. It is
white, like the clock face he sees above. The clock hand moves
towards eleven, then towards a quarter, then back to eleven. The
lieutenant knits his brow. Dissolve.

Shot 3: A cubicle attached to the guard room.

The valet in a fever on the camp bed. Soldiers with hanging heads
(large figures) pressed round the bed. One of them opens his
mouth and the others all look at the whitewashed, plank door.

Shot 4: Guard room.

The lieutenant walks to a comer, looks round because the woman
wearily stands up and slowly exits with lowered head, leaving the
door open. The lieutenant follows her with his eyes, presses his lips
together, turns round, discovers four or five wine bottles near the
stove. One is smashed, lying in a pool. The lieutenant swings
round, looks again at the wall clock, moves to the writing stand and
rings loudly. The guards rush in and stand at attention. Turning
his back to them, he writes a message at the stand. A soldier takes
it and exits. After a moment of reflection the lieutenant exits.

Shot 5: Dock.
The soldier rides off.

Shot 6: Circular staircase. Same as Act I, shot 3.

The woman leans on the door with the curtain. She listens, she
looks out and sees (jrom above) in the

Shot 7 : hall on the main floor

106
 THREE IN THE TOWER

the lieutenant step out of the guard room. He encounters the valet,
who is carrying three large suitcases and a laundry bag. He goes up
the stairs in front of him.

Shot 8: Upstairs.
The lieutenant, in passing, preoccupied with the suitcases, opens
the glass door for the woman. He holds the key chain in his hand
and continues on his way. The valet trots along behind him,
weighed down. Standing calmly at the doorpost, the woman has
observed the lieutenant with some surprise, she watches him - her
brow slightly creased (see Act II, shot 6) - as he moves away and
goes calmly through the door into the dining-room.

Shot 9: Hall on the main floor.

Two soldiers without jackets and a currycomb for the horses in
hand look up at the landing. One grins bitterly and pushes the
other. They tumble into the guard room.

Shot 10: The captain 's bedroom.

The lieutenant enters with the valet. He pulls the bed covers off
and throws them into the valet's arms. Pushes open the windows.

Shot 1 1 : Guard room.

Soldiers with half-opened uniforms guzzle the wine remaining in
the bottles; card game. The two from shot 8 enter, imitate the
suitcase scene. The soldiers listen, they run to the door, one waves
with a bottle. They look out, up.

Shot 1 2: Above in the corridor

the lieutenant enters and goes into the dining-room.

Shot 1 3 : The dining-room.

Everything like the previous evening, the blinds down, the table full
of glasses and the woman sits in the middle of the darkened room
at the table. The lieutenant at the door nods with his head. He still
has his hand on the door handle, but when she does not move, he
goes to her, bends over the table (always seen from behind) towards
her, pushes the glasses away, looking into them. Then he places the
fiat of his hand somewhat heavily on hers. She looks up quizzically.
Then she stands up and walks right past him through the glass
door, as he watches her with a somewhat concerned look.

Shot 1 4 : Com'dor.
The woman removes linens from the cupboard. She hands them
over to the lieutenant who, arms akimbo, taps with his right foot
and watches her. He turns his head and whistles over his shoulder.
The valet runs in; the woman calmly gives him the linens after she

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 EARLY S C RE E N PLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

looks coolly at the lieutenant. Dissolve.

Shot 15: An outlying road.

Two soldiers ride in, stop in front of the commander's house.
Dismount. One enters.

Shot 1 6 : The lieutenant's bedroom.

The valet prepares the toiletry articles, sniffing at the small bottles.
Makes the bed in the alcove. The lieutenant enters and examines
the soiled linen on the chair. Finds a blood stain. Washes his hands.
Throws the water from the basin out the window, goes in his shirt
sleeves into the

Shot 1 7 : corridor,
does not find the woman and descends

Shot 1 8 : the circular staircase.

He opens the door to the

Shot 1 9: guard room

and looks through the other open door of the cubicle to the woman,
who is standing inside by the valet's camp bed. The soldiers watch
with hardly disguised astonishment how the lieutenant with a dark
mien nods at the woman to come to him. The woman looks at him
aloofly and turns back again to the camp bed. He exits angrily,
slams the door shut. One of the soldiers, a tall one with a Dutch
pipe, steps in front of the stove, follows the lieutenant with his eyes,
nods with understanding. Now the woman emerges from the
cubicle, motions to him with her eyes and asks the soldiers at the
stove something. Two of them stand at attention and say:
'He talks about a corpse that gets up. '
The woman nods her head, exits slowly.

Shot 20: Hall.

The woman comes out, the lieutenant has been waiting for her, he
has his jacket on, a scarf over his arm which he puts round her
shoulders. Both are strangely aloof. Why? They exit.

Shot 2 1 : A path in the vineyards on a hill.

They walk next to one another, separately. They stop. He looks
around, his arms akimbo. The wind blows. He says:
'He will never return. He swam away.'
She was looking straight ahead as he said this, but now she looks
him straight in the eyes. She says:
'Where is he?'
His face darkens, he says between pressed lips:
'You no longer love me! '

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 THREE IN THE TOWER

She shakes her head, she does still love him, but he should tell her.
She approaches him, rather close, she grasps like a child at a button
near his neck, she asks more urgently:
'For God's sake, I beg of you, just tell me where he is. '
H e shakes her free. She stands there startled, she lets her head sink,
her face recedes into the shadow. He looks over the hill. Then he
makes an angry gesture with his shoulders. He speaks with his
hands. He says something like: How can you believe I would know
more than you? Then he clumsily tries to grab her. But she looks at
him coldly and moves away. At first startled, he then throws back
his head (who cares!) and seizes her again, she resists with her hand
and walks slowly with lowered head into the dunes . He stands
there, half ashamed, half glowering, straightens his collar and turns
round. Dissolve.

Shot 22: Guard room.

Soldiers clean their rifles, as the stooping, exasperated lieutenant
passes by - visible through the window. The soldiers have angry
looks on their faces.

Shot 23: In front of the wooden gate.

The woman emerges from the darkness, moving slowly. She passes
through the gate.

Shot 24: Guard room. Evening.

The soldiers sit together round the stove, playing cards. One of
them looks at the clock, which shows eleven. At that moment the
door opens and the woman enters. The soldiers put their heads
together, two want to stand up, the others recede. The woman
notices nothing, she calmly walks to the plank door, she has a glass
of milk in her hand, she disappears into the cubicle.

Shot 25: Cubicle.

The valet tosses and turns on the camp bed. The woman bends
over him, she places the milk on a small table. Behind her, in the
doorway, the tall soldier with the Dutch pipe appears. He looks in
suspiciously.

Shot 26: Guard room.

The soldiers watch the tall one, who motions to them with his
head. They all look into the cubicle. The Dutchman enters.

Shot 27: Cubicle.

The woman straightens up, looks round, sees the soldiers behind
her. The cubicle is filled with them.

Shot 28: The commander's house.

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 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

A table, a lamp with shade. The commander bent over papers.

(The guard soldier enters right and delivers the lieutenant's note.)
The commander reads:
'Captain Gland allegedly shot himself yesterday evening
between 1 1 and 1 1 . 1 5 in the guard room of the tower. Corpse
disappeared. Awaiting orders. Lieutenant Seegers. '
H e stands up and rings.

Shot 29: Cubicle.

The woman is still kneeling at the camp bed, but she looks round
and when the Dutchman motions with his chin (not removing his
pipe from his mouth) for her to leave, she stands up with com­
posure and looks the soldier straight in the face. A commotion
arises among the soldiers, several point to the door, point with their
thumbs over their shoulders to the ceiling and then one of them
even grabs her by the arm and wants to throw her out. She tears
herself loose, jumps to the wall, where, crouching like a tiger, she
holds back the crowd with her look. Suddenly she relaxes her
posture. She walks towards the Dutchman; she grasps him by a
button on his uniform. He says with his head bent back, as if in
fear:
'Because you are running around with the murderer . . . '
She releases him, she reconsiders, several of them grab her now by
the arm, almost as if they want to support her, but . . . she pulls
herself free and runs like a hunted animal through the group that
forms a path for her.

Shot 30: Guard room.

She runs through.

Shot 3 1 : Circular staircase from below.

She calls up, then runs up the stairs.

Shot 32: Bedroom.

The lieutenant lies on the bed next to the candelabrum, clothed,
reading the newspaper; he listens.

Shot 33: Circular staircase.

Halfway up the woman calls again and then continues to climb.

Shot 34: Bedroom.

The lieutenant sits up as the door opens, the woman tumbles in
and, straightening her hair, calls to him anxiously. He immediately
takes his sword and exits past her. Standing in the doorway, she
follows him with her eyes, then follows.

Shot 3 5 : Outlying area.

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 THREE IN THE TOWER

Three officers with twenty cavalrymen galloping!

Shot 36: Guard room.

The soldiers enter from the cubicle. At the same time the
lieutenant rushes in, he makes an imperious movement of his head,
perhaps he says: 'Attention! ' One stands at attention, the others
gesticulate and shout:
'What do you care about the woman?'
The lieutenant points with his sword as if he were going to jump
into the crowd. At that point the Dutchman, with his pipe in his
mouth, pushes aside the soldier standing at attention, coolly steps
up to the lieutenant and says sharply:
'You are a murderer! '
The lieutenant wants to strangle him, but the others jump on the
lieutenant and pull him down. They throw the bottles and kick at
him with their boots. Tie him up, lay him on the table. Meanwhile,
the woman has crept in, walking in a slouch, she is pale, standing
at the wall, and shudders slightly at the word 'murderer'. Now in
the stillness they all look at her and she goes to the lieutenant. With
composure she walks over to him, she stares right into his face,
once again she has the crease on her brow and she suddenly turns
round and exits. The soldiers follow her with their eyes, puzzled,
and she disappears through the door into the darkness. The
Dutchman looks up and it is 1 1 . 1 5 p.m.

Shot 37: Courtyard scene. It is dark night.

The woman stands in the doorway, brightly lit, she takes a step out
and collapses sluggishly, unsteadily and without a sound. Two
soldiers run out, bend over her . . . Dissolve. (The entire detach­
ment of cavalry, riding elegantly like a tidal wave and very fast,
recedes into the distance . . . )
Then very quickly

Shot 38: Dock.

three officers, followed by about twenty cavalrymen, gallop over
the dock. They dismount in the courtyard. An officer lifts up the
woman, who lies like a white stain on the stones. They push their
way into the tower.

Shot 39: Guard room.

The bound lieutenant, a soldier with a cocked pistol. He hears the
cavalry, runs to the window, runs to the cellar door, shouts down.
The commander in the doorway looks with astonishment at the
bound lieutenant . . . the cavalry behind him flood into the guard
room, then down the cellar steps.

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 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 40: Cellar.

Among the barrels and bottles the half-drunken soldiers crawl
round in shirt sleeves. They are apprehended and each one is
escorted up by two cavalrymen with drawn swords.

Shot 4 1 : Circular staircase.

The lights of three candelabra ascend the stairs. The woman is
being carried up on the arms of one of those lighting the way.

Shot 42: Dining-room. Dark.

Enter the commander and the officers. The lieutenant; one of them
carries the woman, places her on the chaise longue. The lieutenant
clears the glasses from the table. The adjutant begins to write. The
lieutenant reports. The lieutenant paces back and forth. He opens
the window, all three see from above

Shot 43: in the courtyard

the soldiers carry out a table. (Continues from below.) The four
officers come through the tower door very quickly and go to the
table. They sit down. A knee-high, four-cornered paper lantern
(Goya3) is placed on the ground.

Shot 44: Dining-room. Half dark.

The lieutenant watched the soldiers from the door. Now he strolls
secretively over to the chaise longue and bends over the woman.
She awakens, recognizes him, slips out from under him, pulls
herself partially from the sofa to safety, staring at him all the while.
Standing erect, ready to flee, she says to his face:
'Don't you dare kill all of them! Because they know what you
have done to one of them. '
H e wants to attack her, she pulls away from him, slips out. He
shakes the door, then leaves abruptly through the glass door.

Shot 45: The woman 's bedroom.

She still holds the door closed, then relaxes her grip. Absent­
mindedly arranges her hair, goes to the dresser and packs, suddenly
like a wild person, underwear and clothes in baskets. Occasionally
she stops, breathing fast, hand on her brow, absent.

Shot 46: In the courtyard.

The rebels are brought out, assembled in front of the table. Several
tremble, one bawls. They stand in a line. The commander rises,
says something. The rebels are surrounded and pushed towards the
back. The commander and his officers quickly go into the house.
The lieutenant, large and brutal, becomes visible for a moment
alone (the rebels have been pushed into a dark corner of the

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 THREE IN THE TOWER

courtyard) , as he carries the paper lantern to the back.

Shot 47: The woman 's bedroom.

The woman hears something, she runs to the window and looks
down. She sees the paper lantern move through the courtyard.

Shot 48: At the wall

the rebels stand in the shadows. They are waiting for something.
They watch the paper lantern come towards them. The lieutenant
emerges from the darkness, he places the lantern on the ground, he
reads the judgment. The rebels stand rigid. The lieutenant swings
the lantern, the soldiers form a line, they aim their rifles. The scene
has a ghostly light from below owing to the lantern.

Shot 49: The woman 's bedroom.

The woman rushes from the drapes. She runs out.

Shot 50: Courtyard.

The lieutenant raises his dagger. At this moment something white
enters, the woman running from the right. The lieutenant lets his
dagger fall. The soldiers shoot. Almost simultaneously the woman
stops in her tracks. She comes to herself, then moves four steps in
the direction of the lieutenant, she emerges from the darkness, she
looks at him. Soldiers want to remove the lantern, but the
lieutenant kicks the lantern so that darkness prevails. Dissolve.

Shot 5 1 : Tower entrance.

The officers emerge. As the woman passes by, she halts, says
something, bends her head, continues on her way. After saluting,
they wait. The woman goes into the house.

Shot 52: Circular staircase.

The soldiers carry out trunks.

Shot 53: Courtyard.

Soldiers pull an ancient travelling carriage out of the coach house
and harness the horses. The woman approaches it, seen from
behind. The officers have mounted, they hold the horses and
carriage. Then the lieutenant emerges again from the shadows with
the lantern. The woman looks at him and climbs into the carriage
without a word. Then the carriage begins to move.

Shot 54: Courtyard corner.

Soldiers gather the bodies of the executed rebels.

Shot 5 5 : Courtyard.
The lieutenant is still standing there with the lantern in his hand.
He watches the carriage depart. For a long time the woman does
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 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

not tum round, but at the gate she stands up and turns towards
him, without a gesture. Her face is empty, large, clouded over. The
lieutenant brushes his brow, he drops the lantern. It extinguishes.

Act III

'The year of mourning' or 'The wonderful life' or 'The Madonna

among the animals'

Shot 1 : Night.
Two paper lanterns (attached to the front of the carriage) emerge
from the background. The woman is sitting in the carriage. The
carriage swerves and halts. Three gentlemen in frock coats appear
in the background. Waving. The woman descends, one of the
paper lanterns changes into a chandelier and illuminates a small
marble table in a

Shot 2: restaurant private booth.

The woman joins the cavaliers at the table. The carriage has
disappeared. A waiter brings drinks. A thin, delicate cavalier
strokes the woman's bare arm, she ignores him. She toasts another
one who has an aster in his buttonhole, and he disappears.
Trembling, she stands up, stares after the man who disappeared,
the glass falls over, the thick, dark liquid flows over her dress, she
is confused. The thin man offers her his arm, a black, elegant
carriage glides in, she steps in with the cavalier. One of them stays
behind. He tosses round banknotes, grins, fades out. The
chandelier extinguishes. The carriage lights glide through the
darkness, stop. In the carriage the woman and the thin man stand
up, see an obstacle in front of the horses: a bundle of elegant men's
clothes, a top hat, a large aster, the carriage moves on, very springy.
It halts.

Shot 3: At an entrance.
The woman descends and enters

Shot 4: a brightly-lit ballroom.

She is caught up and dances away with a huge, spindly, elegant
young man. Her companion fades out. The dancer has a
pockmarked face. For quite a while they dance alone under the
chandelier. While dancing, they pass a long silk drape; he pulls it
back and drags her out; they flee through

Shot 5 : a draped corridor,

and then she leans half-drunken in his arms, in

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 THREE IN THE TOWER

Shot 6: a carriage,
which fills up, for suddenly two other men are in it who attempt to
get her drunk by force, putting filled glasses to her lips. She resists,
but one of them throws her back, he is fat, sweaty, one of his eyes
is glued shut, the other opened too wide by a large monocle. She is
lying on a

Shot 7: white ottoman,

and the man moves behind her. He disappears. But the comer of
the room changes into

Shot 8: the corner of the tower courtyard,

and under the trees the lieutenant is walking alone, back and forth,
his arms akimbo. He stops at the gate. The tree there begins to
move, apparently there is a wind, its leaves fall. The lieutenant is
still standing at the gate, the leaves fall on him, he is completely
covered by wilted leaves. Now he disappears.

Shot 9: At the canal.

The leaves continue to fall, the woman walks among them towards
a canal, her dress is tom. A ragged man walks next to her; they
climb

Shot 1 0 : stairs
through

Shot 1 1 : crooked streets, narrow like house corridors, with washing hung
out to dry above.
She runs away from him to an

Shot 1 2 : attic room,

sits down with her hands in her lap, bent forward . . . It is raining
outside. Fade to

Shot 1 3 : the bedroom in the tower.

The lieutenant is lying fully clothed in bed among many
newspapers. He arises from the newspapers, suddenly lets one fall,
looks at the ceiling, stands up, shuffles through the

Shot 14: corridor

to the glass door, which he opens with a key and enters

Shot 1 5 : the dining-room,

which is dark, as if devoured by moths. He goes to the drapes,
looking at the table where the glasses have been standing for a year
already. He opens a crack in the drapes, as the captain once did.
He looks out. It is raining.

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 E A RLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 1 6 : Attic room. Evening.

There is a ring, the woman looks up. An old woman waddles in,
rubs her hands. She is a madam. Enter the fat, black cavalier
(Daumier4) . He has a dress over his arm. He places it over the
chair. The old woman examines the cloth, exits. The woman sits
bent forward, her elbows on her lap, she looks aloof and somewhat
exhausted, turning her head towards the dress. She glances at the
cavalier, stands up slowly, looks in the mirror, slides her fingers
down her sides, releases the clip over her shoulder and walks
fatalistically with the dress behind the dressing screen, while the
cavalier lights a new cigarette in a flash. She emerges immediately
in her evening gown. He looks her up and down, grins. He has bad
teeth. Dissolve.

Shot 1 7 : A carriage
drives through the evening with its lights on to

Shot 1 8: the Bats ' Cabaret.

Musicians with long Spanish guitars sit on velvet cushions.
Swollen, the cavalier enters with the woman, who looks tanned,
racy. They are still standing in the middle when the room fills up
with costumed people (four or five) . The woman dances with all of
them on the carpeted floor. Drapes in the background fall away,
the room changes into

Shot 1 9 : the lieutenant's bedroom.

The closed drapes in the alcove are pulled open. The lieutenant
wakes up. He has had a nightmare. Sitting in bed, he lights a
cigarette, he shakes his head ponderously, he lies back. Drapes fall.

Shot 20: The ballroom

comes once again into sharp focus. A knife-battle is taking place.
The lamps are broken, someone grabs the woman and pulls her out
to

Shot 2 1 : a carriage.
Wretched, with a limping horse. The new cavalier kisses the
woman brutally, bends her back, she drives on alone. The coach
driver throws her out of the carriage because she cannot pay and
strikes her with his whip. She stands

Shot 22: next to a street lantern,

and gentlemen in frock coats pass by. She holds out her hand.
Then three drunken young men come by and drag her along
through the

Shot 23: street with drying laundry, narrow like house corridors,

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 THREE IN THE TOWER

and carry her, when she collapses,

Shot 24: up the stairs

Shot 25: to the wallpapered attic room, same as shot 12.

They throw her on the bed and leave with a suitcase. The drapes
billow in the wind, it is black outside the window. Snow falls.

Shot 26: Snow falls on trees that have now lost all their leaves.
The trees become smaller, fade to

Shot 27: the lieutenant's bedroom.

And the lieutenant stands at the window and looks at the trees . The
captain's valet clears up the meal. Many newspapers are strewn
about, everything looks messy. The lieutenant walks down the

Shot 28: corridor,

lethargically, his hands in his trouser pockets, to

Shot 29: the dining-room door.

He turns round, he cannot decide to go into the dining-room, he
turns and goes back to

Shot 30: the bedroom.

He sits down and smokes. Throws the newspapers in the fireplace,
pulls open the windows, sprays perfume round the room, sniffs . He
looks at his frayed sleeves, curses. Then he pulls open drawers,
rummages among the underwear, changes clothes. He cleans up,
combs his hair, poses at attention in front of the mirror. He has
taken off his old boots. Then he goes to the door without his
helmet, pulling on his white gloves.

Shot 3 1 : Courtyard.
The travelling coach has pulled up, the valet hands the lieutenant
his coat and the helmet with long feathers. He climbs in and drives
off. Snow is falling. The trees are still, two of them change into

Shot 32: the wallpapered attic room

with the woman at the window, while it snows outside. The room
has looked until now very impoverished. The woman presses her
face to the glass. The old, dirty woman brings food on a tray, leaves
again rapidly. The woman had glanced round, she now looks out
of the window again. Then the door opens and the lieutenant is
standing there. He takes off his helmet with the feathers. The
woman looks round, sees the lieutenant, she stumbles towards the
wall. The lieutenant shrugs his shoulders, he looks at her with a
serious expression. Then she calmly moves a step towards him, she
invites him to sit down on the only chair, looks at him again. He
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 EARLY S C RE E NPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

once again makes the gesture of not-being-able-to-do-otherwise.

Then she calmly walks to the right to the screen, the lieutenant
looks out the window from the middle of the room. She comes out
again immediately in the dress from the beginning of the act. She
passes by him to the door, her head somewhat lowered, one
shoulder pushed back towards the lieutenant. He follows her out,
stooping slightly, since the door is too low for him. Dissolve.

Act IV

[Shots 1-9 are missing in the typescript.]

Shot 1 0 : Cubicle. Evening.

The valet pulls the captain's jacket from the bed and dusts it off,
tries it on in front of the small window, combs his hair, shuffles out
in his work trousers. He imitates the captain.

Shot 1 1 : Guard room.

The young soldiers are playing cards at the stove. The valet walks
by, his right hand in his jacket (a la Napoleon and the captain) . The
soldiers laugh and continue to play cards.

Shot 1 2 : Hall, same as shot 9.

They have all been drinking and this has animated them. They tell
jokes and laugh uproariously. In their midst the woman,
completely passive, with a pale, immovable face. The commander
stands up and toasts:
' Our young friend, the young captain, has just revealed to me
that he wishes to go before the altar and it is to be with the
beautiful wife of our old friend, the old captain! '
Uproarious laughter. The glasses are lifted. The woman has half
stood up and suddenly the table becomes dark, across from the
woman sits the captain, heavy and black, in front of the fluttering
white window drapes. He has calmly rested his arm on the table
and he is playing with something in his hand. It becomes brighter.
The officers rush to the woman, who has fallen over the table.
Dissolve.

Shot 1 3 : In front of the glass door in the tower.

The valet, seen from behind, enters the dining-room.

Shot 1 4 : A country road between dark hills at night.

In the closed but transparent glass coach the lieutenant and the
woman. Wretched and miserable. He removes his helmet, dries his
brow. She looks at him with an unfriendly stare. Why?
I I8
 THREE IN THE TOWER

Shot 1 5 : In front of the glass door.

The lieutenant pushes the woman in before him. He calls
something down the stairs.

Shot 1 6 : The dining-room.

The woman catches sight of the valet at the table who is playing the
captain, reading the newspaper and smoking, getting drunk. He is
startled and collapses. The woman makes a few uncertain steps
towards the table. She has lowered her head, but looks straight
ahead and almost smiles. The lieutenant, following her, sees
through the bluff and slaps the valet, throws him out. The woman
falls into the rocking chair. Dissolve.

Shot 1 7 : The lieutenant's bedroom. Evening.

The lieutenant enters, he throws his jacket on the bed, pushes open
the window, sprays perfume round the room.
'This constant stink in the room! '
At this moment h e hears something, he goes to the door, takes a
pistol, leaves, walks across

Shot 1 8 : the corridor,

looks down and walks with a candelabrum that he takes from

Shot 1 9 : the dining-room.

Only his arm can be seen.

Shot 20: Circular staircase.

The lieutenant walks down and sees below

Shot 2 1 : on the stone floor

the woman, spread out, kneeling where one year ago the bloody
jacket lay. The lieutenant lifts her up, he leads her back upstairs
and he says to himself:
'But now the wedding, for God's sake, before you land in the
mad house.'

Shot 22: Arrest cell.

The valet. Catching fleas. The sliding window opens. A soldier's
fist pushes in a bowl. The window closes and slides open again and
a woman's hand pushes fruit in.

Shot 23: The country road with trees that are budding again.
The woman walks along. A man comes towards her. She halts; it is
the captain. He looks very calm, he is smoking. He walks by her,
nodding. Dissolve.

Shot 24: The woman 's bedroom.

Kneeling on the floor, the woman folds linen. The lieutenant
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 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

stands behind her. Suddenly she clasps her hands in front of her
face and lets her head fall with great sobs on the piles of linen. The
lieutenant behind her shakes his head, laughing maliciously.

Shot 25: Guard room.

Yes, soon the wedding will take place. The men are cleaning the
room with mops and rags. They change clothes, slick their hair.
The lieutenant enters; he sticks a thick cigar between the buttons
of each of their jackets. They grin.

Shot 26: Courtyard.

Coaches arrive. The lieutenant, behind the gate, receives the
guests. The four officers and the commander arrive. They enter the
house.

Shot 27: The hall below

is decorated with flags and so on. An oval table is almost breaking
under the weight of fruit bowls, mounds of plates, baskets of
tableware. Between the upholstered chairs are ice buckets with
bottles. The woman sits at the table. The officers enter. Formal
greetings.

Shot 28: Guard room.

The soldiers, in gala uniform, are pasting together the paper
lantern from Act II. One of them stops another, who knocks it,
salutes and says:
'Watch out, kids, people were shot under it.'
The soldiers grin, salute the lantern.

Shot 29: The hall.

The drinking is in full swing. The woman - calm, with charming
grace - is serving the guests. Then the chairs are pushed back, they
rise. A soldier appears at the wall, he plays the accordion. The
officers dance with the woman. The lieutenant drinks alone at the
table. And now the officers begin one after the other to change back
into the cavaliers. One of them has an aster in his buttonhole, one
has a pockmarked face, one pushes a monocle in his eye and all of
them are aggressive and fresh. She begins, however, to dance ever
more wildly and shamelessly; she laughs freely, then her face
freezes up completely, only to laugh again. Two cavaliers drag her
to the table, empty the glasses into her mouth, while the lieutenant
watches with a threatening look. One of them strokes her arm, the
lieutenant jumps up and strikes the table. But fortunately the
commander is still just able to make a toast at the head of the table.
And while everyone seeks glasses to toast, there appear above

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 THREE IN THE TOWER

Shot 30: in the corridor

three drunken soldiers who lower the paper lantern.

Shot 3 1 : Hall.
In the middle of the toast the lantern lowers on to the table, the
woman jumps with a start out of the arms of the cavaliers, the
lieutenant stares at her with horror. She turns her face slowly; he
follows her gaze and in the place of the commander stands the
captain, toasting. After a moment of horrified gazing, the woman
grasps a glass, reaching far over the table, and throws it at the one
who is toasting. She pounds on the table while laughing wildly so
that the glasses dance; she jumps up crazily and rushes past the
drunk officers to the captain and (close-up) the commander shoves
her arms away coolly and aloofly. Leave-taking. The officers go to
the window, look out. Time to leave.

Shot 32: Courtyard.

The coaches are harnessed. The guests rush out to the coaches.
The coaches rush out of the gate.

Shot 33: Hall.

Not overturned! The lieutenant stands in the middle of the hall
and, apparently with great calm, shoots with his pistol at the
lantern. The woman, sunken into the commander's chair, waves
her foot, stares at the wall. Bowed over her, the lieutenant has one
hand on the chair back, one on the table and beside himself with
anger tells her what she does not hear. He straightens up, looks
darkly at the tablecloth, smashes a glass on an ice bucket and walks
to the bell. He rings.

Shot 34: Guard room.

The soldiers, drunk, half-dressed, hear the alarm bell, grab their
clothes. The door opens abruptly, the lieutenant steps in, stomping
with his foot, they rush out.

Shot 35: Hall.

They stand in formation, at attention, half-dressed, completely
drunk. The lieutenant gives orders. They rush to the table, each
takes a glass. They run back to the formation, when the lieutenant
beats with his sword on the table, they must drink on beat.
Suddenly he grabs the woman's arm roughly while she continues
to stare into the emptiness, but now she looks at the soldiers. And
then she begins to laugh so hard that she shakes. It is completely
unnatural, she is transformed, she has seen the emptiness and now
she jumps up on the table and dances and everyone watches her.
But at this moment the valet, completely drunk and standing in the
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 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

door wearing the captain's jacket, can no longer hold the rope to
which the paper lantern is attached; he releases it and it falls on the
woman, who is immobilized, holding it in her hands. And the valet,
startled, rushes to the table and then everyone laughs loudly in
unison. The woman lets the lantern fall on the valet and sinks
down, the soldiers catch her. But she holds on to the tablecloth
and, freeing herself from them, with the tablecloth in her grip she
walks to the stairs, trailing it behind her. The lieutenant, however,
rushes over to the valet. Suddenly he straightens up, looks round as
if ruined, takes a few steps towards the woman and stops. Dissolve.

Shot 36: The captain 's bedroom.

Sitting on the bed, a dark and bulky profile, the captain smokes
calmly. Dissolve.

Act V

'The evil child digs up a corpse' or 'The flesh-eating plant' or

'Through the broken defence the black waters break'

It is night.

Shot 1 : The woman 's bedroom.

The captain goes from the bed to the door.

Shot 2: Circular staircase.

Unclear, as if a bundle of clothes, the woman rushes down the
circular stairs.

Shot 3: Gate.
The woman runs towards the gate. Pounds at it like a mad woman,
the gate gives way, she runs out, the gate stays open.

Shot 4: Night in the hills.

The woman walking.

Shot 5: More hills.

The woman walking towards the camera more slowly, hours have
passed.

Shot 6: The lieutenant's bedroom.

The lieutenant is sleeping restlessly, then he pulls away the alcove
drapes and gets up. In his shirt sleeves he goes to the door and
walks into

Shot 7 : the corridor,

where he knocks on the door of the woman's room. Then he enters.
122
 THREE IN THE TOWER

Shot 8: The woman 's bedroom.

The lieutenant enters, he lights a candle, illuminates the bed. The
woman is gone. He is slightly startled; he goes with the candle to
the window, then back again. He appears to be thinking.

Shot 9: In the hills

the woman is wandering. She appears to be tired.

Shot 1 0 : The woman 's bedroom.

On the chair next to the woman's bed the lieutenant is seated and
has fallen asleep. His shoulders are slumped and ragged, he looks
remarkably old. Then he twitches and awakens. He looks again at
the bed, leaves with the candle.

Shot 1 1 : Corridor.
The lieutenant gives the alarm. He looks down and sees

Shot 1 2 : in the hall

the half-dressed soldiers stumbling out.

Shot 1 3 : The hall, same as Act IV.

The soldiers stand in formation. They see the lieutenant with the
candle. He steps up to them, strong but as if ruined. He counts
them with the candle in his hand, absent-mindedly, then he turns
round and leaves to go upstairs again. They stare stupidly after
him. Dissolve.

Shot 1 4 : In the hills

the woman is wandering, and behind a hill the captain joins her. He
calmly walks at her side, smoking. She walks slowly next to him,
like his slave, she dares not look at him.

Shot 1 5 : The lieutenant's bedroom.

The lieutenant enters, he looks at the room like a stranger; he has
lived there for a year, it was not a happy year. He lies down on the
bed, half-dressed, stiffly.

Shot 1 6 : Guard room.

A lazy, sleepy soldier sits at the table. He lifts his head from the
tabletop, through the window he sees the woman creeping home.
She is fatigued, dishevelled, she has sand in her hair and walks like
an animal.

Shot 1 7 : The woman 's bedroom.

The woman enters shyly. She lets down her hair, falls on her bed
as if dead. The captain in black is sitting on the chair and watches
her.

1 23
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

Shot 1 8: The tower from outside, day breaks.

A window opens. The lieutenant, in shirt sleeves, looks out with a
scowl. He looks at the sky.

Shot 1 9 : The woman 's bedroom. Dawn.

The captain has disappeared. The lieutenant enters, he stands in
the door, glances at the bed, wants to come in, thinks again, turns
round, shuffles out.

Shot 20: Circular staircase.

The lieutenant descends slowly, carrying the wide pistol case. A
soldier (the guard) salutes at the bottom. He does not see him,
walks into the

Shot 2 1 : courtyard
and shoots at targets on the wall.

Shot 22: Guard room and cubicle.

The plank door is smashed. The soldiers are lounging on tom straw
mattresses, one is still guzzling, several are sleeping. Half-closed
metal blinds through which pale light shines. One of them hears
shooting. He turns over. No one gets up.

Shot 23: Dining-room.

It looks as if it has been devoured by moths. The woman moves
round, dragging her feet. She sets the table. She looks out, glances
from above

Shot 24: into the courtyard

where the lieutenant is target shooting. He is supporting his right
arm with his left hand.

Shot 25: Dining-room.

The woman has no expression on her face. She sets the table
calmly: two place settings, then, hesitating, a third one. The
lieutenant enters. He sees the third place setting. Passing by, he
takes it in his fist, apparently with calm, one arm akimbo, and
throws it in the comer. Sits down. Goes to the window, looks out
through a crack. The woman sits down. The valet serves. This is
the morning after the wedding, the lieutenant thinks to himself and
looks at the woman. But she is looking at the third chair, because
the captain is sitting there. The lieutenant sits down now, suddenly
he notices the woman's gaze, he leans forward, he stares at the
scene with great concentration, he sees nothing, he goes to the
window, he pulls up the blinds. The woman pushes her plate to the
one who is invisible to the lieutenant, and - smiling strangely - like
a servant, gives him her salt shaker. The lieutenant is uneasy, why
1 24
 THREE IN T H E TOWER

does she smile that way? No, this is unbearable. He moves around
her in a wide arc, he goes to the door and exits. Dissolve.

Shot 26: Guard room.

The half-dressed soldiers sit around the table and eat their mash.
The door opens and the lieutenant saunters in. He scowls, he has
stray hairs on his shoulders, has not washed, even his jacket is open.
He does not notice the mess, or even how lazily they stand up. He
sits down at the table and lets them eat. They continue to eat, their
skulls deep in their plates, squinting at him from the side. He does
not eat. He stares at nothing and plays with a knife. Dissolve.

Shot 27: Fade-in, guard room.

The lieutenant is standing at the window, his back to the camera,
the soldiers no longer pay him any attention, he looks out. And you
see nothing through the window except

Shot 28: the black-leafed trees in the courtyard

that shake in the evening wind. And

Shot 29: in the courtyard

the lieutenant stands and looks at the sky.

Shot 30: The sky

with moving clouds.

Shot 3 1 : Courtyard.
The lieutenant turns round and shuffles into the house.

Shot 32: Guard room.

The men are eating again. The lieutenant enters, sits down with
them. Eats nothing.

Shot 33: Dining-room.

The woman kneels at the fireplace, she is cold, she stretches her
bare arms over the fire, her clothes are tom. The captain is rocking
in the rocking chair. The woman stands up, says something to him,
leaves slowly. She begins to run, at the door already. The captain
fades out. The empty chair continues to rock.

Shot 34: The hall.

The woman takes in passing some bottles from the table.

Shot 35: Guard room.

The woman enters with bottles under her arms. She places them
on the table. The lieutenant hardly looks up. The woman fills the
soldiers' glasses, they toast her. Everyone drinks, the woman too,
who sits cowering on a chair across from the lieutenant, who is not

1 25
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

drinking; he looks at her briefly. She is looking fixedly at her

husband, as if examining - like a child who thinks slowly - the face
of a strange man. Her strange husband. He then drinks hastily.
Now a soldier plays the accordion. It is warm here. There are
people. Here it is better than elsewhere. One of them asks the
woman to dance, the soldiers are already waltzing with each other.
Why not? She waltzes as well and watches the lieutenant constantly
and it goes well, the lieutenant even tries to smile at her. But why
does she get that small crease on her forehead? The lieutenant
stands up and exits.

Shot 36: Courtyard.

The lieutenant comes out. He shuffles over to the gate, closes it. He
begins to look strangely alone. He shuffles further to the corner of
the courtyard, finds the pistol case, lifts it up and takes it under his
arm. Lost in thought he searches the targets for hits, then he turns
round, walks back to the house, sunk in thought. Dissolve.

Shot 37: Guard room.

The woman waltzes. The lieutenant stands in the doorway. He
looks at the woman, turns round, shuffles out. The woman halts,
stares after him.

Shot 38: Hall.

The lieutenant drinks while walking. The woman comes in.
Somehow she is revived, she walks up

Shot 39: the stairs

somewhat more freely.

Shot 40: Dining-room. Dark.

The lieutenant guzzles from a bottle. He waits. The woman enters.
The lieutenant guzzles, throws away the bottle, holds himself up by
the white drapes. He speaks hoarsely, wildly, choking:
'I'll wait no longer.'
The woman wants to leave, simply to turn round. The lieutenant
springs like a tiger. He catches her at the glass door, smashes it in
the process, drags her back in. She resists, she bends back her
upper body like a supple animal. He throws her to the table, which
she holds on to and stares at him. He pulls a pistol from the case,
he thrashes around with it, he points it to his temple. She raises her
hands, she clearly is afraid, she says something with pale lips, very
few words, he listens, she has said nothing for so long. He goes
towards her, takes her face in his two hands, he has thrown the
pistol on the table. But she looks at him like a stranger, despite
everything. He releases her, this can't go on, he has started and is
126
 THREE IN THE TOWER

going to take care of things, whatever the price, he'll put an end to
these ghosts. He walks to the windows, pushes them, they break,
the white drapery billows into the room. He throws the table at the
wall, he's taking care of things. He tears down a drape, bundles it
up, throws it out of the window, follows it with his eyes, grins over
his shoulder, he is drunk, he is becoming bizarre. She has been
watching him calmly from the table, now she smiles, pale and
bloated in the shadows, she smiles. She moves from the table to the
door, free, light, but extremely tense, she looks out, she is some­
what crazy, but that doesn't matter. She too goes to the window,
always stooped now, she looks out. Then, as she turns round
beside the lieutenant, she sees the captain emerge from her bed­
room door, large, massive, apparently sunk in his thoughts or as if
he had forgotten something in the room. The woman touches the
lieutenant's sleeve, she stares at the apparition, the lieutenant
begins to move, he walks through the room with heavy steps, he
stops, looks at her to see where the ghost is located, then he raises
his hand and drops it right through the captain, with his whole arm.
The captain has stopped, now he continues to move, he grins
slightly. But the lieutenant sees how the woman laughs, she is
beginning to laugh, her special laugh for this, she has experienced
all the misery of the earth; now she is laughing, she is laughing it
off. She goes around the table and laughs. She straightens the
tablecloth, she runs her hand over the drapery. She laughs the
whole time. The lieutenant has had enough, he is seized by the
horror, this is too much, he is only a human being and not a
particularly bright one at that! He bends down to the pistol case,
fixing the woman with his stare, he takes out a pistol and moves in
front of the woman, seizes her right hand with his left. He aims with
his right. He determines where he must aim by looking back at her.
He shoots where she is looking. He shoots three times. Each time
it whizzes through the captain and the captain continues to walk.
And the lieutenant shoots in the new direction. But after the third
shot his arm sinks and the horror seizes him even more strongly. He
grasps at his throat and runs out. The woman follows him with
short steps, then stops, laughs and turns round; she laughs again.

Shot 4 1 : Corridor. Rapid timing.

The lieutenant runs through

Shot 42: the lieutenant's bedroom.

The lieutenant enters, panting. He leans against the dresser,
throws clothes about. He fetches suitcases from under the camp
bed, throws his clothes in, he takes his uniform jackets from the

1 27
 EARLY S C REENPLAYS ( 1 9 2 1 )

hook and throws them in the suitcases. He rings like a madman

until he is trembling. He is at his wits' end. Then he shakes the
clothes cupboard. Nothing, it doesn't move. The devil take it, that
too! The lieutenant smashes the cupboard with a chair. It breaks
open and the lieutenant jumps back. (Close-up.) In the cupboard
there is a half-decayed corpse wearing uniform trousers and a shirt!
The captain. And it falls slowly out of the cupboard. And when the
lieutenant sees it, he bends down, lifts the left arm, runs to the
door, through the

Shot 43: corridor

in a wild chase to the

Shot 44: dining-room,

where the woman comes towards him, calls something at the door,
turns right round, but she stands there as if rooted to the spot. He
rushes back in, pulls her with him by the hand.

Shot 45: The lieutenant's bedroom.

They rush in, they hurry to the clothes cupboard, the lieutenant
bends down, lifts up the corpse, carries it to the bed, throws an end
of the sheet over it, looks round at the woman. But she has
straightened up, catches her breath, pulls a strand of hair from her
eyes, lifts up her arms, falls over the lieutenant, who catches her in
his arms. They stand upright for a moment in the black bedroom,
the drapes billow into the room; then the lieutenant throws her
violently and wildly on the bed and falls over her. Dissolve.

The end.

!28
 Part IV
The Threepenny Material
(1930-1932)
This page intentionally left blank
 The Bruise - A Threepenny Film

[GBFA 1 9/307-20. Nero-Film Company purchased the adaptation rights

to Brecht's and Weill's musical on 2 1 May 1 930, hoping to capitalize on
what had become the most popular play in Weimar Germany. On Brecht's
insistence, Nero-Film negotiated a further agreement, signed on 3 August,
that allowed him to write a scenario with his theatre collaborators Caspar
Neher and Slatan Dudow, as well as Leo Lania. Though the agreement
accorded Brecht the right to demand changes if the final cut did not follow
their scenario, it also obliged them to follow the original play's text both in
style and content. While Brecht and his team were writing the film
treatment in southern France, Nero-Film had resold the rights to Tobis­
Klang-Film and Warner Brothers in anticipation of an international
release by the celebrated director Georg Wilhelm Pabst. Nero-Film
proceeded to rent studio space and hire the casts for both a German and a
French version. When the production company realized that Brecht's
screenplay differed in essential points from the stage play - he had
introduced, for example, an entirely new motif, the bruise of the title, as a
visual element to connect structurally the three antagonistic groups:
Macheath and his gang, Peachum and his beggars, and chief of police
Tiger Brown and his men - it sought an accommodation, which Brecht
refused. The production began nonetheless, with a new script written by
Bela Bahisz and Ladislaus Vajda (see Brecht's footnote 1 7), whereupon
Brecht went to court (see 'The Threepenny Lawsuit'). An English-language
version of Pabst's shooting script - not identical with the final cut - can be
found in Masterworks of the Gennan Cinema (New York: Harper, 1 973),
pp. 1 79-263.
For 'The Bruise', Brecht basically took from the play the characters and
the Victorian setting in order to construct a much more radical image of
struggle between class interests. This modification of the storyline affected
the sequence of scenes and songs as well as the play's message. In a
typically Brechtian interpretation of the Hollywood happy ending, the
three main enemies discover their common interests when confronted with
the threat of a revolt by the mass of exploited beggars. Thus, Brecht and
his collaborators not only revamped the story to sharpen the political
message, but also took into account the cinematic medium for which they
were writing, integrating parallel montage sequences and conventions of
the American gangster and romance film genres. The numbered footnotes
are from Brecht's original text.]

13 1
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0 - 1 9 3 2 )

First Part
2
Polly Peachum 's Love and Marriage1

Love at First Grasp

Old Oak Street, a winding row of dilapidated warehouses,
granaries and apartment houses, overlooks a dirty canal criss­
crossed by several wooden bridges, the largest of which is St
George's Bridge. Stepping out one early afternoon from the Drury
Lane Swamp, the brothel located in this street, Mr Macheath
catches sight of a girl fetching beer who will bring him within a few
hours to the marriage altar and to a close call with the gallows
before many days have passed. 3 He looks at her only from behind.
He begins to follow her immediately and knows: he will marry this
charming bottom. A small crowd of people round a shabby ballad
singer at the end of the street provides him with an opportunity to
approach Miss Polly Peachum more familiarly. The ballad's
content is a sketchy report about the alarming misdeeds of a
certain Mac the Knife, which seem even more alarming because of
their unprovability. At a particular point in the song, when this
unprovability is regretfully and admiringly emphasized, Mr
Macheath allows himself a very questionable trick: standing
behind the captivating girl, he suddenly reaches round the nape of
her neck for the slender throat with his thumb and middle finger ­
the all-too-practised grasp of a seducer on the docks. In response
to her shocked look, he repeats with a smile the ballad's last verse
- 'Nothing can be proven against him'. Immediately the victim
turns round to leave, he follows on her heels - she will no longer
escape him. But now the crowd shrinks back from him as if he
were a wild animal, heads press together behind him and
malicious whispering follows the figure hurrying after the girl with
the beer stein. 4

1. Sound films have the deplorable habit of forgoing intenitles. The titles in the
Threepenny film are long shots of an entire section's intellectual site. They do not
only serve to clarify what follows. In cenain instances they can claim a value in
themselves: in this case their function would consist simply of being seen. Beyond
that they ensure the epic flow by dividing the film into chapters. To leave them out
would be idiotic.
2. At the beginning the entire cast sings 'You gentlemen who think you have a
mission . . .', The Threepenny Opera [see 'Second Threepenny Finale', Act II,
Scene 6] .
3. See The Threepenny Opera, 'The Ballad of Sexual Obsession' [Act II, Scene 4] .
4. In this first pan, which portrays a free love unburdened by eanhly interests, it will
be effective to awaken a cenain suspicion about Mr Macheath - who is so thoughtlessly,
so instinctively married here - by means of all sons of improbable and witty ideas.

132
 THE BRUISE - A THREEPENNY FILM

Where There's a Will, There's a Way

The same day; the Macheath Gang - already numbering over 1 20
members from various social strata around 1 9005 - has organized
for the evening hours an energetic visit to the National Deposit
Bank, the fourteenth such undertaking. The appropriation of the
old, honourable bank will take place differently from what was
planned for this evening. Polly Peachum's first love and Mr
Macheath's final marriage will bring about the great trans­
formation. We come across Mr Macheath once again as he notes
with satisfaction the contents of the store window display that Miss
Polly finds worthy of her interest: an engaged couple in wax.
Discovering the reflection of her pursuer in the window glass, she
moves on in a huff. But the Octopus Hotel, which she enters to
fetch the beer, already anticipates the first resolution: in the
crowded, cramped confusion of the mazurka, danced by the
prostitutes, maidservants and loafers in front of the bar, Polly
suddenly, but not exactly unexpectedly, feels herself pulled by her
pursuer into the swirling entertainment. She hardly resists. Her
destiny is sealed. Without a word she leaves the pub with him -
although she does not know him - from the other side, exiting to a
different street (they have not danced more than half a round) and,
crossing the courtyard, they pass by amorous, embracing couples
and then make their way past the factories along the canal over
which the moon is just rising. 6 Meanwhile her companion still
found time to tell several gentlemen waiting in two cars parked in
front of the hotel that the bank visit planned for that day is to be
postponed and instead a wedding, which had just been decided
upon, is to be organized. 7 In the meantime she waits patiently for
him with the filled beer stein in her hand. She says: 'I'll only go a
short way with you.' Then two hopelessly infatuated lovers move
through the night in carefree and blind love,8 while the revolver
shots of the thieves in the car echo through the city's shopping
street, for a wedding trousseau must be collected. No less than
twenty major robberies bring together all the necessities, from the
marriage bed to the toothbrush and, most importantly, a rich
selection. The lovers take a boat, 9 while three cars block a sidewalk,

5. At some later point in the film this 'club' can be shown in a photo in the style of
certain choral society portraits.
6. One or two moons will suffice.
7. He names a banquet committee and sets the wedding for 1 1 p.m. sharp. The
place: the absent Duke of Somersetshire's stable.
8. See The Threepenny Opera, 'Lovers' Dialogue' [end of Act I, Scene 2] .
9. With her at the oars.

1 33
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0 - 1 9 3 2 )

several masked men break a store window and steal a toothbrush.

Meanwhile a blind beggar snitches on four men, who are arrested
by the police as they steal a grandfather clock, while behind the gate
of a factory entrance the bride quickly pulls on the wedding dress
(which, wrapped in newspaper, was shoved under the groom's
arm) .

A Social Event
Mr Macheath's wedding with Miss Polly Peachum takes place in
the fourth hour of their acquaintanceship in the stable of the Duke
of Somersetshire. Since this gentleman is at present not in
London, it is only a matter of twisting the arms of two domestics
to 'rent' a banqueting hall that holds 1 50 guests. At eleven o'clock
sharp it is filled to the last seat. Under the banquet manager's
clever direction, the wedding couple finds the stable already
transformed into a huge parlour. The first impression might be of
a somewhat conventional occasion: these good, rather stout men
have brought their women; but if a marriage licence were required
of them, some would certainly be embarrassed and the bride may
herself offer the fruit bowl to certain of the women whose social
function she perhaps suspects but can never approve. All in all,
this wedding is a social event. Prominent members of society who
are in attendance include: 1 0 the High Judge from Drury Lane, a
general, two members from the Upper House of Parliament, three
well-known lawyers, the vicar of St Margaret's; noted in particular
was the presence of Chief of Police Tiger Brown, an old war
buddy of the groom, as was whispered among the guests. The
banquet meal - in the yard a complete butchery has been set up
for the entire duration and proceeds to prepare not less than three
entire oxen - is embellished by the performances of several of the
groom's musically endowed colleagues. The bride, too, outdoes
herself with a short ballad for which she receives ample
applause. 1 1 A brief, unpleasant episode is of no further
importance: towards the end of the banquet, which lasts into the
early morning hours, three of the men report to their gang leader
Mac the Knife that a beggar snitched while they were making
'arrangements' for the celebration and they barely escaped the

1 0 . It can be indicated that this chapter is a newspaper report by copying a

newspaper page over it. Single sentences from the society page, such as 'noted in
particular', can be highlighted with bold-faced type.
1 1 . 'Barbara Song', The Threepenny Opera [Act I, Scene 3] . During the ballad Polly,
the actress, stands small and alone in the huge space.

1 34
 THE B RU I S E - A TH REEPENNY FILM

police. This beggar is a member of J.J, Peachum's Beggars'

Trust. 1 2

Second Part
The Beggar King's Power

The Dull Routine

The next morning members of Macheath's gang, undoubtedly
coming directly from the banquet, break into Peachum's costume
house for beggars and leave with the contents of the cash register.
Upon entering his office, the 'Beggar King' sees on the door,
written in chalk, 'Receipt for 40 pounds 6 shillings 2 pence for the
purchase of a grandfather clock'. Soon he has the explanation.
Business is just getting started - simply, but decently, dressed
people are transformed into pitiable wretches - when a beggar
delivers the one-pound reward for having prevented the theft of a
grandfather clock. At the same time he reveals a huge bruise on his
head from a recent thrashing by the thieves in front of the store for
having snitched on them. Mr Peachum slaps his face. How stupid
of him to have brought the Macheath Gang down on him! A bit
later he discovers that his daughter was out the entire night - as she
tells him in so many words - and married to a man whose name she
does not even know. Mr Peachum knows it. And straight away he
knows, too, that it can only be a fight to the finish. He pulls the man
with the bruise from the comer. He raises him up like a monument
to public injustice. He promises his employee to avenge imme­
diately and most cruelly the injustice meted out to one of his own
in the service of the police. He goes to the police. 13 The man with
the bruise accompanies him.
In the office of the police commissioner he finds an unfamiliar

12. The first part � 'Polly Peachum's Love and Marriage' � is divided into three
chapters with their own titles. Each chapter demands its own technique in terms of
photography, rhythm of events and images, and the particular camera shots they
require, etc. The first chapter should flow without editing and cuts. (The spectator
does not see Polly Peachum's face before Macheath does.) The second chapter
introduces two regularly alternating and mutually qualifying activities: the falling­
in-love (soft focus, indolent) and the organizing of the trousseau (sharp, montage
editing) . The third chapter shows single, unconnected still lives; the camera
searches for motives, it is a sociologist.
1 3. Not without having complained beforehand in the first 'Threepenny Finale' about
the 'uncertainty of human relations'. This finale can be presented in the form of a
family fight; Polly sulks in her room behind the door she has slammed shut, her mother
whines on the stair landing, and Mr Peachum argues at the bottom of the stairs.

1 35
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

gentleman engaged in a confidential discussion with the chief of

police. (Apparently they are discussing certain files about a Jimmy
Beckett alias John Miller alias Stanford Sills who was condemned
to death in Southampton and Newcastle and Dover, files that
incriminate this gentleman and are to be delivered to him that
afternoon - a belated wedding present from the chief of police.)
This gentleman - Mr Macheath - dismisses Peachum's complaint
against the gangleader Macheath with the statement: with such
accusations he could call for the arrest of London's mayor. The
Beggar King stands silently next to his employee, who has once
again been insulted, then silently leaves police headquarters with
him. Ringing laughter follows them. Who is this Mr Peachum?1 4

W'ho is Mr Peachum?
The events during the inspection of the renovated Old Oak Street15
quickly demonstrate to the police chief (this very same afternoon)
who Mr Peachum is. Since the Queen must pass by Old Oak Street
in the harbour after her arrival (scheduled for the coming Friday),
this eyesore is being transformed by the police into a charming
garden street - several gallons of whitewash do wonders, 1 6
dumping places become children' s playgrounds, the women
inhabitants of the Drury Lane Swamp leave their workplace under
14. After Mr Peachum and Macheath depart, Mr Brown sings the following
strophes to the melody of 'Mac the Knife' [see The Threepenny Opera, trans. Ralph
Manheim and John Willett (London: Methuen, 1979), additional songs] :
Oh, they're such delightful people
As long as no one interferes
While they battle for the loot which
Doesn't happen to be theirs.
When the poor man's lamb gets butchered
If two butchers are involved
Then the fight between those butchers
By the police must be resolved.
1 5 . Especially at this point the stage play is left behind, not the meaning but its story.
To film elements from the stage play with only slight changes would be pure
nonsense.
16. The police sing while whitewashing, 'The Song about Whitewash':
Where something's rotten and walls are crumbling
Then something must be done to set it right
And the rot is growing so frightfully
If anyone sees that, it's just not good.
There's already another new
Spot on the wall
It's just not good! (No good at all!)
We need whitewash! Whitewash is what we need!
 THE B RU I S E - A THREEPENNY FILM

police guard with howls of protest so that on the Friday yearned for
by the entire nation it can pretend to be a home for fallen girls. Just
as Mr Peachum transforms his employees into wretches, here a
wretched street is transformed into a pretty and restful scene. At
the inspection of the completed renovation by the Prime Minister,
Mr Peachurn demonstrates his art: masses of beggars have left the
inner city, they creep forth from the centres of the metropolis, and
among the newly planted flower beds between the freshly
whitewashed houses appear the faces of the professional beggars,
corroded by vice and misery. 1 7 No one has attempted, and rightly
so, to camouflage the children of this quarter. Here any attempt to
disguise things is hopeless: no velvet suit can hide the thin bodies
wracked by rickets. And what would be the point in using police
kids if suddenly a real child is smuggled in among the imported
ones and, in answering the question of the fat, rosy-cheeked Prime
Minister as to his age, says 'sixteen' instead of the 'five years old'
one might expect from his size? The festive tour ends in other
words on a shrill dissonance. Returning from this flop, the police
chief - who very clearly saw Mr Peachum standing silently at the
first comer, next to him the man with the bruise - can only advise
his friend Macheath, who impatiently demands his wedding
present, to disappear as quickly as possible. 'Macheath, we are
dealing with adversaries who know nothing about morality or even
the most primitive forms of human decency,' he says to him. He
does not even mention the files.

When the pigsty collapses, it's just too late!

Give us whitewash and we're willing
To do everything to make it right.
Give us whitewash, don't make such a fuss!
It's not our fault, we're ready to work!
Give us whitewash, then everything'll be new
And then you'll have your new times.
[This is an early version of 'The Whitewashing Song' in Round Heads and Pointed
Heads, interlude berween Scenes 2 and 3 .]
1 7 . They scream out:
You! There's something rotten! The walls are crumbling!
Is it not possible to do something about it?
You! The rot is growing so fast!
If anyone sees us, it's no good! (No good at all!)
(We did not work out additional suggestions since at a certain point the sight of
those who were supposed to follow our suggestions and complete the film robbed
us of our illusions. Immersed in our work, we had forgotten: it was already
September 1 930.)

1 37
 T H E THREEPENN Y MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

Departure and Plans . . .

The carefree attitude of a young girl has brought Miss Polly
Peachum one day of unmitigated happiness; already the next
morning she is desperate after her father's horrible revelation about
her husband, the next evening suddenly thoughtful, sober and a
decisive Mrs Macheath. Immediately after the terrible scene in the
parental home, she has rushed to seek help at the scene of her
nocturnal joy. Among a crowd of curious onlookers, attracted by
the strange scene, she watches with her face pressed to the fence as
eager police carry furniture - her furniture! - out of the Duke of
Somersetshire's stable onto the lawn. Three fully packed travelling
carriages indicate the return of the palace's owner. At this very
moment, when all her illusions are collapsing, she feels on her neck
an all too familiar grip: thumb and middle finger of her lover! 'Poor
Polly, you can learn something! ' They immediately leave together.
Once again the pair takes a walk, only the second one, but how
different from the first! He tells her that he must leave, right away.
She tells him that she cannot approve of his work, she weeps.
' Can't you become something decent?' she asks. She glances at a
street sign: National Deposit Bank. It is the same bank her father
works with. 'Can't you become a banker, or something?' - 'We've
long had our eyes on this bank,' he says. 'No, not like that,' she says
and weeps. 'You can always buy it,' he says with irritation. 'Can I
do that?' she says. 'You see, if we could buy the bank where my
father's money . . .' and they continue on their way, immersed in
an enthusiastic conversation. At a comer they take leave of one
another. 'Now I know everything,' she says, 'for now we can do
without you. It's better if you hide in the Drury Lane Swamp, as
you intend. '

Third Part
Playing with Fire

The Historical Change of Ownership of the National Deposit Bank

While the prostitutes from the West India Dock read the 'wanted'
leaflet in which the police describe a fugitive named Mr Macheath,
the Macheath gang's general meeting is taking place in a
restaurant's banquet room. With Mrs Macheath presiding, they
decide to assume control legally of the National Deposit Bank.
Justification: the new times. Astonished, Mr Macheath is just
passing through the completely transformed Old Oak Street, while
the general meeting is dismissing by means of retirement
 THE B R U I S E - A T H REEPENNY FILM

allowances those members whose social standing is so low that it

would prevent them from participating in the important changes.
The Macheath gang's buy-out of the venerable National Deposit
Bank can be best illustrated with an image: emerging from their
stolen cars, 18 moving towards the modest entrance of this old,
renowned house that awakens nothing but trust, approximately
forty gentlemen cross over an imaginary line on the sidewalk.
Before the eyes of the unbelieving observer they are transformed at
the moment of crossing over from the bearded robbers of days of
yore into the sophisticated managers of a modem financial market.
- And Mr Macheath walks with a light step in the direction of the
West India Dock, resolutely moving towards the Drury Lane
Swamp, while humming a few new verses of a ballad that has just
become obsolete . . 19 .

The Struggle for the Head of Macheath

On this morning Mr Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum enters police
headquarters together with the man with the bruise. Seven lawyers
accompany him. For the first time during this discussion with the

18. While they arrive in four or five cars, they sing the 'Song to Inaugurate the
National Deposit Bank' [see translation by Manheim and Willen, additional songs] :
Don't you think a bank's foundation
Gives good cause for jubilation?
Those who hadn't a rich mother
Must raise cash somehow or other.
To that end stocks serve much betrer
Than your swordstick or biretta
But what lands you in the cart
Is getting capital to start.
If you've got none, why reveal it?
All you need to do is steal it.
Don't all banks get started thanks to
Doing as the other banks do?
How did all that money come there? -
They'll have taken it from somewhere.
19. [See translation by Manheim and Willett, additional songs.]
How's mankind to get some money?
In his office, cold like snow
Sits the banker Mac the Knife, but he
Isn't asked and ought to know.
In Hyde Park behold a ruined
Man reclining in the sun
(While down Piccadilly, hat and cane, just think about it)
Strolls the banker Mac the Knife and
God alone knows what he's done.

1 39
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

chief o f police the threat o f the 'demonstration o f misery', which

causes so much dread, is explicitly mentioned . . . 20 Once again
Tiger Brown envisions the horror of the slum dwellers, who would
do anything for a piece of bread. Mr Peachum demands point­
blank the head of Mr Macheath, alias Jimmy Beckett. 'My friend
Sam,' he says, 'insists that the man be hanged. ' Mr Brown can only
reply that the police do not know the whereabouts of the notorious
bandit. 'You will find that out,' Mr Peachum promises.
The arrest ensues under racy circumstances during a picnic
outing by car under God's free heavens to which Mr Macheath has
invited the ladies from the Drury Lane Swamp. In the police car
that pursues him, the prostitute Jenny Diver, an old acquaintance
of Mr Macheath, sits by the side of Mrs Peachum. Among ageless
oaks in a circle of shady ladies the poor devil receives the kiss of
Judas from this person. After a speedy chase (for the tum of the
century) - a car full of police charges after a car full of prostitutes
- Mr Macheath is apprehended. 'Please come along, Mr
Macheath, it's only a formality. '
Half an hour later a deputation o f bankers and lawyers led by
Mrs Macheath enters police headquarters. In the ensuing
conversation with the chief of police the directors of the National
Deposit Bank demand point-blank the release of their boss. The
chief points out to the gentlemen that in the slum districts a
demonstration is being planned against the police's handling of the
case of the banker Macheath that - in view of the Queen's expected
arrival - would make him fear the prospect of unpleasant incidents.
'The police are too weak, gentlemen, against the misery that is
too great. ' - 'Sir, then it is our duty to undertake something against
this misery.' - 'And?' - 'We will strengthen the police.'
The ensuing deliberation about the means to be put at the
disposal of the police, a conversation that increasingly takes on the
character of a philosophical debate about the state, provides Mrs
Macheath with an opportunity to seek out her husband. She enters
his cell in order to declare her unwavering love despite events and
sees there her rival, Jenny Diver, who in a fit of remorse has visited
him. Once again: the struggle for Macheath. 21
Returning exhausted from this unpleasant scene - Diver, happy,
was led out - Mrs Macheath meets the gentlemen who are coming
down the stairs. Their comments about the chief of police's attitude
appear to be so depressing that Mrs Macheath falls in a faint.
20. Peachum's story about the police chief of Semiramis. The Threepenny Opera [end
of Act II, Scene 6] .
2 1 . The 'Jealousy Duet' [Act II, Scene 6] .
 THE B R U I S E - A THREEPENNY FILM

With Macheath's arrest events begin to unravel. Towards

evening Mr Peachum stands at a street comer and reads a
newspaper announcement to a man with a bruise which reports
that in the city there is an enormous tumult because of the
completely unfounded arrest. of the National Deposit Bank owner.
Influential circles were warning the police about submitting to the
demands of the riffraff in the streets. The banker's release was now
expected that evening. In a gateway Mr Peachum carefully
removes his companion's hat in order to examine the bruise. 'It's
getting smaller,' he cries out angrily. 'I can't help it,' the man
replies incredulously. 'Well,' says Mr Peachum and hits him
forcefully and cold-heartedly on the disappearing bruise. 'Now,' he
states, 'they can release him this evening. '

Fourth Part
The Mounted Messengers of Mr Macheath

A Turbulent Night
This evening five or six beggars pass through the slums of the West
India Dock, one of them carrying a placard on a pole. In their midst
is a man without a hat who has a large bruise on his head and the
placard reads: 'Justice for poor Sam!' They go from bar to bar and
show the bruise to everyone who has a sense of justice. It turns out
that in this district there are a lot of people who either have a sense
of justice or a sense of humour and therefore are prepared to meet
at St George's Bridge the next morning at seven o'clock in order to
show the high and highest authorities poor Sam's bruise.
And no matter how small the bruise is, the fear of those above
will make it larger, their bad conscience will see to that.
During this expectant night the chief of police nervously rides
one more time through the streets, which the next day will be a
place of joy or maybe of other feelings. Passing over St George's
Bridge, which - closed off by the police - lies there empty and tidy
under waving flags, he believes that he hears noises. Getting out, he
notices under the bridge dark, formless heaps: naked misery itself
that is just lying down to sleep. This misery is entirely unfamiliar
not only to Mr Peachum . . .
Mrs Polly Peachum keeps watch over her husband in jail. The
greying morning will bring the hour when she will don black
clothes, hastily, just as no more than three days ago she put on her
wedding dress . . . Did the couple not consider during the night
whether they should separate after all?
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

The house o f Peachum's Beggars' Trust i s fully illuminated in

the light of dawn. Do Mr and Mrs Peachum have a reason to
laugh? Here forty or fifty persons await instructions from the boss,
kept awake with cigarettes and coffee; they are the messengers to
the countless masses in the slums, naked misery itself. In the
business premises some of them are already painting impressive
placards for a demonstration that will certainly be successful in
'those dark holes that London tries to forget'. Will the decision be
made here? What ideas will a rather illogical but substantive speech
by Mrs Peachum - drunk as usual - awaken in her husband, who
in any case fears for his business. 'You are a genius, Peachum,' she
says, 'don't go too far! You want to summon the misery, but
remember, the misery is great. ' - 'I will tell them, it is time to settle
accounts,' he says gently. 'You can do that,' she suggests, 'they will
settle, but with whom will they settle? Can you arrange it so that
they don't also settle accounts with us? They will come forth from
the slums, why not, but for whom will they come? They will hang
Mr Macheath, lynch the chief of police, do who-knows-what to the
Queen, will they spare us? What will happen when they come,
Jonathan?' Will he not say suddenly: 'I must reconsider, perhaps it
would really not be very pleasant . . . '
Now, no matter what this whole society cooks up, one thing is
sure: it is supposed to save this society. And one question will
unavoidably be raised at this point: from whom?
A dream of the chief of police will answer some questions.

The Dream of the Chief of Police

Towards morning the chief of police has a dream: he sees a bridge
from below, a small piece of earth surrounded by raging river
water. But on this small site under the flags something is moving
that spreads out quickly, no one knows from where they come,
there appears to be something even deeper here below; in any case
there are already crowds moving up now, up the banks and over the
freshly painted railings, onto the bridge itself directly under the
flags. Yes, this small site spews forth many, innumerable, steadily.
Once it has begun, it never ceases; of course, there are police, they
are standing over there, they will block the bridge, there are tanks,
they will fire, there are soldiers too, they will - but the miserable are
already there, they are coming together, they are marching, their
ranks are closed, as wide as the streets, they fill everything, like
water, they seep through everything, like water, they have no
substance. Of course, the police throw themselves against them, of
course, batons are flying, but what's this? They strike right through
 THE B R U I S E - A THREEPENNY FILM

the bodies: in a wide wave the miserable march through the police
towards the sleeping city, through rolling tanks, through fenced
barriers, silent and mute through the police calls to halt and the
rattle of the machine guns and they pour into the houses. Teeming
misery in a mute march, transparent and faceless, they march
through the palaces of the wealthy, they march through the walls of
art galleries, the royal residence, court chambers, parliament.
Such dreams have consequences.

The Messengers Ride Forth . . .

When morning dawns, the men and women from the West India
Dock are standing on St George's Bridge, waiting for poor Sam
with his bruise. But through the tolling of the bells that greet the
Queen's special train, past the honour guards, under waving flags,
the chief of police rushes to the Old Bailey to sacrifice his friend
Macheath and halfway there he meets, coming from the opposite
direction, Mr Peachum, who is turning in his friend Sam, for the
same reason. They have realized that they have the same enemy - the
people waiting on St George's Bridge.
And Mr Macheath? Fortunately he is also not exactly hard up:
mounted messengers, or rather, cars of the National Deposit Bank
guarded by armed police, are just delivering the bail for the hero.
Arm-in-arm, Mr Peachum and the chief of police enter the death­
row cell to release the bandit and lock up the man with the bruise.
After all, unity makes for strength: after an embittered struggle a
unified society greets in its midst the banker Macheath and waits
with him for the Queen. 22

22. Closing verses of the 'Mac the Knife' ballad [see translation by Manheim and
Willett, appendix] :
So we reach our happy ending.
Rich and poor can now embrace.
Once the cash is not a problem
Happy endings can take place.
Smith says Jones should be indicted
Since his business isn't straight
Over luncheon, reunited
See them clear the poor man's plate.
Some in light and some in darkness
That's the kind of world we mean.
Those you see are in the light part,
Those in darkness don't get seen.

1 43
 No Insight through Photography

You don't have to doubt whether the cinema is up-to-date!

Photography is the possibility of a reproduction that masks the
context. The Marxist Sternberg, for whom you surely share my
admiration, explains that from the (carefully taken) photograph of
a Ford factory no opinion about this factory can be deduced.
Even when the sociologist comes to the same conclusion as the
aesthete, his conclusion is infinitely more useful.

[GBFA 2 1 /443-4. Manuscript written around 1 930. Fritz Sternberg was

a Marxist-oriented sociologist and philosopher whom Brecht met in late
1 926. The photograph of a Ford factory alludes to a similar passage in
'The Threepenny Lawsuit' (Part III, Section 2).]

On the Discussion about Sound Film

The Threepenny lawsuit demonstrates how far the process of

transforming intellectual values into commodities has progressed.
To preserve the formal and socially critical features of The
Threepenny Opera in the sound film, we ourselves wrote a version of
the screenplay. To protect this version against the anticipated
neutralization by the industry, we signed a contract. To implement
this contract, we went to court. What happened? For the version of
the screenplay we were offered money so that we would not write
it. It was a commodity. For the contract, which was completely
ignored, we were offered 25,000 Marks right there in the
courtroom, just so that we would sell it. The contract too was a
commodity. The lawsuit, which in part we lost because our
witnesses were not called, must be appealed through all the courts,
which is very expensive, so that we must buy it at an unreasonable
price. The lawsuit - also a commodity. According even to Cicero,
who was an attorney, the system of law costs either justice or
money. For justice waits behind many doors that can only be
opened with money. What then can be learned from the Threepenny
lawsuit? When you buy a ticket to a sound film, you have learned
and you know that what you are about to see was produced
exclusively as a commodity in a world consisting exclusively of
commodities. If you intended to buy art with your ticket, then you
have not learned that the art sold to you in the sound film first must
be marketable in order to be sold.

1 44
 NO I N S I GH T THROUGH P H O T O GRAPHY

[GBFA 2 1 /444. Written in November/December 1 930, published in Der

Scheinwerfer 7 (Essen, December 1 930) . Brecht refers to the Roman orator
Marcus Tullius Cicero, who was a practising lawyer. A typescript of the
text includes a handwritten addition following the last sentence:
If then you buy a ticket for the sound film Threepenny Opera, in so far as
there will ever be such tickets to buy, then you must know that this
Threepenny Opera fell into a huge machine whose function it is to make
commodities out of artistically formed works at enormous expense.]

Meddling with the Poetic Substance

All changes undertaken in the process of adapting existing stage

plays for sound films are no longer simply transformations from the
acoustical to the optical medium necessitated by technological
considerations. Rather they are to an extent a form of meddling
with the poetic substance of the work itself.
Here, then, the rights that the author has in the theatre must be
extended to the sound film. This question has not yet been clarified
legally. The lawsuit concerning The Threepenny Opera has created
a precedent. As Brecht had explicitly demanded in his contract, the
screenplay was supposed to be written in consultation with him.
He sold his play to the company only on condition that he could
control the adaptation for the sound film. This clause was a major
component and a major right of the contract. Yet from the
beginning, so Brecht explained to us, the company violated it, at
first mainly because of lack of time. They wanted to use the studio
space that had been rented too early.
The few conversations with the director Pabst afforded absolutely
no artistic perspective but rather were limited to issues of authority
(whether Brecht could decisively influence the screenplay or not,
etc.), and from Pabst's side came the repeated advice that one must
take into account the backwardness and stupidity of the film
audience. 1 In these discussions Brecht already suspected that any
serious and artistic work would face enormous obstacles.
Brecht said that he did everything possible to avoid a botched job
and produced the material for a Threepenny film very quickly. This
provided the film company, in its own opinion, with the
opportunity simply to ignore the contractual rights of collaboration
by fabricating a legalistic delay. He was supposed to deliver the
material on 1 5 August. The legal delay consisted, in the film
company's opinion, in the fact that he had indeed delivered to Leo

1 45
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

Lania the material as contractually agreed on 15 August, but not in

the form of a medicine that Lania could easily swallow.2 Lania and
Brecht had planned a series of discussions in which they would
work on the stylistic adaptation of the material into the final script.
Three days after delivering his material, Brecht received written
notice that he was legally overdue and that the film company was no
longer obliged to work with him. 'I tried continually,' he said, 'to get
an overview of what was happening in the studio. But I did not even
succeed in getting a look at the shooting script. However, I did hear
from a third party that two other authors were now preparing the
screenplay. 3 I was also explicitly prohibited from entering the studio.'
Brecht's suspicion about a stylistically inappropriate adaptation
was only fuelled when he learned that the film was to be distributed
exclusively to cinemas agreeing to also take the Otto Ernst film
Flachsmann als Erzieher, (Flachsmann the Teacher), which was to
be produced later.4 In other words The Threepenny Opera is to be
doctored up so that it can please the fans of Flachsmann als Erzieher
too.
The film producer fears the over-exaggerated power of the
censor and the pre-release critiques of the film distributors who are
willing to accept only what has earned them a good box-office
income in the previous weeks. Their misdirected dominance is
seriously underrated even in professional circles.
'Since no one ever spoke with me about the style of The
Threepenny Opera, the public will most likely find something
completely different from what it expects,' Brecht said. His case
will soon be one among many - our authors must learn to protect
themselves from being violated by those who have unartistic views.

[GBFA 2 1 /445-6. Hand-corrected typescript of November/December

1 930. Apparently the text was written for the lawsuit proceedings in
conjunction with the Threepenny film. Originally written in the first person,
it was later changed by Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann into a third­
person narrative. For further details, see 'The Threepenny Lawsuit'.]

The Experiment is Dead, Long Live the Experiment!

No snob doubts that artistic experiment is dead. It is true that art

had made its peace with the powers that be, long before they armed
themselves for their war. As usual it was a series of separate peaces.
The Loyal Opposition ofHer Majesty the Market sensed its responsibility
 M E D DLING WITH T H E P O E T I C S U B S T A N C E

and could no longer shut its pockets to the knowledge that elsewhere it's
the same the whole world over, lest loyalty is not to be a blind
delusion. The film studios stocked up with literature's most illustrious
names at exactly the time when the box-office theologians insulted the
man they would not touch with a barge pole as a 'Rembrandt'. And yet
it is not the last we've heard of it, for the avant-garde is surrendering
but it will not die. Whoever has seen a prize-winning Hollywood film
will no longer think a pebble in the brook is so dead . . .

[GBFA 2 1/446-7. Typescript written around 1930, probably originally for

'The Threepenny Lawsuit' but not included. The text continues after the
last sentence as follows (crossed out by Elisabeth Hauptmann) :
Joking aside: the real experiments were not wilful escapades but arduous
attempts to adapt to the new demands of the time. New subject matter
and new classes of audience made them necessary. These problems are
pushed aside today. And here the real limits of the usefulness of our
experiences become visible . . . ]

The Threepenny Lawsuit

A Sociological Experiment
[GBFA 2 1/448-5 1 4 . The film version of The Threepenny Opera, which was
shot by Georg Wilhelm Pabst from 19 September through mid-November
1 930, was not based on Brecht's screenplay 'The Bruise' (see above),
although it did incorporate significant elements from it. On the grounds
that the production had not fulfilled its contractual obligation of
'protecting' the integrity of the artists' original play, Brecht and Weill
threatened the entire investment of the production company by filing suit
against Nero-Film (Brecht on 30 September, Weill on 1 October, 1 930) .
Their lawsuits were filed ostensibly not because the company had rejected
the screenplay but in order to regain the film adaptation rights to the play.
The trial lasted four days, from 17 to 20 October 1 930, and generated an
unusually large press response. This owed both to Brecht's own notoriety
and to the fact that the case had a signal function, for it touched on the
sensitive question of competition between the cinema and the theatre and
on the speculative issue of artists' rights to control their ideas in the mass
media. The judgment was delivered on 4 November, with the court
deciding against Brecht that Nero-Film had neither breached the contract
nor infringed his copyright, since Brecht himself had changed the original
play. In Weill's parallel suit, however, the court found in his favour and
granted an injunction against the film's release because Weill, contrary to
Brecht, had fulfilled his contract as specified, whereas Nero-Film had
introduced additional music without Weill's permission. Brecht reached
an out-of-court settlement with Nero on 1 9 December 1 930, before his

1 47
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

appeal was scheduled to begin on 2 3 December, and Weill settled for

damages on 9 February 1 93 1 . The film opened in Berlin on 1 9 February
1 9 3 1 and undoubtedly contributed to the play's international fame as well
as to Brecht's, although there is no record that he ever actually saw it.
Based on this court experience, Brecht wrote 'The Threepenny Lawsuit'
in 1 9 3 1 (published in 1932 in his book series called Versuche) in order to
develop a far-reaching critique of 'bourgeois ideas' about art under
capitalism. Not intended as a documentary record, his commentary on the
lawsuit in the essay is sometimes inaccurate (e.g., he quotes selectively
from the trial proceedings and maintains a one-sided, flawed under­
standing of 'co-determination') . Rather it presents Brecht's analysis of
how the capitalist system functions, unmasking the justice of the bourgeois
state as the justice of the ruling class that is willing to violate its own legal
system in order to protect its financial interests. Brecht plays the role of the
naive artist who goes to court to defend the inviolability of intellectual
property guaranteed by the liberal, democratic constitution. There he
discovers that in fact the validity of individual ownership is measured
against economic consequences, for in the case of the cinema the
economic risk is so great that the profit motive in producing the
commodity (the film) is considered more important than the right of the
poet to his immaterial property (the ideas) . In short, Brecht shows that,
contrary to what many artists would like to believe, the work of art, like
other commodities, is subject to market forces.]

Contradictions are our hope!

This past winter the film adaptation of the stage play The
Threepenny Opera provided us with an opportunity to confront
several ideas that are characteristic of the current state of bourgeois
ideology.5 These ideas, stripped of the behaviour of public
institutions (the press, the film industry, the justice system), are a
small part of the enormous ideological complex constituting
culture, and the latter can be judged only if this complex is
observed and made accessible to observation in its practices, i.e.,
functioning, in full operation, constantly produced by reality and
constantly producing it. Once these ideas are grasped in their
entirety - those that intervene in reality and those that do not - our
image of culture will be complete and there is no other way to
complete it. Everything said about culture from a more remote,
general point of view that does not take account of practice can
only be an idea and therefore must be tested in practice.
We must take care to seek the large, abstract things like justice or
personality not only where we happen to find them - in some
mediocre heads or mouths; one must also search for them in
common reality, in the film industry's deals and in the deals of
those who earn their bread by maintaining the justice system. To
have noble ideas is not the same as to have culture. When the
 THE THREEPENNY LAW S U IT

question arises whether there is justice or legal process (should the

two not happen to coincide), then the answer must be: legal
process. And confronted with the choice: legal process or the law
(should both not be granted together), we would have to choose
legal process. In any case we should speak of justice only to the
extent that it exists at all in the legal process. Now, to tease out the
ideas from an always functioning reality, from the continually
adjudicating courts, from the press which expresses and
manufactures public opinion, from the industry which unceasingly
and freely produces art, methods are needed other than 'objective,
disinterested', passive contemplation. This other, 'non-objective'
etc. method will be demonstrated in what follows and is called a
'sociological experiment'. A full evaluation of the experiment will
not be presented, the experiment itself being rather deficient
because it has been inadequately planned and was undertaken by
too few people who are themselves insufficiently specialized. Since
such large institutions like the press, the courts, etc. are subject to
them, these experiments would need a society that proceeds
systematically and shares the work in order to make visible what
must be seen. Indeed, the whole of literature, such as it is produced
by individuals, is becoming more and more questionable.

I. The Legal Suit

When we had our publisher draw up a contract for the filming of
The Threepenny Opera last summer, we saw an opportunity to earn
money as well as an opportunity to make a film. The film company
committed itself to making the film according to our plans and
granted us the right to co-determination for the shooting script.
Apparently the company had not really understood the entire scope
and the real consequences of this latter, more unusual, part of the
contract, as would soon become evident. When it learned that we
had completed the script version, it showed all the symptoms of
deep disappointment. In the company's view it had become a bitter
necessity to dig once more into the purse in order to get us to
abandon our efforts. Against all prudence and financial tempta­
tions, however, we insisted stubbornly on this script. Greatly
irritated, the company now declared the contract invalid owing to
some not very plausible excuses concerning the inconvenient
clauses and took steps to produce without us a film that would be
(only in this form) as commercially viable as possible. So we had to
appeal to the court.
To protect the intention and artistic form the following
agreements were included in the contract for the film adaptation:
1 49
 T H E THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

'The producer grants the authors a right o f co-determination in

adapting subject matter for a shooting script. '
'The composition of new music and the adaptation of the
existing music may be undertaken only by the composer Kurt
Weill, who will be separately remunerated for it. Similarly, new
song texts for the existing music as well as for possible new
compositions may only be written by the poet Bert Brecht, who
is also to be commissioned by the producer to collaborate on the
shooting script. The producer will remunerate separately the
author Brecht for this activity.'

They were supplemented by the following special agreements:

'a) Mr Brecht will deliver the basic material for the screenplay.6
For this purpose Nero-Film will assign him Mr Neher and Mr
Dudow as collaborators. In consultation with Mr Brecht, who
will preserve the characteristic style and content of The
Threepenny Opera for the sound film, Mr Lania will prepare the
final screenplay with the assistance of Mr Vajda.
b) Mr Brecht will write the texts for the screenplay.
c) Mr Brecht is entitled to demand changes in the shooting script
that do not alter the basic material and are feasible from a
practical viewpoint.
d) Mr Brecht will deliver to Mr Lania today approximately one­
third of the screenplay's basic material. He agrees to deliver a
second section on the 1 2th day of the month and the final section
by the 1 5th day of the month. His work will be undertaken
wherever he is residing, but within Germany.'

In reference to the arrangement, it was agreed that Lania could

receive the basic material orally and would later write the script
with Brecht at the latter's place of residence. It is apparent that the
author had organized the work so that the company was able to
register its wishes for changes only after completion of the script.
When Brecht delivered the basic material to Lania, and Lania
reported on it to the company emphasizing that, in the manner
provided for in the contract, that is, in consultation with Brecht, he
could now produce the script, the company declared Brecht in
breach of contract without further hesitation because he had
delivered the material in a form that made his further involvement
(i.e., further consultation with him) necessary. The court agreed
with this judgment and said:

'The plaintiff must give the defendant the opportunity to look at

the material in order to allow his representative to determine
 THE THREEPENNY LAWSUIT

which parts of the script are deemed unsuitable. Only if the

refusal of the defendant exceeds the limits of his right of co­
determination and especially if it is not justified by objective
reasons such as the expenditure of large sums or the fear of
censorship problems has the defendant violated the contract. '

In other words, the company had not demanded in the contract

any right of co-determination, yet the court granted it anyway.
Beyond the binding contract the court declared:

' . . . admissible changes to the work for which the entitled may
not withhold his agreement in good faith. '
'The cinematic adaptation o f a stage play demands considerable
changes to the original work.'
'Moreover, the author's right protecting against changes of the
stage play is also limited by the common knowledge that
fundamental changes are necessary for the purposes of film
adaptation. The statutory grounding of §9, that changes
affecting the essence of the work and modifying its impact are
not permissible, is void therefore when adapting a stage work
insofar as one can assume that the author of the stage work
will not generally be held responsible for the film's deficiencies,
but rather only the author of the screenplay. For this reason
too the author of the stage work who has assigned the rights
of film adaptation must permit extensive changes in good faith.'

The court rejected Brecht's suit.

The court named the main reason for its rejection of the author's
suit his determined refusal in the court to make any recom­
mendations for changes to the film that had already been completed
without him.

'The defendant is currently no longer bound by the contract,

since the plaintiff turned over to the court the material without
recognizing any legal obligation towards the defendant and also
refuses to exercise the right of co-determination in a reasonable
way. Despite the court's request to explain in detail what he
objects to in the screenplay, or, should his claim be correct that
he does not know this screenplay, to list his objections based on
an inspection, as suggested by the court, he declared that he
could approve of no work by the defendant that was not based
on a screenplay adapted by him.
Since the court determined through a comparison of the script
and the basic material that extensive parts of the script by Lania
approved by the plaintiff and a series of scenes from the stage

1 51
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0-- 1 9 3 2 )

play were adapted only with changes necessary for the cinematic
impact, the plaintiff's position of total rejection appears
unjustified according to the contract between the parties. On the
contrary, the defendant must have the right to produce the film
without the plaintiff in view of his refusal to exercise his right of
co-determination in a reasonable way. '
'Therefore it did not suffice if the plaintiff was prepared to
continue his collaboration even after the defendant had declared
his withdrawal from the contract, which at that time may not
have been justified because the plaintiff's final refusal to hand
over the material was not yet certain. '

The company, itself shocked at such a complete victory, returned

to the author the film rights in a settlement and paid for the court
costs - a shocking act of mistrust towards the administration of
justice, which does not appear to be well-founded in the judgment
of the original jurisdiction!
The press's position emerges from the following newspaper
clippings:

It is a legal issue.
Is the film author a supplier or an equal partner? (Magdeburgische
Zeitung)
Until now there has been almost no precedent for authors who
secure such rights in contracts with film companies. (B.Z. am
Mittag)
Whatever the judgment will be, one thing is already clear today,
no one has the right to change, alter or transform into its
opposite the work of intellectuals for whatever reason and no
matter what the amount of money paid. It is an ancient,
guaranteed right that the productive work, the achievement of
creative people must remain inviolable. (Neue Berliner 12 Uhr
Zeitung)
It is to be welcomed that finally a court will determine in this way
that theatre directors and film makers have no right - except that
of epigones - to distort a stage play in any way they please. For
the primacy of art . . . must unconditionally . . . be preserved.
(Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung)
There is hardly any decency and backbone left in matters of art
and art deals . . . There is no trust and no consideration for the
work itself. There is only immodest promotion, especially on the
part of the director, or resentment on both sides . . . In this sense
Brecht's appearance in the case of The Threepenny Opera was a
commendable signal. (Kolnische Zeitung)
 THE THREEPENNY LAWSUIT

W'hat does it cost?

When it came to negotlatmg the value of the litigation, the
following dialogue ensued: Attorney Dr Frankfurter: 'Are you
willing to accept 25,000 Marks for signing over all rights, or what
amount would allow us to lay aside this complaint?' Bert Brecht:
'It is not an issue of material value.' (Berliner Borsen-Courier)

The right of the author

And therefore we must thank Bert Brecht that he refused during
the proceedings the settlement offer of 25, 000 Marks from the other
side. Brecht explained that it was more important for him to
learn what his rights are. (Neue Berliner 12 Uhr Zeitung)

He is not for sale: what did he steal?

First the judge insisted on raising the question of plagiarism with
which Brecht had been charged . . . 7
Attorney Dr Fischer explains that The Threepenny Opera is not an
original work at all. Brecht had 'inserted' in his work Ammer's
translations of Villon's poems without violating the style. When
he was questioned about this, he declared the entire copyright
law medieval and outmoded . . .
Brecht refused to discuss ownership and property rights. The
plaintiff wished to defend his ownership of this work for purely
legal reasons only, and otherwise he viewed it as the property of
the audience to whom he transferred it. In his opinion the
question here is: 'Can industry do with art as it pleases?' (Neue
Zeit des Westens)
The world offacts
From a legal perspective, Dr Frankfurter's elaborations were
especially interesting. He stated that here an artist was coming
up against the world of facts. Brecht assigned the film rights to
The Threepenny Opera to Nero-Film in return for financial
compensation. What the company does with its rights is not his
concern. They have the right to make the film in twenty years or
today. They may have a new script produced to their taste
without letting Brecht say a word against it.
There was much talking and arguing during this lawsuit and the
auditorium full of writers listened attentively to the lawyers'
words. (Berliner Tageblatt)

A denunciation
The constellation in this suit about the sound-film adaptation of
The Threepenny Opera is, then, 800,000 Marks vs. justified public
interests. Naive as their behaviour may seem at first sight, the

I 53
 T H E THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0 - 1 9 3 2 )

authors are subjecting themselves t o an obligation t o the general

public when they litigate, for only they have the opportunity to
uphold the established interests of the public and of art.
Obviously the court cannot ignore the 800,000 Marks, as if they
were nothing. Yet, opposed to them is a weighty value, hardly to
be measured in numbers, that concerns the security of
contractual agreements, even if they at first appear unusual.
(B. Z. am Mittag)
Reason enters
In any case, by now the financial investment already comes to
800,000 Marks, so that a prohibition of the film could have
enormous consequences. On the other hand, probably an additional
800,000 Marks would need to be sacrificed, if today one were to
repair The Threepenny Opera (insofar as it is completed)
according to the exact intentions of its creator, as a lawyer for the
defendant explained.
On the one hand 800,000 Marks, on the other an artist who is
simply fighting for the idea of his work: the judgment in this case
will perhaps become a historical document. (Der Film)

Subtle but important differences

The production company claims that Brecht wanted to intro­
duce a tendentious political theme into the film.
Considering the writer's general attitude, that is probably the
case.
In the theatre this is the guaranteed right of any creative artist. In
the cinema, however, we cannot tolerate such a specialized world
view without serious financial loss.
But film-illiterate writers should cease to create complications in
which the scribe doubtless is ninety to one hundred per cent in
the wrong.
Anyone who enters into work or commercial relations with the
cinema must be aware that this is an industry consisting of
people who bet their money on one card and then must earn the
applause of several thousand theatres or simply lose their money.
The film appeals to a large audience that does not seek and
understand deep philosophical thought processes.
If the matter is such, we urgently wish the court to place itself
unambiguously on the side of the film industry.
There are nasty tongues claiming that this is in general more of
a financial than a literary question.
Even the gentlemen who are especially gifted and talented in this
domain must be made to understand that they will not always

1 54
 THE THREEPENNY LAW SUIT

succeed with what are called 'trivialities' among those who

frequent the 'Romanisches Cafe'.8 (Kinematograph)
These are not opposed world views but only opposed interests.
Otherwise it is a matter of an absolutely transparent struggle for
the all-too-famous ego, for the preservation of stylistic aspects,
not for the declaration of an opinion. Opposed to this cult of the
ego is an obvious commercial interest.
Aesthetic nihilism fights a windmill battle against international
capital. Egomania vs. egomania. What does it have to do with us?
(Tagliche Rundschau)
And yet this much seems certain, that even Mr Brecht, despite
the reverential estimation of his own work, did not prohibit the
film adaptation but expressly permitted it. He who loves his child
so dearly, as Brecht apparently does his Threepenny Opera,
perhaps should not expose it in the first place to the dangers of
film adaptation. ( Vossische Zeitung)
Honour the writer who on principle does not allow his work to
be filmed. (Frankfurter Zeitung, the film company lawyer, Dr R.
Frankfurter)

In a word
In a word we see that the German cinema is on the move . . .
even if sometimes confusion emerges . . (Berliner Tageblatt)
.

As the final straw, several journalists chimed in who had not

supported our suit but now complained that we had ended our
idealistic suit for vulgar, materialistic reasons and that we may even
have been motivated by them from the outset. In the interest of the
experiment's clarity we think it is right to mention them as well.

The 'financial side ' of the Threepenny lawsuit

On the part of the film company that produced The Threepenny
Opera, the financial side of the case against the company was
pushed into the limelight by means of a detour through several
popular scribes who to some extent enjoy financial relations with
the company. As far as money is concerned, it is the custom among
idealists in this country in this period of high capitalism to speak of
it with nothing but contempt. I must confess that I instructed my
lawyer at the outset of the suit (which was not conducted for
money) to calculate my costs very carefully (also as far as the risk
was concerned) . I do not have too much money, and it is the only
means at my disposal for protecting my work - which for the most
part demonstrably does not earn any money, (He Said Yes, The
Decision, The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent, A Reader for Those

1 55
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0 - 1 9 3 2 )

who Live in Cities, The Mr Keuner Stories, etc.) - from the damaging
influence of large financial institutions. This money also allows me
to reject certain idealistic journalists who, despite their meddling,
would like to spend it for their ideals.
When Nero-Film Company last summer deduced from the
purchase price the right to treat The Threepenny Opera as they
pleased, ignoring all contractual conditions, I decided to appeal to
the court in protest, despite the financial considerations. The
lawsuit had the goal of exposing publicly the impossibility of
working with the film industry even under contractual guarantees.
This goal was reached when I lost the suit. Everyone can see that
the lawsuit demonstrated the deficiencies of the film industry and
of the administration of law. It would have made sense to appeal to
the higher courts, if it had been possible to prevent the film's
distribution. My attorneys advised me that this possibility did not
exist. Under these circumstances, not being in the right, but rather
being wealthy would have been necessary. A positive judgment
(hardly to be expected) by the High Court, for example, would not
have affected the film, which would already have been released
long before, but only showed that an author's legally sanctioned
right can never prevent the release of a film not produced according
to contractual conditions. Hence, at this point I broke off the suit,
which had served its purpose by clarifying the legal situation
(insofar as it was a reality) .
After I had brought this precarious thing to an acceptable
conclusion by the skin of my teeth - something that lay in the
public interest and yet was abandoned by everyone - all sorts of
people came forward who until then had paid no attention to the
struggle and continued to regard the incident 'from an objective
point of view' . To this purpose they informed themselves upon the
film's release about the 800,000 Marks and trumpeted now 'in the
public interest' with great flourish what the connoisseur Karl Kraus
has called a deception of intonation. This consisted of linking the
commentaries they could have 'made' if, after having won the
lawsuit, I had let my silence about the film be bought with a
financial award, to the actual fact that I had lost the suit, received
no award and made no promise at all to remain silent. The film
company never succeeded in silencing me through open or
concealed financial rewards - for example, my opinion that its film
was a botched piece of work and a shameless distortion of The
Threepenny Opera. Without my guidance it did not succeed in
making this film into a work that was even halfway equal to the
stage play. It did not succeed in preventing in principle the release
 THE THREEPENN Y LAW S U I T

of a Threepenny film. It did not even succeed (to note with

satisfaction the financial side) in cheating me out of a part of my
remuneration or in plunging me into lawsuit debts. It will also not
succeed in casting the slightest suspicion on my corruptibility; if I
couldn't be bought off, what was there in it for me? It has only
succeeded in producing the film with the help of a court judgment
that serves my purposes by allowing me to clarify the current legal
situation . . . (Der Scheinweifer)

II. From Speculation to the Experiment

Our position in this lawsuit revealed from the outset important
contradictions: in turning to the court, we were forced to seek
justice in a legal system that we in no way wished to recognize as a
seat of justice because its laws put at our disposal only the right to
private property. Moreover, we saw quite soon that even in this
form we would not get justice.
The public had the right to our pursuit of justice: we were
obliged to transfer the intellectual attitude of our work, an
oppositional one, into every form that our work assumed. In fact
the public had not made this claim for quite some time. They
gladly permitted writers to accept money for pale copies of their
works in any form. But we, enemies of the Pope, had the
responsibility to be more papal than the Pope himself. 9 We had to
furnish the public with a claim which they were no longer in a
position to make themselves but yet to which they were still
indebted. The speculative quality of our suit soon receded behind
these possibilities of bringing into view social attitudes (the press,
the cinema and the courts), d1at is, of staging an experiment in
collaboration with players who otherwise are difficult to engage.
This short-lived speculation would have consisted in using our
legal rights to get our hands on the means of production for the
film. We had guaranteed rights, contracts. But the time for
contracts was past. They had been sacred in barbaric times. Who
could have missed their passing? By now the social order was
running so smoothly that everything is self-regulated. Are there
contracts in nature? Does nature need contracts? Large financial
interests operate with the force of nature. Where contracts still exist
(they do where profits are distributed), their validity need only be
appraised from financial perspectives. The balancing game among
these players was far more interesting and to show it was far more
useful than making a film. Here there was much to see, much to
make visible. For there was still some hesitation on the part of the
collaborating institutions, at least among the press and courts, who
1 57
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0 � 1 9 3 2)

still suffered under the after-effects of the nursery, a charming

embarrassment about subjecting themselves unquestioningly to
the logic of facts. The instructors were also learners. In the wake of
traditional legal sentiment, there were ideas connected to
important and still potent social prejudices of the most profitable
kind. Newer institutions like the cinema assume responsibilities
much too hastily in what appear to be insignificant secondary areas,
proceed downright anarchistically, not knowing that they too must
rely on something like morality, even though in other areas. Space
has to be found for them without this morality deteriorating. A
hard bit of work!
The anticipated attempts of the justice system to accept logic
were not going to be frustrated by us. We had to abandon whatever
fell by the wayside but carefully orchestrate the process so that it
was clearly perceptible in a quick enough and public enough way.
We had to free ourselves completely from the wish to be right,
something completely different from the wish to get justice. We
had to establish (acquire by purchase) the existing right, just being
issued, and insist on it only until it had justified or compromised
itself. The suit had to become an image of reality, had to say
something about it. Reality was to be constructed in the lawsuit.
For this we had only limited means at our disposal, only so much
time and so much money. We instructed our lawyers to use our
money as carefully as possible because money provides us the
opportunity to work without patronage and because our trust in the
courts was not much greater than that in the industry. Our risk was
over 1 5,000 Marks. The victory of the logic of facts was only a
question of time. It was better to lose the first lawsuit than the third.
This determined our behaviour after we lost the first lawsuit. Of
course, the worst-case scenario would have been to win in the first
instance (as happened to Weill), because then sheer lack of money
would have prevented us from clarifying the real legal situation,
which would have consisted in losing further up the line. The film
would have been released after the court allowed us to prevent the
release by depositing in escrow a sum we did not possess. A victory
in the appeal would have proved that even in this case of proven
illegality the industry risks at most minor damages. But at least the
law would have remained the law. And it would have been our fault!
Luck saved us from proving that in capitalism there are still judges.
After losing the suit in the first instance and quickly giving up, we
abandoned the 1 00 per cent completion of the experiment (we
would have achieved a wider and deeper result with appeals), not
only out of financial considerations but also because the anticipated
 THE THREEPENNY LAWSUIT

results would not have changed anything in principle. The insights

gained up to this point would not have been devalued by possible
future ones. It is insignificant whether this or that judge would have
betrayed a few more traditional views. He could have done so in any
case only because in a practical sense these views would have had no
consequences (the destruction of the film) ! We had to be pleased
that already the court of first instance and not the third executed
this act of reason that we expected and that we had to make
possible. We could not have afforded financially to get to the real
facts in losing only in the second appeal. Already in this phase the
lawsuit had become a full-fledged experiment. We had definitely
not planned it only as an experiment, but even if we had, we would
not have been able to conduct it any other way. Conducted in order
to reach something specific - for instance the film's prohibition - or
a specific insight - for instance the court's bankruptcy - it would
hardly have revealed anything useful in this sense. The case could
not have been argued from beginning to end with the goal of
winning or losing; that would have resulted in nothing. We had to
trust the lawsuit and at most figure that it would somehow offer
some insight into the way intellectual property is treated financially
today. In other words, we had to rely on society's deep antagonisms.
We could not foresee whether the courts would judge us in the
wrong. It would only have been cynical to assume this from the
start. We were certain only about one thing: even if the courts
judged us in the right, it would only prove that our laws were
completely outdated. In this case we could reckon with an
enormous public outcry (winning would have meant that the film,
an object worth a million, would have ended up in the court bailiff's
small furnace because of a writer's claims to intellectual property) .
Both the artists' and the courts' other-worldliness would have been
proven, and to the applause of the public the cinema would have
abandoned all art owing to the fact that it no longer was supposed
to be able to violate it.* All the newspapers would have advised us
not to go 'too far' and to let the film be released after we would have
been proven 'right', and they even would have been prepared to
concede us financial damages in any amount. When the court
decided against us in the suit, it proved the flexibility of the laws,

* 'If the courts had decided that under existing laws the creator of the original idea
has the right of co-determination for the film, it would not have served well the
authors' goal. Currently their advice and suggestions are sought after, if their work
is to be transformed and adapted for the film; under this other interpretation all film
producers would explicitly exclude the author by contract arrangement from any
collaboration.' (Frankfurter Zeitung, Dr R. Frankfurter)

I 59
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0� 1 9 3 2 )

admitted the rights o f hard reality, demonstrated worldliness and

the unstoppable disintegration of bourgeois ideas about property
(that can only be sanctified by the owner) and art (whose ' organic'
unities are increasingly being destroyed) .
The lawsuit was to be viewed as a sociological experiment,
organized for the purpose of seeing certain ideas at work. For this
purpose we emphasized explicitly to the public that our struggle
was aimed against one million Marks. We freely disclosed our
concern as to whether we could expect justice under these
conditions. We used the curious residue of discomfort that the
bourgeoisie still feels towards an all�too-obvious confirmation of
capital's power. The 800,000 Marks can do a lot, we said, no one
doubts that. There is, then, perhaps only one thing left that it
cannot do: prevent us from showing what it can do. Those who
regard the litigation only as a moral act (an even higher morality
because it was not for financial gain) can hardly understand the
experimental character of a lawsuit that focuses on morality itself
as the problem. Those, too, who regard an experiment only as a
systematically planned undertaking, geared from the beginning
only to experimentation, cannot comprehend (i.e., evaluate) an
undertaking like the Threepenny lawsuit. For these people it is an
incomprehensible, fluid event which out of a moral act gradually
becomes an experiment about morality as such. An initial act of
simply reacting to an intolerable injustice becomes a systematic
process which chooses a general injustice as its object or, better, it
chooses a social condition which excludes acts of justice and
morality. In the course of this development the court becomes the
defendant, whose defence is the social order, which then also
becomes a defendant. For the court, which in the beginning was
permitted to apply the law, is soon forced to state something about
the law. The legal case becomes unimportant and the case of law
becomes acute. Now all sorts of ideas are suddenly freed up, such
as those that are produced by the constantly changing reality (and
themselves have the quality of reality) and those that are dismissed
by reality (become ideologies) . Since the law is corrected by reality,
reality comes into view, when one corrects the law.

III. The Critique of Ideas

1. 'Art does not need the cinema. '
Honour the writer who on principle does not allow his works to
be filmed . . . He must decide whether he will not permit his
work to be filmed, which would be his free, artistically very
respectable will or, if he wants to have the financial earnings, he
r6o
 1 . Brecht saw
The Gold Rush in
March 1 9 26
(see 'Less
Certainty ! ! ! ') ;
i n 'Effects of
Chaplin' ( 1 9 3 6)
he specifically
mentions this
sequence.

2 . Lotte
Reiniger's
A benteuer des
Prinzen Achmed.
See Brecht's
comment
' Mutilated
Films' ( 1 928) on
the mistreatment
of films by
the cinema
exhibitors.

number of Soviet
films, including
Youth of Maxim
(by Kosintzev and
Trauberg) , that
develop 'real'
individuals in
contrast to
American films
that lack
individuals .
4. In 'The Threepenny Lawsuit' Part III section 6, Brecht refers to the 'rotting meat'
sequence in Eisenstein's film Bauleship Potemkin.

5 . Lars Hanson in Mauritz Stiller's Saga of Gosta Berling. In 'The German

Chamber Film' ( 1 924), Brecht cites Lars Hanson and Charlie Chaplin as models of
alternative acting styles to the German histrionics familiar from Expressionist films.
6. (I to r) Berlin theatre critic Alfred Kerr, Bertolt Brecht, and manager of Radio
Berlin Ernst Wiechert broadcasting a conversation on 'The Crisis in the Theatres'
in April 1 9 2 8 .

7 . ( l to r) Actor Erik \virI , Brecht and composer Hanns Eisler a t a gramophone

recording session in 1 93 1 .
8 . Georg Wilhelm Pabst's 1 930 adaptation of the Brecht/Weill musical led to
Brecht's lengthy essay 'The Threepenny Lawsuit'. Cover page of Illustrierter Film­
Kurier.

9 . Right: The first page of the contract between Brecht's publisher Bloch-Erben and
Nero-Film for the Threepenny Opera film.
FELIX BLOCH ERBEN
BERLIN·WILMERSDORF 1

Vl�RL.AG UNl> VER'l'RIED

DRAMA'riSOHElt UND
!tUSIKALlSCHRH W"ERKK

RlliDAl<:'l'IO.N' UND VERL AG

lJES ,.CHAn.IVARI"

-+-

zwischen

dam Ver�!_F.'ellx Bloch Erben, Berlin-'rl illllersdor:f 11 N:i.kolsburgerplatz 3

und der ����_:�a�-�i.tioll, A. G. t Wien I , Karlspletz 6 , (Musikverleg)

(beide im :folgenden kurz "Ve rlag" genennt)

einerseita

und

(im :folgenden kurz " Produktion"

andererseits.

' t -- .

Der Verlag hat an dem !heateretUck mit Musik "Die Prelgroschen-

o,per" (The Beggar ' a Ope ra) , Ein StUck mit fl!usik in dnem Vorspiel und

acht Bildern nach dem Engli schen des John Gay , Uberaetzt ?on EJ.isebeth
Ha�ptmann , Cl eutache Bearbeitung von Bert Brecht , Musik von Iurt Weill,

das all.e inige unbe schrlmkte Verfilmungsre cht f'ur die ganze Welt , des
hic>rmit de r Produktion im Einversti!.ndni a und in Volllllacht des Text­

dichters und dar Komponisten· ubertragen wird .

l graphiscbe Ver·wertung
Dieses Recht bm:fasat d ie ltinellllto von Text
und Musik des TheaterstUckes f'Ur· alle LAnder und alle Sprachen und nach

j eder Hinsicht , fUr atumme , Ton:fiime ( Platten:filme und aon stige Systeme ) ,

Farbfilme , plaatische FiJ.me oder sonstige eventuell noch durch techni­

sche oqer aoiiStige Neuerungen entstehenden Arten fUr die ganz e Welt , urid

zwar z ur alleinigen und ausschliesslichen Benutzung.

§ 2
Die Produktion i at verp:t'Uc,Jttet, in allen Ublichen AnltUnoigungen
daraut hinzuweiaen , da88 daa Or�f.nal.werk v�n Bert Brecht und Xilrt Weill

stammt .
 1 0· On th e set
of
Kuhle Wampe
wi th
Adolf Fi sch er
B erto lt B re
ch , an d
;
Martha Wolt er.

Ma n u s k r i p t : Brecht u n d Ottwa ld Mus i k : Hanns Eisler

R E G I E : S. T H . D U D O W
Komero: Gunther Krompf
!'roduktionsleitung : Georg M. Hollering, Robert Scharfenberg
D a rste l l e r:
.
Hertha Thiele, Ernst Busch. Martha Wolter, Adolf Fischer.
lili Schonborn, Max SoblotzH, Allred Schaefer, Gerhard
Bienert, Martha Burd1ordi. Karl-Heinz Corell, Carl Dohmen,
Fritz Erpenbeck., Josef Honoc.zek., Richard Hilgert, Hugo
Werner- Kahle, Hermann Krehon, Paul Kretzburg, Anna
Muller · Lin ke, Rudolf Nehls, Erich Peters, Oily Rummel,
Wi l l i Schur, Martha Seemann, Hans Stern, Carl Wagner
_
AOOO Arbeitersportler I E i n e A r b e itersp ieltruppe
1 1 . Pos ter fo U t h m a n n· C h o r 1 S a n g e r v e re i n i g u n g N o r d e n
r Arbeitersanger GraB-Berlin 1 Char der Berliner Stoatsoper
Kuhle Wamp
e. Architekte n : Robert Scharfenberg. Carl P. Haod<er 1 Auf·
nahmeleite r : Karl Ehrl i ch I Tona ufnohrne n 1 Tobis Melofilm
Syste m : Tob i s · K io ng fi l m 1 Musik.olische leitung : J osef Schmid
Orcheste r : lewis Ru th 1 Bo l la d e n : Helene Weigel und Ernst
Busch ; T onschnitt : Peter Meyrowitz

UrauHiihrung : Heute lm Atrium

Weltvertrieb u n d Verleih f U r Deutschlan d :

PRAES E N S - FI LM G. M. B. H .
Berlin SW 68, FriedrichstraBe 23 - Fern•precher: A 7 Donhoff 3803
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page of the
12. The first
'Solidarity Song'
score for
Eisler for Kulzle
by Hanns
Wampe.
tion
13. Right:
Outdoor loca
Wamp e,
shot of Kuhle
w ith
coat and
ht in
Bertolt Brec
hat.
1 4 . Brecht met Soviet
film maker Sergei
Eisenstein in 1 9 3 2 .

15. Left: Fritz Lang

in the mid- 1 940s.
 THE THREEPENNY LAW S U I T

must once and for all make do with what he gets . . . (Frankfurter
Zeitung, the lawyer for the film company, Dr Frankfurter)

We have often been told, and the court held the same opinion, that
when we sold our work to the film industry, we gave up all our
rights; the buyers acquired through purchase the right also to
destroy what they had bought; the money satisfied all further
claims. These people felt that, by agreeing to deal with the film
industry, we put ourselves in the position of someone who brings
his laundry to a dirty ditch for washing and later complains that it
is ruined. Those who advise us against using these new apparatuses
concede to them the right to work badly and out of sheer objectivity
forget themselves, for they accept that only dirt is produced for
them. 10 Yet from the outset they deprive us of the apparatuses
which we need in order to produce, because more and more this
kind of producing will supersede the present one. We will be forced
to speak through increasingly complex media, to express what we
have to say with increasingly inadequate means. The old forms of
transmission are not unaffected by the newly emerging ones nor do
they survive alongside them. The film viewer reads stories
differently. But the storywriter views films too. The technological
advance in literary production is irreversible. The use of tech­
nological instruments compels even the novelist who makes no use
of them to wish that he could do what the instruments can, to
include what they show (or could show) as part of the reality that
constitutes his subject matter, but above all to lend to his own
attitude towards writing the character of using instruments.
There is, for example, a major difference according to whether
the writer approaches things as if using instruments or whether he
produces things 'from within himself . What the cinema itself does,
that is, the extent to which it maintains its identity against 'art', is
not unimportant in this connection. It is conceivable that other
kinds of writers, dramatists or novelists, can for the moment work
more cinematically than the film people. To some extent the
former depend less on the means of production. But they
nonetheless depend on the cinema, on its progress and regress, and
the scriptwriters' means of production are saturated by capitalism.
Today the bourgeois novel still projects 'a world'. It does so in a
purely idealistic way from within a world view: the more or less
personal, certainly individualistic view of its 'creator'. Of course,
inside this world each detail fits exactly, though if removed from its
context, it would never for a moment seem authentic in relation to
the 'details' of reality. We learn about the real world only as much

161
 T H E THREEPENN Y MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0� 1 9 3 2 )

a s we learn about the author, the creator o f the unreal world; in

other words we learn something only about the author and nothing
about the world. The cinema cannot depict the world (its 'setting'
is something else entirely) and allows no one to express himself (or
anything else) in a work, and allows no work to express a person. It
provides (or could provide) useful conclusions about the details of
human actions. The splendid, inductive method it at least
facilitates can be of unforeseeable significance for the novel, in so
far as novels can still signify anything at all. For the theatre, for
instance, the cinema's treatment of the person performing the
action is interesting. To give life to the persons, who are introduced
purely according to their functions, the cinema simply uses
available types who encounter specific situations and assume in
them particular attitudes. All motivation from within a character is
excluded; the person's inner life never provides the principal cause
of action and seldom its principal result; the person is seen from the
outside. Literature needs the cinema not only indirectly but also
directly. In the decisive extension of literature's social obligations,
which follows from the refunctioning of art into a pedagogical
discipline, the means of representation must be multiplied or
frequently changed. (Not to mention the Lehrstiick proper, which
would demand the transfer of the cinema apparatuses to all those
involved!) These apparatuses can be used better than almost any­
thing else to supersede the traditionally untechnical, anti-technical,
'transcendent' 'art' associated with religion. The socialization of
these means of production is vital for art. To say to the intellectual
worker that he is free to renounce the new work tools is to assign
him a freedom outside the production process.* Similarly, the
owners of the means of production say to the labourer that they do
not force him to work for the wages they set for him, he is 'free' to
go. The armed and the unarmed, the murderers and the victims
face off as equals, both are permitted to fight. The migration of the
means of production away from the producers signals the
proletarianization of the producers. Like the manual labourer, the
intellectual worker has only his naked labour power to offer, yet he
is his labour power and nothing more than that. And, just like the
manual labourer, he needs these means of production more and
more to exploit his labour power (because production is becoming
ever more 'technical') : the horrible vicious circle of exploitation has
begun here too!
To understand the situation we must free ourselves from the

*See No. 12, where it is shown that no rights exist outside the production process.
 THE THREEPENN Y LAWSUIT

widespread idea that only one part of art needs to be concerned

with the battles for the modem institutions and apparatuses.
According to this idea there is a part of art, true art, that -
completely untouched by these new possibilities of transmission
(radio, cinema, book clubs, etc.) - uses the old ones (the freely
marketed, printed book, the stage, etc.). In other words this true art
remains completely free from all influence of modem industry.
According to this idea the other part, the technological art, is
something else altogether, creations precisely of these apparatuses,
something completely new, whose very existence, however, is in
the first place beholden to certain financial expectations and
therefore bound to them for ever. If works of the former sort are
handed over to the apparatuses, they immediately become
commodities. This idea, leading as it does to utter fatalism, is wrong
because it excludes that so-called 'untouchable art' from all
processes and influences of our time, treating it as untouchable
only because it is impervious to the progress of transmission. In
reality the whole of art without exception is placed in this new
situation; art must confront it as a whole and not split into parts; it
will become a commodity as a whole or not at all. The changes
wrought by time leave nothing untouched but rather always
encompass the whole.
The (widespread) idea discussed here is therefore harmful.

2. 'The cinema needs art. '

The revitalization of the sound film by means of the truly poetic
script would be an infinite gain. (Kolnische Zeitung)
I find that the position of the producers and their followers is
totally unproductive. As far as I am concerned, they need to
understand nothing about art but they must be able to calculate
its use value and for purely practical reasons proceed like a
progressive industrialist who entrusts tasks to real artists.
(Frankfurter Zeitung)
The demand for art in the cinema encountered no resistance. It
came just as strongly from the newspaper columns as from the film
factory offices. Films could only be sold as a means of pleasure, so
the producers from the beginning shared with art the same market.
The general idea that a means of pleasure had to be refined and
that this was the domain of art, art being generally the most refined
of all means of pleasure, led to the further engagement of artists for
the cinema. We do not want to broach the familiar discussion
about the subtle distinction between real and false art in order to
prove, for example, that the cinema had instinctively seized upon
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 930- 1 9 3 2 )

false art (to b e marketable, art must first b e purchasable) . Already

the definition as a means of pleasure lends both types of art
quotation marks. In any case 'art' has established itself against the
apparatuses with a vengeance. Almost everything we see on screen
today is 'art'. It must be 'art': as 'art' this kind of thing was already
integrated into the market, thus accommodated by it, even if in a
slightly different, now somewhat antiquated form as novel, drama,
travelogue, critique. The cinematic form introduced greater
distribution possibilities (as well as an enormous turnover of
capital) and added to the old charms those of the new technology.
Only in this way can the director impose his 'art' against the new
apparatuses with the supportive pressure of the sales office: he
imposes what he, as any run-of-the-mill spectator, understands by
art and can do himself. He does not know what art is supposed to
be. He probably believes it should produce common emotions,
coordinate impressions, or ' all such things ' . In the domain of art he
has the reasoning power of an oyster, nothing more in the domain
of technology. He is unable to comprehend anything about the
apparatuses: he violates them with his 'art'. In order to grasp reality
with the new apparatuses, he would have to be an artist, in the
worst case a connoisseur of reality, but under no circumstances a
connoisseur of art. So he produces with them the familiar, tried
and true 'art', which is simpler: a commodity. He has the
reputation of a tasteful arranger, it is said: he 'understands
something about art'! As if one could understand something about
art without understanding something about reality! And here the
apparatus together with the subject matter functions as reality.
This situation did not provide the new apparatuses with the
possibilities available to them. No matter whether their main task
was to generate the social phenomenon of art - this too they would
have taken more easily in their stride if they could have avoided
from the start the necessity of producing something like old 'art'.
Applied to the sciences, for example, in medicine, biology,
statistics, etc., in order to document visible behaviour or to show
simultaneous events, they would have learned more quickly to
document human interactions. The latter is difficult enough, and
it is unsolvable without a very substantial, specific function among
the tasks of the entire society. The situation has become so
complicated because the simple 'reproduction of reality' says less
than ever about that reality. A photograph of the Krupp works or
the AEG reveals almost nothing about these institutions. 1 1 Reality
as such has slipped into the domain of the functional. The
reification of human relations, the factory, for example, no longer
 THE THREEPENNY LAWSUIT

discloses those relations. So there is indeed 'something to

construct', something 'artificial', 'invented'. Hence, there is in fact
a need for art. But the old concept of art, derived from experience,
is obsolete. For those who show only the experiential aspect of
reality do not reproduce reality itself. It is simply no longer
experienced as a totality. Those who show the dark associations,
the anonymous feelings that reality produces, do not depict reality,
itself. You shall no longer recognize the fruits by their taste. But
speaking in this way, we speak about an art with a completely
different function in social life - that of depicting reality and we do
that simply to liberate all that 'art' achieves hereabouts from
whatever demands do not stem from its function.
It is not right that the cinema needs art, unless we create a new
idea of art.

3. 'The public 's taste can be improved. '

Whereas all the better industrial companies today know that
quality goods raise profits and therefore they hire professionals
who can enhance quality, the film industry scorns professional
advice at every tum and invests its energy instead in playing the
role of judging taste itself. Film distributors, for instance, claim
responsibility for functions for which they notoriously have none
of the prerequisites . . . they maintain that they know public
needs and, on the basis of this presumed knowledge, influence
the entire film production branch. There would be nothing
wrong with such dilettante ambitions, if they produced great
successes. Experience teaches, however, that - other than those
film productions which speculate in misguided instincts like The
True Jacob or Three Days in Confinement12 - these ambitions are
at home in the lowest spheres and can succeed in barren
provincial towns only because there are no other distractions
there. Thus experience teaches that the distributor who believes
he should decide the type and quality of films in truth acts against
his own commercial interest and stumbles from one mistake to
another. Many difficulties in the film industry can be traced
simply to the illusion of agents and buyers that they are art
experts and public opinion researchers. That they are not,
dishonours them in no way; that they nonetheless want to be,
demonstrates their commercial incompetence. In reality they
usually migrate towards the lowest level of public taste -
innumerable films substantiate this thesis - and yet the
philosopher Georg Simmel has made clear the fact that the
average always lies somewhat above the lowest threshold. From
a practical point of view one should not treat philosophers with
165
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

such contempt. (Frankfurter Zeitung)

If we add physics to the metaphysical commentaries on the cinema

that already fill the newspaper pages not devoted to advertise­
ments, that is, if we concern ourselves with the actual mechanism,
the cinema's why and wherefore, since it cannot possibly be just
charity on the part of a few financiers to convey to the public the
latest technological developments and the writers' most beautiful
thoughts, if then - overlooking the broad 'rear' offered in the fore­
ground and turning to the anxiously hidden 'front' in the back­
ground - if we consider the cinema as the (poorly performing)
business of pumping rather rigid, hardly varying, but from the
perspective of impact quickly exhausted types of entertainment
into a huge, amorphous, unimaginable public, then we will hardly
avoid this last absolute obstacle to all progress called public taste,
just as when we follow virtuously the familiar metaphysical
method. This complicated, costly and lucrative thing, public taste,
hinders progress. There is no doubt about the customers' growing
influence on the product's 'how', and its reactionary impact. Our
progressives must fight this influence. It is represented by the film
buyers, the market's provincial organizers. More precisely, these
are really people who have assumed the office to which the press
itself is entitled, to our metaphysicians of the culture pages:
choosing the right thing for the consumer. We have to fight them,
then, because they are reactionary. Now, our metaphysicians can
find them without any trouble: they occupy the back rooms of the
daily journals, the advertising offices! There the physicists sit
together and discuss public taste. They understand it just as little
as the metaphysicians in the front room, but it is not so important
to understand something in order to exploit it. For them this costly
and lucrative thing, public taste, is the true expression of the movie
masses' real needs. It is empirically detectable, and in their
sharpened instincts these people, who depend financially on the
accuracy of their analysis, act as if the roots of this taste lay in the
social and economic situation of these masses, as if the customers
purchased correctly, as if the purchase were demanded by the
customer's situation. In other words, this taste could not be
changed by aesthetic instruction or the so ably and vigorously
modelled ruminations of our Kerrs and Diebolds, but only by real,
fundamental changes in the situation. 13 Our metaphysicians
consider the organization of the world, however, to be a matter of
taste. They would never investigate, say, the social value of
sentimentality. Should they want to, they would lack the
methodology and the necessary knowledge. A certain humour, and
166
 T H E THREEPENNY LAW S U I T

even its special clumsiness, is not only a product of material

conditions but also a means of production. Recently Ihering did
something along these lines for the theatre when he insisted on the
occasion of The Captain of Kopenick that a parade march can still
have an explosive impact even as a caricature and why it is so. 14 As
long as we only fight against the consequences of causes unknown
to us and only criticize symptoms in a purely conceptual world, our
demands can at best be regarded as harmless in the practical realm,
where what we fight for has a solid social function and is a real
commodity with a value for both the customer and the merchant.
The struggle on the part of progressive intellectuals against the
influence of merchants is based on the assumption that the masses
do not know their interests as well as the intellectuals. But these
masses have fewer aesthetic and more political interests and at no
time was Schiller's suggestion to make political education a matter
of aesthetics so obviously hopeless as it is today.15 Those who fight
under this banner appeal to those who finance the films with the
request that they educate the consumers. They propose the
capitalists as the pedagogues of the masses! Practically they
imagine (although they are on no account obliged to imagine
anything practical) the great process of education as if their fellow
intellectuals, who share similar tastes and are commissioned by the
financiers to produce the films - the directors, scriptwriters, etc. -
would use the capital 'put at their disposal' to educate the
consumers. Basically they want to incite them to sabotage. No
wonder the latter almost always express a strange, deep moral
indignation at such suggestions. The director of the Threepenny
film refused out of decency to endanger the capital 'entrusted' to
him, and it is just as impossible to undermine this decency as it is
to undermine the decency of the supportive critics. At most
concessions to good taste can be extorted, but is there more at
stake? Should we demand more than the simple refinement of the
means of pleasure? Public taste does not improve by removing bad
taste from the movies, but the movies will become weaker. Do we
know what we remove with the bad taste? The masses' bad taste is
rooted more deeply in reality than the intellectuals' good taste.
Under certain social conditions the refinement of the means of
pleasure weakens it. The concept 'means of pleasure' perhaps
implies too much luxury in itself to be applied to the cinema.
Perhaps the cinema plays a much more important role? Perhaps it
is better to say that it serves recreation? In any case, it is absolutely
necessary to examine carefully public taste precisely where it refers
to the expression of social interests that the public wishes to satisfy
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

in the cinemas. One would have to proceed, however, experi­

mentally, that is, in cooperation with specific cinemas that serve in
particular middle-brow audiences and among them well-defined or
working-class strata, that screen specific films, and that survey the
reactions with the proper instruments. The collected results would
further have to satisfy the demands of predictability, that is, they
would have to be prepared in a way that the industry could use
them, in other words, without absolute judgment.
The idea of the cultural columnists is, then, inadequate: the
public's public taste will not be changed by better films but only by
changing its circumstances.

4. 'Film is a commodity. '

. . . According to this one cannot say that there is no reason to
consider the scriptwriter in a different or lesser light than the
stage dramatist . . . The former fabricates a mass commodity that
enters the international market. In this sense and through the
related financial risk he carries a greater economic weight;
therefore the financial investments must be evaluated differently
. . . Yet, the entire production of a marketable commodity that
defines the commercial activity of the film producer is also from
another perspective of a different nature. He must work
according to supply and demand and depends much more than
the stage director in his city on fashions, public taste, the subject
matter's topicality, the competition of the world markets.
Oudgment of the High Court, see No. 1 3)
Anyone who enters into work or commercial relations with the
cinema must be aware that this is an industry consisting of
people who bet their money on one card and then must earn the
applause of several thousand theatres or else simply lose their
money. (Kinematograph)

Everyone agrees that film, even of the most artistic kind, is a

commodity. Some believe that this does not harm it, that it is only
incidentally a commodity, that the commodity form is only the
form in which it circulates in the market and on no account must
necessarily define it entirely. They say that art's function is
precisely to liberate the cinema from this enslavement. Those who
believe this have no idea about the modificatory power of the
commodity form. The fact that in capitalism the world is
transformed into production in the form of exploitation and corruption
is not as important as the fact of this transformation. Others say that
the film differs from a work of art because it is more a commodity
than the latter can be, that is, the nature of the film is defined by its

168
 T H E THREEPENNY LAWS U I T

commodity character. Almost without exception they lament this

fact. No one apparently can imagine that this means of entering the
market could be beneficial for a work of art. Yet they defeat with a
gesture of 'heroic realism' (seeing things as they are) something
which never escapes the businessman: the fact that a thing is
marketable. There remain works of art in other genres which are
not commodities, or only in small measure, so that their com­
modity character barely affects them, so to speak. Only those who
blind themselves to the enormous power of the revolutionary pro­
cess that drags everything in this world into the circulation of
commodities, without exception and without delay, can assume
that works of art in any genre could be excluded. For the deeper
sense of this process consists in leaving nothing without relation to
something, but rather in linking everything, just as all people are
linked to each other (in the form of commodities) . It is the process
of communication itself.
We have, then, two false ideas before us:

1 . The ('bad') commodity character of the film is cancelled out

by art.
2 . The artistic character of other art genres is not affected by the
('bad') process in the cinema.
5. 'The cinema serves recreation. '
Producers cannot act otherwise. A film is such a major economic
undertaking, represents such an aggregate of daring, capital and
film labour, that it must not be endangered by the moods of
prima donnas, lack of knowledge about the needs of the cinema,
or - in the case of Brecht - even political tendentiousness.
(Frankfurter Zeitung, the lawyer for the film company, Dr
Frankfurter)

As long as cinema's social function is not criticized, film criticism

remains a critique of the symptoms and has itself only symptomatic
character. It exhausts itself with issues of taste and is limited by
class-given prejudices. It cannot recognize taste as a commodity or
the weapon of a particular class but rather accepts it as an absolute
(what everyone is able to buy is accessible to everyone, even if not
everyone can buy something) . Now, within a certain class (here the
one with purchasing power) taste could be productive by creating
something like a 'lifestyle' . (Immediately after the bourgeois
revolution of 1 9 1 8 such tendencies became visible in the cinema.
Wide sectors of employees, who saw inflation as an opportunity to
ascend into the dominant class, learned a remarkably stylized
behaviour from Bruno Kastner etc., which could be studied in any
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

coffee house. 16) But mainly the sharp distinction between work and
recreation characteristic of the capitalist mode of production
divides all intellectual activities into those serving labour and those
serving recreation and makes of the latter a system for the
reproduction of labour power. Recreation is dedicated to non­
production in the interest of production. This is, of course, not the
way to create a unified lifestyle. The mistake is not that art is
dragged into the circle of production but that it happens so partially
and is supposed to create an island of 'non-production'. Those
who buy tickets transform themselves in front of the screen into
idlers and exploiters. Since the object of exploitation is put inside
them, they are, so to speak, victims of 'imploitation'.

6. 'In the cinema human interest must play a role. '

The human interest aspect must be deepened. (The director)
The story may even be to a large extent foolish, if - as is today
almost always the case - the foolishness or sentimentality of its
inventive structure is embedded in an invented detail which is
scenically-mimetically authentic and realistic and by which the
human interest in hundreds of individual moments triumphs
over the primitive falsity of the whole. (Thomas Mann)

This idea coincides with the notion that films must be philistine.
The general applicability of this eminently rational thesis (rational
because who should make any other kind of films or look at them,
once made?) is produced by the inexorable demand for 'pro­
fundity' on the part of the metaphysicians of the press, the partisans
of 'art'. They are the ones who wish to see the 'element of fate'
emphasized in human relations. Fate, once a grand concept, has
long since become a mediocre one, where accommodating oneself
to circumstances has produced the desired 'transfiguration' and
'inwardness', and one exclusively of class struggle, where one class
'determines' the fate of another. As usual our metaphysicians'
demands are not hard to satisfy. It is simple to imagine everything
they reject presented in such a way that they would accept it with
enthusiasm. Obviously if one were to trace certain love stories back
to Romeo and Juliet, or crime stories to Macbeth, in other words to
famous plays that need contain nothing else (need show no other
kind of human behaviour, have no other kind of causes determine
the course of the world), then they would at once exclaim that
philistinism is the province of the How and not the What. But this
'it all depends on How' is itself philistine. This beloved 'human
interest' of theirs, this How (usually dignified by the word 'eternal',
like some indelible dye) applied to the Othellos (my wife belongs to
1 70
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me!), the Hamlets (better sleep on it!), the Macbeths (I'm destined
for higher things!) etc., today occurs on a mass scale as philistinism
and nothing more. If one insists on having it, this is the only form
in which it can be had; to insist is itself philistine. The grandeur of
such passions, their non-philistinism, was once determined by the
role they were meant to play in society, which was a revolutionizing
one. Even the impact that Potemkin made on these people springs
from the sense of outrage they would feel if their wives were to try
to serve rotting meat to them (enough is enough!) . 1 7 Similarly
Chaplin knows perfectly well that he must be 'human', that is,
philistine, if he is to be permitted to do anything different and to
this end changes his style in a pretty unscrupulous way (viz. the
famous close-up of the hangdog look which concludes City
Lights!) . 18
In fact the film demands external action and not introspective
psychology. Capitalism has an impact on this by provoking,
organizing and mechanizing certain needs on a mass scale,
revolutionizing everything. It destroys great areas of ideology by
concentrating only on 'external' action, by dissolving everything
into processes, by abandoning the hero as the medium and man­
kind as the measure of all things, and smashes the introspective
psychology of the bourgeois novel. The external point of view is
proper to the cinema and makes it important. For the cinema the
principles of non-Aristotelian drama (a type of drama not
depending on empathy, mimesis) are immediately acceptable.
Non-Aristotelian effects can be seen, for instance, in the Russian
film The Road to Life, simply because the theme (the education of
neglected children by means of certain socialist methods) prompts
the spectator to establish causal links between the teacher's
behaviour and that of his pupils. 19 By means of the key
(educational) scenes the analysis of the causes becomes so gripping
for the spectators that they 'instinctively' dismiss any motives for
the children's neglect borrowed from the old empathy-type of
drama (domestic unhappiness plus psychic pain instead of world
war or civil war) !* Even the use of work as a method of education
arouses the spectators' scepticism, for the simple reason that it is
never made clear that in the Soviet Union, in total contrast to all
other countries, work actually does determine morality. As soon as
the human being appears as an object, the causal connections
become decisive. Similarly the great American comedies depict the

* See Herbert Ihering's review of The Road to Life (Berliner Borsen-Courier, [28 May
1931]).

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human being a s an object and could have an audience entirely

made up of reflexologists. Behaviourism is a psychology that, based
on the needs of commodity production, seeks to develop methods
to influence the customer, an active psychology, therefore,
quintessentially progressive and revolutionary. 20 Its limits are those
that correspond to its function in capitalism (the reflexes are
biological; only in certain films of Chaplin are they already social).
Here again the road leads only over capitalism's dead body, but
here again this is a good road.

7. 'A film must be the work of a collective. '

I could imagine that it would be quite meaningful for those
involved, both the artists and the producers, to consult with one
another about the question of forming a collective and its mode of
working. (Reichsfilmblatt)
This idea is progressive. Indeed, a film should do nothing that a
collective cannot do. This limitation alone would be a fruitful law,
'art' would be excluded. In contrast to an individual a collective
cannot work without a clear point of reference and evening enter­
tainment is no such clear point. If the collective, for instance, had
certain didactic intentions, it would immediately form an organic
body. It is the essence of capitalism and not something generally
valid that 'unique' and 'special' artefacts can only be produced by
individuals and collectives bring forth only standardized mass
commodities. What kind of collective exists today in the cinema?
The collective consists of the financier, the merchants (public taste
researchers), the director, the technicians and the writers. A
director is necessary because the financier wants nothing to do with
art, the merchant because the director must be corrupted, the
technician not because the apparatus is complicated (it is
unbelievably primitive) but rather because the director has not
even the slightest inkling about technical things, the writer finally
because the audience itself is too lazy to write. Who would not wish
under these conditions that the individual contribution to the
production should remain unrecognizable? At no time during the
work on the Threepenny film, including that during the lawsuit, did
those involved share a common notion of the subject matter, the
purpose of the film, the audience, the apparatus, etc. Indeed, a
collective can only create works which are able to make 'collectives'
out of the audience.

8. 'A film can be regressive in content and progressive in form. '

The film is essentially the art form in which the material weight
of the artistic means imposes the greatest limitations on the
1 72
 THE THREEPENNY LAW SUIT

creative mind; the mind is not the master of the cinematic means
of expression, they are always cumbersome, complicated,
unreasonably expensive tools. (Reichsfilmblatt)
The Threepenny Opera offers us an unheard-of wealth of technical
peifection. As much as this technical perfection charms us on the
one hand, we are disheartened on the other to ascertain that its
use is not merited. (Der Jungdeutsche)
What we have is a cinematic spectacle, certainly not unified but
magnificent, worked with such technical and artistic perfection
that the substance almost disappears. (8-Uhr-Abendblatt)
A fascinating cinematic impression, no matter what was
intended. (Filmkurier)

What ends does this perspective serve? Is it supposed to separate

the wheat from the chaff? Then the wheat would be the form, since
the 'form' functions as the form of presentation. In practice the
formula serves to find a market for the most wretched trash. Never
could one write in a film review that the content of this or that film
is good and the form bad. In reality the reference to quality (a
quality free of meaning and content) is regressive, short and
simple. In reality there is no difference between form and content,
and what Marx said about form is valid here too: it is good only in
so far as it is the form of the content. An edit and a sequence that
aim principally to please correspond to a dramaturgy with the same
primary goal. Our intellectuals regard the form of Love Parade or
The Brothers Karamasov as good because it is the form of its
(reactionary) content. 21 There is not the slightest difference
between the content of the ideas in, say, Old Heidelberg and The
Brothers Karamasov.22 The technique of the presentation takes care
precisely of that. Our critics are all too quick to confuse this ability
to present things appetizingly with the improvement of the
apparatuses. An example of technical progress, which is actually a
digression, is the perfecting of the photographic apparatus. They
are much more light-sensitive than the old boxes used for
daguerreotypes. It is possible to work with them almost without
taking into consideration the light conditions. They have a series of
additional qualities, above all for shooting close-up, but the
likenesses they produce are undoubtedly much worse. With the
old, less sensitive apparatuses several expressions ended up on the
plate that was exposed for a relatively long time. As a result the final
image had a more universal, lively expression, so something of the
functional. Yet it would certainly be quite wrong to declare the new
apparatuses to be worse than the old ones. Perhaps they still lack
something that will be discovered tomorrow, or one can do
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 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

something with them other than shoot faces. But why not faces?
They no longer capture the faces, but must the faces be captured?
Perhaps there is a way of making photographs with the newer
apparatuses that would dismantle the faces? This way of using the
apparatuses, which are undergoing change, will most certainly not
be found without a new function for such photography. The
intellectuals are uncertain about technology. Its brutal but
powerful intervention in intellectual matters fills them with a
mixture of contempt and admiration: it becomes a fetish for them.
In art this relationship to technology expresses itself in the
following way: everything can be forgiven, if it is 'well executed' .
Hence, this technology profits from the shimmer of its separability
('it can be directed towards better, more meaningful functions! ') .
What it makes possible could also be something other than
nonsense. This is how the nonsense gets its shimmer in reality and
in the marketplace. Obviously the whole lot of accomplishments
can be thrown on the junk pile when cinema's social function
changes. The use of the apparatuses can be learned in three weeks:
they are unbelievably primitive. The typical director - who tries to
work as true to nature as possible, whereby nature is what he has
seen on stage, in other words, who tries to deliver the most perfect
imitation possible of an art-work - attempts to conceal all the
shortcomings of his apparatuses, whereby for him the short­
comings are any features that prevent the apparatus from making a
copy true to nature. He regards as the proof of his professionalism
the skill with which he elicits the true imitation of a real stage set
by means of such a deficient apparatus. The good man, who must
fight as well a bitter battle for his art with some people from the
marketing division who understand nothing about the business and
who keep trying to trip him up, this good man lets no one touch his
apparatus who may not possess this skill. So close to the business,
he is miles away from any inkling that these deficiencies of the
apparatus could be its qualities, because this would presume the
refunctioning of the cinema. Cinema technology is a technology
that makes something out of nothing. (The film Karamasov is
indeed something, an assemblage of various charms.) This some­
thing is made from nothing, that is, from a pile of trivial ideas,
imprecise observations, inexact statements, undemonstrable asser­
tions. This nothing came forth from something, from the novel The
Brothers Karamasov, that is, from a series of precise observations,
exact statements and demonstrable assertions. The cinema tech­
nology that was necessary to make something out of nothing had
first been forced to make nothing out of something. This 1s a

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 THE THREEPENNY LAW S U I T

practice from which it cannot be removed. It is not usable for

making something out of something. This is, then, the technology
that performs the tricks, for it is not art but a trick to make out of
a portion of filth a tasty dessert.

9. 'Political censorship is to be rejected on artistic grounds. '

[Sources available]

The intellectuals' battle for an improved cinema is especially

unfortunate where it confronts the state and censorship. Here they
must struggle not against the public's condescension towards the
cinema but against the censor's condescension towards the public.
Yet here finally the viewing masses' real interests become visible,
those about which even they don't know much, but which the
censor knows. Here and nowhere else the education takes place
that the 'progressives' and pathbreakers would like to control. The
mass of petty-bourgeois consumers are to be educated in a morality
that, rigorously applied, is suitable for ensuring the satisfaction of
their entertainment and other needs. The social class which sets
store by the sentimental and humoristic treasures of the cinematic
army barracks and student bars is not always sure about choosing
the correct political and cultural perspectives that ensure these
charms. This class must hire professionals who can enlighten them.
Interestingly it is not even necessary to draw on the wishes of the
upper middle classes to understand the censorship process. It can
be viewed and understood as a schizophrenic process within the
petty bourgeoisie, based on the structure: I tell myself that I must
restrain myself. The petty-bourgeois knows that he could not digest
everything he might eat. An 'unimaginative', straightforward,
pessimistically oriented filming of whatever can be photographed
in a student's life, that is, in the life of a type who in the briefest
amount of time must hoard a maximum of expensive and hard-to­
market specialized knowledge while sacrificing a large part of his
energy, or in the life of the worker type who is drafted and drilled
for war against his class brothers, this simple filming would attack
the basic situation of these ticket buyers who could still imagine
themselves even worse off than they are now. For there are people
who can buy no movie ticket at all! In a world with humour people
would have no need for humour! These people have an obscure
intuition that the untouched filming of the act of birth signifies a
political act. The search for an answer to the 'why' would lead to
the ABCs of sociology because one would have to consider the
influence of the political situation on the senses, which appear to
be only biologically determined. Everyone knows that the physical
1 75
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2)

pains felt by the birth-mother are not the truth of the birth. 23 The
truth is something more totalizing. But into what kind of world do
these uteruses expel their creatures? Where does the heroism of the
partial truth come from, if it is not that of the total truth? What do
our enemies of censorship fight for when they are fighting for the
right to see the birth act? They would get sick. They are fighting for
the right to get sick. They will not succeed. They will not be
allowed to vomit, even if they make threats. The priceless comedy
is that they wish to reject the filmed birth act on artistic grounds,
while the censor rejects it on political grounds. Hence the struggle
of the two 'powers' ! For artistic reasons they request that the class
struggle be interrupted! In terms of taste a real abyss separates
them from the cinema masses (since they would be the ideologues
of the upper middle class, as far as taste goes, which oddly is the
same as culture in this case) and in terms of political savvy an abyss
separates them from the upper middle class (that is, a dependency
which pays off) . They do not understand that their own economic
and social position depends on the sanctity of marriage (possibly
with the exception of their own) and motherhood. Once again -
where do they belong? To those strata that do not know their
political interests. And what must they do? They must be educated.
And once again - what constitutes their impossible situation? They
would have to be able to desire political art notfor artistic butfor political
reasons. There are no valid aesthetic arguments against political
censorship. At the very least they would have to be in a position to
apprehend critically the political-cultural situation of the art
consumers (which is their own) instead of criticizing only the
symptomatic taste of these people. They themselves find it difficult
to lift themselves above the petty-bourgeois class, for whom
essentially films are made, the only class in which the concept of
'humanity' is still relevant (humanity is petty-bourgeois) and the only
class which owing to its situation thinks on principle in a retrograde
way. Yet the self-limitation of this sort of thinking is not retrograde.
We are approaching the era of mass politics. What may sound
comical for the individual ('I shall not grant myself freedom of
thought') does not for the masses. The masses do not think freely
as individuals. For the individual continuity is a condition of
thinking; and for a long time this continuity was only possible for
the individual. Our intellectuals, who do not constitute a mass but
rather dispersed individuals, understand thinking precisely as an
inconsequential reflex because it has no continuity backwards,
forwards or sideways. Anyone who really belongs to the masses
knows that he is able to advance only as far as the masses can. Our
 THE THREEPENNY LAWSUIT

intellectuals, who - each on his own - advance by separating them­

selves from the masses, do not really move ahead but rather hang
on to their brief head start. The uniformly functioning masses of
our age, who are steered by common interests constantly geared
towards them, move according to clearly defined rules of thought,
which are not generalizations of individual thinking. These rules
have as yet been insufficiently investigated. To some extent they
can be derived from the thinking behaviour of individuals where
these think as representatives or agents of mass units. Thinking in
the next phase of capitalism will not have the same sort of freedom
that laws of competition have forced on the capitalists. But it will
have a different one.

1 0. 'A work of art is the expression of a personality. '

A work of art is a living creature and the creator who will not
tolerate its mutilation is right ten times over. (Frankfurter
Zeitung, the lawyer for the film company, Dr Frankfurter)
It would have been possible to transform The Threepenny Opera
into a Threepenny film while maintaining the status quo in the
utilization of the film apparatuses if its social thesis were the basis
of the adaptation. The assault on bourgeois ideology would have
had to be staged in the film as well. Intrigue, settings, figures were
to be treated with complete freedom. The approach of breaking up
the work while maintaining its social function within a new
apparatus was rejected by the film company. Nevertheless, the
work was of course broken up, but according to commercial
criteria. To reach the market, an art-work, which is in terms of
bourgeois ideology the adequate expression of a personality, must
be subjected to a very specific operation that splits it into its
components. To a certain extent the components enter the market­
place separately. The process to which the art-work - this
'adequate expression of a personality' - is subjected in order to
reach the market can be clarified in the accompanying chart
showing its dismantling [see 'Chart of the Dismantling Process'] .
It is a chart of the disintegration of the literary product, of the
unity of creator and work, meaning and story, etc. The work can
be given a new or several new authors (who are personalities)
without eliminating the original author for the purpose of market
exploitation. His name can be used for the altered work, that is,
without the work. Even the rumour of his radical convictions can
be used without their fruit, the very work itself. The work can be
used as literature without its meaning, i.e., with another or with no
meaning at all. The thesis is dismantled into a sanctioned, socially

1 77
 Chart of the Dismantling Process The "'ork of art a�
adequate expression
of a personality

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Melodrama Atmo!:>phere Manners Suspense Happy end Genre Roles Title Topicality Poetry Name Radical
and wit and artistic
reputation
 T H E THREEPENNY LAW S U I T

acceptable one and into one that reaches the market only as a
rumour. The work's subject matter can assume a different form, or
the form can be given a different (or partly different) subject
matter. Moreover, the verbal and scenic form may appear without
one another. The subject matter's story can be presented by other
figures, the figures can be introduced into a different story, etc.
This demontage of art-works seems at first to follow the same
market laws as cars that can no longer be driven and are therefore
dismantled so that the component parts can be sold (iron, leather
upholstery, lights, etc.). We witness the ineluctable and hence
permissible disintegration of the individualistic work of art. It can
no longer reach the market as a unity. The strained condition of its
contradictory unity must be destroyed. Art is a form of human
communication and therefore dependent on the factors that
generally determine human communication. These factors
revolutionize the old concept. Some examples:

1 . A work of art is an invention that, once invented, immediately

assumes commodity form, that is, it appears separately from its
inventor in a form determined by the commercial possibilities in
the market. (a) Court judgment according to which the author
must allow changes to a work that qualify its impact because
someone else puts his name to them - the scriptwriter. (b) Authors
such as Heinrich Mann, Doblin, Hauptmann do not ask for the
right of co-determination. 24
2 . A work of art can be reduced to the invention of a story, which
is invented according to market needs. It has no innate intellectual
thesis incorporated into it. (The film companies' practice,
uncontested by the authors.)
3 . A work of art can be dismantled into its components and
individual components can be removed. It can be mechanically
dismantled, in other words according to economic and police
criteria. (Court judgment according to which the author must
permit the company to decide which parts of the manuscript are
not usable.)
4 . Language is unimportant. It is to be separated from the
important dimensions of gesture and mime. (The court found our
complaint concerning the modifications of the text unworthy of an
answer.)
Nonetheless this butchered work enters the market as a unity.
The chart can be read not only from top to bottom but also in
reverse. In this case it is no longer a matter of how a particular art­
work (like The Threepenny Opera) can be made marketable, but

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 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

rather o f the way in which an art-work must b e constructed from

the commercial perspective. The dismantling process is, in other
words, a production process. The sentence 'the whole is more than
the sum of its parts' applies not only to the chart's upper part but
also to the lower.
The idea that the work of art is the expression of a personality is
no longer valid for films.

1 1 . 'Capitalism 's contradictions are like the snow ofyesteryear. '

The press reports are presented by and large chronologically,* but
the sequence derives its humour from the fact that the excerpts
from various newspapers look as if they could have been from only
one of them, without the readers having been especially surprised.
If you admit the latter, you will find the sequence justified. Indeed
the distribution of opinions is only the dramatic development of
one and the same fundamental attitude, the bourgeois one. Only
together do they provide the whole. The individual journalist
himself shares the opinions of all the other journalists and
participates in the development of the full opinion. Here too a
collective is at work that makes the individual's contribution
unrecognizable. How is it formed? It is formed by the class
struggle. By the shared work of proletarianization and the shared
fate of becoming the proletariat. The ideological schizophrenia of
the petty-bourgeois journalist manifests itself in the cohabitation in
his consciousness of different realms of ideas, in their gradual
shifting towards one another. At one and the same time he has at
least two ideas about the same thing: he derives one from upper­
class idealism, which will impose Individuality, Justice, Freedom,
etc. on reality and the other from reality itself, which prevails in all
its tendencies against the idealism, deflects it, domesticates it, but
also lets it exist. The contradiction cannot be liquidated until the
entire bourgeois system is liquidated. In a comical fashion the
fiction of a certain intellectual freedom ensues for the journalist.
He can choose, i.e. defend one or the other idea since both must be
defended. The battle report reads then: first I had the upper hand,
then he did. The whole comedy of the situation comes into
perspective in the exclamation of two boneheads when we broke off
the lawsuit: we should never have begun the lawsuit or never have
broken it off. They considered the opening of the suit idealistic and
its liquidation rational and for them there is an enormous
difference between idealistic and rational thinking. Those who
think rationally have no right to be regarded as idealists and

* See Part I.

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 T H E THREEPENNY LAW S U I T

idealists have no right to be reasonable (according to our two

champions of utmost consistency, either we were unreasonable
enough to begin the suit or idealistic enough to lose it to the point
of self-destruction) . Even our leftist friends regarded the lawsuit as
superfluous. (The importance of proving that in a lawsuit against
industry the individual is in the wrong! Doesn't everyone know that
already? Indeed, everyone knew it.) For us it was interesting to see
how far the disintegration of trust in justice had advanced in all
circles: everyone who spoke with us, without exception, warned us
before they learned of our case and even after they had seen our
contracts about conducting a lawsuit against a million Marks. But
wasn't it also interesting to know where everyone's knowledge
leads them? The truth is: it is not enough to know that capitalism
has become increasingly incapable of ordering its affairs as long as
it is still capable of holding the masses in disorder. It is also not
enough to say this, because the knowledge about its failure
provokes calm rather than disquiet; we must constantly prompt it
to fail. Capitalism cannot die, it must be killed. When enough facts
about class struggle have penetrated our consciousness, then class
struggle may appear as a natural category and the actions of
individuals as well as groups strike even themselves as determined
from the outset by class struggle, which leads to a dangerous
passivity. Then class struggle is no longer a human issue, but rather
humanity becomes the object of class struggle. For many leftist
writers the world is boarded off with barricades. The barricade
conceals the adversary and protects him more than it does them.
The world then consists of two worlds that are detached from one
another, not attached. From this perspective a large number of
people are petty-bourgeois and petty-bourgeois people are nothing
more than petty-bourgeois, belonging to an immutable and natural
category. A certain way of eating fish is petty-bourgeois, certain
social tasks are performed by petty-bourgeois people and those
who perform them are petty-bourgeois. Contempt protects them
from any demands. Similarly, industry is unintellectual and the
courts are unjust, just as the trees are green and it is more
reasonable for industry to be unintellectual than for us to attack it
for that. The concept 'snow of yesteryear' plays a special role here.
If this or that is so and so, it is snow of yesteryear. Pity the person
who is caught in the snow of yesteryear, especially when shovelling
it! It must be new snow. Nothing gets protected like the snow of
yesteryear. Literature is increasingly assuming a commodity
character and the laws of competition force our literature to invent
new things, what is not familiar or has been already forgotten. In

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this way an injustice, having become old, is no longer offensive, a

serious insult after two weeks is only a minor irregularity and
capitalism, which is just another 'subject-matter', is a bad subject,
snow of yesteryear.

12. 'The rights of the individual must be protected. '

[Source: Civil Code]

The court declared the author's right to protection against changes

to a stage play to be limited also by the general knowledge that, for
the purposes of filming, changes are necessary that touch the
work's essence and affect its impact, but that the author of the
screenplay rather than the author of the stage play is to be held
responsible. Such changes must be accepted. But a suit would not
be rejected, if it could be proved that the changes exceed this
standard . . . According to the contract, the author, who was
guaranteed his right of co-determination, expressly contested the
company's competence in matters of taste. Dismissed by the com­
pany, the author can only argue that the court itself should
intervene. Thus, he is forced to acknowledge the competence in
matters of taste on the part of some judge or another. Two second­
rate scribes, Bela Balasz and L. Vajda, attempted to 'preserve the
style' and the judge decides intuitively, without having seen the
film, that they succeeded in imitating the author's way of writing,
in other words, in forging his signature. The judge himself declared
the forgery a success! Don't the rights of the individual count for
something? Let's put it this way: he has no rights outside the
production process. There are no rights outside the production process.
The only right the court explicitly allows the individual is the one
he needs in order to assume responsibility towards the general
public, which is then recognized as his obligation. (The author
must answer to the public for the damage done to his work.) When
someone else assumes this responsibility (with his agreement or
without), the subsidiary rights also disappear. In a form of
production that makes unrecognizable the contribution of the
individual to the production, it is difficult to protect the right of the
individual. Yet it resurfaces in discussion of the production's
revenue.

13. 'Incorporeal rights must be protected. '

The idea that incorporeal rights must be protected is as general and
secure as the idea that Law transcends economic and social
processes and expresses humanity's innate sense of justice. This
Law is independent of everything material, criticizing and
clarifying it. This idea of the Law would, for instance, ensure that
1 82
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contemporary human relationships emerging from economic

developments - a natural process - take their bearings from a
stable, unshakeable sense of justice. Contradicting this idea are,
however, the courts' very weighty judgments . It is useful to read
carefully the following decision of the High Court:25
Does the film contract provide the screenplay writer grounds for a
claim against thefilm producer to duplicate and distribute thefilm? 1 st
Civil Senate. Judgment of 1 6 June 1 923 in the case of D. & Co.
(defendant) vs. W. (plaintiff) . I 1 8 5/22. 1 st Regional Court of
Berlin I - 2nd Superior Court of the same.
The plaintiff is the author of the screenplay Only a Dancer;26 the
defendant acquired it from him for a film but has not yet
produced it. The lawsuit wishes to arrive at a judgment that
forces the defendant to produce the film, duplicate it and
distribute it for screening under the name of the author. Both
previous jurisdictions granted the plaintiffs suit. The
defendant's appeal was successful.
Reasons:
Concerning the litigious question whether there exists an
obligation to film on the part of the defendant, the Superior
Court considers that the expressed acceptance of such an
obligation is not demonstrated; witness N.'s declarations and the
content of the letter of confirmation show nothing conclusive
about it. Lacking the formal promise of the defendant, the Court
must examine whether even without a special agreement such an
obligation is justified. There is no legal stipulation; commercial
conventions cannot be accepted as binding. Yet an examination
of the legal nature of the contract would lead to the conclusion
of the existence of such an obligation to film. The contract is,
granted, not a publisher's contract; thus, 'Ill of the Publishers'
Code would not be directly applicable. Nonetheless, an applica­
tion corresponding to the obligation of the publication law
would appear to be in order concerning the duplication and
distribution of the work. This obligation is based on the idea that the
publisher is for the author only the means to communicate to the
general public the products of the intellect. The payment does not
usually represent the author's main goal, rather the goal is primarily
to communicate the work to the public. There is no reason to place the
scriptwriter in a lesser position than the author of other intellectual
products. The higher costs of the film producer in comparison to those
of a publisher cannot be the deciding factor. To this extent the issue
is no different from that of the first production of a stage play. In
specific instances the disproportion of the means needed for the
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apparatus might lead to the negation of the obligation to pro­

duce. But the defendant here has not provided adequate
evidence for this. What distinguishes the film entrepreneur from
the theatre entrepreneur is essentially that the latter is personally
involved in the stage production, whereas the former duplicates
and distributes the reels of film. This distinction, however, does
not offer a basis for differentiation in the jurisdiction of the
litigation.
It is impossible to follow this line of argument; it derives more
from a judicial construction than from a consideration of the
legal facts at hand.
The presiding judge assumed correctly that the film contract is
not a publisher's contract and that the opinion applicable to
literature is in this case wrong (see Goldbaum, Urheberrecht, p.
93). 27 Similarly the analogous application of'I[ I of the Publishers'
Code cannot be approved. Certain similarities between a
publisher's contract and a film contract and between the latter
and the Superior Court's comparison to a stage production
contract are not substantial enough. On the other hand, the
differences in both of these instruments are so significant that it
is unacceptable to transpose principles of publication law to
cinema law. For publishing the already practised law, as it
emerged through jurisprudence and scholarship based on the
customs of the highly reputable German printing industry, led to
regulations in law codes in accordance with the needs of the
book and musical score trade. That the needs of the film industry
and cinema market are quite different from those of the book
trade is evident. Thus, they necessarily have a different effect on
the legal relations between scriptwriter and film producer.
Altered economic circumstances provide therefore the opportunity for
an especially careful consideration of the legal exigencies and the
general application by analogy oflegal principles in more or less related
domains.
In view of the differences in the domain under investigation, the
following details must be considered:

1 . The object of the publisher's contract are written works and,

since there exists no law for art publications, it extends as well in
general application by analogy - by common law - in part to
products of the fine arts and photography. The duplication of the
original work takes place fundamentally without a personal,
intellectual contribution on the part of the publisher, more in a
mechanical form. On the other hand the duplication is restricted
to the same artistic medium. The circumstances are no different
 THE THREEPENNY LAW S U IT

in the case of translations (see Goldbaum, Urheberrecht, p. 93),

when books translated from one language into another do not
fall within the framework of a mechanical but of an intellectual
achievement, or in the case of engravers, who are not on the
same level as printers. For the decisive factor is first of all that in
both cases it is a matter of remaining in the same artistic domain
(the literary work or the image) and that, despite all the invest­
ments of intellectual activity, it is a question of scrupulously
respecting the original work down to the utmost detail. The
dramatization of a book, however, is no longer covered by the
publishing law. It is, moreover, characteristic that the publisher
himself is supposed to bring to the public the duplicated, true repro­
duction of the original work as a commodity in larger or smaller
quantity and conforming to the intention of the publisher's contract in
order to introduce to the public the author and his work.
2. The situation is different for so-called stage performance
contracts in the case of written dramatic works. Here there is no
duplication. The distribution is also different. A play is put on
stage as defined and carried out according to the production
contract only for this particular theatre. The distribution of the
work as a commodity in the sense of the publisher's contract is
eliminated. The number of performances is usually contractually
defined and limited. The transposition of the work into another
artistic domain is not a consideration in the case of the stage play
since it is written by the author ready for use. The director is here
only the author's assistant. The latter can be and is frequently
himself involved in the stage production.
This perspective must be somewhat modified in the case of stage
performance contracts for ballets, mimes, etc., that are only based
on a scenario. For here the dramatization must be created, that is,
the transposition from verbal language into gestural language. Here
the director, stage producer or ballet master contributes something
essential, so that the artistic structure comes to life. But even in
these circumstances there is no distribution beyond the framework
of the theatre that signed the performance contract. There is no
commodity trade involved. Whether there obtains any kind of
performance obligation in the acquisition of such scenarios will not
be considered here. For it is characteristic of the stage performance
contract that the performance obligation is limited (according to
number and days, etc.) and therefore is mentioned expressly in
words.
3. The film production contract is once again different. It
contains isolated elements from the publisher's and performance
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contracts and adds new ones a s well. It i s a specially conceived

contract that must be appreciated on its own legal merits . Like
the publisher's contract, its object is an original text. But this is
not the object of duplication and distribution, rather from this
object something is produced. As with the scenario of the ballet
or mime, first it is dramatized, that is, the situations only
described by the original text must be transformed into actions
and performance. Gestures take the place of words as the means
of expression. Simultaneously there is a transposition into
another artistic genre; the work first transformed into a dramatic
mime must be transposed at the same time into a work of images.
Even if this happens by means of photography, that is, in a more
mechanical way, it is nonetheless not simply a matter of filming
mechanically a ballet or a mime that has been performed on a
theatre stage. The cinema has its own rules that are not only of a
visual nature but rather determine and affect the essence and
content of what is represented. The essence is the dissolution of
the dramatic process into single shots that results from the
disappearance of the word and compression into short, inde­
pendent scenes. Their sequencing and combination, arrange­
ment and plausibility are contained only implicitly in the original
film text. They obey their own principles, which are different
from those of the verbal drama and distinct as well from those of
pure stage mime. It is the responsibility of the film director not
only formally to stage this but also, in a certain sense, to
transpose all of these indispensable things into reality. He is not
the scriptwriter's assistant but at the very least his collaborator.
This is valid as well for the so-called shooting script, for only
during the filming itself does the director, who is literally
constrained to look through the lens of the camera operator,
recognize what is necessary for a good film. Hence the many
technical modifications and the frequently divergent opinions of
author and director which, however, the latter can or should not
necessarily always accommodate. For he is if not principally then
partially responsible for the film's creation as a visual work in its
own right. Only then is the strip of film duplicated and
distributed as a mass commodity; but even here usually not
directly by the film producer but rather through the intervention
of commercial film distributors. What the film reel contains,
however, is not - as in the case of the book - the intellectual
product of only the original text's author, but his and the
director's cooperative work. The latter also plays a role vis-a-vis
the public, a circumstance usually reflected in the importance

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and reputation of the company that has engaged and secured his
intellectual skills. As a result it cannot be stated, as is the case in the
contested judgment, that there are no grounds for considering the
scriptwriter differently or in a lesser role than the writer of stage plays.
The screenplay prepared for the shoot is not the same as nor
similar to the stage drama. The film entrepreneur is also not a
theatre entrepreneur. The latter produces on his stage one or
more performances, as agreed, of the play. The fonner produces a
mass commodity that is intended for distribution around the world. In
this case, and owing to the commercial risk involved, he is under
greater economic pressure. Therefore the financial costs must be
weighed differently. Once a film is produced, if it is unusable or
not readily usable, then the film's mass circulation as a
commodity by the distributor is obstructed. In contrast, the
stage manager simply cancels the next performance in his theatre
without causing a major setback in his commercial undertaking.
Yet, in still other respects the film producer's entire business policy,
aiming at the fabrication ofa distributable commodity, is different. He
must work according to supply and demand and depends much more
than the stage director in his city on fashions, public taste, the subject
matter's topicality, the competition of the world market. For it is not
enough to produce at great expense negatives and copies of a
film; they must also circulate as commodities. In this area the
film producer no longer has an exclusive, determining influence
on the decisions of the commercial film distributors. For the
distribution, and especially for screenings in the cinemas, new
costs are generated (like electricity, depreciation of apparatuses,
etc.), which the buyers in the large film market can only recoup
if the film is successful. Once again the distribution is different
here from the case of a book, which is produced just once and
sold by the publisher himself. Finally it is more difficult to
anticipate the quality of a usable film script than that of a
published drama; for the former remains still - as explained - in
a certain sense unfinished.
The relationship between playwright and theatre or writer and publisher
does not therefore provide a basis for ascertaining a reasonable mutuality
of interests - the source of a healthy economy - between scriptwriter and
film producer. On the one hand there is the scriptwriter's legitimate
wish not only to obtain his remuneration for which he transferred
the exclusive rights of performance but also to reach the public and
film audience with his intellectual product; on the other there is the
interest of the film producer, who helps create the work with his
director and carries the enormous economic risk of production and
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

exploitation. Even in publication law there are indications that in

the case of cooperative work no obligation obtains for duplication
(�47 of the Publishers' Code), just as special rules are provided in
�6 of the Literary Copyright Law in the case of collaborative work.
For this reason we declare that a general application by analogy of
� 1 of the Publishers' Code is not justified. The entire legal nature
of the film contract as a specialized contract has not yet gone
through an evolution corresponding to the economic development
(as did the publication law before its judicial regulation) that would
permit us to consider the author's legal right to insist on production
as appropriate and compatible in good faith, if it is not
contractually stipulated.
We have not investigated or decided whether the scriptwriters'
interests in the future development of their legal relationship to the
film producers will not be served in another way than by the
rejected obligation to produce the film, for example, by the return
of the original text if the work is not produced within a certain time
limit, be it with or without a claim for compensation according to
the specific situation.
Consequently the suit is rejected as ungrounded.

The third section, which treats the specificity of film production,

gives - as we see - an excellent dialectical explanation of the
crucially expanded sector of technology in the cinema and
concludes that 'it cannot be stated that there are no grounds for
considering the scriptwriter differently or in a lesser role than the
writer of stage plays'. He must be viewed as part of the apparatus.
This apparatus includes, however, the commercial organization as
well. The opposition between author and production technology is
resolved dialectically and at the same time it characteristically
includes technology's dependence on the market. The author is
pulled into the technical process, viewed as commodity produc­
tion. The protection of the author's incorporeal rights is eliminated
because the producer 'is under too great an economic pressure'.
Intellectual interests can be protected only as long as they are not
too expensive. Any longer and one cannot do them justice. For
'altered economic circumstances provide the opportunity for an
especially careful consideration of the legal exigencies and the
general application by analogy of legal principles' (such as the
protection of incorporeal rights). The whole thing is called 'a
reasonable mutuality of interests - the "source" of a healthy
economy - between scriptwriter and film producer' and constitutes
a document of the most decisive materialism. If the opposition
between material and incorporeal interests were not unresolved -
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the rape of the former is not a completely satisfactory solution -

then the entire apparatus, here so artfully unified and rationalized,
would have intellectual, incorporeal interests as well. In short, if
everything were not directed only at the protection of profits, we
would not have much to oppose to it from our side.
Yet it is most certainly not the case that the obsolete, generally
widespread ideas about an ideal and absolute Law mentioned at
the beginning have been abandoned by the courts in favour of the
newly emerging ideas in decisions such as those by the High Court
discussed above. On the contrary, it seems that for very vital
reasons the capitalist social system cannot relinquish its old ideas.
Dominant ideologies are just as conflated as dominant classes.
Every idea is beholden not only to one but to several others; it also
holds more than one destiny in its hand. It should not be retained
or rejected according to its immediate utility which is, as already
stated, multiple, because even the fact of rejection can be harmful.
Ideas must be tested again and again in practice, and frequently in
isolation from one another. Practice remains young, while the
ideologies age, and they are no stronger than their weakest link, the
single idea. Chained together as they are for better or worse, they
drop an absolutely compromised idea only with the greatest
hesitation, after it has changed its name more than once . . . But at
the cradle and coffin of every ideology sits practice.
It is useful to return to our particular legal case for a moment.
We tried in a specific, real case to get 'justice', to take a specific
bourgeois ideology at its word and to let it be proven wrong by the
bourgeois practice of the court. We pleaded our lawsuit by insisting
on ideas which were not our own but which we had to assume were
those of the court. In losing the suit, we discovered their new ideas,
which do not contradict general bourgeois practice: they only
contradict the old ideas (which constitute in their entirety that
classical upper-class ideology) . Do bourgeois institutions, then,
relinquish completely their old ideas? They relinquish them
practically, but not ideologically. Practically they withdraw their
ideologies from circulation but 'in other respects' they retain them.
The joke is that they (especially they) can carry out their practices
neither if they abandon their ideologies nor if they put them into
effect.
The composer Weill received a judgment that looked as follows:
based on our contract he, too, could not object to the film. ('The
contractual agreements concerning his collaboration only give him
the right to demand compensation if his collaboration is rejected
unjustly.') He could have objected if the film company had been
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

guilty of gross textual modifications. But it was guilty of such

alterations in a still acceptable proportion (see Brecht's judgment) .
Even if the company had undertaken alterations affecting the
music, Weill would have had the opportunity to do several things.
But the company had already assured the court during the lawsuit
that this was not the case. Nevertheless, the court found in Weill's
favour. Could he then object? Yes, just as long as it had not been
ascertained that the deviations from the manuscript were accept­
able. Unfortunately (see above) this had been ascertained! Neither
with the Weill judgment nor the Brecht judgment could anything
happen to the film. But Weill was in the right and Brecht was in the
wrong with his complaint. How objective the court's attitude must
seem when it so carefully separates the wheat from the chaffi
Weigert's judgments were in their end-result (the production was
made possible!) irreproachable from the perspective of the highest
authority.28 Yet this justice does not look as presentable as, say, that
delivered by the High Court. The difference between the logical
effort of the High Court and that of Mr Weigert is quite striking.
The desire to protect the apparently still indispensable belief in
the ideal and individual right beyond the production process,
where justice itself can no longer be protected, generates really
grotesque distortions, as illustrated in the following case reported
to me. An architect sued a hotel company because it had engaged
another architect to alter its fa�ade. He claimed the fa�ade to be his
intellectual property. The court found in his favour. What were his
rights here? Obviously there was no question of having the new
fa�ade demolished. The issue was that the architect was to have his
loss - an ideal loss - appropriately compensated. The architect,
however, had to demonstrate the material loss he suffered. Since
the man cannot do this, he receives no compensation. Nonetheless,
he was in the right and it is still forbidden to assail the intellectual
property of another. Just as forbidden as it is customary. Comical
as it may seem, in this legal decision there is the indication of a way
out. Incorporeal claims are protected and - incorporeally fulfilled.
The State recognizes the offended sense of justice as justified.

14. The court must make production possible. '

Extraordinarily decisive because it revolutionizes all behaviour and
all ideas is the role that production plays or, more exactly, the
constant growth of this role. Justice, freedom, character have all
become functions of production, thus variables. No longer is a
cognitive act possible outside the general production process. One
must produce in order to know and production means to be in the
production process. Even the place of the revolutionary and of the
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revolution is the production process. There is a simple but little

noticed example: the surprisingly small role for the unemployed in
the revolution. Out of this minor role will emerge immediately a
major role when unemployment begins to threaten production
seriously.
The machinery of justice works as one component in the general
machinery of production. The court's behaviour manifested in
every point of the proceedings the willingness to make possible in a
practical way the production of the film, and film production was
understood as the routine fabrication of routine films. In this
willingness, the judge merely made the effort to ascertain the role
played by the various parties in the production process. For
example, it was simply ascertained whether the author facilitated or
hindered the production. To facilitate meant that the author
contributed to a film such as the company routinely fabricated
based on commercial calculations, to hinder if the author
demanded a different kind of film. Out of the author's right to
maintain control over the screenplay from the outset, an author's
obligation was constructed via the lawsuit (in the local court), a duty
to make recommendations to an already completed film based on a
screenplay by another. The contracts played a subordinate role.
They were likewise evaluated according to their role in the
production process. If they contained (and they did contain)
demands by the author for the right of co-determination in the way
the film was to be produced, then they were regarded as part of the
author's sabotage of the production and placed the author's entire
behaviour, which was the main object under consideration, in an
unfavourable light. The author was Shylock, insisting on his piece
of paper in order to strangle the company. Unable to comprehend
the conditions under which a work of art is produced, the court
refrained from expecting that the company produce a work of art.
But able to comprehend the conditions under which a film (as mass
commodity) is produced, the court refrained from expecting that
the company fulfil its contracts. Our standpoint was not tenable.
We insisted stubbornly on contracts to which we were entitled
because the competition would otherwise have signed (and broken)
them, which would have meant the company's ruin. For the film
was acquired from us with the advance from the money that its sale
was to earn. It had to be sold before it could be bought. These
contracts hindered the production of the film, hence they had to be
changed. It had been agreed that before the completion of the
screenplay the company was not supposed to be permitted to
intervene; Mr Weigert cancelled this agreement. It had been agreed

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that the material for the screenplay would b e communicated orally

to L. Lania, the scriptwriter. Mr Weigert demanded it in writing. It
had been agreed that only a screenplay written by Lania and
accepted by the author would be filmed. Mr Weigert condemned
the author, who would have accepted such a screenplay, because he
did not accept the one produced by the company . . . etc.
In short, Mr Weigert held the company not to the contracts that
it had signed but rather to those that it should have signed. Thus,
the court's worldly knowledge triumphed over that of the industry
and bad contracts were improved in an ideal way. It was in other
words unimportant that the company had not engaged Mr Weigert
to write its contracts . In a parallel suit by the composer against the
film company he was found in the right and the film was banned.
The company had fired him out of nervousness and the court
found in his favour on the grounds that he had put himself
sufficiently at the disposal of the production. In his (musical)
recommendations, which he continued to make up to the end, the
court could recognize no hindrance at all to the production; those
that were not only musical did not have to be considered . . . By
means of this judgment the court demonstrated its indifference to
the fate of the millions that were at stake. It was merely a question
of production. But if justice 'diminishes' proportionately to its
distance from production, it nonetheless does not play a very
brilliant role in proximity to production. In order to be the purely
calculable factor that is needed for financial estimates, justice must
become much more primitive. The more dynamic and complicated
economic life becomes, the more static and primitive will justice
be. That makes it, however, less calculable as well.

IV. Summary
The ideas used in this work were not gained from observing the
film produced by the Nero Company based on The Threepenny
Opera, nor from reflecting on the ideas of art, cinema, business, etc.
that are necessary to produce such trash. On principle the film was
not considered, and the reader of this work would be well advised
simply to ignore the sorry result of the director's diligent efforts.
Otherwise, in reference to this result he can no longer recognize
what is progressive in a certain sense in some of these ideas, which
was precisely the goal of our little investigation. For there are pro­
gressive tendencies which lead to results that are in themselves
retrograde. One of the reasons for this is that such tendencies can
have several results at the same time (in our case, for example,
more than just the film), and another reason is that these
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tendencies can be thwarted by others. In practice we have before us

an extremely complicated field of contradictory tendencies and
ideas. Whether the director in question is especially unintelligent
can be ignored because the director's intelligence is unimportant
for the industry. Much more interesting for us is the fact that the
film critics, in agreement with the industry, simply ignore the
idiocy of the plot and the base conviction of the entire film and
grant the 'artist' Pabst a right to stupidity, which is generally
granted to poets, painters, musicians, etc., and which is in fact
more of an obligation. The function of these artists is not usually
sought in the sphere of intelligence, a certain lack of reason is
reckoned as innocence. Nonetheless the stupidity is more an
accompanying trait than a driving force of this production. The
wonderment that someone speaks at all when he has nothing to say
gives way to understanding when one hears that he is paid for
speaking. Speaking can have several functions, at one time to direct
attention to something specific and at another to divert attention
from something specific. Many people contend that a sensible text
distracts them more from music than an illogical one. Stupidity
would immediately disappear from film production if it or stupidity
assumed a new function. This, however, depends entirely on the
social system. And the evaluation of ideas (this is the main point)
depends principally on the function that they could have not only
in the given social systems but also in the imagined ones, i.e., in
those social systems that are in the path of our development.
We have drawn ideas from practice, actually we have subjected
them to practice. They are working theses that must be pursued
beyond their result (the film) . The theses partially contradict
certain other ideas that do not come from practice but rather are
situated far from it, before it, if not to say, above it: elements of
upper-class ideology, of idealistic origin.
Underpinning many of these ideas is the idea of an inviolable
phenomenon called 'art' that is directly fed by humanity but is able
also to do without it. It is the idea of art as an independent
phenomenon of a social nature, which can impose itself on society,
which can and must manifest itself everywhere and under all
circumstances, making use of the entire external world only as a
medium. When the people die who bring it forth, it does not die
along with them. Even the drying up of the consumers does not
lead to its disappearance.* Its utility is considered to be great, but

* 'When people no longer wear pearls, oysters will continue to produce them'
(Hebbel, cited from memory) .

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n o one dares t o name i t because one o f its most valued predicates

is supposed to be a certain uselessness. Its utility is supposed to
reside in the claim that there is something in it that escapes
common usage and is loved with indifference. Indifferent love rates
as the height of the human spirit. The making of art is attributed to
humanity's innate drive to express itself. This need is an inborn
one, it is said. Humanity expresses itself like fish swim. This is a
purely predicative assertion and for its further application in larger
systems it needs Aristotelian logic, which can operate with such
assertions. The tautological character of such conceptual defini­
tions bothers no one there, and it would not have to bother us if it
did not conceal the view of the function of art and so make the
implementation of art difficult. Now practice, which must imple­
ment art, finds itself, as already mentioned, in an increasingly
strong opposition to this idea of 'art'. It is therefore not necessary
to dissolve this idea - which corresponds to many others that
constitute the Aristotelian-medieval world view - or to destroy it by
means of its own concepts. It is more correct to let the evolution of
reality take care of this, not simply by waiting but by provoking
reality with experiments in order to formulate the process more
visibly through acceleration and concentration. One should also be
open to the flow of new concepts, thus increasing the conceptual
material, just as Bacon suggested, admittedly without much
success in the humanities but with all the more in the sciences,
because the obstinate insistence on preserving the old conceptual
material that can no longer apprehend reality is very significant.
However the art-work is conceived and whatever the reason for its
existence, it is sold and this selling plays a new role of great
importance in the global system of human relations. The selling,
which has become quantitatively so powerful, regulates not only
the old relations through indifferent customs adapted to the time
(they have just 'followed suit') but it also introduces completely
new goals for the exploitation and thus also for the production of
the art-work. If the concept of the art-work is no longer applicable
to the thing that is created after the art-work has been transformed
into a commodity, then we must prudently and delicately but
fearlessly let go of this concept, if we do not want to liquidate the
function of this thing itself along with it. It must go through this
phase without any surreptitious purpose. This is no inconse­
quential detour from the proper path but rather a change from the
bottom up that eliminates its past to an extent that, when the old
concept resurfaces - and it will, why shouldn't it? - no more
memory of the thing that it once described will be awakened. The

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commodity phase will relinquish its current specificity but it will

have charged the work of art with another, inherent specificity. The
sentence 'The work of art is a commodity' would also be just a
predicative, tautological assertion if it did not indicate something
more of the art-work's function, something of what constitutes its
principal value.
In this sense the conversion of intellectual values into com­
modities (art-works, contracts, processes are commodities) is a
progressive process, which can be affirmed on the condition that
the progress is conceived as the act of advancing and not as the
result of being advanced, in other words the commodity phase
must also be seen as surmountable in its turn by the ongoing
advance. The capitalist mode of production smashes bourgeois
ideology. A few working theses that can be observed in the
production of any routine film, in the execution of any routine
process, suffice already to illuminate the unstoppable victory of
capitalism, which long ago transformed itself into the mad run its
ideologues can no longer keep up with. Their lunch is now
provided only by corruption, a roof over their heads serves only
to cover a bad conscience. What disappears with them is the type
of petty-bourgeois that originally created the ideological
construction called 'Humanity'. The technology that triumphs
here, and appears to be condemned to nothing more than
guaranteeing the profits of some dinosaurs and thus of barbarism,
can achieve very different things in proper hands. It is our task to
get it into the proper hands . In practice the justice system makes
production possible. How is it supposed to protect, then, an
ideology ('intellectual property is untouchable'!) that endangers
production? In practice the critics encourage impersonal works,
ideologically they demand personal ones. And although everyone
can see that works whose value derives from the unique
expression of an individual personality are no longer produced
today and, even if produced, they would no longer find their way
to the consumer, the concept of the value of a personality is still
measured by the way it expresses itself in a work and the concept
of a work's success by how much of the personal is expressed in
it. Capitalism is consistent in its practices out of necessity. But if
it is consistent in its practices, then it is inconsistent in its
ideology. Whatever its usefulness, it is for capitalism itself, but it
is not therefore useful only for capitalism. Reality arrives at a
point where the only obstacle to capitalism's progress is
capitalism itself.

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V. On the Organizing of Sociological Experiments

We spoke of a 'sociological experiment' when society's immanent

contradictions are provoked and made perceptible by appropriate
measures (appropriate behaviour) . Such a sociological experiment
is simultaneously the attempt to comprehend the functioning of
'culture' . Public thinking is unleashed and takes place with distri­
buted roles. It is almost literally a matter of a thought process. The
material is alive, it functions, it is not only an object of contem­
plation. The viewer himself is alive as well and not outside but
inside the processes.
The sociological experiment is a process that allows us to show
the 'public situation' as it develops. The driving tendencies that
appear in practice appear as inconsistencies in ideology. For
example, in practice a film is produced collectively and perceived
as a work of art, before the concept of art allows for collective work.
Or a certain planned economy - the dictatorship of demand over
supply - establishes itself in the production of art without the
concept of art relinquishing the value it places on the personality,
etc. These ideological inconsistencies must be grasped. Bourgeois
culture is not what it thinks about bourgeois practices. It is not a
question of recognizing some kind of dualism here. Not a hair
separates this culture from its practices. Facing any bourgeois
behaviour, one must constantly hold on to reality and rise into
theory only as far as the last step allows and the next demands.
There are enormous dangers in any deductive process. Even
induction resists freeing itself from the facts and above all these
facts must be themselves actively formed and constantly able to
criticize theory. For actually we need from all knowledge only hints
for our own behaviour and information about the adversary's likely
behaviour.
For the revelation of forgeries, which the bourgeois press
photographers have on their conscience, the most appropriate
method would be to write descriptions as if the reader were simply
put in a position to learn such falsification. The forger's character
would only appear where he reveals traits that are necessary for the
falsification. The longer morality is kept out of the investigation,
the more powerfully it assumes its rights in the end. Thus a work
on nationalism would gain immensely if it not only concerned itself
with an investigation of nationalism as a form of expression or with
the analysis of nationalists, but also observed nationalism as a
proposition and therefore only admitted to the investigation of this
idea the practices it develops. If its practicability were actually
investigated, if the question were raised whether today a nation can
196
 THE THREEPENNY LAWSUIT

be constructed of the type needed by the nationalists for their

plans, that is, one with the most effective means of mobilization,
then all the economic and ideological factors begin to appear in
their proper and unsuspicious position, ideas like blood relations
etc., for example, as specialists' propaganda material. This is so
because apparently national groups that actually lend themselves to
effective operations in the foreign policy domain can be created
only with great difficulty.
An example of an unusable definition is Thomas Mann's
definition of the cinema as a 'spectacle for the eye spiced with
music'.* Mann describes the phenomenon from a perspective that
makes it seem unchangeable. Reading these kinds of descriptions
is like reading definitions and one holds on to the custom of
accepting such definitions as long as they contain nothing that is
obviously false, i.e., refutable. That is very dangerous because
definitions are operations by which things are placed into certain
systems. If these systems are ignored or assumed, they are
reinforced in absentia by the definition. In this way every new thing
(that must be defined) helps the old by defining itself on the basis
of the latter. Mann's definition of the cinema, for instance, helps
the novel, from which it is taken. But the cinema has nothing to do
with this pseudo-definition, where it does have something at all to
do. The failure of cinematic adaptations of famous novels shows
how the film actually serves very different functions. It destroys and
unmasks the novels. Not the film but the novel produces its
debacle. Working with old concepts, one works with highly
impractical concepts. The concept of art, for example, includes
something like hostility towards the apparatus. Pure humanity (=
artistic) is thought of without the apparatuses, in other words in a
form that does not exist at all. If man is the tool-producing animal
- and he is not in every irrefutable definition - then pure humanity
certainly can include the apparatus. All definitions that include the
concept of art hostile to the apparatus do not make the subject
matter easy to manage but rather push 'art' out of reach and admit
their own ineffectiveness. Yet the point is to establish definitions
that make possible the management of the material in question.
Even if someone organized an experiment like ours or applied the
lessons from such an experiment only to make a routine film, i.e., a
film that 'serves recreation', uses 'art', is a commodity, tries to be
thematically regressive and formally progressive, is an 'art-work' in

* [Thomas Mann, 'Uber den Film',] Schunemanns Monatshefte, [Berlin, August]

1 928.

1 97
 THE THREEPENNY MATERIAL ( 1 9 3 0- 1 9 3 2 )

which 'human interest' plays a role and, by means of a few gestures

to the sociological experiment, puts under the court's protection all
practices that contribute to such a production, thereby acting in
complete agreement with the public, even then it would be more
useful to have undertaken such an experiment than to show how to
reach the conclusion that the German cinema is situated quantita­
tively far below the level of the Russian or for that matter the
American, or to express simply the indignation that in the cinema
good and useful apparatuses are misused. There is absolutely no
hope for success in projecting a certain 'culture' and trying to con­
vince 'reality' of it. By means of such deductions one simply forfeits
the opportunity to understand how reality functions and so to figure
out what are the revolutionary and what are the reactionary
tendencies in what has already happened. The experiment mobilizes
contradictions of this sort in the things and the processes and main­
tains the movement of the process itself during the investigation.
The sociological experiment shows social antagonisms without
resolving them. The organizers themselves must assume the position
of an interested party in the force field of opposing interests, a
thoroughly subjective, absolutely partisan perspective. In this way
the sociological experiment differs fundamentally from other
investigative methods that assume the most objective, disinterested
perspective possible on the part of the investigator. Without
pursuing these methods further, it can be stated that they have little
prospect of even modest success precisely because they assume
something no longer assumable, that an objective perspective is
possible in a radically antagonistic social system. Only the partici­
pating, active subject is capable of 'understanding' here. Assuming
this subjectivity, one could organize sociological experiments in
any dimension, one could even imagine something that the status
of current technology would not permit, just as one can conceive of
operations beyond the current reach of surgery. Above all, many
apparently private occasions must be developed for these under­
takings by changing their function, as the Threepenny lawsuit did.
The courts, and with them the press, must be involved systematically and
on a grand scale in organizing sociological experiments. Since the
public prosecutor in the bourgeois state in no way represents the
interests of the entirety, the interests of the individual injured party
being also those of the masses, court lawsuits can be used precisely
to bring into the public consciousness the deeper, less noticeable
social processes that constantly transpire and constitute bourgeois
practices. To comprehend the sociological experiment is to 'find a
handle' on reality. It does not come about in an act of observation,
 THE THREEPENNY LAW S U I T

it does not end when an observation has been made. Here

experience is supposed to provide the foundation of control. Most
public events, and the most important among them, are far from
developing a scientific consciousness. In comparison, science itself
works, of course, more consistently and methodically, but even
science will not be able to depend much longer on the primitive
organization of congresses at which the results of the division of
labour are exchanged. Discussion methods are needed that
resemble more closely collective thinking processes. The
materialist dialectic will elaborate these methods. But it will be of
the utmost importance that the objects come forth alive, at their
most complete level of functioning and not dead or excluded from
the production process (say, for the purpose of observation) .

1 99
This page intentionally left blank
 Part V
The Kuhle lWlmpe Film
(1932)
This page intentionally left blank
[The film Kuhle Wampe was planned and produced over the period of
almost a year in 1 93 1 . The credits as well as the original film poster list the
Bulgarian film maker Slatan Dudow (or Dudov in English) as director and
Brecht and Ernst Ottwalt as scriptwriters. The censorship card, however,
lists Brecht as director, assisted by Dudow. The film today is often
screened under both Dudow's and Brecht's names and in its post- 1960s
reception it has frequently been attributed - incorrectly - to Brecht alone.
According to regulations governing film distribution in the Weimar
Republic, Kuhle Wampe was submitted to the Film Inspection Board in
Berlin in March 1 932. On 3 1 March the Board announced its decision to
prohibit the film's release because of its emphatic propagandistic
tendencies. Two board members, as well as the production company
Praesens Film, appealed this decision and on 9 April the board met once
again (see below, 'Short Contribution on the Theme of Realism' and the
translator's notes to it), only to confirm its original judgment. Owing to
massive public protests and Praesens Film's willingness to cut scenes
considered by the Board to be inappropriate, the Berlin Film Inspection
Board met for a third time to consider the film on 2 1 April and agreed to
its release (with several additional cuts and limited to screenings for adults
only) . Kuhle Wampe had its first screening in Moscow in mid-May 1932,
with Brecht and Dudow present, and opened in Berlin in the Atrium
Cinema on 30 May 1 932. It ran successfully but briefly, falling victim to
the elimination of left-wing films with the accession to power by the
National-Socialists in March 1933. It was screened later in 1 932 in
Amsterdam, Paris (Cinema Falguiere) and London (Film Society) and
opened in New York City in February 1 934 (Gayety Theatre) under the
title Whither Germany? and in September 1 936 in Zurich.]

Film without Commercial Value

1 . A Communist film no longer has commercial value because

Communism is no longer a threat for the bourgeois public. It no
longer arouses interest. It would be different for a National­
Socialist film.

2. Artistically valuable films are commercially damaging because

they ruin the public's taste by improving it. They are themselves,
however, not commercial. (If they were, then the capitalist would
risk this dangerous improvement of taste for reasons of com­
petition, just as he would risk Communist propaganda.)
203
 T H E KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

3 . To earn their money, they are willing nevertheless to enable us

to produce a (damaging) film. To punish us for our opposition to
capitalism and for the essay 'The Threepenny Lawsuit', they
disregard our financial claims, thus exploiting our serious
difficulties.
Conversation on 22 January in the offices of Tobis.

[GBFA 2 1 /544. Typescript written in January 1 932. Brecht's comments

here indicate that, after the collapse of the Communist Prometheus Film
Company when the film Kuhle Wampe had almost been completed, it was
offered first to Tobis Film, but finally was taken on by Praesens Film. See
explanatory notes to the article 'The Sound Film Kuhle Wampe'.]

The Sound Film Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the

World?1

1.
Owing to a series of especially favourable circumstances (the
dissolution of a film company, the willingness of a private
individual to invest not too large a sum of money as well as his
acting talent in a film, etc.) we were able in summer 1 9 3 1 to use
the opportunity to produce a small film. 2 Fresh from our
experiences of the Threepenny lawsuit, we insisted on a contract -
for the first time in cinema history, we were told - that made us, the
film makers, the holders of the copyright in a legal sense. This cost
us our right to the usual remuneration, but we gained for our work
otherwise unobtainable liberties. Our small team consisted of two
scenarists, a director, a composer, a production manager and - last
but not least - a lawyer. 3 Obviously the organization of the work
caused us a lot more trouble than the (artistic) work itself, that is,
we gradually came to see the organization as an essential part of the
artistic work. This was possible only because the work as a whole
was political. Just as we were completing our work, which at all
times faced the possibility of interruption, after nineteen­
twentieths of the film had been shot and large sums of money spent
as well as loans taken out, one of our creditors, who held a
monopoly on the apparatuses we needed, told us that the company
had lost all interest in the release of our film and preferred to write
off the debt rather than to allow us to continue working.4 It
believed that qualitatively better films increased the expectations
on the part of the press, which did not necessarily coincide with

204
 THE S O U N D FILM KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORL D ?

those of the paying audience,* and that the film would not be
commercial because Communism no longer posed a threat in
Germany. On the other hand, other companies would not give us
credit because they feared the film would be censored, indeed less
by the state than by the cinema owners themselves. The former is,
of course, only the expression of the latter, since the state in any
case is not the impartial third party beyond the fray but rather the
executor of big business and, as such, one of the parties.

2. Description of the film

The sound film Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World? consists of
four independent parts that are separated by self-contained musical
compositions accompanied by images of apartment buildings,
factories and natural landscapes. The first part refers to a real
incident, showing the suicide of an unemployed youth in those
summer months when the destitution of the lower classes increased
because of emergency decrees: unemployment pay for young
people was discontinued. Before jumping out of the window, said
young man took off his watch so as not to damage it. The beginning
of this part shows the search for work as - work. The second part
shows the eviction of a family owing to the decision of a judge (who
uses the phrase 'their own fault' for the misfortunes of a family that
can no longer pay the rent) . t The family moves outside the city to
a campsite called Kuhle Wampe where they take up residence in
the tent of the daughter's boyfriend. 5 (The film for a while had the
working title 'Ante portas' .) There the young girl gets pregnant.
Subject to the pressure of the lumpen petty-bourgeois conditions
in the tent colony (the combination of a sense of owning a piece of
property and receiving a small government dole creates odd forms
of social behaviour), the young couple becomes engaged. On her
own initiative the girl breaks off the engagement. The third part
shows workers' athletic competitions . They take place on a mass
scale and are brilliantly organized. They have a political character,
and the recreation of the masses has the mark of militancy. Over

* [Although a foomote is marked here in the typescript, no note is provided; the

reference is probably to 'The Threepenny Lawsuit'.]
t This formulation 'their own fault' in eviction judgments is one of the already
shattered pillars that shamefully exposes past glory. Don't those who use this
infamous phrase notice that, by applying to themselves the concept 'without fault'
and to those whom they rob of their roofs the concept 'at fault', they forever
eliminate the concept of guilt. In fact, this is exactly what is happening here!
[Although no foomote number is marked, this note in the typescript most probably
refers to this sentence.]

205
 T H E KUHLE WA MPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

3,000 working-class athletes from the 'Fichte Hikers' participated

in this part. 6 The two young people from the second part are
among the athletes. The girl has had an abortion with the money
her girlfriends helped collect and the couple have dropped the idea
of marriage. The fourth part shows the people returning home by
rail as they discuss a newspaper article that reports on the
destruction of Brazilian coffee beans to support the commodity
market price.

3. Five poems from the film

1) Song of the Homeless (Constitution of the Reich?
2) On Nature in Springtime8
3) Song for the Athletic Competitions9
4) Solidarity Song10
5) The Appeal1 1

On the poems
The 'Song of the Homeless' was dropped for fear of a general
prohibition, 'The Appeal' for technical reasons.
The 'Solidarity Song' was sung by approximately 3,000
working-class athletes. The 'Song for the Athletic Competitions' is
sung by a solo voice during the motorbike and rowing races. 1 2
The poem 'On Nature in Springtime', spoken by a solo voice,
connects the lovers' three walks. This part of the film was screened
during the production for proletarian athletes and was criticized for
the nudity in it. 1 3

[GBFA 2 1/544-7. Unpublished typescript from 1 932, signed b y 'Brecht.

Dudow. Hollering. Kaspar. Ottwalt. Eisler. Scharfenberg.' Brecht's
secretary Elisabeth Hauptmann added the name of composer (Hanns)
Eisler, and Kaspar probably refers to the stage designer Caspar Neher,
whom Brecht often consulted.]

The Film Kuhle Wampe

The film Kuhle Wampe was made under great financial pressure by
the young director S [latan] Th [eodor] Dudow. Most of the scenes
had to be shot at the utmost speed, for example, a quarter of the
entire film in two days. 14 The only support we obtained came from
the Communist athletics groups who organized for us as many as
4000 working-class athletes on certain days. Owing to the
difficulties of constantly raising money the film production lasted

206
 S H O RT C ONTRI BUTION ON THE THEME OF REALISM

for over a year, and in the meantime developments in Germany

raced ahead (spread of fascism, increasing unemployment, etc.) . 1 5
When the film was finished, it was immediately prohibited by the
censor. 1 6 The film's content and purpose are best summarized by
presenting the reasons for the censor's decision to prohibit it.
We showed how certain working-class groups accommodate
themselves in a tired and passive way to the 'swamp' . The Interior
Ministry declared: this is an attack on Social Democracy. Such an
attack is prohibited just as an attack on the church, etc., that is, on
any institution which supports the state.
We showed: the fate of an unemployed youth who never finds his
way to the workers' militant struggle and who is driven to death by
the cutbacks in unemployment assistance for young people,
undertaken in the name of Bruning's emergency decrees . 1 7 The
Interior Ministry declared: this is an attack on the President who
signed the emergency decrees and who is here being accused of
insufficient concern for the welfare of suffering workers.
We showed the activity of the large Communist workers'
athletics groups that comprise in Germany about 200,000 workers
and place athletics in the service of the class struggle. The Interior
Ministry declared: this is a show.

[GBFA 2 1 /547-8. Unpublished fragmentary manuscript, written m

April/May 1 932 for the film's first preview in Moscow in mid-May.]

Short Contribution on the Theme of Realism

One seldom succeeds in testing the actual impact of artistic

methods. At the most one usually hears approval ('Yes, you
showed it just like we know it') or that it was 'provocative' in some
way. Here is a little test that succeeded.
With S [latan] Dudow and H [anns] Eisler, I made the film Kuhle
Wampe that depicts the desperate conditions of the unemployed in
Berlin. It consisted of a montage of several relatively self-contained,
short pieces. The first one showed the suicide of a young
unemployed worker. The censor raised questions about it, and
there was a meeting between the censor and the company's lawyers.
The censor proved to be an intelligent man. He said: No one
disputes your right to depict a suicide. Suicides happen. Moreover,
you can depict the suicide of an unemployed worker. That also
happens. I see no reason to hide that, gentlemen. But I object to

207
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

the way you have depicted the suicide o f your unemployed worker.
It does not accord with the general interest, which I must defend.
I am sorry I must make an artistic reproach.
We said (irritated) : ?
He continued: Yes, you will be astonished that I reproach your
depiction for not being sufficiently human. You have not depicted
a person but, well, let's admit it, a type. Your unemployed worker
is not a real individual, not a flesh-and-blood person, distinct from
every other person, with his particular worries, particular joys and
finally his particular fate. He is drawn very superficially. As artists
you must forgive me for the strong expression that we learn too little
about him, but the consequences are of a political nature and force
me to object to the film's release. Your film proposes that suicide
is typical, that it is not simply the act of this or that (pathologically
disposed) individual but rather the fate of an entire social class!
Your standpoint is that society induces young people to commit
suicide by denying them the possibility to work. And you do not
even shrink from indicating what one might advise the unemployed
to do in order to change the situation. No, gentlemen, you have not
behaved as artists, not here. You were not interested in showing the
shocking fate of an individual, which no one would prevent you
from doing.
We sat there disconcerted. We had the unpleasant impression of
being caught red-handed. Eisler cleaned his spectacles with a
gloomy expression, Dudow was bent over in pain. I stood up and
- despite my dislike of speeches - made a speech. I rigidly upheld
the untruth. I mentioned individual traits that we had given our
young unemployed worker. For example, that he laid his watch
aside before jumping out the window. I argued that this purely
human trait alone had inspired the entire scene. That we had
shown other unemployed workers who did not commit suicide,
4000 of them, because we had shot a large workers' athletics group.
I objected to the shocking reproach that we had not behaved
artistically and suggested the possibility of a press campaign against
such a charge. I was not ashamed to declare that my honour as an
artist was at stake.
The censor was not shy about going into details of the
presentation. Our lawyers watched with dismay as a real debate
about art ensued. The censor stressed that we had lent the suicide
act an explicitly demonstrative character. He used the expression
'something mechanical'. Dudow stood up and excitedly demanded
that medical opinions be sought from specialists. They would
testify to the fact that acts of this kind often evoke something

208
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

mechanical. The censor shook his head. That may be, he said
obstinately. But you must admit that your suicide avoids anything
that seems impulsive. The audience will not even want to stop him,
so to speak, which would be the expected reaction to an artistic,
humane, warm-hearted presentation. Good God, the actor does it
as if he were showing how to peel cucumbers!
We had a hard time getting our film through. Leaving the
building, we did not conceal our admiration for the astute censor.
He had penetrated far deeper into the essence of our artistic
intentions than our most supportive critics. He had taught a short
course on realism. From the perspective of the police.

[GBFA 2 1 1548-50. Unpublished typescript written in spring 1 932, after

the Film Inspection Board's decision on 9 April. The 'censor' refers to
Interior Ministry expert Kurt Haentzschel. Other parties at the meeting
included four members of the Inspection Board, two lawyers of the film
company Praesens Film (Otto Landsberg and Paul Dienstag), their
independent expert Harry Graf Kessler, two company representatives,
Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Ottwalt, Slatan Dudow, a board stenographer and a
photographer. The meeting was chaired by the director of the Film
Inspection Board, Ernst Seeger. Contrary to Brecht's report here, Hanus
Eisler is not documented as having been present at the meeting. See
Protokoll der Film-Oberpriifstelle, No. 4636, Berlin, 9 April 1 932.]

Kuhle Wampe or "Who Owns the World?

Scene segmentation

[Although the film's original screenplay, entitled Weekend - Kuhle Wampe,

is extant and was published in the appendix to volume 1 9 of GBFA (pp.
441-5 7 1 ) , that text represents no more than the working basis for the
completed film. Indeed, Brecht's contribution to this first version of the
screenplay was minor, probably consisting of the dialogues, whereas he
was involved both on the set and during the final editing of the film. Thus,
what follows is a translation adapted from the 'scene protocol' or
segmentation prepared in the late 1 960s by Wolfgang Gersch and Werner
Hecht (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1 969), using a 35mm copy of the
film owned by the State Film Archive in the German Democratic Republic
(East Germany), now held in the Federal Film Archive in Berlin. The
shot-length given in metres was measured at the speed of 0.456
metres/second, or five metres corresponds to 1 1 seconds' running time.]

209
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

[Reel I]
Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World?

Screenplay: Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Ottwald1 8

Music: Hanns Eisler
Director: S. Th. Dudow
Producer: George M. Hollering, Robert Scharfenberg
Cinematography: Gunther Krampf
Sound system: Tobis Melofilm System, Tobis-Klangfilm
Sound technician: Kroschke, Michelis
Sound editor: Peter Meyrowitz
Sets: Robert Scharfenberg, C . P. Haacker
Musical director: Josef Schmid
Orchestra: Lewis Ruth
Cast: Hertha Thiele [Anni Bonike] , Martha Wolter
[Gerda] , Lilli Schonbom [Mrs Bonike] , Ernst
Busch [Fritz] , Adolf Fischer [Kurt] , Max
Sablotzki [Mr Bonike], Gerhard Bienert [man
with a goatee] , Alfred Schafer [Franz Bonike] .
[Others not listed in the credits include: Willi
Schur (Otto, a guest at the engagement party),
Martha Burchardi, Karl Heinz Carell, Karl
Dahmen, Fritz Erpenbeck, Josef Hanoszek,
Richard Hilgert, Hermann Krehan, Paul
Kretzburg, Anna Miiller-Lincke, Rudolf
Nehls, Erich Peters, Oily Rummel, Martha
Seemann, Hans Stem, Karl Wagner, Hugo
Werner-Kahle and the agit-prop theatre group
'Das rote Sprachrohr' (Red Megaphone) .]
'Ballads: Helene Weigel, Ernst Busch

World distribution and rental: Praesens Film GmbH, Berlin SW 48

210
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD ?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

1 1 .6 m fast montage [Title 1): One

shots 1-30 unemployed worker less
accompanied
by rapid,
staccato music

2 2m fade-in Brandenburg Gate

!Berlin)

3 1 .7 m dissolve factory yard, 4 smokestacks

in foreground

4 1 .6 m long shot factory buildings on right

and left sides of street,
connected by a closed bridge;
the Spree River in the
background.

5 4.5 m camera pans a train moves into the frame

right from the left towards the
camera; the smoke envelops
the windows of a nearby
apartment building

6---1 3 6 . 5 m brief shots of large apartment

buildings and back courtyards
in Berlin working-class district

1 4--30 13.7 m montage of '20 instead of 26 Weeks'

front-page I Vossische Zeitung,
newspaper 2 October 1 931 )
headlines 'Westfa lia South splits off'
!Deutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung, 5 March)
'Spy war of the I ron
Front . . . aga inst the officials'
I Viilkischer Beobachten
'Against the Btitz-Pension'
ILokai-Anzeiger, 24 October
1 930)
'Japan accepts' I Germania,
1 March)
'Unity London-Paris'
I Vorwarts, Berliner
Volksblatt. 24 January 1 93 1 )
' O n e Billion a n d 800 Million'
!Die Rote Fahne, 5 June 1931 )
. . . urtius on his foreign policy'
!Berliner Tageblatt und
Handelszeitung, 1 1 February
1931 )
rapid shots of '2.5 million without work, the
entire front result of Mr Schacht's policies'

211
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

pages that '314 million unemployed!'

roll upward 'Four million! In crease of
out of the unemployed under pressure
image frame of young'
'Unemployment increases!
2.700,000 seeking jobs in
June'
'4.1 million unemployed. Rapid
increase in unemployment in
August'
'Almost 4.5 million unemployed I
Increase of 1 80,000 in second
half of December'
'Almost 5 million unemployed I
On 15 November 4,844,000 I
Increase since 1 November is
220,000'
'Over 5 million unemployed &
part-time workers I
Unemployment increases again'
'31 5,000 unemployed i n Berlin
1 00,000 unemployed without
music ends su pport'

31 4m fade-in newspaper title: 'Employment

fade-out Classifieds', Berliner Lokal-
Anzeiger (free l

32 33.9 m fade-in, long street with pillar covered in

shot, music advertising posters, street
begins workers in the background;
pedestrians and bikers enter
from both sides, park their
bikes, greet one another, wait
or walk away; the young Biinike
is the third to enter; he stands
with his bike to the right of the
column

33 6.5 m medium shot unemployed workers waiting

with their bikes; people on foot
join them and build a group

34 2.5 m see 32 the entire street is now filled

with unemployed people waiting

35 8m medium shot a biker enters from the right

with newspapers, gets off the
bike and distributes the papers;
the unemployed push to grab a
copy from his hands and try to
get out of the c rowd

2!2
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD ?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Desc ription Title I Dialogue

36 4.9 m close-up the unemployed push up to the

newspaper seller

37 3.6 m close-up young Bon ike scans the

classifieds quickly but
ca refully; others read in the
background

38 4.9 m close-up the distributor gives away the

last copy and waves away the
others; the unemployed move
off, among them a helpless,
he avy woman

39 3.6 m medium unemployed sit on their bikes

and read the classifieds; young
Bon ike puts the paper in his
pocket and takes off on his bike

40 3.1 m full shot several men from the group

follow Btinike on their bikes

41 2.6 m full shot the bikers go from right to left

past houses, cars, streetc ars

42 3.9 m medium shot bikes going from right to left,

camera in front framed so that only the feet
of bikes pumping the pedals are seen

43 2.2 m medium shot the bikers pass apartment

buildings; the first three pass
by, with Bon ike in the middle

44 2m see 42 downhill the bikers do not have

to pump so much

45 1 .6 m full shot bikers enter back right, a

horse-d rawn wagon passes in
the foreground; the
camera pans approaching bikers pass
left through a building entry

46. 4m full shot in a building courtya rd, on a

window the sign 'gatekeepe r';
pushing his bike, Biinike goes
to the window where we see
the gatekeeper's face;
apparently he gives a negative
answer; Btinike exits the frame,
the next biker enters, gets off
and after hearing 'no', drives
off again; gatekeeper hangs a
sign in the window; the third
biker hardly pauses and the
fou rth rides right by

2 13
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

47 2.1 m close-up the sign in the window written [Sign): Workers will not
in chalk be hired'

48 1 .8 m see 46 two bikers ride right by the

window

49 2.9 m close-up travelling shot with bikers from

left to right

50 1 .9 m medium, Bon ike i n foreground on bike,

travelling shot in the background buildings
and street traffic

51 2.4 m close-up, bikers as in 49; front wheel and

travelling shot handlebars of bike

52 9.4 m full shot factory yard; six unemployed

bikers with Bon ike in the lead
ride in quickly from the left
through an arch in the
slow pan up, background; rows of windows
pause at top, on the six-floor building;
quick pan down bikers race out of the yard,
Biinike now in third position

53 2.2 m close-up shot in front of the fast-moving

bike wheels; feet pumping fast

54 1 .8 m extreme Biinike's head, its movements

close-up suggest the fast rhythm of the
bikers; he looks back at his
'pursuers'

55 2m see 53

56 1 6.5 m long shot a street leads from background

into the foreground, on the
right a building with the half-
covered sign 'Glass . . . ;
'

the six bikers ride towards

the camera and turn into a
pan right factory yard where a truck
cab and trailer are standing;
in the background a n outdoor
elevator;
another biker with a piece of
glass under his arm crosses
in the opposite direction the
path of the group of six;
shortly thereafter the bikers
return, pushing their bikes;
young Bon ike crushes the
newspaper into a wad and
tosses it; in the background
they meet up with others who

2 14
 K UHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD ?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

are pushing a wheelba rrow

music ends with c rates in it

[Reel II]

57 5.5 m full shot the bikers enter from the right,

music from far pushing their bikes along the
away - polka street; young Biinike nods to
medley an older unemployed worker
and enters an apartment
building

58 3.1 m low angle; courtya rd fac;ade of a back

music louder wing of the building

59 1 3.3 m full shot in the small back court two

street musicians (harmonium
and saw) play with their backs
to the camera; in the back-
ground a crumbling fac;ade and
a basement apartment entry;
Biinike enters rig ht, pushing
his bike, pauses to watch and
listen to the musicians, then
exits left

60 1 8.9 m medium shot Biinike family's living-room; Mr

Biinike lies on the sofa covered
with lace, reading a newspaper;
a certain a rticle interests him,
he sits up, puts the paper on
the table, takes his pencil stub
from a jacket pocket and M r Biinike: The boy
writes a note on it; a plate is won't get support at all
placed on the table; any more.
he looks up at the mother, who M r Biinike: You don't
is setting the table; she doesn't care about a nything any
answer; he puts the pencil more do you.
away and continues reading

61 2.7 m medium shot in the foreground a bicycle

hangs from the ceiling; young
Biinike is tying the pulley rope
to a nail; the music outside
breaks off; he takes off his cap
and exits right

62 9.5 m medium shot young Biinike enters the living-

pan to table room and goes to the table,
sitting down across from his
father; he looks at his father
and then looks away blankly;

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Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

his father looks him over and

then turns away, playing with
his spoon;
a soup terrine is put on the
table, the cover raised, soup is
ladled into the father's bowl

63 5.8 m medium shot the mother, only half in the

frame, serves the soup; the
door to the kitc hen in the
background opens and Anni
enters; Anni: Hello !
she removes her hat, takes a Anni: The welfare office
comb out of her purse and is going to pay the back
combs her hair rent for the Schulzes
next door.

64 9.4 m full shot father and son eat while the Mrs Bon ike [to Anni]:
mother puts another plate on They won't pay a penny
the table; for us.
she closes the soup terrine Mr Bi:inike: You never
and sits down; Anni enters know. At the welfare
from left and sits down with office they take it as it
her back to the camera comes.

65 5m close-up frontal shot of the mother Mrs Bi:inike: 'The early

eating soup bird gets the worm.' If
you don't try anything,
how can you be
surprised things go to
pot.

66 2.1 m long shot unemployed workers riding

their bikes at high speed on a
street, following the camera

67 1 .4 m medium shot over-the-shoulder of the son to Mr Bi:inike: And the boy

the father doesn't even bother to
greet the building
manager.

68 4.4 m medium shot over-the-shoulder of the Anni: Greeting won't help

mother to Anni and the father; when you haven't paid
Anni continues to eat the rent in six months.
Mr Bi:inike [angry]: He
can damn well say hello.
Unemployed and impolite
to boot. no one can
afford that.

69 1 .4 m medium shot over-the-shoulder of the son to Mrs Bon ike [sternly to

the mother her son]: That's not the
way to get a job.

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 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

70 3.1 m see 68 Mr Btinike [to son on the

righd: Not that way, not
when impolite.
Anni: Not when polite
either!

71 0.9 m medium over-the-shoulder of the Anni: There are no jobs.

mother to Anni

72 2.3 m see 42 the unemployed on their bikes,

pumping the pedals

73 4.6 m medium shot between mother and son to Mr Btinike [to Anm]: You
Anni and the father, who can be poor, you can
gesti culates wildly with his have bad luck. But there
spoon are also people who
don't have bad luck
seven months in a row.
Anni: You think the boy is
especially lazy.
Mr Btinike: Yes, that's
what I think.

74 6.8 m full shot the mother from behind, the Anni [provocatively]: And
son on the left, Anni on the you? How far did you
right, the father frontal get? You've got no
more than the dole in
your pocket too.
Mr Btinike stands up, rests his M r Btinike: You don't
hands on the table and shouts have to waste your time
at Anni at the unemployment
office the whole day and
then come home with
your lip. Hard-working
M r Btinike exits right people get on.
Mrs Btinike [to her
husband]: Good God,
what will the neighbours
think?

75 1 m medium shot Mr Btinike agitatedly pulls on

his ja cket in front of the
kitchen door and looks angrily
at his family

76 1 .4 m medium shot the young Btinike sits and

stares blankly at the table and
the empty plates

77 1 m see 75 M r Btinike goes to the kitchen

and exits left

78 5.3 m close-up; pan Mrs Btinike scrapes the Mrs Btinike: Every day
to Mrs leftovers onto a plate the same fight.
Btinike's face

2 17
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2)

Shot Length Editing I Sound Desc ription Title I Dialogue

79 3.2 m full shot, Mr Bon ike in the stairwell

sound of steps descending

80 8.9 m full shot Anni and her brother, who still

stares blankly, sit sile ntly at the
table; the mother cleans up,
folds the tablecloth and
places a bowl on the table

81 1 .6 m close-up Anni looks up and smiles at

her brother

82 3.7 m close-up over-the-shoulder of Anni to

her b rother, who stares
impenetrably into the void

83 2.9 m close-up Anni smiles and then looks

serious

84 9m full shot Mrs Biinike cleans up in the

kitchen, removes her apron
and exits left

85 1 0. 1 m full shot young Bon ike sits at the table

in the foreground; Anni stands
at the mirror in the background
and puts on make-up; someone
whistles, Anni turns, moves
pan left off left and bends out of the
window; Anni: Coming!
pan right she returns to the mirror,
finishes her make-up, puts the
lipstick in her purse and exits
right

86 3.3 m full shot a wall-hanging above the 'Don't blame the morn
kitchen table with a proverb that brings hardship and
and embroidered flowers work, It's wonderful to
care for those one loves.'

87 27.7 m medium shot sitting at the table, young

Biinike listens to the receding
footsteps of his sister; when
he hears no more, he rises,
camera pans goes to the window, opens
and follows both casements abruptly, and
Biinike grips them with both his hands;
he looks at his left arm with
camera dollies the watch, turns to the left,
in on watch removes it slowly and ca refully
(close-up) puts it on the chest of drawers;
he turns to the window again,
places the flower pot to the
side, and climbs onto the sill

2!8
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

88 6.5 m see 79 M rs Biinike slowly climbs the

steps, ca rrying a heavy bag

89 3m close-up young Biinike's left hand holds

onto to the upper window
frame; as he jumps, his head
and left shoulder appear in
the image; the hand lets go
and a horrible scream is heard
from below

90 3.1 m close-up the window sill with the

displaced flower pot

91 3.1 m extreme the wristwatch, showing

close-up six o'clock

92 2.1 m see 42 and 72 the unemployed on their bikes,

pumping the pedals

93 3.1 m medium shot the bike suspended from the

ceiling, over a metal bedframe

94 4.3 m long shot, excited people gathered round

high angle from Biinike's body, which is
window covered with a tarpaulin

95 3.7 m full shot part of the group (a woman, a

worker, a child, a cop); in the
background a woman and two
children look out of the window;
Anni and her boyfriend Fritz
voices push through the c rowd from
of playing the left; he looks at the
children covered body, then at the cop

96 5.3 m medium shot, Fritz and Anni look down, Fritz [to the cop]: What
children's at each other and then at the have you done now?
voices covered body Woman: Jumped from
the window.

97 4.8 m full shot, low two women on a stairwell 1 st woman: And he put
angle landing; a third goes up to the wristwatch on the
join them table first.
2nd woman: Of course,
it would have been
ruined, from the fourth
floor.

98 4m medium shot, three children (silhouettes Child [lefll : Which

extreme low against the sky) look up, a window was it?
angle, corner of the building in the Child [right, pointing]:
children's upper right corner ofthe That one!
voices from image Child [middle, pointing]:
afar Nah, not that one, There.

2 I9
 T H E KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Desc ription Title I Dialogue

99 1 .3 m close-up a woman on the stairwell Woman: One

landing unemployed worker less.

1 00 2.6 m full shot, five women in the stairwell 1 st woman: Such a

high angle young man.
2nd woman: And the
father doesn't know a
thing yet.

1 01 16.6 m medium shot M r Biinike sta nding with Mr Biinike: They've got
another man at a bar, each 7 million unemployed i n
with a h alf-full glass of beer; America to o.
they drink chasers and smoke Man: Well, before they
used to drive to work in a
car and now they're
demonstrating because
of unemployment.
Mr Biinike: But on foot!
Man [nods in agreemend

1 02 1.5 m close-up over-the-shoulder of a police Officer: Motive for the

offi cer to the cop, behind are deed?
heads of the crowd Cop: Unknown!

1 03 1 .7 m close-up stairwell Old woman: Such a

young man. He had his
best years still to come.

1 04 4.3 m full shot; a police ambulance on the

camera pans street; the driver noisily slams
with driver; the door and moves left to get
noise of the in the car; the ambulance
car drives off and turns right

[Reel III]

1 05 2.6 m [Title II]: The best years

of a young man

1 06- 50.2 m dissolves forest paths, forest in sunshine,

1 21 between short grasses and trees waving in
takes; music the wind; the wind increases,
grows more shaking the grass and making
agitated with waves on the lake
the wind

1 22 6.3 m medium shot a judge sits behind his bench Judge [slowly]: I n the
covered with files at his right; matter of the building
he takes one, pages through it owner [fast, monotone]
and reads the judgment; Gustav Ste phan, plaintiff,
against 1 . Franz Biinike,
2. his wife Greta, nee
Mohr, acc used, due to

220
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

non-payment of rent, the

court has decided . . .

1 23 6.4 m full shot Mrs Bon ike is standing on a (off-voice of judge): . . .

ladder in the empty living-room, the accused are
removing the hanging light sentenced to abandon
from the ceiling; she descends apartment to the plaintiff.
and exits left with the lamp; Although the acc used
sun shines through the has been unemployed for
window in the background a long period, the Biinike
couple could have paid
the overdue rent with a
bit of good will. Their
current difficulties must
be seen as their own
fault.

1 24 1 .3 m see 122 the judge takes another file Judge: In the name of
from the pile the people.

1 25 2m close-up O n a door a white sign printed [Sign): Court 234,

in black letters, with the Division: Rental Issues
numbers pasted on

1 26 3.6 m medium shot over-the-shoulder of Anni to a n

official, sitting a t a desk,
behind him a file case full of
files; he reads, looks up at
Anni and makes gestures
regretfully with his hand

127 2.3 m long shot the courthouse corridor, Anni

shuts the door where the sign
of 1 25 is hanging, exits right

1 28 5.6 m full shot, Anni is walking quickly on the

parallel sidewalk, often masked by
travelling shot; parked cars; in the background
street noise are storefronts and other
pedestrians

1 29 2m close-up [Sign): Welfare Office

Room 1 5

1 30 2.1 m medium shot Anni sitting on a bench; on the

left a door opens, an official
enters halfway and hands Anni
a piece of paper with a
regretful gesture

131 4.3 m see 1 28 a different street

132 3.4 m medium shot over-the-shoulder shot of Anni

to the fat building manager
who looks out of his door with

221
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

a n unfriendly mien; closes the [Sign]: To the Building

door with the sign . . . Manager

1 33 3.2 m close-up, Anni is walking along a street

parallel with store fronts
travelling shot

1 34 1 .4 m close-up [Doorbell sign]: Braun,

Bailiff, 5-7 p.m.

135 2.7 m close-up the head of an older man

framed i n a door; has a look of
regret on his face

136 3.5 m see 133 other pedestrians in the

background

1 37 2.1 m medium shot a telephone booth; Anni enters

from right and opens the door
ofthe booth

1 38 4.7 m medium shot a car repair shop; Fritz is in the

loud workshop pit under a car spray-washing
noise the motor; Voice: Fritz, telephone!
he puts aside the hose and
exits

1 39 2.3 m full shot in the repair shop, with gas

tanks, ads for Shell Oil on the
wall; Fritz, dressed in work
clothes, walks towards the
back of the shop to a door with
a shelf on which the telephone
sits; takes off his cap and lifts
the receiver

1 40 1 .8 m close-up Anni's head through a glass

pane of the telephone booth,
the receiver pressed to her ear

1 41 1 3.1 m medium shot Fritz leans on his left elbow Anni's voice: It's come
while talking on the phone to the eviction now. The
bailiff was just there. The
furniture is out on the
street.
Fritz [matter-of-fact/y]:
Yes, and now what?
Anni's voice: Yes, and
now what?
Fritz: Then you'll just
have to come out to my
place at Kuhle Wampe.
Anni's voice: Is that
possible?
Fritz [laughing]:

222
 KUHLE WA MPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD ?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

Naturally. I'll bring a car

fade-out for the furniture.

1 42 3.4 m fade-in spare tyre on the back hood of Off-voice of

extreme close- an open convertible that drives commentator during
up away from the camera; shots 1 42-48:
see 1 04 slight the Btinike's street; the open About one hour by bus
pan car - loaded with furniture from metropolitan Berlin,
and household appliances - set among the grass
dissolve turns right at the corner and woods on . . .

1 43 l .l m close-up Fritz, in a black suit with white . . . the inviting shores of

shirt and tie, sits at the steering the Miiggel Lake, not
wheel, Anni is next to him, far from the Miiggel hills,
dissolve holding a coffee grinder is the tent colony . . .

144 2.2 m full shot busy city street; the open car . . . Kuhle Wampe,
travelling shot looks like a hay wagon Germany's oldest
front of car overflowing with an entire weekend colony. It was
dissolve household established in 1913 with
ten or twenty tents. Afte r
the War it . . .

1 45 1 .6 m medium shot shot over the car's radiator . . . expanded to such an

through the windshield, Fritz extent that it now
and Anni with furniture piled comprises ninety-three
dissolve behind them tents in which three . . .

146 3.9 m full shot the car turns right; street . . . hundred persons are
travelling shot traffic with cars and bicycles housed. The pedantic
in front of car cleanliness within the
dissolve colony and in its
surroundings is
remarkable. The . . .

47 4.8 m medium shot the car is driving on a road . . . colony 'Kuhle

through a forest Wampe Club Supporters'
dissolve is a member of the
Central Organization
of . . .

1 48 4.4 m long shot in the background the car . . . Beach Clubs Inc. The
turns into a sandy forest path Club's relationship with
and drives towa rds the camera the authorities is
currently a good one.

149 2.5 m travelling shot an oval sign hanging between [Sign]: Kuhle Wampe
music starts: two trees Club Supporters
'Schwarzen-
berg March'

1 50 6m high angle full a descending path seen

shot through branches from high
angle; Fritz, Anni, M r and Mrs

223
 THE KUHLE WA MPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

Biinike carry furniture and

household goods

151 5.5 m medium shot Mrs B1inike comes with a

chair under her left arm
towards the camera; Mrs
pan Biinike from behind ca rrying a
washbowl stand and folding
stool with the right arm

1 52 3.6 m close-up on a table next to two cups and Radio voice: You just
music from flowers is a radio with a large, heard the '
shot 149 ends horn-shaped loudspeaker, on Schwarzenberg
the right a seated woman March', written in 1814,
in our programme of
'Army Marches Old and
New'

1 53 9m full shot on the right a row of large, Radio voice: Now you
neat living tents with sun will hear the march
shades and flower pots in 'Deutsche Kaiserkliinge'
front of the windows; Fritz German Imperial Tune].
music starts enters from the right with the
Biinike family; they place
furniture next to a tent; Fritz
helps Mr Biinike move a chest
of drawers and they go back
on the same path, leaving
Mrs Biinike behind

1 54 2.8 m long shot large tents in the forest; a man

with a backpack pushes his
bike, following him a woman
in long trousers

1 55 2.8 m full shot images of the tent colony:

people working on their tents,
sitting down, running by, etc.

1 56 2.8 m medium shot two men and a woman

ca rry a boat

1 57 2.8 m full shot people on reclining chairs,

strollers in bathing suits

1 58 3.3 m see 1 53 Fritz and Mr Biinike come with

a sofa; M rs Biinike and Anni
ca rry a small table into the tent

1 59 1 .5 m full shot between the tents is a sign

pointing the way

160 2.7 m medium shot a g ravestone in the sand with [Inscription]: Here rests
a wreath in front of it our last hope for work:
'Kuhle Wampe'

224
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

161 1 .4 full shot a bicycle, folding table and

kitchen utensils at the entry
to a tent

1 62 1 .3 m medium shot a shirtless man in a reclining

chair smokes a cigar

163 1 .4 m close-up the head of a young man

reading the paper

164 1 .4 m medium shot group playing cards

165 1 .4 m medium shot two chess players, a third man

watches

1 66 1 .3 m medium shot a woman sitting next to a tent Radio voice: Attention,

music from is embroidering Berlin! You just heard
1 53 ends the march 'Deutsche . . . '

1 67 1 .4 m medium shot a man sitting in a tent and Radio voice: . . .

cleaning mushrooms Kaiserklange'. That
completes today's
morning programme . . .

168 1 .3 m full shot a man sits near a tent and Radio voice: . . . from
peels potatoes the Berlin Broadcast
Hour.

169 1 .4 m medium shot seen through the entry to a

tent a woman is busy cooking

1 70 1 .4 m close-up three hotplates with pots

171 1 .6 m close-up over-the-shoulder of a man

who lifts a spoon to his mouth,
fade-out he blows it and shakes his head

1 72 1 0.6 m fade-in, full a second tent has been added

shot in front of Fritz's tent; he
pounds at a stake for the new
tent grabs a new rope and
pounds that stake into the
ground; Anni hands him the
third rope; Fritz looks at Anni,
pounds some more and then
stops to look at her again

1 73 7.7 m medium shot Anni stands in front of the

orchestral mirror in a slip and combs her
music starts: hair; she takes a pencil from
'Das her purse, leans towards the
FrOhjahr' [The mirror and darkens her
Spring] eyebrows

174 7.1 m full shot Fritz paces back and forth in

front of his tent; after a while
Anni comes out in a dress with

225
 THE KUHLE WAMPE F I LM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Desc ription Title I Dialogue

a cap o n her head and a purse

under her arm; Fritz takes her
arm and they exit right

175 9.6 m long shot forest bathed in sunshine; Anni Off-voice: [1] The play
Helene Weigel and Fritz enter from left, of the sexes renews
sings the ballad walking on a path which they itself I Each spring.
'The Spring,' then leave; at first Fritz has his That's when the lovers I
accompanied hands in his pockets, then he Come together. The
by orchestra puts his arm round Anni's gently caressing hand I
waist; they disappear behind Of her lover brings a
some trees tingle to the girl's breast. I
Her fleeting glance
seduces him.
[2] The countryside in
spring I Appears to the
lovers in a new light. I
The air is already warm. I
The days are getting long
and the fields I Stay light
for a long time

176- 43.1 m montage of nature shots: leaves and grass [3] Boundless is the
1 86 images moving in the wind, the forest, growth of trees and
a meadow, a tall birch, a grasses I In spring. I
tree silhouette against the Incessantly fruitful I Is
sky the forest, are the
meadows, the fields. I
And the earth gives birth
to the new I Heedless of
caution.19

187 8.2 m see 1 75 Fritz and Anni come out of the

forest and go back, he with his
hands in his pockets, she
following at some distance;
he looks back over his
shoulder at her; they exit left

[Reel IM

1 88 1 0.3 m fade-in; M r and Mrs Biinike are sitting Mr Biinike: I am a

medium shot in the tent, nea rby the courtesan but not a spy,
petroleum lamp is on a small a courtesan who was
table; M r Biinike holds a cigar paid well for her love,
in his right hand and a news- who demanded and got
paper in the left from which he five thousand, even thirty
reads aloud slowly, sometimes thousand as the just
spelling out words; across price for her favours.
from him on the right Mrs That was the refrain of
Biinike is sitting on a metal- Mata Hari's defence . . .

226
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

frame bed with a pencil in her [inhales his cigar].

hand, unnoticed by her
husband

189 1 .2 m extreme the worried face of Mrs Biinike Mr Biinike's voice: . . .

close-up Among her favourites
were . . .

190 1 .7 m close-up Mrs Biinike is calc ulating her M r Biinike's voice: . . .

household expenses in a also, as it was put, the
notebook: bread 45, potatoes one-time . . .
1 5, margarine 30, cheese 1 5,
liverwurst 20, onions 1 5,
cabbage 38, herring 25, cigars
30, salt 1 5, fat 45; she draws
a line

1 91 1 .2 m close-up liverwurst with a price-tag Mr Biinike's voice: . . .

'Y. Ib. liverwurst 20 pfennigs police president of
Berlin, Jagow . . .'

192 1 .4 m medium shot potatoes with a price-tag Mr Biinike's voice: . . .

' 1 0 lbs. 20 pfennigs' the Prince of
Braunschweig . . .

193 1 .4 m medium shot Mrs Biinike's hand writes Mr Biinike's voice: . . .

Mr von Jagow got to
know Mata Hari
when . . .

194 4.7 m medium shot Mr Biinike, who is now sitting Mr Biinike: . . . she
upright, holds the paper in performed at the Winter
front of his eyes Garden. He visited her
backstage to see how
the nude dance . . . Mata
Hari . . . and whether
everything . . .

1 95 2m extreme Mrs Biinike's head M r Biinike's voice: . . .

close-up was legal. She was
called the Queen of
Dance . . .

1 96 1 .3 m close-up package of rendered fat with Mr Biinike's voice: . . .

price-tag Vl lb. excellent veal but known as the
fat, home -style 45' Queen of Sensual
Pleasures . . .

197 2.6 m close-up herring with price-tag 'special M r Biinike's voice: . . .

sale! best German herring, 1 2 The rich connoisseurs
pieces 50 pfennigs, about admired her as a
2 1bs.' delicacy of the rarest
kind . . .

198 7.7 m medium shot Mr Biinike holds the news- Mr Biinike: . . . The effect

22 7
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot length Editing I Sound Desc ription Title I Dialogue

paper comfortably again; Mrs of her dances came

Bon ike continues to write her especially from the veils
accounts in the notebook; in and nudity, from the
the background the wall- snake-like and lustful
hanging from the previous movements, in short,
apartment can be seen from the [phonetic
(shot 86) sounding ouo symbolism
of love or-gies, as seen
indeed . . .

1 99 1 .9 m extreme Mrs Btinike's h andwriting Mr Btinike's voice: . . . i n

close-up the expressive dances of
the most primitive . . .

200 1 .2 m close-up onions with the price-tag Mr Btinike's voice: . . .

'onions 1 5llb.' and oriental peoples . . .

201 15.4 m medium shot over-the-shoulder from the Mr Bon ike: . . . Only her
father to the mother, who small breasts were
writes while sunk in thought covered by small,
chiselled copper
plaques. The upper arms
and ankles were
decorated with bracelets
set with gleaming jewels.
Otherwise she was
naked, from her
fingertips to her toes . . .
[he puffs smoke]

202 l.l m close-up bread with price-tag 'bread 45' Mr Btinike's voice: . . .
The dance revealed her
flexible and firm
structure in its an-
androgenous agility.
Between the arching
lines reaching from her
open under . . .

203 1 m close-up margarine with price-tag Mr Btinike's voice: . . .

'margarine Y2 lb. 30 pfennigs' arm below her raised
hands . . .

204 l.l m close-up cheese with price-tag 'best Mr Btinike's voice: . . .

farmer's mountain cheese to the depression at her
Y, lb. 30 pfennigs' waist . . .

205 21 m medium shot from behind Mr Bon ike to Mr Bon ike: . . . The legs
Mrs Btinike were a n ideal shape and
were raised like two fine
columns of a pagoda.
The knee caps were like
two round lily buds.
Everything had a

228
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

delicate am-amber
colour. Everywhere gold
and pink lights played.
Born on the column's
Anni enters, takes off her cap ca pital of long, softly
and sits down next to her arched thighs the narrow
pan to right mother, dejected; Anni looks ivory-coloured
pan to Anni at Mrs Biinike and then turns stomach . . .
slow fade-out away Anni: H i !

206 7.7 m fade-in, full in front ofthe tent Fritz and Fritz [mutters -
shot Anni are leaning on a table, incomprehensible)
silently standing next to each
other; Mrs Biinike comes out
and goes round the two to the
back of the tent; both watch
her, then lower their heads
again

207 1m extreme the serious faces of Fritz and Fritz: Were you there?
close-up Anni Anni: It's too dirty there.
fade-out [pause) I'm not going to
ruin my life.

208 1 1 .1 m fade-in, full Anni and Mr Biinike are sitting Mr Biinike [threatening):
shot in the tent at the table in front If a nything happens,
of the window; both are eating; [ very loud] I'll beat you
Anni jumps up, throws some- to a pulp.
thing on the floor, grabs her
cap and purse and exits right;
Mr Biinike watches her and
pushes his chair angrily to the
fade-out side.

209- 1 5.9 m fade-in, full women workers are sitting

211 shot near each other at a n
assembly line; they take a pa rt,
do their task rapidly, and place
it back on the conveyor belt;
an intercut shot shows a single
woman who is working at the
medium shot line on a n electrical unit; then
factory noise the working line again with the
begins women's rapid movements

212 2.9 m pan electrical testing device

medium shot serviced by women and girls;
Anni in a work apron behind a
protective grille, back-to-back
with her colleague Gerda; the
space between their two work
tables is closed off by a rope [Sign): High voltage!

229
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Desc ription Title I Dialogue

with a sign hanging from it Danger! Life-threatening!

213 5.2 m close-up Anni tests various contacts of

object with two wired poles; in
the background there are
other women

214 5.2 m see 212 Gerda !turned towards

Anni): Don't lie, some-
thing is the matter with
you.
Anni [to Gerda): Don't
make trouble here at
both continue working on the work, otherwise I'll be
assembly line fired tomorrow.

215 3.5 m close-up Gerda tests a n object, reading

off the measurement; Anni in
the background

216 3m see 21 2 Anni [to Gerda): I ca n't

stand it any more. If it
goes on, I'm moving
away from out there.

217 5m see 209

218 4m see 210

factory noise
stops (see 21 1 )

219 7.5 m medium shot, a car radiator over a pit; Fritz

pan down sprays the engine, another
repairman is busy
greasing it

220 1 .9 m extreme the car's radiator

close-up

221 6.1 m medium shot continues 219 Worker [turned to Fritz):

Paying alimony and
single taxes, you might
as well get married.
Fritz continues his work Fritz [looking at him
briefly!; Nonsense.
Fritz [after a pause): I
want my freedom.

222 3.9 m medium shot Fritz working, silently

fade-out

223 9.5 m fade-in in Fritz's tent; Anni is sitting at Anni: Where are you
the coffee table, Fritz is going?
standing next to it, he takes Fritz: I still have to wash
his jacket; a car tonight.
finishes his cup of coffee; Anni [reproachfullyl: You

2 30
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Desc ription Title I Dialogue

he exits quickly left, followed wanted to talk with

by Anni Father tonight.
Fritz: But I can do it
tomorrow too.

224 6.1 m medium shot Anni and Fritz walk along a

path, followed by the camera;
a group of children comes
their way

225 0.9 m extreme Anni looks down at the

close-up children

226 1.1 m long shot children passing by

227 l.l m extreme Anni's face

close-up

228- 34.9 simultaneous Anni's visions: children's faces [Sign): 'Dr me d.

256 dissolves circle round her; her head Dohmeyer, Gynaecology
image montage gradually fades out; children's 4-6'
accompanied faces, a baby, children's faces; [Ad): 'Nestle's sweetened
by increasingly poster ad with nursing mother; milk and children's pap'
rapid music the children passing by; cod [Sign): 'Free office
(motifs from liver oil ad with a man ca rrying consultation and
the film and a fish on his back; pre-printed advising for pregnant
children's pink slip filled in with reason mothers, hours Monday,
songs) for layoff 'no work'; children's Tuesday, Thursday 9-10'
faces; a baby basket with [Ad): 'Scott's emulsion for
'heaven'; ad for Nivea baby our children'
soap; shop window with baby [Sign): 'Strieber, midwife'
shoes; waving baby with [Sign): 'No waiting! No
pacifier in a carriage; ad for medical exam! Under
Nestle children's pap; state control WORRY-
decorated coffins in a shop; FREE Funeral Insurance
identity card from the G roup Inc., Cremation'
employment office with the
following information: Anna
Biinike, born 28 June 1 91 1 , in
Berlin; residence in Berlin,
27 Tritt St, single, occupation
- worker, group 52, date 1 1
January 1 932, form no. 4879,
payday - Wednesday; house
fa�ade (see 58); group of
people surrounding the
covered body of Anni's
brother with ambulance next
to it; the driver closes the
ambulance door (see 1 04);
coffins in a shop window with
a sign; from inside the coffin
shop looking at the street; [Sign): 'Entire burial
dolls; baby dolls; dolls; costs 99.50 Ma rks'

23 1
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

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children's toys

257 l.l m extreme frontal shot of Anni walking

close-up along the path with a very
worried expression

258 3.8 m medium shot, Anni and Fritz walking next to

parallel each other on the forest path
travelling shot

259 4.3 m full shot forest area; in the foreground

end-of-the-line lor the street-
car; two men get on; Fritz
takes leave from the streetcar
door - shakes Anni's hand;
streetcar bell another man jumps on the
moving streetcar; Anni exits
left, another stre1etcar pulls in

260 6.6 m long shot a forest path; Anni enters from

the side and disappears along
the path

261 3.9 m full shot movie posters; a young man [Poster]: 'Nie wieder
pan; pop song passes by; Fritz and his friend Liebe'11
'Life without Kurt enter, look at movie
Love' from posters
loudspeaker;
street noise

262 5.1 m medium shot Fritz and Kurt anB sta nding in Kurt: What are you going
front of a showcase with film to do with Anni?
stills; Fritz looks at the photos Fritz: Marriage is out of
the question. I'm not
going to ruin my life.
Kurt: What will happen to
the girl?
Fritz [turning away): Very
unfortunate.

263 2.8 m full shot in front of the cinema; Fritz

fade-out goes to the cashier and pays;
they exit left

264 1 7.7 m fade-in, full Fritz and Mr Btinike are sitting Mr Btinike: Now you're in
at the table in the tent; it is a spot!
evening; both are smoking Fritz: Why? It happens
heavily; they avoid looking at i n the best of families.
each other Mr Bon ike [after a
moment's pause]: Are
you going to marry the
girl?
Fritz: I guess I don't have
much choice.

232
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

Mr Biinike [after a
pause]: When do you
want the engagement
party?
Fritz: Pretty soon, I
guess.

[Reel VJ

265 6.5 m fade-in; a n oval sign partially covered [Sign]: Congratulations

close-up, pan by fir tree branches. a festive
to table; table with flowers, M r Biinike
undistinguish- in a black suit with white bow
able sound of tie; sitting on his right is bald
voices starts Uncle Otto and his wife and
other guests

266 2.1 m medium shot Anni is standing at the table,

she looks down and laughs,
plays with her hands; in the
background a white porcelain
clock and furniture

267 1 .4 m close-up Mr Biinike, seated next to a

man with a dark bow tie, looks
over his guests and smokes

268 1 .8 m see 266 Anni notices his look and,

embarrassed, plays with a
fake flower on her belt; she
laughs bashfully and looks
away

269 1 .4 m close-up a girl with a pearl necklace,

seated between two young
men, smiles at Anni

270 1 .6 m see 266 Anni takes something from the

table and looks at it
271 l.l m medium shot Uncle Otto, his wife, a young
man and the girl with the pearl
necklace in conversation

272 1 .9 m medium shot Anni smiles at Kurt and Gerda

who are sitting next to each
other; they also smile, then
turn away and start talking

273 2.3 m full shot the entire long table with the
seated guests, Mr Biinike in
the background; on the left
Kurt who takes something
from the table and puts it in

233
 THE KUHLE WAMPE F I L M ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

Gerda's mouth

274 1 .7 m medium shot Mrs Biinike is standing in a

separate room and handing in
stacks of plates

275 2.2 m full shot over-the-shoulder of M r

Biinike t o the table; in the
background Anni takes the
plates from Mrs Biinike and
puts them on the table

276 2.5 m see 274 Mrs Biinike hands in a cake

277 5.1 m close-up hands grab for the cake

slices until the plate is empty

278 2m see 275 the g uests are drinking coffee,

Mrs Biinike as well; only Anni
is standing in the background

279 1 .5 m medium shot Anni is standing next to Kurt

with cake and a coffee cup in
her hand, both are eating

280 2.4 m medium shot Kurt and Gerda are drinking

coffee, eating cake and
smiling at one another

281 1 .2 m see 274 Mrs Biinike hands in another

pot of coffee

282 4m wipe, medium chain-gang style, Mrs Biinike,

shot Anni and Kurt hand each other
beer bottles

283 6.6 m full shot light shines from the tent onto
the ground in front of it;
through the tent's entry one
sees the table extended into
the front room; Fritz enters
with a c rate full of beer bottles
on his shoulder, places it on a
sta ck of other crates next to
the tent, brushes the dust off
his black suit, heaves a c rate
of empty bottles onto his
shoulder and exits the way he
came, with his left hand in his
pocket

284 5.7 m medium shot; Anni winds up a gramophone

music starts: in the corner near the clock,
'Entry of the sets the needle on the record
Gladiators' and turns to the left

2 34
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

285 2.6 m see 274 Mrs Btinike hands in a plate

with food

286 6.5 m see 283

287 3.5 m see 282

288 3m close-up a guest with moustache eating

his food

289 4m see 275 Anni is eating while standing,

bent over the table

290 3.2 m close-up the man with the dark bow tie
pokes at a bone on his plate
with his fork; after he has
greedily eaten the meat. he
puts the bone on the plate

291 5.8 m close-up pieces of meat on bones are

placed o n the platter and
immediately picked up with
forks or hands till the platter
is empty

292 4.7 m medium shot; Uncle Otto chews on a large

march music bone he holds in his hands; his
ends wife eats with knife and fork;
two empty beer bottles in
front of Otto

293 5.7 m wipe, medium Uncle Otto has shed his jac ket
shot and tie and opened his shirt,
nine empty beer bottles in
front of him; toasting Mr
Btinike to the left, he drinks a
pint in one gulp; Mr Bon ike
sets his smaller glass on the
table

294 3.6 m medium shot the girl with the pearl necklace
drinks from a beer glass; the
young man with tousled hair on
her right drinks from a bottle;
he bends the girl back and
kisses her; the second young
man clinks glasses with his
partner while looking at his
neighbour kissing

295 8.9 m medium shot Fritz once again brings in a Anni: Can I help you?
crate of beer, puts it down and Fritz [turns round briefly):
brushes the dust off his jacket; No need.
Anni comes out of the tent Anni: Want to come in?
Fritz [cleaning his

2 35
 THE KUHLE WAMPE F I LM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

trousers]: What for?

296 2.1 m close-up Anni: Wait a minute

[shortpause]. you don't
want this whole
engagement, right?

297 1 .3 m close-up Fritz: Of course not!

298 5.4 m see 296 Anni [turning away]: Hm

[pause]. Why are you
doing it then?

299 4m see 297 Fritz puts a handkerchief in his Fritz: I have no choice.
pocket and then shoves his
hands in his pockets

300 1 .8 m full shot Fritz bends down, takes a beer

and opens it; Anni exits left; in
the background the entrance
to the tent with the guests
inside

301 1 .8 m close-up Fritz drinks from the bottle and

song: 'Ein looks at Anni; singing from the
Prosit . . .' tent

302 1 0.5 m full shot; the guests are standing at the

pan to right table singing and rocking back
and back and forth, especially Otto's
wife; some partners have
changed places; there are
now also children among the
guests

303 1 .6 m extreme the gramophone needle is

close-up; placed on a record
music starts

304 9.6 m full shot the guests are sitting again at

the table, in the middle of the
image is Otto's wife and one of
the young men on whom the
girl with the pearl necklace is
song starts: leaning; she is singing along
'Schiiner with the gramophone record;
Gigolo, armer Otto's wife and others join in;
Gigolo' in the background is the
Biinikes' wall-hanging

305 2.5 m see 293 Mr Biinike again takes a beer

bottle and pours some for Otto

306 4.6 m medium shot the man with the bow tie, with
sweaty face, drinks from the
bottle; on his right Mr Biinike,
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

who gets a bottle from under

the table and drinks
307 3m pan the singing and drinking guests

308 1 .3 m long shot Fritz is sitting and smoking a

music: record cigarette to the right of the
continues open tent; Kurt comes out

309 2.3 m medium shot Otto's wife has grabbed the

head of the man next to her,
kisses him, then slaps his face;
the second man has put his
arm round the girl with the
pearl necklace while the other
girl lays her head on his
shoulder

310 2m see 308 Kurt goes to Fritz

31 1 1 .6 m see 308 everyone is swaying to the

music ends music

312 5.2 m medium shot Kurt and Fritz watch a guest Fritz: Nothing to eat, but
who comes out of the tent and he's got to have patent
walks behind them leather shoes.

313 1 .6 m full shot dark camping area; the man

walks to a tree

314 3.4 m see 312 Fritz: Unbelievable.

Kurt: Well, if you're
celebrating this kind of
engagement, how can
you be surprised that
people get drunk

315 11 m full shot Uncle Otto, completely drunk

and with a cigar in his mouth,
gets up and totters along the
table, pushing over plates and
glasses; his wife threatens
him, also gets up and follows
him; Otto falls variously on the
seated guests and the table;
his wife pushes him from the
pan right side; the young man and the
girl with pearl necklace are
kissing in the background

316 25.8 m full shot Uncle Otto can barely hold Otto's wife: Otto! Otto!
himself up, clinging to the head [with authority) Come
of one of the guests; he totters, back right away!
holds himself up on a post and
finally falls flat in front of the Otto's wife: Oh!
tent, bringing down a stool Kurt's voice: Let'm alone !

2 37
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

with a tub; If he wants to go

Otto tries to stand up with the swimming, it's good for
pan right (to help of his wife; he curses to him!
include Kurt himself; she tries to hold him Otto's wife: Otto, you're
and Fritz) by his suspenders while he going to be the death
tries to move forward, swaying of me yet.
dangerously; Otto's wife: Otto, you
he pulls himself free, falls stay here and be done.
forward against the beer (upse� Swimming at
c rates and pulls down the night with a belly full of
dishes from a table nearby; his beer.
camera pan to wife follows him with raised Uncle Otto: My body
follow Otto arms, warning and cursing belongs to me.
him; he falls in the grass; Kurt
watches him while Fritz has
been sta ring blankly the
whole time

317 3.4 m full shot in front of two tents Anni and

Gerda are adjusting a blanket
over a fully packed handcart;
in the background tottering
figures

318 7.6 m medium shot Mr Btinike totters over to Fritz Mr Btinike: What's up
and Kurt, who are still in front with the beer, Fritz?
of the tent Fritz: Just whistle and I'll
run! [to Bonike who
disappears behind them]
Just whistle! (sharply]
Whistle!

319 1 0.6 m see 317 Btinike enters from the right M r Btinike: What are you
up to?
Gerda and Anni exit, pulling Anni: Get Mother and
the handcart; M r Btinike your things! We're
remains standing with his moving away from here.
hand on his chin (Gerda goes to the cart's
drawbarl
Mr Btinike: Gerda put a
bee in your bonnet?

320 3.5 m see 318 Kurt looks over Fritz to the tent

321 6m medium shot Anni, Gerda, Mrs and Mr Mr Btinike: Where can
Biinike are standing in front we go?
of the tents around the Mrs Btinike: We're not
handcart; just gypsies, on the road
M r and M rs Biinike exit right in the middle of the night.
with the handcart; Anni and You've gone nuts!
Gerda turn abruptly in the
other direction and leave
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

322 5.7 m full shot from the left Mr Bon ike pulls
and Mrs Bonike pushes the
cart in an arc to the tent; the
party guests and Fritz are
standing in front ofthe tent;
the Bonikes stop in front of
them

323 10.1 m medium shot over the cart to Fritz and Kurt, Mrs Bonike: You've got
on the right Mrs Bon ike, on to be really ashamed.
the left M r Bon ike and two Mr Bonike [puts his arms
guests; on Fritz's shoulders]:
Mr Bon ike takes the steering She's gone nuts. Simply
rod again and they exit left ran away.
with the cart Mrs Bon ike: Don't worry,
Fritz, we'll stay with you.
Fritz [sarcastically]: Wha
fade-out a joke.

324 4.2 m fade-in; Gerda and Anni are standing Gerda: So, now you're
full shot in a stairwell in front of an going to live with me,
apartment door; next Sunday you'll come
Anni nods. with me to the athletic
games and you can
forget Fritz.

[Reel Vl]

[Title Ill]: Who Owns the

World?

325- 45.2 m fade-in; cranes, coal piles, silos,

340 montage; dollies, wagons on steel
strongly bridges, chimneys spewing
rhythmical smoke, large factories
music with
'Solidarity
Song' motifs;
fade-out

341 30.3 m fade-in; full large clubroom in a wooden [Banner]: Worker-

shot building, on the wall in the athletes aga inst the race
background hangs a banner; for records: become a
young people and children, worker-athlete.
some in the uniform of the D istributor: Wedding!
Fic hte athletes,11 are busy with Young man's voice: Here!
various jobs to prepare the D istributor: Two hundred.
athletics festival; on the left [hands them over]
some others are waiting D istributor:
behind a wooden barrier; in Reinickendorf!
the foreground a young boy Young man's voice: Here!

2 39
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

distributes printed leaflets, Distributor: Eighty.

calling out the names of city (hands them overl
districts and checking off their D istributor:
names on a list; he goes to the Charlottenburg !
pan left left with the leaflets and Young man's voice: Here!
hands them out; Distributor: One hundred
travelling shot a group of young people work and twenty . . .
with an offprint machine; Friedrichshain !
travelling shot a table where Gerda and Young man's voice: Here!
continues right another girl are stirring paint; Distributor: One hundred
Kurt enters from the right and and fifty . . . Pankow! . . .
teases her by holding the not here . . . Mitte!
mixing stic k to her nose; Gerda Voice of a young man:
laughs and Kurt continues to Here!
travelling shot the right, kneels, puts the paint Distributor: Schiineberg!
continues right can on a piece of paper and Voice of a young woman:
begins to paint on a huge Here!
piece of white paper spread Distributor: One hundred
on the floor; . . . Tempelhof!
travelling shot a group sits at a table and Voice of a young man:
continues right works on banners; in the Here !
background a young man puts D istributor: Eighty . . .
small flags on a city map Wilmersdorf!
hanging on the wall Voice of a young man:
Here!
D istributor: Eig hty . . .
Prenzlauer Berg!
Voice of a young man:
Here!

342 6.3 m full shot Gerda is sitting at a table Kurt: Where is Anni
mixing paint in the foreground; today?
Kurt kneels on the floor behind Gerda: She's coming, she
her and paints large letters had to go to the printer.
Kurt: What's up with her?
Gerda: What do you
mean? She's still living
with me.

343 3.5 m close-up; dolly Kurt raises his head Kurt: That is really
inconvenient for her, that
she broke up with Fritz
right at this time.

344 1 0.1 m full shot a long table where young [Sign]: Sports equipment
people and children are room
working; i n the background a Young man (irritated]: I
pan right to sign; a young man is pasting, a didn't even get home last
medium shot young woman in a uniform night, I've got to sleep
brings a roll of cloth and sometime. Tomorrow I'm
spreads it out next to him on supposed to compete i n
t h e table the swimming marathon.
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Desc ription Title I Dialogue

Young woman [hits the

table with her fist,
insistently]: No, you've
got to finish the banner.
Look, it'll be done pretty
soon.
she exits right; he pushes the Young man [shouting
cloth aside and turns back at her]: Yeah, and when
to his work a m I supposed to sleep?

345 23.5 m medium shot a door with two posters; [Poster left]: Wrestling
travelling shot Fritz enters and goes to Gerda; match
in front of Fritz, in the background a bulletin [Poster right]: 'Major
pan to Gerda boa rd with posters; Sports Meet of the All
Workers' Sports Leagues,
Sunday, 12 June.
Swimming, Rowing,
Motorcycle, Bicycle
Races Begin at 9 a.m.'
Gerda cleans off her hands Fritz: Hi Gerda, so Anni's
and adjusts her skirt; living here now?
Gerda: Yes, sure.
Fritz: I've been looking
for her the whole week.
Where is she running
around till late at night?
Kurt enters from the right with Kurt: She's not running
a can of paint that he places around. She's with us
on the table and works here.
Gerda: She was here
before, too, before you
came along and took her
from us.
Kurt with a look at Gerda that Fritz: I convinced her
indicates his critical attitude that she didn't have the
towards Fritz stuff for your athletics.
[pause] In my view some
women don't have what
it takes. [forcefully] Some
do and some don't.
Gerda: I think she feels
fine here with us.

346 1m medium shot a group of young people First I can't come

tomorrow, I'm out of
money.
Second: I have only
twenty pfennigs too.
Can't you give us
something?
they get some money Third [laughing]: Sure.

24 1
 THE KUHLE WAMPE F I LM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

347 1 0.6 m medium shot Gerda on the left, straightening Fritz: By the way, I was
her blouse, next to her Kurt laid off yesterday.
and Fritz; Kurt: That's bad.
pan to poster Kurt pulls Fritz up to the [puts on his cap]
bulletin boa rd where the Gerda (pointing to
poster is hanging posterj: Look at that!
And if you want to talk to
Anni, come on out with
us tomorrow.
Kurt: The competitions
are in the afternoon.
There you can hear a
few things that won't do
you any harm.
348 1 .8 m dissolve, full a street; meeting point for
shot motorcyclists, who line up
their bikes

349 1 .9 m extreme Kurt i n leather clothing starts

close-up his motorcycle

350 2m see 348 other racers follow Kurt's

example

351 1 .9 m the motorcyclists drive by a

group of uniformed children
and young people

352 2.3 m full shot motorcyclists with and

without sidecars turn a corner

353-- 1 7.2 m montage; worker-athletes march through [Song]: [1] Forward,

358 accompanied the streets singing the without forgetting I
by the refrain 'Solida rity Song'; motorcyclists Where our strength is
of the and bicyclists pass them by; now to be! I When
'Solida rity Anni is marching together starving or when eating I
Song' sung with a group of women Forward, not forgetting I
and whistled athletes in a forest area; tent Our solidarity!
by a chorus residents watch them pass by [2] Forward, without
forgetting I Our street
and our field I Forward,
without forgetting: I
Whose street is the
street I Whose world is
the world?23

359- 64.7 m montage; the starting signal for the [Banner]: Buckow
392 accompanied motorcyclists is given at the Triangle Race
by 'Athletics race course; in the background [Banner]: Derop
Song', sung by are banners and on the right Petroleum
Ernst Busch in there are many bicycles; the [Song]: [ 1 ] Coming out
solo with motorcycle race; signal for the of the crowded flats I
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

orchestra start ofthe women's regatta The darkened streets of

and swimmers; short takes of embattled cities I You
the motorcycle, rowing (close- come together I To
up of Gerda in boat) and struggle together. I And
swimming competitions; Kurt learn to win. I And learn
(#48) is almost a lways in the to win. [2] You bought the
lead among the motorcyclists, boats I From the pennies
who are now arriving at the you sacrificed I And you
finish; the swimmers in the saved the bus fare by
end spurt; the rowboats finish starving. I Learn to win ! I
Learn to win! [3] After
the gruelling struggle for
the necessities I For a
few hours I You come
together again I To
struggle together. I And
learn to win!24

393 1 .6 m full shot; the motorcyclists at the goal;

applause Kurt is the winner and is
begins surrounded by well-wishers,
who applaud him

394 l.l m medium shot Gerda is sitting in a boat and

laughing

395 0.5 m full shot;

see 393

[Reel VII]

396 2.7 m medium shot a flag waving in the breeze

397 1 1 .7 m full shot spectators stand close [Banner): Solida rity

together in front of a dais for
the winners with a huge
pan right over banner spanned across it; the
the winners winners go up to the tribune
and pan left on the left and form a line
back from the right

398 l.l m medium shot Kurt

399 2.3 m medium shot; Gerda and another woman a sharp whistle followed
applause ends athlete by the call 'Hey!'

400- 43 m The agit-prop theatre [Song]: We are the 'red

412 group 'Das rote Sprachrohr'25 megaphone'. I
sings and plays 'The Song of Megaphone
a ctors the Red Unity Fronf: the group of the masses we are. I
whistling introduces itself as 'voice of We speak what
the masses' and, while oppresses you. I We
whistling, moves in a speak what oppresses

243
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

choreographed pattern around you, I We are the 'red

the stage until they form a megaphone'. I
half-circle; Megaphone of the
masses we are.
the scene of eviction is both Kiislin Street, Wedding
spoken i n solo voice and sung district, back building.
in chorus using large, clear The landlord throws out
gestures; an old renter. He brings
the eviction is so 'rough' that along the furniture
the evicted man is thrown into mover:
the audience; 'Go ahead and load up
the entire scene has a strong the junk.'
rhythm, is very disciplined and 'Wait a minute. You
stylized in its presentation; must've made a mistake.
at the end the a ctors dance to We've lost our welfare
the music of their song; benefits, M r Landlord.' -
applause the spectators, among them 'You're half a yea r
Fritz and Anni in the first row, behind in rent. God
applaud knows, my patience has
run out.'
Patience, patience -
that's a c razy thing. The
neighbours, proles, are
building a circle. The
furniture mover asks, he
discusses, until even . . .
the last one understands.

413- 52.9 m montage the theatre group Red [Song]: [1] Forward,
435 mass chorus Megaphone stands in a line without forgetting I
sings the o n stage and begins singing Where our strength is
'Solidarity the 'Solidarity Song'; the nowto be! I When
Song' (see c rowd of thousands joins in; starving or when eating I
353-8) the audience and the winners Forward, not forgetting I
on the dais; Our solidarity! [2] First
the c rowd in front of the stage; we are not all here now I
young athletes, older workers, Second it is but one day I
audience with banners and a When the work of one
flag (see 396) week's time I Still is
heavy in our bones. [3]
Forward, without
forgetting I Where our
strength is now to bel I
When starving or when
eating I Forward, not
forgetting I Our
solida rity! [4] First we are
not all here now I
Second it is but one day I
And now those lying in
the meadow I Otherwise

244
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORL D ?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

are in the streets. / [5)

Forward, without
forgetting I Our street
and our field. / Forward,
without forgetting: I
Whose street is the
street I Whose world is
the world?

436 4.9 m medium shot the demonstrators disperse;

mixed voices the winners leave the dais;
continue the crowd dissolves
pan left

437 1 1 .3 m full shot the c rowd pushes towards a

camp site located in the
woods, among them Kurt and
Gerda (he in leather, she i n a
sporty dress); Gerda lays her
arm on Kurt's shoulder

438 2.7 m medium shot the theatre group is packing

up instruments on the stage

439 6.4 m medium shot Kurt and Gerda are standing Kurt: [returning the
next to a man selling brochure) I have that
newspapers; Kurt is reading a one already.
brochure called 'Birth Control';
he buys the magazine 'Fa ctory
and Union'; they move on

440 3m full shot a large group of athletes is

sitting in a meadow; others are
standing around them; they
laugh as a young woman tries
to stand on her head

441 1 .7 m medium shot women athletes are sitting on

the grass and laughing; one of
them eats an apple; a second
one takes it and eats it

442 2.5 m medium shot swimmers are lying on the

grass, two are reading the
newspaper

443 1 .7 m medium shot many parked bicycles, some

leaning against trees

444 1 .6 m close-up front wheels of racing bicycles

445 2.1 m medium shot empty rowing boats in the

water

446 1.1 m medium shot sterns of three paddle boats

245
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Desc ription Title I Dialogue

447 9m medium shot; three young men are lying on Young man: Listen, I'll
high, oblique the grass, their heads bent read it again now: 'A
angle over a book; one reads aloud real state; says Hegel,
'and a real state
government emerge only
when there are already
distinct classes, when
wealth and poverty
increase greatly and
when the situation is
such that a large numbe r
can no long satisfy needs
in the accustomed way.'

448 2.9 m full shot in front of a tent Anni and Fritz

are lying on the grass, resting
on their elbows; they are
looking stra ight ahead; Fritz
looks over to Anni; behind
them another man is lying in
the same posture, reading a
newspaper that another one is
reading as well over his
shoulder; in the background
are other worker-athletes
standing, lying and talking

449 1 5.4 m medium shot; Gerda and Kurt are walking by Voice from a tent: Now
travelling shot the tents; a group of young hold still!
in front of people march by them; Gerda: Fritz always
the couple worker-athletes sitting, lying, wanted to have his
playing, singing and laughing freedom.
everywhere Kurt: At 13 Marks 20 a
week, freedom is worth
shit.
Gerda: Well, then he can
marry Anni.
Kurt: I'm sure he'll do it.
Gerda: At least she is still
earning money.

450 8.3 m see 448 they look into each other's eyes Fritz: You may be right.

451 37.8 m 'Solidarity athletes put their boats in the I Song - same text as
Song'; noises water and get in; motorcycles 41 3--35]
of the with sidecars are driving along
returning a forest road; several groups
participants of bicyclists follow them, some
and spectators with flags; a tight group of
drown outthe young athletes and workers -
song some with backpacks -
precede the camera down the
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

stairs and through a tunnel

into the subway station

458 7.6 m medium shot; the crowd coming down the

the noise i n stairs
the tunnel
becomes
louder and
louder

[Reel VIII]

459 1 2.5 m full shot; voices the festival parti cipants push
of passengers their way into the subway car,
and sounds some seat themselves and
of the train others remain standing as it
begin fills up

460 7.4 m medium shot a man with a goatee is reading Conductor's voice:
the newspaper; he shows his Attention! Doors closing!
unease as the c rowd streams
sound oftrain in, adjusts his hat and
accelerating continues reading

461 3.8 m medium shot passengers standing in the

middle aisle

462 4.8 m Gerda standing on the left,

Kurt turned towards her,
sta nding in the aisle

463 4.9 m close-up Fritz and Anni are seated; his

arm is round her shoulders
and he gently tousles her hair

464 8.7 m full shot, high seated and standing Man with goatee
angle through passengers [casually from the
a luggage net newspape!]: In Brazil
above the net they burned 24 million
pounds of coffee.
Voice of a man on the
left [surprised, with
disbelie�: What did they
do with the coffee?
Man with goatee: They
burned it, pure and
simple.
Man with sta rched
collar: 24 million pounds
of coffee burned?

465 1 .4 m close-up Man with sta rched

collar: That is n o more

2 47
 THE KUHLE WA MPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2)

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

than demagogy.

466 1 .5 m medium shot an older man with glasses is Older man with glasses:
sitting next to a woman; above I read that too but I
them is a worker in shirt don't believe it.
sleeves leaning on the seat
back

467 2.6 m close-up among the standing Man with white hat
passengers is a man with a [ with a contemptuous,
white hat, a well-trimmed pedantic tone]: Anyone
beard and a bow tie with common sense
knows that is simply not
possible.

468 1 0.6 m medium shot seated and standing Man with goatee [reads
passengers from the newspapmj:
'Burned coffee -
Madness ofthe World
Ma rket.' See? There you
have it: 'In Santos, the
world's largest coffee
port, there is more
coffee in the
warehouses than the
world . . . urn . . . can buy
. . . All together 1 2 to 15
million sacks . . . more
than an entire year's
production from Brazil,
so . . . And because
more and more coffee is
added . . .

469 8.1 m medium shot, the passengers grouped Man with goatee: · . . . the
high angle round the reader government has the
surplus burned.'
Man with sta rched
collar: You don't have to
read that. We know
about that nonsense.
Man with goatee: 'We
have expensive wheat
and unemployed
industrial workers while
Argentina has expensive
industrial goods and
unemployed farmers.
And it is all called the
world market and is a
crying shame.

470 2.2 m medium shot passengers standing Worker in shirt sleeves:

 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

24 million pounds of
coffee burned. That is
really a crying shame!

471 0.8 m close-up Worker i n a sweater:

They can do that to us!

472 0.7 m close-up Man with white hat: [ with

raised forefinger]: Quite
right!

473 3.8 m medium shot; Older man with glasses:

see 448 I don't understand a
thing. Burned coffee!
What's the purpose
anyway?

474 4.1 m close-up Fritz and Anni Anni: That is pure malice
on the part of those
people.
Fritz: Malice? They can't
be malicious if they don't
. . . [with thumb and
forefinger makes a
gesture of counting
money]
Voice of man with black
hair: So you want to
defend the guys, huh?

475 1 .4 m medium shot the head of the man with black Man with black hair:
hair appears over the You think it's okay that
separating wall they burn the expensive
coffee?

476 4m close-up; Man with the white hat

see 472 [shaking his head and
with raised finger]:
Permit me, the man didn'
say that at all. The man
said quite clearly . . .
[turning to the side] Wha
is it you said again,
neighbour?

477 7.3 m medium shot two elder women with high Woman in cheque red
hats pulled over their dress [to the woman
foreheads across]: You know, you
should never actually
boil coffee, I tell you. [to
the woman on the left
with a coral necklace]
Coffee should never boil.
[leaning back exhausted]

249
 THE KUHLE WA MPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

Once it boils, it is ruined.

Woman with coral
necklace (to the woman
in the chequered dress):
And don't even think of
pouring the coffee into a
tin pot because the
aroma just disappears.

478 4m medium shot Man with goatee

(pointing to his
newspapen: It's all in
here. Why did they do it?
Because they wanted to
keep the price of coffee
high.
Man with sta rched
collar: You see!
Man with goatee: 'You
see!' We have to pay the
high price!

479 8.3 m medium shot several sta nding passengers Man with sta rched
collar: And why do we
pay the high price?
Because our hands are
tied. International
politics!
Man with white hat
(behind him): Quite right!
Man with sta rched collar
[lecturing the
passengers, with his hat
in his hand]: If we had a
fleet, then we'd have
colonies too. If we had
colonies, then we'd have
coffee too. And if we had
coffee . . .
Voice of the man with
goatee: Yeah, what then,
in your esteemed
opinion?. . .

480 2.7 m medium shot Man with goatee: . . . G o

ahead a n d s a y it. Then
the prices will g o down,
huh?
Man with starched
collar: No, they shouldn't.
But then . . .
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Descri ption Title I Dialogue

481 1 0.1 m medium shot; the man with the starched Man with sta rched
reverse collar in foreground; Kurt is collar [bends down to
standing behind him with the man with goatee): . . .
other passengers we'll cut the deal!
Kurt [looks over his
shoulder to the man with
the starched eolian: I
keep hearing 'we'. Who
is that we? You and me?
[looking in the other
direction) And that
gentleman there?
[another direction) And
the lady there? [ another
direction) And the funny
man there? So, 'we' cut a
deal. [to the man with the
starched eolian Come
on, man, you don't really
believe that!

482 1 1 .5 m medium shot a man with a grey hat, sitting Man with grey hat 24
next to a woman in a white million pounds. 36 times
blouse, writes figures on a 24 . . . ca rry the zero . . .
sheet of paper, pencil in hand another zero. Then they
threw away 86 million?
That's supposed to be a
deal?
Voice of the woman
opposite: That's no deal!
Man with grey hat: If one
pound costs 3 Marks
60 . . .
Woman in white blouse:
[excited): What, 3.60?
H ey, you must be used to
a superior brand.

483 8.4 m medium shot over Kurt and other Man with starched
passengers to the man with collar [talking in various
the sta rched collar directions): Gentlemen, I
say it again: so long as
the people can't save
their pennies, they'll
never get ahead.
Man with white hat
[nodding in the
background): Quite true!
Man with starched collar
[nods to him)
Kurt: Yeah, you really

251
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

look like you save your

pennies.

484 1 2.3 m medium shot; group sitting around the man Man with grey hat
see 482 writing figures [pencil in hand]; Okay:
one pound costs 3 Marks
60 . . .
Woman in white blouse:
But why 3.60? For 2.40
you can get very good
coffee.
Voice of the woman
across: I even bought
some for 2 Marks.
Man with grey hat [to
the woman across]:
Really? Let's say 3
Marks. That's not the
point.
Woman in white blouse:
Now wait a minute! I say
2.50 and he says 3 Ma rks
and there's supposed to
be no difference?
Man with grey hat [looks
up in protesd: 24 million
times 300 . . .

485 4.5 m medium shot; Fritz [to Annt]: That's

see 463 nonsense, what he's
figuring there. [to those
speaking on his left,
sharply! They earn
nothing on the stuff they
throw away but rather on
the stuff they keep and
sell to us at a high price.

486 5m close-up Gerda and several other Worker in sweater [to

passengers his righd: You've always
got to have less than is
needed. Otherwise
there's no deal!
Gerda [next to him]; You
can only make a deal
when there are people
who need something and
don't get it.
Worker in sweater [nods]

487 5.7 m medium shot; Woman with coral

see 477 necklace: They're on
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Desc ription Title I Dialogue

(somewhat welfare but they drink

further to the coffee by the pound; you
left) can smell it in the
stairwell. I don't know
nothing, but I always said
to my husband: 'William,
you know, there's
something fishy there.'

488 3.4 m close-up; group with Gerda and Kurt Man with white h at:
high angle Coffee is a luxury in any
case. The common
people never drank
coffee before.
Kurt (looking over his
shoulderj: Before the
people used to travel in
carriages.
(Another passenger
laughs]

489 19.1 m medium shot; the aisle with standing Man with starched
extreme high passengers collar (sharply]: I forbid
angle; camera this political agitation!
pans several Kurt (next to him]: What
times from do you mean 'agitation'?
one side to You're the one who's
another campaignin g ! (turns his
back to him]
Man with sta rched
collar: (turns suddenly to
him, agitated]: Just keep
your temper, young man!
a brief scuffle ensues between Kurt (turning quickly];
Kurt and the man with the I'm not your young man!
starched collar; Kurt pushes Man with starched
him away; Fritz sta nds up collar (right next to Kurt]:
behind the man and taps his It's quite obvious that
finger on his temple to you never served.
signal 'you're crazy' Kurt: And you? You were
probably an NCO, huh?
Worker in sweater
(friendly]: Kurt, belt him
one!
Worker behind Kurt
(provoking]: Give th e
fool an orange and send
him to the orphanage!
Man with starched
collar (threatening with
his hand]: You !

2 53
 THE KUHLE WAMPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

Kurt: Close your trap or

the sawdust will come
out! (passengers laugh]
Man with sta rched
collar ]close to Kurt!: I
warn you! Your insult
costs 40 Marks.
Kurt: Oh man, don't ruffle
your feathers!
Man with starched
collar (yelling]: Since
when do you talk to me
like that? They didn't
raise us in the same
stall!
Man with white hat
(slowly]: Quite right!
Man with starched
collar (turns round and
shakes the man's hand]:
Worker behind Kurt:
Bow-legged and can't
hold a gun!
Another worker: Stupid
fathead!
Worker behind Kurt:
Other people've got a
head but you've got a
pimple! [loud laughteri
Man with starched collar
(turns round in a huff
towards the speakeri

490 6.2 m medium shot group around the older man Older man with glasses
with glasses (rises]: But gentlemen, I
must insist that you
quieten down! You are
not alone in the train!
You keep talking about
coffee in Brazil. Now I
ask you, gentlemen: wha
is it to you what happens
to the coffee in Brazil?

491 8.4 m medium shot group around Kurt and Gerda Man with white h at:
Quite right! What's more,
it's Sunday today.
Kurt: O kay, if you're not
interested in coffee, then
I have another q uestion
for you: you do eat bread,

2 54
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Shot Length Editing I Sound Desc ription Title I Dialogue

right, neighbour? What

do you say to the wheat
that they're using in
America to fuel the
boilers?
Gerda: And what about
the cotton?

492 1 7.6 m medium shot a very fat, bald passenger is Man in coat [talking to
sitting on the left and dozing; the fat man while tapping
a man in a coat is sta nding his arm]: Ya see, we
next to him don't even need that
much coffee. We
Germans are thrifty
people. The main thing is
to stay free of those
foreigners. Ya know, we
should be growing our
own coffee i n Germany.
They grow so many
grapes along the Rhine,
why not some coffee? Ya
see? We could even buy
wine in France. And then
we'd have peace in
Europe, ya see?
Fat passenger
[phlegmatic, resigned]:
Yea, the two of us, we're
not going to change the
world either!
Kurt: Right! . . .

493- 2.2 m close-up the head of the fat passenger Ku rt's voice: . . . You
494 looking in the direction of the won't change the world.
voice; the man in the coat
looks to his left over his
shoulder

495 1 .6 m close-up Kurt: And the lady

there . . .

496 0.9 m close-up woman with the coral Ku rt's voice: . . . will not
necklace change it either. And the
man . . .

497 1 m close-up dozing man with glasses Ku rt's voice: . . . will not
either . . .

498 1 m close-up Kurt [turned towards the

left]: . . . and an
unpolitical person like
you . . .

2 55
 T H E KUHLE WA MPE FILM ( 1 9 3 2)

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

499 O.B m close-up the man with the white hat Kurt's voice: . . . not by a
long shot . . .

500 1 .7 m close-up Kurt [turning his

head straight,
contemptuously): And
this man here . . .

501 4.6 m extreme head of the man with the Kurt's voice: . . . he too
close-up, starched collar will not change the
slight low world. He is satisfied
angle with the way it is now.
Man with sta rched collar
[provoking, stressing
each word]: And who
will change it?

502 6.4 m close-up Gerda [agitating): Those

who are not satisfied!

503 32.8 m full shot; subway station tunnel; [Song): Chorus: Forward,
'Solidarity passengers with backpacks, without forgetting I
Song' in bicycles and lunch bags Where our strength is
background precede the camera through now to be! I When
the tunnel starving or when eating I
Forward, not forgetting I
Our solida rity!
Solo [Ernst Busch]: If we
saw the sun was shining
I O n the street and on the
field I We could never
really think that I This
was truly our own world.
Chorus: Forward, without
forgetting I Where our
strength is now to be! I
When starving or when
eating I Forward, not
forgetting I Our
solida rity!
Solo [Ernst Busch): For
we know well it is but
one I Drop into the empty
bucket I Yet it cannot
clean up I Anything at all
for us.
Chorus: Forward, without
forgetting I Our street
and our field. I Forward,
without forgetting: I
Whose street is the
street I Whose world is
the world?
 KUHLE WAMPE OR WHO O WNS THE WORLD?

Title I Dialogue

Cuts made by the producer6

[in Mrs Biinike: Don't hold

60] the emergency decrees
right under his nose.

between shots [reading of the

1 21 and 1 22 extradition judgments
aga inst the plaintiffs
Dickmann and Linde]

[in [when Anni enters] [Title]: Criminal Code

205] �218, Sec. 1 .27 Off-voice:
A woman who kills her
foetus in the womb or
who permits the killing by
someone else will be
punished with
imprisonment.

in [Text]: Petty-bourgeois
reel problems still play a big
IV role in the life of Kuhle
Wampe.
[Text]: Very different
problems occupy the
mass of worker-athletes
on the weekend.

[in Gerda: We lent her some

343] money and now
everything is okay.

[in [Conclusion to the 'Song

412] of the Red Unity Front']
The neighbours are
standing like one man,
that's why the masters
are yelling . . . no one
gets in. The landlord, the
bailiff, the police, under
pressure they'll release
the apartment.

[in Newspaper man [calls

439] out names of
newspapers]

Cuts demanded by the censor:

M r Biinike: Maybe you

should take a look at the

2 57
 THE KUHLE WAMPE F I LM ( 1 9 3 2 )

Shot Length Editing I Sound Description Title I Dialogue

emergency decree about

the reduction of
unemployment
payments; 30 Marks less
per month.

[in 6.2 m Anni: Yes, at both

207] addresses. But it won't
work.
Fritz: Why not?
Anni: 90 Marks!
Fritz: And the cheaper
one?

[228 6m among the shot of car with the inscription

. . .] montage shots 'Fromm's Act'.28

36.5 m between shots shots of nude bathers atthe

347 and 348 beach
 Translator's Notes

Part I
Texts and Fragments on the Cinema (1919-55)
1 . Die Brillanten der Herzogin (Vitascope, 1 9 1 4) opened in Berlin
on 30 January 1 9 1 4 .
2. Prostitution ( 1 9 1 9, directed by Richard Oswald), a 'sex
education' film starring Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt and
Reinhold Schiinzel and produced with the collaboration of the
sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld.
3. Reference to Swedish directors like Victor Sjostrom and
Mauritz Stiller, whose films were popular in Germany in the
early 1 920s.
4. Brecht saw Chaplin's The Face on the Barroom Floor ( 1 9 1 4,
German title Alkohol und Liebe) in 1 92 1 , when Chaplin's films
were first imported to Germany; see the diary entry from 29
October 1 92 1 : 'the most moving thing I have ever seen in the
cinema, and very simple . . . It is pure art' (GBFA 26/256-7) .
The Swedish actor Lars Hanson was especially admired in
Germany for his lead role in the 1 924 Mauritz Stiller film
Gosta Berling's Saga, based on a novel by Selma LagerlOf.
5. Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed is a shadow or silhouette film
produced by Lotte Reiniger in over three years of hand-drawn
animation together with Walter Ruttmann, Berthold
Bartosch, Alexander Kardan and Walter Riirck, based on
motifs from A Thousand and One Nights. It opened in Berlin
and Paris in 1 926, and is considered to be the first feature­
length animation film. UFA (Universal Film-Aktiengesell­
schaft) was the largest German film industry conglomerate in
the 1 920s and, as a vertical monopoly, owned production
studios, a distribution network and a large chain of cinemas.
6. James Joyce's novel Ulysses ( 1 9 14-22) was published in
German in 1 927 and considered by Brecht at the time to be
among the best novels of the year; it became an object of
heated debate in the realism discussions in Moscow in 1 934.
7. Brecht is referring here to Erwin Piscator's use of film footage
in stage productions at the Theater am Nollendorfplatz; see
Brecht's comments in an article originally published in the New
York Times of 24 November 1 935, 'The German Drama: pre-

25 9
 TRAN S LAT O R ' S N O T E S

Hitler', in John Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre (London:

Methuen, 1 964), pp.77-8 1 .
8. The first extensive use of film footage in a German staging was
in Erwin Piscator's Berlin production of Alfons Paquet's
Sturmfiut (Storm Tide, opened on 22 February 1 926) . In a
1 927 fragment called 'Der Piscatorsche Versuch' (Piscator's
Experiment), Brecht described in more detail the use of
projected film images:

The essential aspect of this experiment consists of the following:

The film integrated into the play production anticipates those
parts of the plot in which there is no conflict so that spoken
dialogue is reduced and becomes absolutely decisive. The
audience has an opportunity to watch and judge for itself certain
events that constitute the conditions for the protagonists'
decision without having to see the events through the responses
of the characters upon whom they act. The figures can speak
freely because they no longer actually have to inform the
audience: the speaking as such draws attention to itself.
Moreover, the contrast between the flat, photographic reality
and the live word in front of the film can be used with special
effects when shifting back and forth from stage to screen to
achieve an uncontrollable intensification of verbal expression.
The pathos-laden and simultaneously ambiguous word gains
credit through the calmly photographed display of a real
background. The film makes the bed for the drama.
The speaking figures become immeasurably larger because the
surroundings are photographed in their entire breadth. While
the surroundings must be diminished or enlarged to fit the
unchanging size of the surface, that is, of the projection screen
(for example, Mount Everest constantly changes size), the
figures always remain the same size . . .
The use of film as pure document of photographed reality, as
conscience, still has to be tested by the epic theatre.

(GBFA 2 111 96-7). See as well 'The German Drama: pre-Hitler',

in John Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre, (London: Methuen,
1 964), pp. 7 7-8 .
Brecht's own use of film footage remained limited to the 1 932
production of The Mother in which a documentary sequence of the
Russian revolution was planned as a final coda. The two-minute
sequence was forbidden by the police, however. Again in his 1 9 5 1
production of The Mother at the Berliner Ensemble, Brecht used a
similar sequence of documentary images from the Chinese

260
 TRANSLAT O R ' S NOTES

revolution at the end of the play. Of course, projections of stills and

titles were incorporated into Brecht's stage productions as early as
1 928 in The Threepenny Opera.
9. Probably a reference to Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, an RKO
production of 1 9 4 1 in which Welles plays the newspaper
tycoon William Randolph Hearst.
1 0 . Brecht is referring to Vsevolod Pudovkin, Mother ( 1 926, based
on Maxim Gorky's 1 906 novel); Grigori Kozintsev and
Leonid Trauberg, The Youth ofMaxim ( 1 935; music by Dmitri
Shostakovich); Alexander Zharki and Josef Heifits, Baltic
Deputy ( 1 937; music by Nicolai Timofiev) .
1 1 . Reference to the production by Brecht and Kurt Weill of The
Threepenny Opera at the Berlin Theater am Schifibauerdamm
( 1 928) .
1 2 . Kurt Weill composed stage music for Brecht's 1 9 3 1 produc­
tion of Man Equals Man at the Schauspielhaus, Berlin, but it
has been lost.
1 3 . The reference is to Caspar Neher's set design for the
Mahagonny productions at the Neues Theater, Leipzig, in
1 930 and at the Berlin Theater am Kurfiirstendamm in 1 93 1 .
1 4. Brecht collaborated with these three composers between 1 927
and 1 932. Kurt Weill composed the music to the Mahagonny
musical ( 1 927) and opera ( 1 930), The Threepenny Opera
( 1 928) and Man Equals Man ( 1 9 3 1 ) ; Paul Hindemith
composed music for the first version of The Baden-Baden
Lesson on Consent ( 1 929); Hanns Eisler composed the music
for The Decision ( 1 932), the film Kuhle Wampe ( 1 932) and The
Mother ( 1 932) .
1 5 . This is a familiar motif in detective novels, which Brecht loved
to read. It was also a prominent motif in Theodore Dreiser's
novel An American Tragedy ( 1 925), which Erwin Piscator
staged on Broadway in 1 936.
16. }oris Ivens, Nieuwe Gronden (New Earth, 1 934; music by
Hanns Eisler) .
1 7 . Wilhelm Dieterle, Syncopation ( 1 942; based on the story 'The
Band Played On' by Valentin Davers) .
1 8. The features by Dieterle referred to here are: The Story ofLouis
Pasteur ( 1 936), The Life of Emile Zola ( 1 937), Juarez ( 1 939),
Dr Ehrlich 's Magic Bullet ( 1 940) .
1 9 . The features referred to are: Norman Taurog, Young Tom
Edison ( 1 940); Clarence Brown, Edison the Man ( 1 940);
Mervyn LeRoy, Madame Curie ( 1 943); Werring Rupper, The
Adventures ofMark Twain ( 1 944); Henry King, Wilson ( 1 944) .

261
 TRANSLATO R ' S N O T E S

20. Paul Muni, an American actor of Austrian extraction, played

Pasteur, Zola and Juarez; Edward G. Robinson played Dr
Ehrlich.
2 1 . Hans Rodenberg was the director-in-chief of the DEFA Film
Studio in Babelsberg.
22. Heinrich Kilger was a set designer.
23. The Socialist Unity Party of Germany or SED (Sozialistische
Einheitspartei Deutschland) was the name of the East German
Communist Party.
24. The reference is to scene one in the Puntila play, including
Matti's story about his previous employer Pappmann,
mentioned later.

Part II
Texts on Radio Broadcasting (1926-1932)
1 . Arnolt Bronnen's one-man play Ostpolzug (East Pole Train)
opened at the State Theatre in Berlin on 29 January 1 926
(director: Leopold Jessner; actor: Fritz Kortner) .
2. Brecht first uses the words apparatus and apparatuses around
this time, 1 927, to refer both to the physical instrument (the
radio) and to the institutions of radio broadcasting. In other
contexts he uses apparatus for other institutions such as the
established theatre and the opera. See also note 1 0 of 'The
Threepenny Lawsuit' in Part IV.
3 . Neubabelsberg is a suburb of Potsdam, at the border of south­
western Berlin, where large studio lots of the UFA film
company (Universal-Film AG) were located.
4. Alfred Braun was the director of the radio play department of
the Berlin Broadcasting Studio. He also directed the radio
version of Brecht's play Mann ist Mann (Man Equals Man, 1 8
March 1 927) and of Brecht's adaptation of Shakespeare's
Macbeth ( 1 4 October 1 927) .
5 . Arnolt Bronnen was a regular employee of the Berlin Broad­
casting Studio beginning in 1 926 and from 1 928 to 1 933 was
the dramaturg for the 'radio play' broadcasts (Dramatische
Funkstunde) for which he also prepared prose works as
broadcast plays.
6. 'Funkstunde Berlin' was the name of the radio play
programme under the direction of Alfred Braun at the Berlin
Broadcasting Studio.
7 . The reference to 'theory' is the italicized text quoted above; it
was projected onto a screen behind the participants on the
raised platform.

262
 TRANSLATO R ' S NOTES

8. The 'Pilgrims' Chorus' refers to Richard Wagner's opera

Tannhiiuser ( 1 845) .
9 . Reference to Richard Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von
Niirnberg ( 1 865) .
1 0 . The premiere of Brecht's learning play Lindberghfiug (later
titled The Ocean Flight or Der Ozeanfiug) was on 27 July 1 929
at the Baden-Baden Chamber Music Festival. See above, the
'Explanations' about The Flight of the Lindberghs.
1 1 . The premiere of Brecht's Badener Lehrstiick vom Einverstiindnis
was on 28 July 1 929 under the simple title Lehrstiick at the
Baden-Baden Chamber Music Festival. Brecht directed,
Ernst Hardt (then Manager of Western German Radio
Broadcasting in Cologne) was assistant director, Paul
Hindemith was the composer and Hermann Scherchen
directed the orchestra.

Part III
Screenplays (193o-1932)
1 . Reference to Mark Antony's speech over Caesar's body in
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (Act III, Scene 2) .
2. A reference to Francisco Goya's painting 'St Francis Borgia
Attends to a Dying Man' ( 1 788) that possibly inspired the
shot.
3. Reference to Francisco Goya's painting 'The Third of May
1 808' ( 1 8 1 4) in which the execution of rebels is lit by such a
lantern.
4. Reference to Honore Daumier's caricatures of bourgeois men
with their fat bellies.

Part IV
The Threepenny Material (193o-t932)
1 . Georg Wilhelm Pabst was already a well-known director in
1 930 when Nero-Film company hired him to direct The
Threepenny Opera. He had directed successful silent films like
Die Biichse der Pandora (Pandora 's Box, 1 929) and Tagebuch
einer Verlorenen (Diary of a Lost Soul, 1 929) as well as the
sound films Wesdf"ont 1918 ( 1 930) and Skandal um Eva
(Scandal about Eve, 1 930) .
2. Leo Lania was commissioned under contract to work with
Brecht, Slatan Dudow and Caspar Neher on the script.
3 . The two other scriptwriters - Ladislaus Vajda and Bela Balasz
- were hired by Nero-Film to complete the screenplay.
4. Flachsmann als Erzieher was a comedy based on the play of the
 TRAN S LAT O R ' S N O T E S

same name by Otto Ernst and directed by Carl Heinz Wolff; it

opened on 7 November 1 930.
5. German 'biirgerlich' means 'bourgeois' in the sense of middle­
class, that is, as distinct from the noble and the peasant or
working class. It also means 'civil' or 'civic' in the sense of
citizen ('Burger') . Both meanings echo throughout this text,
yet all occurrences are translated as 'bourgeois'. Later in the
text Brecht will also use 'kleinbiirgerlich' (petty-bourgeois)
and 'spiessbiirgerlich' (mediocre) to refer not so much to a
class designation as to a low-brow or vulgar attitude
characteristic of a social stratum striving to become 'bour­
geois' but threatened with downward mobility. 'Gross­
biirgertum' refers to the wealthy upper class.
6. The contractual term in German is Grundlage, which literally
means 'foundation' or 'basis', and refers here to the textual
basis for the screenplay, hereafter translated as 'basic
material'.
7. Berlin theatre critic Alfred Kerr accused Brecht of plagiarism
in The Threepenny Opera in an article titled 'Brecht's Copy­
right' in the Berliner Tageblatt (3 May 1 929) in which he
showed that Brecht used K. L. Ammer's 1 907 translations of
poems by Fran�ois Villon without giving due credit. Brecht
responded in a statement printed in Filmkurier (4 May 1 929) .
8. The Romanisches Cafe was a popular meeting place for artists
and intellectuals in Berlin's Westend.
9. This is a wordplay on director G. W. Pabst's surname, since
'Papst' - pronounced the same way - in German means 'pope'.
10. Brecht uses the German words 'Apparat' (with its plural form
'Apparate') and 'Apparatur' to refer variously to the entire
cinema apparatus (the organization of the film industry or
even its institutional and political formation), to mechanical
equipment, machines or appliances in general, or specifically
to the movie camera or movie projector, depending on
context. Contemporaneous German dictionaries confirm the
ambiguity in meanings. Throughout Brecht's usage has been
translated literally as 'apparatus' and 'apparatuses' .
1 1. Brecht refers here t o two o f the largest business holdings in
Germany at the time, the Krupp munition works and the
Allgemeine Elektrizitat-Gesellschaft (AEG) or General
Electric Company.
12. Der wahre Jakob (Hans Steinhoff, 1 9 3 1 ) and Drei Tage
Mittelarrest (first sound film of Carl Boese, 1 930) are both light
comedies.
 TRAN S LAT O R ' S NOTES

1 3 . Reference to the well-known Berlin theatre critic Alfred Kerr

and his counterpart in Frankfurt, Bernhard Diebold.
1 4 . Brecht is referring here to Herbert Ihering's review of the
premiere of Carl Zuckmayer's play Der Hauptmann von
Kopenick at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin (Berliner Borsen­
Courier, 6 March 1 9 3 1 ) .
1 5 . A reference to Friedrich Schiller's Briefe uber die asthetische
Erziehung des Menschen (1 793-95) .
1 6. Bruno Kastner (1 890- 1 932), student of Paul Biensfeld, was a
stage actor first in Harburg and then in Berlin theatres as well
as a film star in the popular cinema.
1 7 . Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1 925).
1 8 . City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1 9 3 1 ) .
1 9 . The Road to Life (Nicolai Ekk, 1 9 3 1 ) , one of the first Soviet
sound films screened in Germany.
20. Brecht is referring here to the social behaviourism of
philosopher Otto Neurath, whom he had come to appreciate
in his reading of the journal Erkenntnis (the house journal of
the logical empiricists) in 1 930-2 and whom he met in
1 932-3.
2 1 . Love Parade (Ernst Lubitsch, 1 929) was Lubitsch's first sound
film, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald;
Fyodor Dostoevski's 1 880 novel The Brothers Karamasov was
adapted in the Soviet Union under the title Dmitri Karamasov
(Fyodor Ozep, 1 930- 1 ) .
22. Aft-Heidelberg (Hans Behrendt, 1 923), adaptation of Wilhelm
Meyer Forster's 1 903 play.
23. The first film in Germany to show the birth act was Das Lied
vom Leben (The Song of Life, 1 9 3 1 .)
24. Films based on literary texts by the authors mentioned here
generated no questions about copyright: Heinrich Mann's
novel Professor Unrat (Der blaue Engel, Josefvon Sternberg, The
Blue Angel, 1 930), Alfred Doblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz
(Piel Jutzi, 1 9 3 1 ) and Gerhart Hauptmann's drama Die Weber
(Frederick Zelnik, The Weavers, 1 927).
25. Brecht is here quoting in full a 1 923 case overturning the
decision of the lower courts that had found in the writer's
favour concerning the status of a film contract.
26. Nur eine Tanzerin (Olof Morel-Molander, 1 926), starring Lil
Dagover, Lucie Hoftich, Hans Albers, Jacob Tiedtke.
27. The reference here is to Wenzel Goldbaum's standard
commentary on copyright contract law, Urheberrecht und
Urhebervertragsrecht (Berlin: Georg Stilke, second edition,
 T RA N S LATO R ' S N OT E S

1 927). Goldbaum also published a commentary on sound­

film copyright issues in the same series called 'Stilkes
Rechtsbibliothek' under the title Tonfilmrecht (Berlin: Georg
Stilke, 1 929). Goldbaum was Weill's lawyer.
28. Erich Weigert presided in the lawsuit at the Regional Court I
in Berlin and delivered the judgment on 4 November 1 930.

Part V
The Kuhle Wampe Film (1932)
1 . The film's German title Kuhle Wampe is the place name of a
tent and garden colony in an eastern suburb of Berlin. It has
often been incorrectly printed in English as 'Kiihle Wampe'
with an umlaut. The film was first distributed in the United
States under the title Whither Germany? In English-language
reference books and film histories the subtitle Wem gehort die
Welt? is variously rendered as 'Who Does the World Belong
To?', 'To Whom Does the World Belong?' and 'Who Owns
the World?'
2. As a result of the bank crash in 1 9 3 1 the Prometheus Film
company, a subsidiary of the International Workers' Aid
(Mezhrabpom) and closely allied to the Communist Party,
went bankrupt and collapsed in January 1 932, when the
filming of Kuhle Wampe had almost been completed. Praesens
Film then took over the production on the condition that
actors, scriptwriters, producers and director would forfeit their
fees. The private individual who helped finance the film has
been variously identified as an entrepreneur who insisted that
his car be used in the film as a condition for his sponsorship
(seen as the vehicle which transports the family's furniture to
the campsite) or as a sponsor who gave 50,000 Marks on the
condition that Brecht write him a song.
3. The scriptwriters were Brecht himself and the novelist Ernst
Ottwalt, the director Slatan Dudow, the composer Harms
Eisler, and the Austrian production manager Georg Hollering.
The reference to a lawyer could be to Georg Hollering, who
wrote all the contracts. Or -if referring to the censorship
proceedings - to lawyers Otto Landsberg and Paul Dienstag.
Scriptwriter Robert Scharfenberg was intermittently involved
in the production as well.
4. The company was Tobis Film.
5. The real tent and garden colony Kuhle Wampe was located on
the Miiggelsee in an eastern suburb of Berlin.
6. The Fichte- Wandersparte or 'Fichte Hikers' called itself 'the

266
 TRANSLATO R ' S NOTES

only revolutionary organization of all working-class hikers,

weekenders and excursionists' . The majority donated their
time to the filming of the athletic competitions (see also note
22) .
7. German title 'Wir wollten ein Obdach haben', GBFA
1 4/1 26-7. The reference in parenthesis is probably to Article
1 1 5 of the 1 9 1 9 German Constitution: 'The domicile of every
German is a sanctuary and inviolable. Exceptions are
permissible only in accordance with the law.'
8. See 'Das Friihjahr kommt' in GBFA 1 4/1 27-8; in English
'The Spring' in Bertolt Brecht, Poems 1 913-1 956, edited by
John Willett and Ralph Manheim with the cooperation of
Erich Fried (New York: Methuen, 1 979), pp. 1 83-4.
9. See 'Gesang der Sportier' in GBFA 1 4/1 1 5 .
10. See 'Solidaritatslied. Sonntagslied der freien Jugend' in GBFA
1 4/1 1 6- 1 8; in English; 'Solidarity Song' in Poems, pp. 1 85-6.
11. Probably refers to the refrain of the poem 'Wir wollten ein
Obdach haben' (see note 7 ) .
12. Brecht's wife, the actress Helene Weigel, sings the song i n the
film.
13. The reference is to a beach scene with nude bathers on a
Sunday morning (church bells chime) at the beginning of the
final part. It was cut by the censor.
14. Brecht refers here to the athletic competition and the subse­
quent discussion in the train.
15. Shooting actually began in August 1 9 3 1 , and the completed
film was deposited with the Film Inspection Board in March
1 932.
1 6. The Film Inspection Board prohibited the film on 3 1 March
1 932. Two jury members appealed the decision to the appeals
board, which confirmed the prohibition on 9 April. The
production company made cuts and re-submitted the film.
After additional cuts demanded by the Interior Ministry had
been made, the Inspection Board released the film on 25 April
1 932.
17. Heinrich Briining of the Centre Party was Chancellor from
1 930 to 1 932. The 'emergency decrees' were issued on the
suggestion of the governing party, while the Social Democratic
Party abstained, and they were signed by President Paul von
Hindenburg.
18. This is the correct spelling in the credits, but the name is also
spelled Ottwalt in other documents.
19. This poem is an early version of 'The Spring' (see Brecht,
 TRANSLAT O R ' S N O T E S

Poems 1 913-1 956, pp. 1 8 3-4) .

20. Mata Hari was the stage name of the Dutch erotic dancer
Margareta Zelle who lived in Paris. In July 1 9 1 7 she was tried
on suspicion of spying for the Germans, condemned to death
and executed in October 1 9 1 7 . Brecht wrote a short sketch for
a film about Mata Hari in 1 926 that was to star Valeska Gert.
2 1 . Never Love Again ( 1 93 1 ), starring Lilian Harvey.
22. The Fichte Hikers were organized clubs of young people from
the working class who combined political militancy with
leisure-time sports actitivities (see also note 6) .
23. This song is an early version of the published 'Solidarity Song'
(see Brecht, Poems 1 913-1956, pp. 1 85-86) .
24. See Brecht's poem 'Kommend von den vollen Hinterhausem'
(GBFA 1 4/ 1 30- 1 ) .
2 5 . 'Das rote Sprachrohr' was a Young Communist group
organized by the actor Maxim Vallentin in 1 928, a leading
agit-prop threatre group that performed on improvised stages
short, aggressive sketches about topical issues.
26. Owing to the careful notes preserved by the Interior Ministry,
the exact contents of the sequences suggested for cuts by the
censor have been reconstructed.
27. This is a reference to the law against abortion in the German
criminal code.
28. Brand name for condoms.
 Index of Works by Bertolt Brecht

The abbreviation n indicates a textual note.

Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent, The (Das Badener Lehrstuck vom

Einverstiindnis), 44, 1 5 5, 26 1 , 263
Bruise, The (Die Beule), xii, 1 3 1-43, 1 47n
Decision, The (Die Massnahme), 1 55, 26 1
Flight of the Lindberghs, The (Der Plug der Lindberghs), 38-4 1 , 44,
263
Hangmen Also Die, x, xiii
He Said Yes (Der Jasager) 1 5 5
Jewel Eater, The (Der Brillantenfresser), 79-99
Kuhle Wampe, see general index
Lehrstucke, see Flight of the Lindberghs, The; Baden-Baden Lesson on
Consent, The; Decision, The, and He Said Yes
Life of Edward II of England, The (Leben Eduards des Zweiten von
England), 32n
Man Equals Man (Mann ist Mann), 1 3, 1 7, 34n, 26 1 , 262
Measures Taken, The see Decision, The
Mother, The (Die Mutter), 260, 261
Mother Courage and Her Children (Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder),
xiv, 2 1 , 22-7
Mr Keuner Stories, The (Die Geschichten von Herrn Keuner), 1 56
Mr Puntila and His Man Matti (Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Mattz),
2 1 , 22n, 27-30
Mysteries of a Hairdresser's Shop (Mysterien eines Frisiersalons),
1 00
Mystery of the Jamaica Bar, The (Das Mysterium der Jamaika-Bar),
49-78
Reader for Those in the Cities, A (Das Lesebuch for Stiidtebewohner),
1 56
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, The (Aujstieg und Fall der
Stadt Mahagonny), 1 3, 40n, 261
St Joan of the Stockyards (Die Heilige Johanna der Schlachthofe), 32
Three in the Tower (Drei im Turm), 1 00-1 28
Threepenny films, x, xi-xii; The Bruise, xii, 1 3 1-43, 1 47n
Threepenny Lawsuit, The, see general index
Threepenny Opera, The (Die Dreigroschenoper), 46n, 1 45n, 1 4 7 n,
26 1 , 263, 264
Visions of Simone Machard, The (Die Gesichte der Simone Machard),
xiv
 General Index

The abbreviation n indicates a textual note.

Acoustics, 23, 24, 25-6 Blier, Bernard, 22n, 23, 25

Acting styles: gestic, 6n; Blue Angel, The, (Blaue Engel,
theatre and cinema, 1 62 Der), 265
Adaptation of literary texts, Boese, Carl, 264
2 1 -2; Threepenny Lawsuit, Bois, Curt, 28n
1 45, 1 77-9 Bortfeld, Hans Robert, 2 1 n
Adorno, Theodor W., 1 8n Bourgeoisie: domination of
The Adventures of Prince Ahmed radio, 37-8; art under
(Abenteuer des Prinzen capitalism, 1 48-9, 1 77, 1 96-
Achmed, Die) , 8, 259 7; censorship and bourgeois
Albers, Hans, 265 morality, 1 7 5-7; bourgeois
Alienation ( Veifremdungseffekt), novel, 1 6 1 ; journalism, 1 80,
10 1 96; definition, 264
American Tragedy, An, 261 Braun, Alfred, 34n, 3 5, 262
Ammer, K.L., 1 53, 264 Braun, Kiithe, 21 n
Art as commodity, 1 44, 1 48, Bredel, Willi, 2 1
1 63, 1 66, 1 68-9, 1 79-8 1 , Bronnen, Amolt, 36, 262
1 86-7' 1 94-5 Brothers Karamasov, The, 1 73,
Axe of Wandsbek, The, (Das 1 74, 265
Beil von Wandsbeck) 20-2 1 Brown, Clarence, 261
Bruning, Heinrich, 207, 267
Backstairs (Hintertreppe), 5 Burri, Emil, 22n
Bacon, Francis, 1 9 4
Bahisz, Beta, 1 3 1 , 1 82, 263 Capitalism, 1 48, 1 69, 1 70,
Band Played On, The, 2 6 1 1 7 1 , 1 72, 1 80-2, 1 9 5
Barckhausen, Joachim, 22n Captain of Kopenick, The (Der
Bartosch, Berthold, 259 Hauptmann von Kopenick),
Battleship Potemkin, 1 7 1 , 265 1 67, 265
Behaviourism, 1 72 Cavalcanti, Alberto, 22n, 28n
Behrendt, Hans, 265 Censorship, 1 75-7, 203, 205,
Berlau, Ruth, 22n 207-9, 266, 267
Berlin Alexanderplatz, 265 Cezanne, Paul, 1 0
Biensfeld, Paul, 265 Chamber film (Kammerfilm),
Biographical film, 1 9-20 5, 1 00

2 71
 INDEX

Chaplin, Charles, 5, 6n, 1 0, Dmitri Karamasov, 2 6 5

1 72, 259, 265 Doblin, Alfred, 3 6 , 1 79, 2 6 5
Chevalier, Maurice, 265 Dostoevski, Fyodor, 265
Chinese theatre, 1 5 (Dr) Ehrlich 's Magic Bullet, 1 9,
Cinema, x-xi; substitute 261
experience, 9; dependent on Dreiser, Theodore, 2 6 1
art, 1 63-5; recreation, 1 67, Dudow, Slatan, xii, 1 3 1 , 1 50,
1 70 . See also Film 203, 206, 207-9, 263, 266
Cinema apparatus, 1 62, 1 63-4,
1 7 2-4, 1 88, 1 97, 264 East Pole Train (Ostpolzug), 33,
Citizen Kane, 2 6 1 262
City Lights, 1 7 1 , 265 Edison, 1 9, 26 1
Class struggle, 1 3 1 , 1 70, 1 8 1 Eisenstein, Sergei, 265
Co-determination, 1 52, 1 79, Eisler, Hanns, xii, 1 4, 1 7, 1 8n,
1 82, 1 9 1 28n, 206n, 207-9, 26 1 , 266
Collaborative work practices, Ekk, Nicolai, 265
xiii; film music, 1 1 - 1 2, 14; Empathy, 20-2 1 , 1 7 1
Threepenny Lawsuit, 172 Engel, Erich, 22n, 1 00
Colour film, 24, 26 Entertainment, xi; substitute
Commodity, see Art as experience 9; film music, 1 2
Commodity Epic theatre: gestic acting, 6n;
Communism, 203, 204, 206-7, use of film footage, 6-7;
266 suitability for radio, 44
Copyright, 1 49, 1 53, 204, 265 Ernst, Otto, 1 46, 264
Costumes, 23, 24, 25, 26 Expressionist cinema, 5n, 1 00

Dagover, Lil, 265 Face on the Barroom Floor, The

Dance of Death, 1 00 (Alkohol und Liebe), 259
Daumier, Honore, 263 Feuchtwanger, Lion, xiv
Davers, Valentin, 26 1 Fichte Hikers (Fichte­
De Santis, Giuseppe, 22n Wandersparte), 206, 266,
DEFA film studios, xiv, 22 267
Deputy of the Baltic Fleet, The, Film: use in epic theatre, 6-7;
1 3, 1 9, 261 as commodity, 1 68-70, 1 87;
Diamond, The, 79 See also Cinema
Diary of a Lost Soul (Tagebuch Film biographies, 1 9-20
einer Verlorenen), 2 6 3 Film music: theatre's
Didactic aims, 38-9, 40, 44, experience, 1 0- 1 1 , inflation,
1 63, 1 67 1 1 ; collaboration with
Diebold, Bernhard, 1 66, 265 composer, 1 1 - 1 2, 1 4;
Dienstag, Paul, 209n, 266 situational music, 1 2- 1 3;
Dieterle, Wilhelm, 1 8, 1 9-20, separation of the elements,
261 1 3- 1 4; quantity, 14-1 5;
 INDEX

emotional effects, 1 5, 1 6; Bjarne, 22n

tempo, 1 5, 1 8; connective Hindemith, Paul, 1 4, 40n,
function, 1 6- 1 7; interruption 26 1 , 263
and innovation, 1 7- 1 8; Hindenburg, Paul von, 267
mixing the functions, 1 8 Hirschfeld, Magnus, 259
Film rights, see Intellectual Hoflich, Lucie, 265
property Hollering, Georg, 206n, 266
Fischer, Ruth, 28n House Un-American Activities
Flachsmann the Teacher Committee (HUAC), xiv
(Flachsmann als Erzieher),
1 46, 263 Ibsen, Henrik, 1 9
Floodtide (Sturmfiut) 260 Ihering, Herbert, 1 67, 1 7 1 ,
Forster, Wilhelm Meyer, 265 265
Frankfurter, Attorney Dr R., Incorporeal rights, 1 82-90
1 53, 1 55, 1 59n, 1 6 1 , 1 69, Intellectual property, 149, 1 53,
1 77 1 54, 1 59-60, 1 82-90, 1 95,
204, 265
Gangster films, 79, 1 3 1 Intellectuals, 1 67, 1 73, 1 76
Gert, Valeska, 268 Ivens, Joris, xii, 1 7, 28n, 261
Geschonnek, Erwin, 2 1 n
Gold Rush, The, 5, 6n, Jessner, Leopold, 5n, 262
Goldbaum, Wenzel, 1 85, 265 Jewels of the Duchess, The (Die
Gorky, Maxim, 2 6 1 Brillanten der Herzogin), 3,
Gosta Berling's Saga, 259 259
Goya, Francisco, 263 Journalism, 1 80, 1 96
Joyce, James, 1 0, 259
Haentzschel, Kurt, 209n Juarez, 1 9, 261
Hagemann, Carl, 36n Julius Caesar, 263
Hamlet, 32, 1 7 1 Jutzi, Piel, 265
Hangmen Also Die, x, xiii
Hanson, Lars, 5, 259 Karamasov, 1 7 4
Hardt, Ernst, 40n, 263 Kardan, Alexander, 259
Harnack, Falk, 21 n Kastner, Bruno, 1 69, 265
Harvey, Lilian, 268 Kerr, Alfred, 1 66, 264
Hauptmann, Elisabeth, 1 46n, Kessler, Harry Graf, 209n
1 47n, 206n Kilger, Heinrich, 23, 262
Hauptmann, Gerhart, 1 79, Killian, lsot, 28n
265 King, Henry, 26 1
Hebbel, Friedrich, 79, 1 93 Kleinau, Willy A., 2 1 n
Heifits, Josef, 26 1 Klette, Werner, 49
Hellberg, Martin 22n Korda, Alexander, xii
Helmke, Sefion, 2 1 n Kortner, Fritz, xii, 262
Henning-Jensen, Astrid and Kozintsev, Grigori, 2 6 1

2 73
 INDEX

Kraus, Karl, 1 56 �ass communication, x, 34

Krauss, Werner, 259 Mastersingers of Nuremberg,
Kuhle Wampe, xii, 203; The(Meistersinger von
censorship, 203, 205, 207-9, Nurnberg, Die), 42, 263
266-7; contractual rights, �ata Hari, 268
204; commercial value, 203- �ayer, Carl, 5n
4; description of the film, �eisel, Edmund, 34n
205-6; poems from the film, Mme. Curie, 1 9, 26 1
206, 267, 268; realism, 207- �orel-�olander, Olaf, 265
9; screenplay, 209-58; Mother, The (Pudovkin), 1 3,
music, 26 1 261
Kunst-Projektions-GmbH �uni, Paul, 1 9, 262
(Kupro), 1 00
Narrative film, 1 4
Lagerlof, Selma, 259 National Socialism, 203
Landsberg, Otto, 209n, 266 Neher, Caspar, 49, 1 00, 1 3 1 ,
Lang, Fritz, x, xiii 1 50, 206n, 26 1 , 263
Lania, Leo, xii, 1 3 1 , 1 46, 1 50, Nero-Film Company, 1 3 1 ,
1 5 1 , 1 92, 263 1 47n, 1 5 1 , 1 56, 1 92, 263
Lehrstiicke, ix, 1 62; see also Neurath, Otto, 265
The Decision, The Flight of the Never Love Again, 268
Lindberghs, and Baden-Baden New Ground (Niewe Gronden),
Lessons on Consent 261
Leni, Paul, 5n Nobility in Decline (Adel im
Leoncavallo, Ruggiero, xii Untergang), 2 1
LeRoy, �ervyn, 26 1 Non-Aristotelian drama,
Letters Concerning the Aesthetic 171
Education of Man (Briefe iiber Novels, 36, 1 6 1 , 2 6 1
die asthetische Erziehung des
Menschen) (Schiller), 1 67, Old Heidelberg (Aft Heidelberg),
265 1 73, 265
Literary adaptations, 2 1 -2; Only a Dancer (Nur eine
Threepenny Lawsuit, 14 7, Tanzerin), 1 83, 265
1 77, 1 97 Opera, 44
Love Parade, 1 73, 265 Oswald, Richard, 259
Lubitsch, Ernst, 265 Ottwald (Ottwalt), Ernst, xii,
203, 206, 209n, 266
Macbeth, 32, 1 70 Outdoor filming, 24, 25, 26
�acDonald, Jeannette, 265 Ox-coachman, The
�ann, Heinrich, 1 79, 265 (Ochsenkutscher, Der), 2 1
�ann, Thomas, 1 70, 1 97 Ozep, Fyodor, 265
The Adventures ofMark Twain, Pabst, Georg Wilhelm, x, xii,
1 9, 26 1 1 3 1 , 1 45, 1 47� 263, 264

2 74
 INDEX

Pagliacci, I, xii Recreation, 1 67, 1 70

Palitzsch, Peter, 23n Reiniger, Lotte, 8, 259
Pandora 's Box (Biichse der Renn, Ludwig, 2 1
Pandora, Die), 263 Richter, Hans, xii
Paquet, Alfons, 260 Road to Life, The, 1 7 1 , 265
Pasteur, 1 9, 261 Robinson, Edward G., 1 9, 262
Pedagogical aims, 38-9, 40, Rodenberg, Hans, 23, 262
44, 1 62, 1 67 Romeo and Juliet, 170
Photography, 1 44, 1 73 Rupper, �erring, 2 6 1
Piscator, Erwin, xii, 259, 260, Riirck, �alter, 259
261 Russian films, 1 3, 1 9, 1 7 1
Poems, 206, 267, 268 Ruttman, �alter, 259
Post-synchronization, 23, 24,
25-6 Scharfenberg, Robert, 206,
Pozner, Vladimir, 27, 28n 266
Praesens Film, 203, 204n, Scherchen, Hermann, 263
209n, 266 Schiller, Friedrich, 1 67, 265
Professor Mamlock, 2 1 , 22n Schiinzel, Reinhold, 259
Professor Unrat, 265 Screenplays: Brecht's: The
Prometheus Film Company, Jewel Eater, 79-99; The
204n, 266 Mystery of the Jamaica Bar,
Prostitution, 3, 259 49-78; Three in the Tower,
Psychology, 5, 6n, 1 7 1-2 1 00- 1 28; Kuhle Wampe,
Public taste, 165-8, 203 209-58
Pudovkin, Vsevolod, 2 6 1 Seeger, Ernst, 209n
Separation of elements, 1 3- 1 4
Radio, xi, 3 2 ; compared to Shakespeare, �illiam, 32, 263
theatre, 33-4; interviews and Shostakovich, Dmitri, 26 1
debates, 35; commissioning Signoret, Simone, 22n, 23
music and plays, 35; Sjostrom, Victor, 259
parliamentary reporting, 35, Scandal about Eva (Skandal
42-3; acoustic novel, 36; um Eva), 263
domination by bourgeoisie; Sociological experiments, 1 57-
37-8; technological 60, 1 96- 1 99
invention outstrips cultural Song of Life, The (Das Lied vom
maturity, 37-8, 4 1 ; Leben), 265
utilization for art, 3 8 , 39; Sound quality, 23, 24, 2 5-6
imitation, 4 1 -2; interaction, Stanislavsky Method, 1 6
42-3; old drama and opera, Staudte, �olfgang, 22n, 23,
44; epic drama, 44 24, 25, 26
Radio plays, 32, 35 Stemmle, Robert A., 22n
Realism, 207-9 Steinhoff, Hans, 264
Recht, Oskar Camillus, 1 00 Stenbock-Fermor, Graf

2 75
 INDEX

Alexander, 22n cinema serves recreation',

Sternberg, Fritz, 1 44 1 69-70; 'in the cinema
Sternberg, Josef von, 265 human interest must play a
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 8n role', 1 70-2; 'a film must be
Stiller, Mauritz, 259 the work of a collective',
Stortebecker, 2 1 1 72; 'a film can be regressive
Strindberg, August, 1 00 in content and progressive in
Strittmatter, Erwin, 2 1 form', 1 72-5; 'political
Stuart Webbs Company, 49 censorship is to be rejected
Suhrkamp, Peter, 40n on artistic grounds', 1 75-7;
Swedish films, 5, 259 'a work of art is the
Syncopation, 1 8, 261 expression of a personality',
177-80; 'capitalism's
Tannhauser, 263 contradictions are like the
Taurog, Norman, 261 snow of yesteryear', 180-2;
Technology, ix, xi; invention 'the rights of the individual
outstrips cultural maturity, must be protected', 1 82;
37-8, 4 1 ; artist's use of 'incorporeal rights must be
technical instruments, 1 6 1 - protected', 1 82-90; 'the
3 ; regressive content and court must make production
progressive form, 1 72-5 possible', 1 90-2; summary,
Tempo, 1 5, 1 8 1 92-5
Theatre: use of film footage, 6- Tiedtke, Jacob, 265
7; elitism, 3 3-4 Timofiev, Nicolai, 261
Thomas Munzer: Der Mann mit Tobis Film, 204n
der Regenbogenfahne ( The Trauberg, Leonid, 261
Man with the Rainbow Flag), True Jacob, The (Der Wahre
2 1 , 22n Jakob), 1 65, 264
Three Days in Confinement
(Drei Tage Mittelarrest), 1 65, Ulbricht, Walter, 26
264 Ulysses, 1 0, 259
Threepenny Lawsuit, The, xii,
147-49, 204, 262; legal suit, Vajda, Ladislaus, 1 3 1 , 1 50,
1 49-57; financial aspects, 1 82, 263
1 53, 1 54, 1 56-7; Valentin, Karl, 1 00
experimental character, 1 5 7- Vallentin, Maxim, 268
60, 1 96- 1 99; critique of Veidt, Conrad, 259
ideas, 1 60-92; 'art does not Vergano, Aldo, 22n
need the cinema', 160-3; Villon, Fran�ois, 1 53, 264
'the cinema needs art', 1 63- Visconti, Luchino, 22n
5; 'the public's taste can be
improved', 1 6 5-8; 'film is a Wagner, Richard, 263
commodity', 1 68-69; 'the Warner Brothers, 1 3 1
 INDEX

Weavers, The (Die Weber), 265 Wolf, Friedrich, 2 1 , 22n

Weigel, Helene, 22, 23, 24, Wolf, Konrad, 22n
25, 2 67 Wolff, Carl Heinz, 264
Weigert, Erich, 1 90, 1 9 1 -2,
266 Youth of Maxim, The, 13, 2 6 1
Weill, Kurt, xii, 1 4, 40n, 14 7 n,
1 48n, 1 50, 1 90, 261 Zelle, Margareta, 268
Wekwerth, Manfred, 23n Zelnik, Frederick, 265
Welles, Orson, 1 3, 261 Zharki, Alexander, 2 6 1
Westfront 1918, 263 Zoff, Marianne, 4 9 , 1 00
Wexley, John, xiii Zola, 1 9, 261
Whither Germany?, 203n, 266 Zuckmayer, Carl, 265
Wilson, 1 9, 2 6 1 Zweig, Arnold, 21 n

2 77