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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Leonie Naughton, That Was the Wild East: Film Culture, Unification and the “New” Germany (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000)
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2003-03-01
2022-12-03
2003-03-01
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Cinéma & Cie
Thomas Elsaesser
2003/03/01
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Leonie Naughton, That Was the Wild East: Film Culture, Unification and the “New” Germany (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000)
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paesaggio nel cinema, che si definisce nella         ricezione si confrontino con i modelli che
doppia opposizione fra figurativo e narrativo        sono alla base della visione che ha generato i
e fra luogo (visibile) e spazio (diegetico), che     testi. Lo studio del paesaggio nel cinema ital-
rappresenta la polarità dalla quale si genera-       iano può essere appunto uno dei terreni nei
no i modelli di costruzione dello spazio filmi-      quali può radicarsi e svilupparsi questa
co, insieme diacronici e sincronici, storici e       prospettiva culturale, assumendo come cam-
strutturali. Sono le tipologie – alle quali l’au-    pioni in particolare Rossellini e Antonioni, al
tore attribuisce suggestive definizioni prese        quale, per il suo carattere esemplare, viene
in prestito dal poeta Dino Campana                   dedicata tutta la seconda parte del libro,
(“panorami scheletrici del mondo”) e da              momento iniziale di uno studio di portata
Ibsen (“il tempo dei giochi”, “il tempo dei          più ampia. E qui il discorso di Bernardi si
miti”, “il tempo della riflessione”), o da lui       dimostra capace di coniugare il recupero dei
stesso coniate (come quella di “paesaggio            risultati più fecondi della critica antonioni-
come apertura sui possibili”) che scandis-           ana con l’acutezza e la profondità delle anal-
cono il passaggio dal vedutismo dei pionieri,        isi dei testi, orientando il tutto alla verifica e
ai giochi visivi delle avanguardie, alla             alla conferma dell’ipotesi più generale e com-
costruzione di spazi funzionali al racconto          plessiva che dà origine al discorso.
che nel cinema classico diventano spazi miti-           Si comprende dunque, anche da questa rap-
ci, alla situazione nella quale il paesaggio         ida esposizione, che siamo davanti a un lavoro
diventa protagonista – oggetto autonomo di           appassionante e profondo, capace di stimolare
un’attenzione che si insinua nelle fratture          un dialogo e un confronto problematico che
sempre più ampie del racconto – e si fa ter-         mi riprometto di sviluppare in futuro e che
mine di riferimento della proliferazione di          auspico possa incoraggiare altri interlocutori.
sguardi forti – che sappiamo essere uno dei
tratti che marcano il cinema della modernità
–, fino a farsi esso stesso fonte di sguardo, nel-
l’esperienza neorealistica e postneorealistica       SELECTED BY: THOMAS ELSAESSER
di Rossellini e di Antonioni. Ed è proprio
quest’ultimo approdo – nel quale lo sguardo            Leonie Naughton, That Was the Wild East:
cinematografico coincide con uno dei con-            Film Culture, Unification and the “New”
trassegni del senso profondo della contempo-         Germany (Ann Arbor: The University of
raneità – quello che permette a Bernardi di          Michigan Press, 2000)
fare emergere l’ambizione metodologica,
teorica e filosofica del suo approccio: il recu-        It has become quiet around cinema in
pero di una prospettiva antropologica,               Germany. Long gone are the days of the New
assente nella cultura italiana; l’affermazione       German Cinema: Fassbinder has been dead
dell’ estetica come “coscienza della distanza”       these past twenty years, and Wim Wenders has
e di una critica come “critica della cultura”,       turned himself into a gallery-photographer,
nella quale gli autori e gli stili individuali       whose shows now grace the Guggenheim
siano i “filtri” che permettono di risalire al       Museum in Bilbao. The bright new hope of the
modello di visione e di concezione che carat-        1990s, Tom Tykwer (director of Lola rennt),
terizza un’epoca storica e una situazione            whose Der Krieger und die Kaiserin remains a
antropologica: una critica che sappia com-           bold, if flawed masterpiece in the post-Dogma
porre un’analisi stilistica sottratta ai suoi        European transcendal style, has followed it up
vezzi autoreferenziali e con un’impostazione         with arguably one of the worst “Europuddings”
dei cultural studies che tenda a una visione         of recent years. Heaven, his necrologue-adapta-
“stereoscopica” nella quale i nostri modelli di      tion of a Krystof Kieslowski project, made the

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untimely loss of the Polish director the more     who could receive GDR television: not
keenly felt. There is a sense that whatever       because of the news or current affairs pro-
cinéphile energy still exists between Munich,     grammes, needless to say, but for the regular
Hamburg and Berlin is now most likely to be       Saturday matinee and late evening re-runs of
found among Germany’s (second-generation)         German cinema classics from the 1930s and
“young Turks:” Thomas Arslan, Katir Sözen         1940s (thus including films made under the
and Fatih Akin.                                   Nazi regime), thanks to the well-stocked
   But even this graveyard of buried reputa-      Staatliche Filmarchiv der DDR, another part
tions and dashed hopes is a busy place, com-      of the Ufa legacy that the GDR found itself
pared to the silence that reigns over the cine-   heir to.
matic landscape in what are now called “the          This almost wholesale liquidation of a small,
New Federal States.” The official euphemism       but substantial film culture and unique
for what used to be the “DDR,” the German         European media-ecology, together with its con-
Democratic Republic was once one of the most      sequences for an entire generation of filmmak-
thriving filmmaking countries of the Socialist    ers, is the subject of a new book by Leonie
block, with internationally renowned directors    Naughton, an Australian film scholar with a
such as Konrad Wolf and Heiner Carow, work-       long-time interest in East and West-German
ing at the DEFA Studios in Potsdam-Babelsberg,    cinema. That Was the Wild East is a welcome
the reluctant but not entirely unworthy heir of   book, but one that will require patient readers.
the once-famous Ufa Studios.                      With impeccable scholarship, intrepid dedica-
   As with so many other aspects of life in the   tion and an Australian sympathy for the under-
GDR, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and      dog, Naughton charts a story almost as uni-
the subsequent unification of the two             formly down-beat and relentlessly depressing
Germanies also changed the craft-conscious,       as so many of the films she discusses in such
self-confident but also somewhat complacent       loving detail.
world of filmmaking in the socialist part. By        The book has a commendably clear struc-
West-German standards, which brutally came        ture, which reflects the overall purpose of the
to be applies in cultural matters just as much    publication series, of which That Was the Wild
as they did in economic affairs, DEFA – both      East is only the latest of about forty titles:
literally and symbolically – was declared         Social History, Popular Culture and Politics in
bankrupt. The fact that well before unifica-      Germany. Part One sketches the impact of uni-
tion, GDR audiences had already begun to          fication on filmmaking in the GDR, with a spe-
abandon DEFA films in favour of such inter-       cial emphasis on the discourses – both East and
national box-office successes like Crocodile      West German, official as well as journalistic –
Dundee and Dirty Dancing did not help the         that were deployed to justify or protest the dis-
home-grown film-culture to make its case for      mantling of DEFA, before the Treuhand, the
continued state funding, once this state had      body entrusted with privatizing, uctioning off
become the Federal Republic. Already since        and disposing of the former state-own assets,
the early 1980s, homes in the GDR had also        finally sold the DEFA Studios to a French con-
tacitly re-tuned their television sets to West    glomerate. Because of the high profile of some
German channels, and in the process, convert-     of the participants – notably the role of Volker
ed their own film culture into the global mix     Schloendorff, the new Head of Studio
of American sit-coms and soaps, West-             Babelsberg – the story of this “fire sale” is rela-
German comedians and chat-shows, sand-            tively well-known, at least in Germany. To have
wiched between the tv-reruns of Hollywood         it concisely re-told by Naughton is helpful, not
classics. Paradoxically, West German              least because she so contrasts the ambitions of
cinéphiles were envious of West Berliners,        certain figures in the national or European film

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industry and the harsh realities of the global-     folk-hero status of the East German equivalent
ized media business. If Paris or London have        of the Volkswagen beetle, the Trabant. A
struggled to survive as important centres of        cramped, foul-smelling, two-stroke plasticated
cinema production, even with the help of tele-      menace on wheels, this tiny box-like car was so
vision, it becomes obvious how provincial and       ridiculous and ugly that it came to stand for
marginal Berlin had become during the               everything West Germans despised about their
decades of the Cold War, notwithstanding the        brethren from the East, until the usual semi-
hype about the New Berlin as capital and heart      otic reversal operated by popular culture on
of Germany.                                         objects of disapproval or denigration by the
   Part Two of That Was the Wild East looks at      dominant culture rescued even the “Trabi,”
the films that have been made since 1989 about      and made it into an icon of rebellious obstina-
unification, by East German as well as West         cy and heroic perseverance against the BMWs
German directors. While most of these films         and Mercedes that progressively invaded East
have had no impact whatsoever international-        German roads.
ly, and – with one or two exceptions – encoun-         Naughton is good at showing how pre-
tered glacial indifference also in Germany,         dictably contradictory are some of the repre-
their value as symptoms and documents is not        sentations of unification and of East Germany
to be underestimated. At least this is              in films made by West German directors. Thus,
Naughton’s view, and her painstaking archival       she notes that - contrary to the actual move-
work almost convinces one that for future his-      ment of East Germans, many of whom went
torians, some ethnographic treasures are            west in search of better jobs and living condi-
indeed buried in these films, about which one       tions, in the films made by East German direc-
(West) German critic remarked: “when you’ve         tors, the characters move further east, some-
seen one of them, you quickly get the impres-       times as far as the Ukraine or at the very least,
sion you’ve seen them all.” Naughton is deter-      to Poland. Also on a retreat are the protagonists
mined to prove him wrong, and she is able to        of West German made films: but here the GDR
come up with quite a sophisticated classifica-      becomes a projection screen for disillusioned
tion scheme, which not only distinguishes           radicals. A country which despite industrial
between feature films and documentaries,            pollution, neglect and poverty beckons with
between Wall films, Romantic Comedies, Love         the chance for a fresh start in bucolic rural set-
Stories, Splatter Films, Musicals, and Gross-Out    tings, the East becomes somehow the “better”
Comedies. She also locates a whole series of        Germany, after both communism and capital-
recurring tropes, ranging from the blatantly        ism have failed: a homeland to lost souls
didactic (sub-standard apples, divided families,    among blossoming apple-trees. As Naughton
orphaned or neglected children) and transpar-       rightly says: “the reclaiming of the east as
ently symbolic (inheritance, shoplifting, canni-    Heimat is a western initiative [...] to which east-
balism, kidnapping are favourite narrative          ern filmmakers addressing unification do not
motifs), to the enigmatically allegorical (an       subscribe” (p. 123).
underwater diver in full diving suit wandering         The three films that are discussed in greatest
the streets without being noticed). As might be     details are Go Trabi Go (P. Timm, 1990), its
expected, the private motor car plays an inordi-    sequel, Das war der Wilde Osten (That Was the
nately important role in marking – as well as       Wild East, W. Büld, 1992) and Wir können
subverting – the differences of values, attitudes   auch anders (No More Mr Nice Guy, D. Buck,
and life-styles between West and East               1993). All three are formula films, using alter-
Germans. Not for nothing is the title of the        nately the road movie and the Western as their
most successful films of the entire genre Go        generic foil to satirize both East and West
Trabi Go, alluding to the by now once more          Germans. Produced by such commercial

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heavy-weights as Bavaria Studios (and Günther        betrayed by their political elites and another
Rohrbach), written and directed by West              time by their West German liberators, behav-
German filmmakers, the films are broad come-         ing as winner-takes-all predators, both politi-
dies in the dumber-and-dumber mode, for              cally and in personal relations. But she has a
whom nothing is sacred and no gag too old or         message at the end which is at once devastating
hackneyed. By documenting the production             and stoical, and not without its own self-depre-
history and relating it to the fast moving           cating irony:
changes in public perception about the cost
and benefits of unification (both East and West        Despite their divergent portraits of the east,
Germans became increasingly disenchanted             unification films from both the east and the
with each other), Naughton brings out the            west present a generally consistent portrait of
symptomatic nature of the films’ plots, props        German-German relations. Mostly these films
and characters. She is also right in emphasising     suggest that those relations do not exist. No
the “generic” nature of virtually every unifica-     alarm is displayed about this situation, which
tion film, rather than taking an “auteurist”         is accepted as perfectly normal. [...] This is
approach. For even though some of the most           another irony that emerges from this cycle of
commercially successful as well as the most          1990s films. What these films ultimately
clichéd works were made by “name” directors,         effect is a segregation of East and West
such as Helma Sanders-Brahms, Margarethe             Germans (pp. 242-243).
von Trotta, and the two enfants terribles of
German cinema in the 1980s, Christoph                  Clearly, the real “unification films” are yet to
Schlingensief and Detlev Buck, their interest        be made, but just as clearly, Germany is not yet
for (film) history is not cinéphile, but sociolog-   ready for them. Perhaps here lies the glimmer
ical. Only when she comes to discussing the          of hope, not just for the future of the Federal
films made by East German directors about the        Republic, but also for the German cinema:
effects of unification in her concluding chap-       when the East no longer feels the victim, and
ter, names such as Helke Misselwitz, Roland          West no longer thinks it has won, then
Gräf, Peter Welz turn up, along with former          German filmmakers will have something in
DEFA directors (and dissidents), such as Frank       common – the task of discovering each others’
Beyer, Heiner Carow and Egon Günther. Their          “otherness.” But now in order to respect and
post-unification films are few, and made with        even to preserve that otherness: this could be
minuscule budgets: these are on the whole            the beginning of another kind of national
sombre and often self-lacerating balance-            unity, just as it could be the beginning of anoth-
sheets of the failures of the GDR: failures by its   er kind of German cinema.
own ideological and idealist standards of hav-
ing set out after 1947 to create a more humane
and just society, not by the standards of West
German affluence, dominated only by the eco-         SELECTED BY:
nomic imperative. The sense of betrayal, of self-    ANDRÉ GAUDREAULT
deception is pervasive, and so is feeling of wast-   ET JEAN-PIERRE SIROIS-TRAHAN
ed lives: perhaps it is understandable that even
East Germans did not want to be confronted             Vincent Pinel, Le Montage. L’espace et le
with this kind of truth, so that some of these       temps du film (Paris: Cahiers du
films attracted fewer than 2000 spectators.          cinéma/CNDP, 2001)
   Naughton’s partisanship is unambiguously
on the side of the people of the East. They see        Cet ouvrage fait partie d’une collection (Les
themselves above all as losers twice over, once      petits Cahiers) que viennent de lancer les

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