Kareem Farooq European Film History Final Paper NYU Fall Semester 2003 Fight the Might: A Look

at Anti-Fascism in European Cinema As a medium, lm has the power to captivate and distract an audience. Films dealing with supercial characters and articial interactions and avoiding any kind of higher level thought-process are simply a diversion from reality and usually can only be accredited for their entertainment value. Today in Hollywood, lms of this stereotypical nature are commonplace, serving no purpose other than to entertain and sedate. What is left out of these lms is the critical voice of the artist. Using the medium as an art without intentions to please everyone, lmmakers for decades have used their talents to express deep social and political ideals and philosophies. While lms of this profound nature have never been great moneymaking successes, they achieve a level of societal value as well as scholarly validity that far exceeds entertainment value. When a lm has no happy ending because there are no winners (at least no winners still alive), leaving the audience left to ponder about and question not only the lm but also themselves and the society they live in, that lm has truly engaged its audience, providing a valuable message and teaching the audience to learn from past mistakes. While the meaning and themes of such social signicant lms are universal, these lms are still products of their own time and place. An art movement is a catalyst to such great lms, giving the artists involved a similar arsenal of aesthetics and archetypes to express view that are sometimes controversial but always valuable. A movement in the arts occurs in response to social inequalities or happenings, such as tensions between classes or an expansion of creative freedom. M and Rome Open City provide a social critique of pre-Nazism and post-Nazism in accordance to the time and place they were made, while sharing the common critique of any society that regulates freedom by governing its people through fear and suspicion. Fitting in to the genre of crime/thriller drama, Fritz Langs M tells a story about a serial killer terrorizing a German town, the frustrated police struggling with the investigation, and the towns underground mob bosses and common criminals tired of putting up with the polices constant, futile pestering. Using the aesthetics of German Expressionism, Lang plays with his audience throughout the lm, constantly shifting our views of the characters. He introduces the serial killer, Franz Becker, played by Peter Lorre, as a dark shadow glooming against his own wanted poster and hovering over the young Ellie Beckmann. Lang also connects the audience with the killer through sound. Becker whistles an eerie tune while buying Ellie a balloon from a blind street vendor. Langs lack of sound in key moments, such as just after Ellies disappeared and her balloon is caught in the telephone wires, also adds to the chilliness of the lm. The audience never sees Beckers face until half an hour into the lm, when he stares at himself in the mirror as a voice over is heard psychoanalyzing the intentions and motives of a psychopath. However, it is not until the second half of the lm that we nally see Becker regularly as a character. By this time, Lang has taken the audience through several scenes involving different groups of men sitting around tables, smoking, and talking about the murders. These repeated similar scenes confuse the audience at some points as to who exactly the police are and who are the criminals. Because of the ambiguity of the lms central characters, the

audience is forced to identify with Franz Becker, making him the lms protagonist. Lang paints an Expressionistic portrait of Franz bloodlusting over a girl he sees in the reection of a mirror through a store window. When the girls mother picks her up, foiling his plans for this possible victim, Becker seeks relief with a shot of cognac from a local outdoor caf. Framed behind tree branches and leaves in the foreground, Becker calms himself down. The audience understands the protagonists inner struggle. Meanwhile, the towns mob bosses have organized every streetwalker and criminal in the town to go out and lookout for the killer. At the same time, the police nally get somewhere with their investigation, discovering Beckers apartment. After leaving the caf, the blind street vendor recognizes Beckers whistle, and the hunt begins. The mob bosses resort to crimenot surprisingly breaking into an ofce building where the killer is hiding. After they catch their killer, Lang uses static shots throughout the building to illustrate the ruthlessness of the criminals, showing the guards knocked out as well the damage they caused while searching the building. At the climax of the lm, the people have congregated in an abandoned warehouse for a mock trial against Becker as organized by the head mob boss, Shraenker. The crowd looms in the shadows, and now it is Becker who is in the light. It is clear that these criminals have become Beckers antagonists. Beckers begging and pleading fall onto def ears. He cries that they cannot kill him because it would be murder, to which they laugh. Shraenker, who is wanted by the police for three murders, tells Becker he will have his justice, yet, like the rest of the criminals, fails to see the hypocrisy in this trial. Just as the mob begins to rush at Becker, the offscreen entrance of the policeanother German Expressionist aestheticsaves him. The criminals all stop suddenly and raise their hands, and the audience understands what has happened. The connection made between M and German society at the time is never specically stated. M was made in 1931 just over a year before the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany, and the disappearing of the Weimar cultureGermanys rst democratic period (Konzett, Delia; notes). Fritz Lang hints to anti-fascist motifs throughout the lm. He presents the police as bumbling fools at times, illustrating a lack of order. At the beginning of the lm, before Ellie Beckmann has been abducted, she is almost hit by a speeding vehicle while crossing the street. Luckily, a police ofcer is there to blow his whistle and safely walk her acrossbut where are the police when the killer found her? Also, the police are searching the wrong criminals night after night, going to this underground beer hall, where the people resemble caricatures from an Expressionist painting (Konzett, Delia; notes). As the police enter the hall, the regular citizens and criminals mock chief Inspector Karl Lohmann, taunting his name. The criminals have no respect for the police, and the audience is subjectively led by Lang to laugh at Lohmann. In one shot, just after the investigators discover Beckers apartment, Lang shows Lohmann on the phone from a grotesque low angle (Ive heard this shot referred to as the crotch shot), revealing Lohmanns overweight physic as he smokes a phallic cigar. It is not until the lms conclusion, when they rescue our protagonist from the evil mob, that the audience bears any kind of respect for the police. As the lms antagonists, the criminals and streetwalkers of M oppose Franz Becker, viewing him as more evil and sinful than they ever could be. Lang highlights the hypocrisy of the mob through dialogue between characters. After the beer hall is raided, weapons are conscated, and several criminals are arrested, a police ofcer has conversation with the owner of the beer hall. She tells him that the crooks and prostitutes would never provide and kind of refuge for the child murderer explaining, Dont you know how mad everyone is about this guy? Especially the girls. Sure, they solicit, but every one is a little mother at heart. Crooks get sort of tender when they see

kids. If they catch that murdering pig, theyll wring his neck. While these thugs are tired of the murders, the truth is they are sick and tired of having their personal freedoms impeded by the police every night; so the mob bosses effort to catch the killer is really an elaborate plan to get the cops off their back as soon as possible. Becker is left isolated and alone by the lms end. Despite his own evils, the audience pities him because he is a product of his own environment. The police have trouble nding him because theyre looking at the wrong kind of criminal. Becker needs help, and he writes to the police for help, but they do not make any attempt to reply to him. So, he is forced to go to the papersto voice his message to the people directly. Yet, the people are even worse than the police. They are quick to judge and hot-tempered. When a little girl on a scooter stops a short, older man, asking him for the time, he is suddenly stared at by several women, and then confronted by a beefy young man. Lang uses low angles on the large man and high angles on the smaller old man to exaggerate the confrontation. This visual choice illustrates the peoples distorted perspective. These people are too quick to suspect and do not bother with discussion. Becker really has no one to turn to for comfort. Sadly, the only sensitive characters in the lm are the mothers of the children he killed. Before coming to power, Hitler promised the German people a strong Fascist state, where he would lead them back to prosperity. The sentiment of the German people at the time was that democracy was too weakas weak as the police investigators in M. The criminals took the law into their own hands, just as Hitler forcefully gained the title of German Chancellor. The mob mentality of the people drove them away from justice, and, instead, to a pseudo-justice based on hypocrisy. The people were blind and failed to recognize that Becker is a product of their own failures and unfair pressures. To declare someone guilty without trying to understand why he did what he did, why he couldnt stop himself, does not solve the problem. It hides it until the problem returns and maybe even comes back twofold. In the end the police are able to carry out justice, but the mothers of the children lost are left to ask, And if they take his life? Will that bring our children back? Unfortunately, these anti-Fascist undertones failed to be recognized or understood by the people in Germany over seventy years ago. Perhaps, if Fritz Lang had the freedom to name the lm by its original title, Murderer Among Us, the undertones would have been more obvious. Fourteen years after M, immediately following the liberation of Rome from the Nazis, Roberto Rossellini was fortunate enough to begin working on Rome Open City without having to worry about any political restrictions. Before making Rome Open City, Rossellini worked on propaganda lms for the Fascist Italian government. With the end of Nazism/Fascism in Italy, Rossellini was nally able to make lms without totalitarian censorship. Made in 1945, Rome Open City is arguably the rst Italian NeoRealist lm, making Rossellini arguably the Father of Italian Neo-Realism (Salas, Hugo). While these beliefs are debatable, it is certain that a lm Rome Open City could never have been made under Fascist rule, meaning the lm experienced an artistic freedom of all those involved had not known for years. While Fritz Langs anti-fascist ideals in M are subtle and require interpretation and reection, Rome Open City is blatantly anti-Fascist as well as anti-Nazi. The lm tells the grim story of Italian citizens tired of living under Nazi rule in Rome 1944. When the leader of a resistance movement, Giorgio Manfredi, is nearly caught by the Gestapo, he ees to his friend, Francesco, for shelter. There he carries out his resistance plans with the aid of Francesco, his pregnant anc Pina, her son Marcello, and a priest named Don Pietro Pellegrini.

Fatigued and desperately waiting for the end of the war, Rossellinis characters maintain exceptional heroism, despite inevitable suffering. Rossellini blatantly displays the cruelty and uncertainty of the Nazi ofcials by the end of the lm. When the Gestapo carry off Pinas future husband, she ees after him, running in the street with her arms reaching out, only to be shot dead before the eyes of the entire community and her son. Marcello runs into the street, holding his mothers lifeless body and crying. Soon after, Manfredis drug-addicted lover, Marina Mari, betrays him, selling him out to the Gestapo for a life of decadence and leisure. Back at Gestapo headquarters, Ferrari is brutally tortured for hours by the Nazis, who are trying to get him to talk about the resistance. During the torture, one of the head Nazi ofcials, Major Bergmann, retreats to the lounge where other ofcials and a few women, including Marina and her rened, (lesbian?) friend, Ingrid. Here Major Bergmann questions the superiority of the German Nazis to the Italians. He gets in an argument with another ofcial over the fate of the Nazis, who have brought about so much hate and pain. Flustered, Major Bergmann hurries back to the torture room and relentlessly tries to convince Don Pietro Pellegrini to get Manfredi to give up and speak in order save his life. In this moment, Don Pietro falls to his knees before the dying Manfredi and prays to God. Pellegrinis humility emphasizes the savageness of the Nazis. While they talk properly, dress formally, and behave cordially around each other, this moment between the priest and Giorgio reveals what animals the Gestapo truly are. On his way to his execution seat, he admits to a fellow priest, It is not difcult to die with dignity, it is difcult to live with dignity. He is slaughtered before the eyes of the children he taught at church, while speaking the words Jesus spoke before dying on the cross, Forgive them Father, they no not what they do. Sadly, he does not die after the rst round of shots red, forcing a Nazi ofcial to do the job with a pistol point blank in his head. This brutally tragic ending reminds audiences of the uselessness of unwarranted bloodshed. No one in the lm deserved to die. They were all martyrs, and Rossellinis lm honors the memory of those killed unnecessarily in the years just before the lm was made. The aesthetics of NeoRealism, while not completely in tune with the later established style of Neo-Realism, adds to the somberness of the picture. With the studios destroyed, Rossellini chose to shoot on location. Lacking a proper budget, he was forced to use whatever lm was available, even though that meant using different stocks, adding to the lms rustic look (Salas, Hugo). Despite the troubles associated with the making of the lm, the lm was one of the rst post-World War II lms to be made, giving the anti-Nazi sentiments of the lm a genuinely gratifying feel. While Rossellini directly denounces the violence of Fascist rule with transparent condemnation in his lm, a lm resulting from another opportune period of unopposed freedom presented the same anti-Fascist/Nazi sentiments of M and Rome Open City only with a more genuinely human and less dramatic perspective. In his Oscar-award winning lm, Closely Watch Trains, Jiri Menzel presents a story of a railway employee, Milos Hrma, working just outside of Prague during German occupation. While the presence of the German forces remains a critical social threat in the lm, this threat is overshadowed by the protagonists sexual insecurities. He has failed in bed with his girlfriend, Conductress Masa, and no longer wants to go on living, so he tries suicide, only to fail once again. His actions get him into ofcial trouble with his German superiors, declaring his suicide attempt as an effort to avoid his duties of service for the Reich. When he returns to work, he wishes to solve is sexual dysfunction, constantly going to others for advice. He explains that his doctor referred to it as premature ejaculation. The nave Milos does not understand why he no one can explain to him how to x his problem. Fortunately, his co-worker, Dispatcher Hubicka, is able to introduce Milos to a woman,

Victoria Freie, well educated in the ways of the body. After a night with her, Milos has lost his virginity and gained a newly found condence. Unfortunately, this does not last long. Our protagonist goes ahead with a resistance plan, involving a bomb and a train, supported by Hubicka and Victoria. Milos carries out the plan, blowing up the train, but, alas, he dies in the process. Jiris lm presents a period in Pragues history subjected to wartime turmoil, but manages to leave the audience almost unconcerned with social pressures. Instead, the audience is concerned with Miloss sexual pressures. This personal touch adds to the emotional build up of the lm. The audience appreciates Miloss nave honesty and humility about himself. Menzel never demonizes sex or exploits sexuality. He uses sexual innuendos throughout the lm. The sub-plot of the resistance ghters is always there, but is never the dominant concern. However, the notion of anti-fascism is still present throughout the lm. Miloss attempted suicide is condemned ofcially by the Reich, which is absurd because something as series as suicide is a personal matter, not an authoritative one, as is the sexual relationship between a man and a woman. After Dispatcher Hubicka stamps the underside of the stations telegraphist, Virginia, he is charged with the vulgar misuse of ofcial stamps and defacing the honor of the German Reichs ofcial seal. As insignicant as misusing a stamp may seem, Menzel uses this insignicance to mock the importance of these bureaucratic procedures. Also, Menzel uses the war as a visual storytelling tool. After failing in bed with his girlfriend, Milos awakes the next morning to a violent bombing that destroys walls of the building he is in. However, he is not at all concerned about his safety. He wants to die and will later try to get what he wants, but in this moment, when he is naked to the world, except for his hat, and some strange man is laying in a bed nearby laughing, all Milos can think about is his failed attempt at achieving his manhood. While Closely Watched Trains presents anti-fascist ideals, it also alludes to many of the problematic social structures of Czechoslovakia at the time. Artists during the sixties in Czechoslovakia experienced a liberal shift in politics, allowing for a more open-dialogue between peoples and other newly attained freedoms. This period, commonly referred to as Prague Spring, may be considered a kind of lmmaking phenomenon with some of the best lms every conceived coming out of the period. These Czech New Wave lms always dealt with social disparities, critiquing the politics and society of the time. The same useless ofcialdoms Menzels lm mocked about the German political structure maybe applied to that of the Soviet Union, and its control over Czechoslovakia. Once again, Menzel denounces these suppressive ofcial structures by humanizing them, making them something all audiences can laugh at and understand because human sexuality is something that every human being can relate to both physically and emotionally. WORKS CITED:
PRIMARY SOURCES

1) Konzett, Delia. NYU Professor: Tradition in Narratives, Spring 2003; class lecture notes on M 2) Salas, Hugo. Roberto Rossellini. Great Directors A Critical Database.



http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/rossellini.html
UPDATED: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/rossellini/ British Film Institute. Fritz Lang: The Illusion of Mastery http://www.b.org.uk/sightandsound/2000_01/lang.html UPDATED: http://www.b.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/43

3)

SECONDARY SOURCES 4) Merritt, Linda. M (Murderer Among Us). A Film by Fritz Lang.

http://www.mninter.net/~babaloo/mlorre.htm 5) Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1947 6) Stoil, Michael Jon. Cinema beyond the Danube: The Camera and Politics. Scarecrow Press, 1974 7) Walker, Alexander. Fritz Lang. BBC Interview 1967



http://www.geocities.com/mishaca/interviews/lang.html UPDATED: http://www.industrycentral.net/director_interviews/FL01.HTM