“Is this film meant as an apology?” an elderly lady wants to know.

“I hope not. The criticism is there. I’m presenting different perspectives.  You have to read between the lines,” Sánchez Lansch explains. “The facts and the people speak for themselves.”

“If anything,” another member of the audience jumps in, “the Berlin Philharmonic is a case of benign Nazism. Compared to the Vienna Philharmonic, where everyone was a party member, the Berliners are harmless. Furtwängler [the orchestra's chief conductor] loved music — and he loved women. That’s all.”

Let’s read between the lines then.

The facts. In 1933 the renowned Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, then a private GmbH not a state sponsored organization, agreed to work under the direction of the Ministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda led by Joseph Goebbels. Between 1933 and 1945 the Reichsorchester celebrated National Socialism and dedicated itself to Führer worship. Its members were exempt from military duty and enjoyed considerable material and physical privileges. Until the end of the Third Reich the orchestra’s loyalty to the Führer never wavered. Every year on April 21, the Reichsorchester officially honored Hitler’s birthday with a rendition of Beethoven’s Symphony No. Nine (Ode to Joy!). The orchestra played at the opening of the 1936 Olympics and at important party events. Outside of Germany it served as ambassador of National Socialism.  The Reichsorchester, the friendly face of the Holocaust — except that the reality of the Holocaust is absent from this documentary.

Sánchez Lansch has unearthed heretofore unseen and unheard archival footage of the orchestra’s performances, he has conducted long interviews with the two surviving members of the Reichsorchester as well as with family of deceased musicians, and he has created a narrative in which word and image complement one another — which makes it hard to read between the lines.

The people.  Two elderly, soft-spoken gentlemen, former members of the Berlin Philharmonic, talk about their memories of the Reichsorchester. In the comfort of their homes the Nazi era is cast into a mild light. They don’t deny that for twelve years they served National Socialism, represented Nazi Germany abroad, enjoyed many privileges that ordinary Germans did not have access to – and yet, neither sees himself as a Nazi. They had no choice, they say; they had to follow orders. “With one leg one always stood in prison,” one of them explains.  They see themselves as victims,  resistance fighters even, because after all they did not become party members, or so they say. (It is a well known fact of German post-war amnesia that only very few were able to remember that they did join the NSDAP.) Most importantly, they were musicians, not politicians.  Is that why in 1933 they willingly provide proof of their ‘Aryan’ descent? Is that why they do not protest when their Jewish colleagues were forced to leave — first the orchestra and then the country? Is that why they give their best when they play in honor of the Führer? What was it like to play the Ode to Joy every year at Hitler’s birthday while at the same time six million Jews were gassed, shot or worked to death in concentration camps? How could they continue practicing their art after the war when it had been put to such murderous aims? Perhaps they would have liked to speak about all of this. They are not to blame that the film maker decided not to ask.

Those in the audience who have little knowledge of what life was like under Nazism  — the enforcement of racial laws, the daily violence against Jews and other “un-Germanic’ people, the dispossession of their property, the deportations, the Holocaust  — will remain ignorant. Those who have chosen to forget will not be reminded. It is here that the film maker’s supposedly impartial perspective reveals itself as complicit with the lie Germans have told themselves and the world since the end of the Third Reich: I didn’t see anything, hear anything, know anything. I was just following orders. I am a victim myself.

If there are people in the audience who ‘read between the lines,’ they do it not because of Sánchez Lansch’s film but despite of it. There is no such thing as impartiality. Anyone who maintains that a documentary is just presenting ‘the facts’ is being disingenuous.

Both formally and thematically “Das Reichsorchester” is similar to another recent documentary from Germany: Felix Moeller’s “Harlan: Im Schatten von Jud Süß” (Harlan: in the shadow of Jew Suess), a film about Nazi film maker Veit Harlan, director of the infamous “Jew Suess,” and one of the most important Nazi film makers, who after the war continued his career in West-Germany.  Shown at Film Forum in March, “Harlan” is by far the superior film precisely because the film maker examines the presence of the past instead of treating the past as history, finished, shut off from the present. Moeller is preoccupied with the question what it meant for Veit Harlan to continue making films after the Third Reich, after having collaborated with a murderous regime by making a film that legitimized anti-Semitism and justified the Holocaust. Moeller raises the question of moral accountability. Even if Veit Harlan believed that a film maker was just an artist and not a politician, is it justifiable to hold on on to this opinion after  he learned that his films were instrumental in executing genocidal politics? Moeller doesn’t offer Harlan’s children an easy way out. He insist on one question: What does it mean to have a father who helped in the execution of the Holocaust? Moeller does not provide answers, he achieves something far more important, he keeps the past alive.

No such concerns are raised in “Das Reichsorchester”. There’s not one sequence, not a single scene in which the film contests the implicit propaganda that in order to qualify as a Nazi one had to have killed at least one Jew with one’s own hands. Germany a country of innocents, the Berlin Philharmonic, an orchestra of resistance fighters. A convenient myth — or shall we call it a lie?

If the Berlin Philharmonic’s involvement with the Nazis can be regarded a case of benign Nazism, it because “Das Reichsorchester” makes us see it that way.

Was Hitler a Nazi?

———————————————————————————————

Kino! 2010. New films from Germany at Moma, April 24 through April 30.

Das Reichsorchester (Enrique Sánchez Lansch, Germany 2007, 102 min)

Harlan: in the shadow of ‘Jud Süss‘ (Felix Moeller, Germany 2008, 99 min)

Benign Nazism originally appeared on unguided tour on April 25, 2010.
All rights reserved (c) bettina mathes

1
I’ve been many things to many people: the most beautiful woman in the world, the icy blonde, “the face that launch’d a thousand ships;” a myth, a phantom, a star; the daughter of Zeus; abused, exploited, exposed; a whore, a victim, a virgin; the torch that burns men’s desire, the shining moon; the primal scene of female beauty. Yet no one can say where I come from and no one knows who I am. Despite the tireless efforts of generations of linguists, my name is an enigma still. Did you know that I have the gift of ubiquity, the ability to be in more than one place at once? Here and not here; there and not there; good and bad; possible or impossible. Paris thought that I was his, although I never was — an idle fancy! To Troy I never went; that was a phantom, an image endowed with life … made … out of the breath of heaven. You think you know me but you shouldn’t always believe what you hear or see.

Suppose I was the wife of an ambitious, if somewhat clueless, professor. I refer to him as “my husband,” he calls me “Darling.” We’re like night and day: he speaks English, I speak French. We’re getting along because I haven’t told him that what he sees in me isn’t who I am.  He doesn’t take criticism very well and he can’t stand it when he’s proven wrong. He’s obsessed with finding evidence that Shakespeare was a Spanish Jew, not English at all. I don’t care for his research (I think it is self-involved), but agree to accompany him to the archive. It’s about time he learns to look for the past in the present, to see first and then, maybe, explain. I’m done with playing the part of the perfect wife  — today I want the masquerade to be over. You know the words.

Enough. I come together with my Lord, ship borne,
And now his city must I seek, his harbinger.
But what intent his heart has, that I may not guess.
Is it as wife I come? And come I as a queen?
Or am I here a victim of my prince’s pangs,
And of the evil fates long suffered by the Greeks?
I am conquered; whether captive too I may not know!

Enough, indeed. Neither conquered nor captive I’m coming home! As befits a queen, I expect a formal reception. I ask that you look at me; listen to me, follow me — but don’t search for evidence, and don’t reach for conclusions. Trust me, there’s merit in suspending your sense of orientation (if only for the twenty-two minutes it takes to read this essay). Je me sens si loin, et cependant si près. Et j’aime à me dire: Me voilà, là.

At your service, Madame.

2
He has abandoned the delights of imagination (he calls it fantasy) and the pleasures of the senses. A committed historian he trades in facts. In search for Truth he doesn’t always see what’s right in front of him. (His wife for instance.) When he looks at a woman, he sees a virgin. A secret admirer of Swiss watches (when he was a young boy, he wanted to be a watchmaker) he has read somewhere that time is a mechanical movement with two degrees of complication. He has been taught that it is impossible to be in two places at once.

He is a manufacturer of sense — although these are not the words he would use to describe what he does. He wants to be remembered as the discoverer of Shakespeare’s true identity. “He wants to be immortalized,” says his wife who knows him far better than he knows himself. His supremely ambitious project demands patience and precision. He always knows what time it is. Is that why he lives entirely in the past? Most people when they meet him for the first time find him awkward, out of place, absent-minded. It’s hard to surprise him, he sees what he wants to see. His questions are short and precise: Is this the way into the monastery? Why did you bring me here? Why do you read me Goethe’s Faust now? Did you miss me? (Does he know that some people refer to his life as a tragedy in two parts?)

He is an experienced traveler who does his homework. Always ahead of himself, always looking for something, he’s a tourist in everyone else’s past. An empty cave is an empty cave only until he arrives and fills it with meaning — with the story of Hildebrandt, for instance, the 13th century merchant who was miraculously saved from shipwreck by a shining light on the hill above the cave. And then this: a voided room, a chapel stripped bare. “Look! Nothing, no signs,” the guide proclaims triumphantly. He is shaken momentarily. Voids make him feel uncomfortable. Is that why he spends most of his time in the archive? Is that why the ticking of the clock doesn’t bother him? He prefers things to be fixed, he can’t endure the sight of decay. Frozen time is his preferred element; terra firma his favorite country. He doesn’t trust the sea and he is suspicious of the moon — although he would never admit that, of course not.

Lately he hasn’t slept so well. Lately he’s been doing strange things at night, in his dreams. The other morning he came to in the corridor after a dream that was painful at first and then became pure pleasure. A crack in the wall, a change of light, a faintly familiar voice like a memory from the future. Listen.

Bei euch, ihr Herrn, kann man das Wesen
Gewöhnlich aus dem Namen lesen…
And that’s plainly what we mean when we call you God’s enemies, seducers, liars.
…
Faust: Who are you?

Mephistopheles says: Part of that force which sometimes encourages evil, and sometimes acts for the good.

Faust says: What is this mystery?

Mephisto says: I am the spirit that always denies and rightly so, for everything is worthy of destruction. It would be better if nothing existed. So everything you call sin, destruction, everything, in short, which is considered evil, that is my element.

Faust says: You say you are a part, but I see you standing whole before me.

Mephisto says: I have told you my modest truth. If man, that tiny universe of folly, usually considers himself to be whole, I know I’m part of that part which existed at the beginning of everything, a part of that darkness which gave birth to proud light which now quarrels with the night that mothered it.

An experiment: neither hear nor see nor speak. To change your mind, to ignore the ticking of the clock, to find questions that don’t need answers: Who can tell dusk from dawn? Who can tell beginning from end? Who knows the difference between the past and the future?

He is anxious all of a sudden. But not anxious enough to return to the archive. The sudden urge to go to Paris. If this is an abduction, he surrenders willingly, with pleasure.

3
Magical, mystical, otherworldly — to describe THE CONVENT means to eschew the surgical vocabulary of academic film criticism, to let go of the urge to isolate an idea and explain the meaning behind what is there on the screen. There is no behind. There’s magic — and there’s Catherine Deneuve who, strange to say, seems to be directing THE CONVENT. Commanding the gaze, prompting camera movement, seeing everything, being everywhere at once, combining what we tend to think of as unconnected. Deneuve plays Deneuve plays Hélène plays Helen of Troy. Goddess and diva, idol and star, archetype and stereotype: she incorporates the most powerful afterimages of Western culture’s imaginary. Deneuve’s performance is of a stunning directness — confrontational and susceptive at the same time. ‘Don’t look for hidden motivations,’ she intimates, ‘pay attention to the ongoing moment.’ Sigmund Freud would not enjoy THE CONVENT. Or would he?

Everything in THE CONVENT is apparent. Image, word, and music are what they are: appearances. And yet nothing in THE CONVENT is transparent: no right angles, no progress, no closure. Repetition, perhaps even compulsion. When the lights go on in the movie theatre, the film continues in my head. I can’t imagine Freud wouldn’t be intrigued.

4
Watching THE CONVENT I feel reassured once more that some things will never be resolved: the argument between fact and fantasy, the disagreement between image and word, the controversy between seeing and believing. I like that ongoing struggle. It gives me the freedom to enjoy insignificant questions. What if the past was in the future? What if Helena abducted Paris? What if there was no before to an afterimage? What if there were no insignificant questions?

Don’t expect answers, be prepared for performance. The meaning of THE CONVENT is THE CONVENT. The actors act for the camera. They deliver their lines like priests reciting passages of sacred scripture: diligently, committed, reserved.

THE CONVENT is a celebration of the irreducible obliqueness of the world we live in. A refusal to be anything else but a film. An invitation to experience the untranslatable immediacy of music, images, and — yes, indeed — words. –

Faust says: “Be silent, then, for danger is in words.”

Is this the way into the monastery?

—————————————–

THE CONVENT, written & directed by Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal/France 1994, 95 min., with Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich, Luís Miguel Cintra, Leonore Silveira.

quotes:

Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust 2.

Margaret Atwood, Helen of Troy does Countertop Dancing

“The Convent” (Manoel de Oliveira, 1994) originally appeared on unguided tour on January 8, 2010.
All rights reserved (c) bettina mathes

Liliana Cavani’s controversial 1974 movie The Night Porter has been labeled “Nazi chic” (Roger Ebert). For some critics the film is a shamelessly pornographic fantasy of the Holocaust, a “sentimental idyll … exalting romantic love between victim and victimizer, against the brute reality of Nazi violence,” (Marga Cottino-Jones) using the Holocaust as a mere “backdrop to the erotic/sadomasochistic misadventures of Max and Lucia, Nazi and victim” (Rebecca Scherr); a “despicable attempt to titillate [the viewer] by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering.” (Ebert)
I’m not convinced.

It’s true, there is something despicable in the deadly, compulsive  & sadomasochistic relationship between Holocaust survivor Lucia Atherton (Charlotte Rampling) and former SS officer Maximilian Aldorfer (Dirk Bogarde). During the Third Reich Max, a doctor at a Nazi concentration camp, forced Lucia, a prisoner, to become his mistress and sex slave. When years later Lucia arrives in the fancy hotel in Vienna, where Max now works as night porter, they resume their relationship.

But does showing a despicable relationship make the film itself despicable? Can we understand the films ‘content’ (the story), without considering its form? Can we talk about what The Night Porter shows (and doesn’t show) without paying attention to how it is shown?

The film privileges Max’s point of view, his perception of Lucia (then and now), his memories of the concentration camp. Perpetrator memories. Repulsive memories of forced sex, of perverse sexual fantasies. Memories that many former Nazis share. Hidden memories, secret fantasies of the past.

Memories are not a matter of fact. Memories are private, subjective, intertwined with wishful fantasies. Often wish and memory are indistinguishable. Consider for instance the fantasies, (erotic or otherwise) Nazi perpetrators never acted on, perhaps never even shared with anyone. Does that mean the fantasies disappeared when the Third Reich fell apart? They did not. They became memories.

Memories are like dreams. They require a body; they are experienced by real people; they are inscribed in the mind of individuals, they must be worked through on a personal level. If we want to understand the satisfaction and enjoyment Germans + Austrians derived from being Nazis, every memory matters, every fantasy counts.

We may not want to see it, but for Max, the perpetrator, Auschwitz was and is a backdrop, a titillating setting, a turn-on.

Lucia’s/Rampling’s exquisite, if extreme, thinness — almost unbearable to look at — is less a “signifier of the real starvation actual prisoners suffered” (Scherr) than an indication that in the film’s reality (Max’s reality) she has no ‘content’, no story of her own. Lucia’s audible presence is as thin as her body. She remains silent for most of the film. Everything about Lucia suggests the presence of an absence. She is a ghost, a memory. Max’s memory.

That’s why I don’t see “exploitation of memories” in The Night Porter. I see performance and repetition. The Night Porter doesn’t ‘deal’ with the memory of the Holocaust. It is less a film about memory than a film as memory.

To expect The Night Porter to offer a realistic and truthful image of suffering in a concentration camp is to misunderstand the film’s formal concerns: to re-enact a memory, to re-evoke the sexiness of camp life as remembered by Max, the Nazi, the perpetrator.

The Night Porter made me reconsider the neatly drawn boundaries between memory and fantasy. “False memory” is a misleading term. It suggests that memories ought to refer to facts, contain the trace of some indisputable, definitive truth. When I remember something that never happened,  from the point of view of a historian my memory may seem false. But it is a true memory nonetheless.

More often than not the perpetrator’s memories lie dormant. They are reviled before they are revealed. Since they must not be repeated, the crimes whose traces they preserve cannot be mourned. I wonder, how long can an individual, how long can a society postpone grieving before it becomes delusional, denying the difference between the dead and the living?

Art can help me understand how memory works, but art cannot remember for me.
- – - – - – — – - – - – — – -

Liliana Cavani, The Night Porter (Italy 1974, 118 min., color)

On remembering the Holocaust in Germany see my essay “Voids”.

Sources:
Marga Cottino-Jones, Marga. “‘What Kind of Memory?: Liliana Cavani’s Night Porter.” Contention 5.1 (1995): 105- 111.
Roger Ebert: The Night Porter (review), in: The Chicago Sun-Times, February 10, 1975
Rebecca Scherr: The Uses of Memory and the Abuses of Fiction: Sexuality in Holocaust Fiction and Memoir, in: Other Voices, v.2, n.1 (February 2000).
Nora Sayr: Review in: The New York Times, October 2, 1974.
Susan Sontag: Fascinating Fascism, in: The New York Review of Books, Volume 22, Number 1, February 6, 1975.

A Note on “The Night Porter” originally appeared on unguided tour on June 7, 2009.
All rights reserved (c) bettina mathes