EXPORT-UNION OF GERMAN CINEMA 3/2003 AT LOCARNO MEIN NAME IST BACH & DAS WUNDER VON BERN Piazza Grande AT VENICE ROSENSTRASSE in Competition AT SAN SEBASTIAN SCHUSSANGST & SUPERTEX in Competition FOCUS ON Film Music in Germany Kino Martin Feifel, Katja Riemann (photo © Studio Hamburg) Martin Feifel, Katja GERMAN CINEMA KINO3/2003 4 focus on film music in germany DON’T SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER 14 directors’ portraits THE SUN IS AS MUCH MINE AS THE NIGHT A portrait of Fatih Akin 15 TURNING GENRE CINEMA UPSIDE DOWN A portrait of Nina Grosse 18 producer’s portrait LOOKING FOR A VISION A portrait of Bavaria Filmverleih- & Produktions GmbH 20 actress’ portrait BREAKING THE SPELL A portrait of Hannelore Elsner 22 KINO news in production 28 ABOUT A GIRL Catharina Deus 28 AGNES UND SEINE BRUEDER Oskar Roehler 29 DER CLOWN Sebastian Vigg 30 C(R)OOK Pepe Danquart 30 ERBSEN AUF HALB 6 Lars Buechel 31 LATTENKNALLER Sherry Hormann 32 MAEDCHEN MAEDCHEN II Peter Gersina 32 MARSEILLE Angela Schanelec 33 SAMS IN GEFAHR Ben Verbong 34 SOMMERBLITZE Nicos Ligouris 34 (T)RAUMSCHIFF SURPRISE – PERIODE 1 Michael "Bully" Herbig 35 DER UNTERGANG – HITLER UND DAS ENDE DES DRITTEN REICHES Oliver Hirschbiegel the 100 most significant german films (part 10) 40 WESTFRONT 1918 THE WESTERN FRONT 1918 Georg Wilhelm Pabst 41 DIE DREIGROSCHENOPER THE THREEPENNY OPERA Georg Wilhelm Pabst 42 ANGST ESSEN SEELE AUF FEAR EATS THE SOUL Rainer Werner Fassbinder 43 DER VERLORENE THE LOST ONE Peter Lorre new german films 44 V Don Schubert 45 7 BRUEDER 7 BROTHERS Sebastian Winkels 46 AUGENLIED EYE SONG Mischka Popp, Thomas Bergmann 47 CATTOLICA Rudolph Jula 48 COWBOYS & ANGELS David Gleeson 49 DETROIT Carsten Ludwig, Jan Christoph Glaser 50 EGOSHOOTER Field Recordings (Christian Becker, Oliver Schwabe) 51 EIERDIEBE THE FAMILY JEWELS Robert Schwentke 52 ELEFANTENHERZ AT MONTREAL ELEPHANT HEART CINEMA OF EUROPE Zueli Aladag 53 ERSTE EHE PORTRAIT OF A MARRIED COUPLE Isabelle Stever 54 EUROPE – 99EURO-FILMS 2 AT LO CA R N O RP Kahl, Benjamin Quabeck, Stephan Wagner et al FILMMAKERS OF THE PRESENT 55 GOLDEN LEMONS Joerg Siepmann AT TORONTO 56 IDENTITY KILLS CONTEMPORARY Soeren Voigt WORLD CINEMA 57 MEIN NAME IST BACH AT LOCARNO JAGGED HARMONIES – BACH VS. FREDERICK II PIAZZA GRANDE Dominique de Rivaz 58 OLGAS SOMMER OLGA’S SUMMER Nina Grosse AT V E N I C E - 59 ROSENSTRASSE IN COMPETITION Margarethe von Trotta AT TORONTO - GALA 60 SCHUSSANGST AT SAN SEBASTIAN Dito Tsintsadze IN COMPETITION 61 SEHNSUCHT NACH DEUTSCHLAND – WILHELM FURTWAENGLER WILHELM FURTWAENGLER – LONGING FOR GERMANY Oliver Becker 62 SUPERTEX AT SAN SEBASTIAN Jan Schuette IN COMPETITION 63 TARIFA TRAFFIC Joakim Demmer 64 VOLVER A VERNOS – PINOCHETS KINDER VOLVER A VERNOS – PINOCHET’S CHILDREN Paula Rodriguez 65 DAS WUNDER VON BERN AT LOCARNO THE MIRACLE OF BERN PIAZZA GRANDE Soenke Wortmann 67 film exporters 69 foreign representatives · imprint Scene from ”A Foreign Affair“ ”A Foreign Scene from (photo courtesy of Kinemathek) ARD-Filmredaktion/Deutsche DON’T SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER When Oscar Wilde set out on a lecture tour of North America in film department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York until 1882, one of the places he ended up was Leadville, Colorado – a 1967. In 1972, he reconstructed Edmund Meisel’s original one-horse-town in the Wildest West quite frequently shrouded in music for Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925). Even before a fog of gunpowder. The room where he was expected to speak Hanns Eisler and Theodor W. Adorno, whose book was a spacious saloon. There was a piano in front of the stage, and Composing for Films (1944) had led to them being considered a sign hung on the wall beside it requesting in large letters: ”Please pioneers in this field, Kleiner established film music as a subject don’t shoot the piano player. He is doing his best.“ Later such pleas for worthy of research in both film and musical history. consideration often adorned the cafés, backyard rooms or tents in which the first film presentations took place around 1900. Although In 1977, Kleiner was invited to speak at the first Film Music increasingly those requests became no more than an ironic remi- Workshop in Bonn. This event has most probably given the niscence, they remind us that silent films were never silent. The task decisive impulse for a detailed investigation into film music in of the music or rather the musician was – on the one hand – to Germany in the recent past. In the context of this workshop, ”the soothe the viewer as he sat in a dark room before a screen showing old man from the New World“, as he referred himself, told a vivid moving pictures, and on the other hand to heighten his inner ex- story of how things had been during the rise and fall of silent film: perience. Occasionally, this did mean that the pianist – as the ”The young cinema spent its first twenty years in show booths and obvious, indeed only available target – had to suffer the after music halls. It was an attraction among others, and it soon began to effects of such heightened experiences … lose its sensational character. Of course at that time it was usually a pianist who took care of the musical setting, in a more or less ori- This story was once related by the Viennese composer Arthur ginal way according to his abilities. One can scarcely presume that Kleiner (1903 - 1980). During the twenties, he had written 250 he paid particular attention to the content of the films. He probab- pieces of music for silent films in Austria and Germany and, after his ly just plonked out the salon pieces, evergreens and the current hits emigration to the USA in 1938, he was the musical director of the that were in everybody’s ears at the time. From around 1913 kino 3 focus on film music in germany 2003 4 European FilmPhilharmonie European performs (photo ”Metropolis“ © Georg Tuerk) onwards, film became more complex, more ambitious – and more For a long time, film music has been considered a factory of emo- artistic. It began to tell stories, to form characters; it developed its tions, regardless of whether this is interpreted as manipulative or own visual language. Then independent cinemas emerged, and – in viewed as something worth striving for. Music creates emotions in particular after the First World War – these became larger and a way that no other cinematic means can. For Norbert Juergen more luxurious. Film developed its own pictorial conventions. Of Schneider, a music theorist and one of the most frequently com- course that was also echoed in the accompanying music: it became missioned film musicians in Germany – his films including Brother of more elaborate and complicated. High-class cinemas in the city cen- Sleep (Schlafes Bruder, 1995), 23 (1998), Charlie & Louise (1993), ters engaged ensembles ranging from a salon orchestra to a full and Jahrestage (2000) – , this has something to do with the direct, symphony orchestra. So-called ”cinema libraries“ emerged: cata- ”’uncensored’ connection between the ear as a sensory organ and logues of music for films. These could be popular repertoire works, the brain. Sensory impressions reach us more directly via the ear, but there were also specially composed pieces as standard sug- since they are channeled past our consciousness. The sensory gestions for use in certain scenarios, at various stages of the plot, impulses received through the ears or through music are much or to create a specific atmosphere. Even highly-acclaimed musicians more stimulating for human emotions than visual impulses, as these such as Gottfried Huppertz wrote detailed orchestra scores are more controlled by the consciousness.“ for the great, prestigious German film productions during the twen- ties – for example Die Nibelungen (1922), The Last Laugh/Der letzte Mann (1924), Faust (1925), Metropolis (1925). At that time, at least the music was already seen as an integral component of a film.“ These scores, or excerpts from them for the piano, proved to be essential material during the reconstruction of the heritage of silent film that has been undertaken by international film archives since the sixties. Arthur Kleiner described the musical practice which emerged in the context of the first sound films and continued until well into the forties in the following way: ”Film music – whether it was written for a propaganda film like Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens, 1934), for an abstract film, a documentary or a melodrama from Hollywood – had to function in a visible way, on the surface, it could not be allowed to get lost in itself: everything, the whole con- FilmPhilharmonie European (photo © Georg Tuerk) struction, had to be turned into a direct phenomenon. And the more music adds the missing dimension of depth to an image, the less it may be permitted to develop its own depth. The purpose of film music is to twinkle and sparkle. It can and may do no more than run its course, so swiftly that it remains one step ahead of our attention as this is carried forwards by the image; it cannot remain one step behind, lost in itself.“ kino 3 focus on film music in germany 2003 5 Peter Alexander in ”Liebe, Jazz und Uebermut“ Peter Franka Potente in ”The Princess and the Warrior“ (photos courtesy of in ”The Princess and the Warrior“ Franka Potente Deutsche Kinemathek) THE HISTORY OF Theo Mackeben was one of the German film composers who GERMAN FILM MUSIC AFTER WWII had already been influenced by elements of American entertain- ment music before the Second World War. His music for the film After the Second World War, as in most fields of public life, a divi- The Sinner (Die Suenderin, 1950), which led to a moral scandal in the ded tradition began for German film production, although for some young Federal Republic because Hildegard Knef appeared naked in time at the beginning there was no established and impermeable one brief scene, laid a carpet of symphonic sound beneath the order in either direction.