4 Editorial

Brecht and a Revolutionary Cinema!1

It has become a commonplace to cite Bertolt Brecht, along withSergei Eisenstein, Vladimir Mayakovsky and John Heartfield, asexemplary for a revolutionary art today. However, it seems para-doxical to cite Brecht as an exemplar of revolutionary cinema,given that only one of his many film projects came to be realisedin anything like the form he planned. But there are more ways thanone in which a work or a strategy can be exemplary.

The one project that did result in a Brechtian film (though itwas not exclusively his work since, like so many of his plays, it wasa collaborative work) is Kuhle Wampe, made in Berlin in 1931.Different assessments of this film are possible; in their articles inthis issue James Pettifer and Bernard Eisenschitz offer very differ-ent verdicts. Nevertheless, within the limitations imposed byeconomic difficulties and political censorship (no precensoredcopy survives) Kuhle Wampe is an exemplary revolutionary filmin its use of montage (in a wider sense than the one currentlymost often encountered) and in its demonstration of the applica-tion of Brecht's theatrical techniques to the very different condi-tions of the cinema. It is also an example of the organisationof an artistic work with a political aim in view in a particularconjuncture. Finally, Brecht's own reflections on this film, whichwe also publish, are crucial statements of his notions of therelation between aesthetics and politics.

However, Kuhle Wampe cannot constitute an example in thesense of a film to be copied by revolutionary film-makers. A workof art, and a fortiori a revolutionary work of art, is an inter-vention in an aesthetic and political conjuncture; a copy madethirty years later is transformed by the interval alone. He whosets out to copy Hawks today will really be copying Bogdanovich.But if the notion of the exemplar is extended from the modelwork to the model intervention, ie, to Brecht's practice in thecinema, it becomes important to consider his work in America.

Brecht lived in Hollywood from 1941 to 1947, and earned hisliving largely by work on film scripts. Only one film, however,and one of the first he was involved with, is given much space inhis Arbeitsjournal, and that is Fritz Lang's Hangmen also Die(1943). The vast majority of his film work in these years is passedover in complete silence, so that it is now almost impossible tosay which films he had a hand in. The journal, as its nameimplies, is not simply a day-by-day account of events, but a recordof Brecht's work. For Brecht, there was no simple functional

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relation between work and earning a living, nor was his ' real *work as an artist a sublime activity pursued independently ofvulgar money matters; rather the journal reveals that emphasis onthe tension between professional and private life that Benjaminsaw as the ' task of all political lyricism' but which is extendableto other fields of artistic activity than the lyric. But the tension isrevealed only in the journal, not in the films. And Brecht soondespaired of his film work in Hollywood ever becoming more thana way to earn a living. The final word in the journal on Hangmenalso Die is as follows:

' The Lang film (now called Hangmen also Die) has given me thebreathing-space for three plays * (24 June 1943, vol 2, p 576).

Thereafter his film work is less and less frequently mentioned. Inhis article on Kuhle Wampe, Bernard Eisenschitz argues thatBrecht's practice in Hollywood was itself exemplary. If so, theexample is not to be found in his contribution to any films madein Hollywood at this time, but only in the Arbeitsjournal.

There are, however, other forms of the tension Benjamindemands. As far as their productions of films is concerned, otherHollywood film makers, both exiles like Brecht (eg, Douglas Sirk)and natives (eg, Samuel Fuller), may be more ' exemplary \ butprecisely insofar as they are less politically responsible, morepolitically naive than Brecht-ie, more irresponsibly or morenaively political (no one and no work is apolitical). Sirk was amember of the European intelligentsia who deliberately rejectedthe elite world of high art for the popular culture of the cinemaas a reaction against his class's readiness to accept fascism onceit was in power. Fuller is a liberal who in his struggle to convertcinema into an instrument of propaganda for his views independ-ently reinvented some of the devices of epic theatre. Both achievedan aesthetic success denied Brecht in Hollywood, but at the cost ofdeep political ambiguity. Brecht did not imagine that he couldmake a Kuhle Wampe in Hollywood. He hoped to apply the' cunning to broadcast the truth among the many \ His projectsenvisaged an adaptation -of the methods of the parable plays tothe Hollywood genres; they include a biopic on Henri Dunant, thefounder of the Red Cross, as the story of a man unable to resistthe temptation to do good, to the ruin of himself and his family,and a version of Puntila as a Western. But they all came tonothing. Even Sirk seemed destined for a time to abandon thecinema altogether and become a Californian rancher raisingchickens and alfalfa. But if Brecht might have made an AH thatHeaven Allows, he could not have made the Magnificent Obsessionthat was a necessary step towards it. A fortiori he could not haveshared Fuller's naive pro-Americanism. Revolutionary cunning cango only so far, and at this period this was not far enough forHollywood.

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At the other extreme are the artists of the ' historical avant-gardes *, the authors of the ' modern text' frequently referred toin Screen. These authors, too, are often regarded as exemplary fora revolutionary art, yet Barthes, in an article in this issue, suggeststhat Brecht and politically revolutionary artists in general are notauthors of the text in this sense. The militant* artist cannotbe as ' radical' as the avant-gardes, he must remember tha t ' com-munism is moderate', as we learn in The Mother. On the otherhand, he cannot tolerate the political equivocation which is theprice of a productive collaboration with the capitalist film industry.The extent to which such theses are true, and what precisely theywould mean, are the main objects of this issue of Screen, and theyare discussed in it mainly in relation to Brecht's theoretical texts,not in an inversion of the conventional bourgeois notion thatBrecht's theatrical practice is one thing, and a remarkable one, histheory is another, and one to be glossed over, but because it isabove all his reflections on his own work in literature, theatre andcinema and on the politico-aesthetic controversies of his day thatprovide the framework within which it is possible to begin tothink of a revolutionary cinema. It is in this sense above all thatBrecht is exemplary for a magazine like Screen, and it is to thisproject that we devote this special number.

BEN BREWSTERCOLIN MACCABE

English translations of Brecht's writings are still far from complete:the most important collection of his theoretical writings remainsJohn Willet's recently reissued Brecht on Theatre (Eyre Methuen1964 (Sr 1974). Throughout this issue, quotations from Brechtare therefore referred to the Gesammelte Werke in 20 Banden,Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt 1967, giving the volume numbers inRoman, the page, numbers in Arabic numerals. Translations fromBrecht's German texts given here, are the responsibility of theauthors of the article unless otherwise stated.

In a future issue we are to publish an interview aboutKuhle Wampe with one of the producers, George Hoeller-ing, who tells us that he hopes to obtain a print of KuhleWampe in the near future for exhibition at the AcademyCinema.

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