Emblems of Modernism in the Early Films of Max Ophüls

Abstract

KARL SIEREK Emblems of Modernism in the Early Films of Max Ophiils ax ophüls' first sound films are firmly rooted in a general aesthetic of European modernism cutting across all media. This is evidenced not only by the wide use their narratives make of the media of technological reproduction such as the gramophone, photography or film but also by the interweaving of different textual systems such as writing, image and sound. In the experimental use of these devices Ophiils' early sound films contribute to the development of trans-media strategies. This is noteworthy for the following reasons: First, Ophiils has rarely been identified as a representative of an aesthetic of modernism, especially in light of the stylistic repertory he subsequently developed, consisting of long takes, "baroque" touches and a preference for nineteenthcentury "bourgeois" subject matter; second, the distinctive emblems of modernism are usually ascribed more to documentary, semi-documentary or politically motivated films or to the realistic touch of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) films of G. W. Pabst and others—at least in the case of cinema in the Weimar era.1 It has often been overlooked that Neues Bauen (Bauhaus in architecture and design) and the literature of Neue Sachlichkeit, contemporary radio plays and serial music, also had a palpable effect also on the narrative cinema of the 1920s and '30s—iffor the most part on an abstract and structural level. These somewhat paradoxical affinities with the contemporary aesthetic of the Weimar Republic can be demonstrated through a variety of different discursive practices used in films by Ophiils such as Die verliebte Firma (1932), Lachende Erben (1933), Arizona Quarterly Volume 60, Number 5, Special Issue 2004 Copyright © 2004 by Arizona Board of Regents ISSN 0004-16 10 M 212 Karl Sierek Liebelei (1933), or in the later Komedie om Geld (1936). To support my argument I will analyze some details from these films. To the extent that it is appropriate to the medium of film, in particular its syncretistic and synaesthetic character (cf. Lotman)—I will draw on concepts from different art theories and attempt to apply them to the respective discourses in film. This method of hybrid transcoding2 highlights: an aesthetic theorem of the auditory to explain visual serialism , a concept of architecture theory to describe episodic narrative units, and a model of the function of fantasy in theories of culture to analyze the paradox of the term "modernism" in connection with Ophiils.3 RUDOLF ARNHEIM OR UBIQUITY The earliest cinematic work by Ophiils that has survived, the musical review film Die Verliebte Firma, contrasts strikingly with the ponderous gravity of the German expressionist cinema. The idea of constructing delicate, ephemeral networks is very much in line with a modernity that takes up the motifs ofmovement, speed and mobility as well as the upheaval of a white-collar society (cf. Kracauer) on the brink of crisis or the emancipation of women. It is, however, more oriented toward cinematographic material and filmic discourse rather than toward unfolding iconic values in formal terms of expressionistic cinema and symbolic terms of montage.4 This idea embraces, almost euphorically, technological innovations such as the acoustic transmission by radio, telegraphy and the sound film. Ophiils' experience from directing radio plays in Frankfurt and Breslau from 1927 to 1931 enabled him to depict the current media strategies in their dual function as a "World Tour in Transmissions." This title of a series of radio plays for children broadcast around Christmas 1929, transposes the trope of travel with all its connotations of modernity and mobility into the space of media: a radiophonie journey carried by the waves of sound. What it alludes to, is the staging of complete ubiquity and material transformation that will be at the core of Die verliebte Firma three years later, the staging of complete ubiquity and material transformations. "I'd so much . . . love to be . . . really in love . . .": The telegraph lady who appears in the fifteenth minute ofDie verliebte Firma combines her work of mechanically typing a telegram with the rhythm of this song. That little tune, broken up into groups of words, is broadcast on the Emblems of Modernism 213 air—or through the telegraph wires. Thus...