The Talkie that Failed to Talk: an Exploration of Sounds in G. W. Pabst’s Kameradschaft (1931)

Abstract

Filmed during a key transition period in the history of film sound, G. W. Pabst’s Kameradschaft (1931) thematizes the challenges and possibilities presented by the new sound technology in surprising ways. In this early ‘talkie’, dialogue often fails: conversations between French and German characters result in tension and misunderstandings, an irony given the film’s message of international solidarity. However, Pabst masterfully deploys the new sound technology to render vivid the diegetic space of the underground mines, and these sounds and noises operate as the primary form of meaning-making in the film. I contend that Pabst’s ‘acoustic realism’ is also a central tenet of the socialist message conveyed in the film. It drives an affective critique of war and enables the director to explore questions of nationhood in the interwar period, as well as the precarity of human experience during this time in hitherto unimaginable ways.