Have you ever thought of looking at a warfilm differently? - What About a Western?

The lone hero stands alone and faces a row of desperate opponents. The sun beats down on him as he raises his pistol and fires. His shots are quicker and more surprising than those of his opponents and they fall down dead.  He holsters his weapon, laconically lights a cigarette and turns to mount his horse. He rides off slowly in to the distance and the camera pans back to see his image become smaller and smaller in a huge, desolate landscape. Western music plays as the hero disappears in to an uncertain future in a land of opportunity…This scenario could be the stock ending of a myriad of Westerns and at first glance the western genre would seem to be a strange genre would seem to be a counterintuitive one through which to explore the national identity of the GDR.

Elsaesser and Wedel, who proposed the notion of National Foundation films also suggested the western as a genre to investigate the national identity of the GDR. They propose that Wolf had been influenced by the western noting that he had, “ a keen appreciation of the classical western, in the manner of John Ford, Robert Aldrich or even Sam Fuller!” (Elsaesser, Wedel, 2001, 21). Wolf himself admitted to the influence o f Italian films and Directors, (Herlinghaus,1982, 64,) and it was Italian film making that had influenced and indeed reinvigorated the western genre in the 1960’s through the Spaghetti Westerns and the introduction of Clint Eastward as the “Silent Man”.  Not only were Hollywood westerns and Spaghetti Westerns an influence on East German film makers,  but also home grown literature such as the stories of German author Karl May writing in German at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th Centuries. He wrote about his experiences in the Prairies of North America and this influenced DEFA filmmakers in the 1960’s to produce their own take on the Western for East German audiences.

Origins and features

The western genre is, perhaps, the oldest Hollywood genre,  which Andre Bazin, co-founder of Cahiers du cinéma , called, “ the only genre whose origins are almost identical with those of the cinema itself[…]” (Schatz, 1988,25). The earliest Hollywood films were Westerns, often using real cowboys and has at its root “[…]the conflicts…of the industrial age, …between old world and new…(Schatz, 1988, 26). The Western develops a popular language for the formational myths of America and is used to reinforce those myths, and drive out any other narratives, such as those of the native peoples (Schatz, 1988, 26).
At the centre of the foundational myth are two protagonists, the frontier and the solitary hero. The frontier is Janus faced giving and taking away, “ if the West was seen as a potential Eden, the garden of the world, it was also seen as a wilderness, the Great American desert. The life on the frontier was both ennobling because it was close to nature and primitive, at the furthest remove from civilisation” (Pye, 1977, 201). The frontier permeates the whole genre, it affects acceptable actions and how justice is interpreted. It permits actions and behaviour that would not be acceptable in the civilised homelands but are vital for survival on the frontier. The frontier is flexible and changing. This constant movement becomes the “crucible” of the nation, (Langford, 2005, 63).

The hero of a Western is a solitary romantic one (Pye, 1977, 201), he is the one who forms the narrative, by recognising the conflict in a community, deciding to engage in that conflict, participating in a life or death struggle and finally prevailing (Schatz, 1988, 27). Having prevailed he moves on to the next challenge rather than settling for the emasculating life of civilisation (Schatz, 1988, 30). The conflict in a movie reflects the conflicts of society but the hero’s engagement in that conflict alienates him from his society, he is “an ambivalent figure who embodies the savage and civilised[…]” (Schatz, 1988, 30), his alienation can only be redeemed through the final battle.

The settlers of this frontier, who travel with the hero,  become like the Jews searching for the promised land, linking the genre to the road movies genre. The hero is “ in a sense both attempting to find a promised land and [is] still wandering in the wilderness” ( Pye, 1977, 207). This sense of constant movement gives a sense of incompleteness and dislocation. The frontier is continually moving and the settlers are following behind with the lone hero. This movement has caused the genre to be described as “a symbolic representation of the American psyche[…]” (Pye, 1977, 208).

This discussion of the genre has concentrated on the settler and western experience, the experience of the native people and wilderness are seen, in the Hollywood genre, as a place where, “ In the end […] the land is exploited for the White Man’s dollars” (Lischke, McNab, 2005,283). The native people are forces of resistance who are pushing back against the White expansion. Here we see a divergence in the genre between the Hollywood and the East German western genre.
Indianer Filmen

Produced by DEFA in reaction to the West German production of Karl May’s stories in the early 1960’s, which East German citizens could see when they travelled to Czechoslovakia on holiday until 1968 (Gemünden, 2001, 26). DEFA produced its own version of the western genre, known as Indianer Filmen, which consciously decided to look at the Western from the point of view of the Indian rather than that of the conquering White settler.  Produced by the Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt’s production team, Roter Kreis, Native Americans were cast as the heroes of the films and the American, English or French settlers as the villains, (Lischke, McNab, 2005,283). “The Indians, struggling to survive imperialist and capitalist forces, would reflect the proletarian ideal of hard work and co-operation” (Lischke, McNab, 2005,286) and while the films tried to be historically accurate, they, like their American genre cousins, also reflected “war not peace” (Lischke, McNab, 2005,287). In portraying war the Indianer Filmen wanted to portray the capitalists as they really were and reflect the East German world view where, “peace is illusory and war becomes an end in itself” (Lischke, McNab, 2005,298).

While the “Whites” represented capitalism the Indians were a primitive but “noble”, (Gemünden, 2001, 28). The films “tap into broadly held notions of [GDR] national identity, firmly appropriating the “other” i.e. the North American Indians, as an “us” (Gemünden, 2001, 30) and therefore the “us” becomes a picture of the “noble[…]rallying against American materialism and greed[…]”(Gemünden, 2001, 30-1). The central figure and consistent star of the DEFA Indianer Filmen is Yugoslavian Gojko Mitic, who plays the chief Ulzana as a freedom fighter or Partisan he, “acts out the fantasy of the resistance fighter and anti fascist, providing a role model for young citizens and relieving older ones from responsibilities they may not have been up to during the 1930’s and 1940’s” (Gemünden, 2001, 33).

Thus, we see 2 streams of influence on Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt and Ich war neunzehn. The Hollywood Western genre, with its emphasis on the lone hero struggling to bring order to (a) an, wide, unruly frontier and the Indianer Filmen with its sympathy for the Native peoples who are oppressed and exploited by the “foreign” invaders and who have to resist as Partisans in their own land.

Elsaesser and Wedel  see a strong western motive with Hecker, in Ich war neunzehn,  acting as an Indian supporting the civilising forces, they say; “ Gregor[…] is perhaps best understood as the typical western figure of the Indian scout[…]” (Elsaesser, Wedel, 2001, 21). There appears to be little literature reviewing Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt the through western genre, however Kunert’s film is linked to DEFA’s Indianer Filmen through its production group, Rote Kreis. It seems not impossible to apply an Indianer Film and Western reading to Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt and Ich war neunzehn.

What is Anti Fascism?

Most East German war films are described as being anti facist films, however I have struggled to find a simple academic description of anti fascist film. So I had to write one.

Anti-Fascist Genre, Purpose and Elements

Purpose

Following a brief overview of anti-fascism, we can now turn to a review of the genre’s purpose, elements and style. A clear and concise description of the genre’s purpose was given by the director of the first of the genre’s films, Wolfgang Staudte who declared that,” honest confrontation with the military and moral catastrophe that in his view, the Germans had brought on themselves[ ...]” (Barnouw ,2008, 48). His most famous anti-fascist films, Die Mörder sind unter uns, (The Murderers are Amongst Us) 1946, and Rotation, 1949, both explore guilt for and reasons for National Socialism. Following the exploration a conclusion is that justice must been seen to be done, with the guilty brought to justice, and that only a socialist future will prevent the catastrophes of the past being repeated. This intense exploration of the causes and remedies for National Socialism became a Leitmotiv for the genre, with the GDR’s  Culture Ministry stating in 1973, „DEFE began its way in film and made it, its goal, to awaken the people’s understanding of the past, which could only be dealt with when they understood in all clarity the causes, connections and forces that had caused this development“ (Barnert,2008,11)

As genre developed we see a Bildungs process take place where the protagonists on the screen learn about their mistakes, recognise them and then are reborn as socialists. In the literary movements the Bildungsroman become the “socialist Entwicklungsroman” (Rider, 1995, 358), while the term refers to the novels of the period it is just as relevant to DEFA’s output.

A further subtext to the genre is the role of grief and the expression of grief for the losses occasioned by war, which had no other outlet. Pinkert suggests that in a nation where it was impossible to take in the enormity of the loss caused by the war, “ the […] antifascist DEFA films produced[…]performative and visual modes that enable new public and private encounters the war through ever-changing processes of melancholic mourning” (Pinkert, 2008, 11). This develops space to mourn where the state has assumed all elements of victimhood to itself and there is no public sphere in which personal loss or victimhood can be expressed. 

When the genre developed from its origins in the 1940’s in to the 50’s and 60’s it took on a darker purpose than just discussion the past but with the second wave DEFA of directors who had been educated in the GDR it become partly a way “of the older generation […] legitimising […] political power” (Mückenberger, 1999, 70) and partly a way of commenting on the post Berlin Wall GDR (Mückenberger, 1999, 71).

 Elements

As with any genre, this one has a number of elements, of which any film will contain some or all. In this case the elements also give clues as to how the makers want the National Foundations of their state to be understood.

The first element of the genre is that the action is centred around the National Socialist experience and the fight against fascism. This was a central reality for those that had created the GDR and were in its leading organs, such as DEFA. Those such as Wolf had this battle at the centre of their youth and the as the core element that had forged their characters. They had kept their souls clean fighting the Nazis in the KPD, fascists in Spain, at home underground, in the Concentration Camps and in exile. This sacrifice was not going to be forgotten. This sacrifice also led to the second element of the anti fascist film, that of a hierarchy of victims (Kannapin, 2001, 31) with socialist victims at the forefront of victimhood and all other victims, such as the Jews, standing in the shadows or invisible. 

The third element is that protagonists are almost exclusively male. Die Mörder sind unter uns, is part melodrama, part expressionist film with the central action taking place around a couple slowly falling in love, however it is the male lead around which the story turns. This continues in to films such as Irgendwo in Berlin, (Somewhere in Berlin) Gerhard Lamprecht, 1946, and Staudte’s  Rotation. These use the melodramatic situation of a family, however as with Die Mörder the action turns around a leading man.

As the genre develops the family is introduced, such as Ehe in Schatten, (Marriage in the Shadows) Kurt Maetzig, 1947 or Die Buntkarierten, (The Gingham Dress) Maetzig, 1949 but the key figure remains male in the genre. Women have the role of either helping the male lead to come to terms with his failed past or acting as a siren educating him as to the real state of the world.

The final element of the genre is it division between “good” and “bad” German soldiers. A “bad” German is not one who served in the Wehrmacht, that would exclude 95% of the male population, but a character who is serving in the SS, as shown in both the films under discussion, or who had committed a war crime, such as Hauptmann Brückner in Die Mörder. Wolf summed up the genre saying that it was not a case that „We should not speak of the disadvantages of those that lived in Germany under the Nazis, however we should speak more of how under the leadership of German Anti Faschists and with the self sacrifice of the Soviets struggled in to the feelings and thoughts of the Germans“(Wolf, 1985, 15).

That is in recognising their mistake and supporting the state the viewer can move forward.