Clowns and Cabaret: Expressions of Surface Culture in Weimar Film
Mara Arts, Independent Scholar
During the Weimar period (1919-1933), German society modernised rapidly, exemplified by its rapid urbanisation. Weimar Berlin was the third largest city in the world, after New York and London, and by 1929 more than a quarter of Germans lived in cities.[1] The rise of mass-consumerism and an increase in free time meant that new leisure-time activities and spaces emerged. Among these new developments were both the rising popularity of nightclubs and the development of a large film industry. This blog post explores the representation of the nightclub space in three film texts of this period: Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (Fritz Lang, 1922); Spione (Fritz Lang, 1928) and Der Blaue Engel (dir. Josef von Sternberg, 1930). It interrogates how Weimar’s surface culture influenced the portrayal of nightclubs in film, and which ideas and values were attached to these images. Surface culture here is taken to mean a ‘moment in modernity when surface values first ascended to become determinants of taste, activity and occupation’.[2]
In the context of this blog post, Siegfried Kracauer’s work on surface culture is particularly fertile. Kracauer’s notion that ‘surface-level expressions (…), by virtue of their unconscious nature, provide unmediated access to the fundamental substance of the state of things’.[3] Cultural historian Janet Ward has extended Kracauer’s theory in her study Weimar Surfaces, which considers surface as a means of penetrating the project of modernity . In Weimar Germany, surface played a meaningful role in mass cultural formation. In this historical moment, aesthetics and surface values became important determinants of taste.
As one of the new media of this modern society, film made people get used to a high speed of visual imagery through the use of montage which allowed filmmakers to juxtapose images in quick succession. Another form of mass entertainment which traded in a similar speed and variety of changing images, though its inception predates the emergence of cinema, was cabaret. Cabaret became popular in Germany from the turn of the twentieth century. Cabaret was a form of live performance in which short acts alternated to fill an evening’s worth of entertainment. However, unlike similar performance forms such as vaudeville which catered to the working classes, cabaret was aimed at a middle-class audience.[4]
Contemporaneous discourses attempted to understand the popularity of variety shows and cinema. On the one hand it was argued that the modern, urbanised citizen could not be expected to follow a high-brow ‘difficult’ play after a day’s work, but instead was only able to manage the constant distraction and diversion of a series of short sketches. On the other hand, it was speculated that in order to deal with the big and constant ‘assaults’ of fast-paced urban life on the psyche, people deliberately sought out smaller ‘assaults’ like cabaret performances to be better able to cope with the high intensity of modern life.
Kracauer argues that the cinema industry was inherently political. In his essay ‘The Little Shopgirls go to the Movies’ he states that films subvert any chance of a social uprising. Films, according to Kracauer, give the audience the illusion of an opportunity for social critique contained within the dominant system of capitalism. The content of a film can be critical of those in power, but ultimately the capitalist studio owners will benefit from any film’s success. Kracauer follows this statement with a number of examples as to how films can serve to maintain the status quo desired by the dominant classes: films eschew any mention of structural social inequality; any misfortune experienced by a film’s characters are presented as personal and not political.[5]
Given their different target audiences, a consideration of class is important when discussing both film and cabaret in Weimar Germany. Ward points out that the big movie-palaces were designed to provide an experience of luxury for the masses. Extending Kracauer’s argument on the anti-revolutionary tactics of film, Ward argues that by providing the lower classes with temporary luxury, they were less inclined to demand a more lasting change to the distribution of capital. A similar point can be made about cabaret: its largely apolitical content served to distract the urban audience from the political reality that served only a small proportion of society.
Taking into consideration the surface-driven consumerist culture of Weimar Germany, this post now closely examines the nightclub scenes in the three films in order to determine how the surfaces of these nightclub spaces support or undercut dominant social narratives. The films - Dr Mabuse, der Spieler, Spione and Der Blaue Engel were made and released several years apart and reflect the progression not only of Weimar society but also of the film industry, as it moved from silent to sound film. All three texts remain widely available and discussed, but the cabaret scenes in these films are not usually closely considered.
Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler
The first film under consideration is Fritz Lang’s 1922 classic Dr Mabuse, der Spieler. The film’s plot includes the character of the nightclub dancer Cara Carozza, who is in love with the criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse. The scene that introduces Carozza shows her performing in a nightclub, the Folies Bergères. Although the club is based in Berlin its name is clearly meant to evoke Parisian glamour. The entrance of the building is sparsely decorated, except for two big lamps and a number of posters on either side of the doors advertising Carozza’s act. On this poster Carozza is shown coyly looking over her shoulder to the spectator. This is in accordance with Ward’s observation that advertisements usually attempted to be sensual, presenting their products as objects of desire. Carozza is on these posters presented as a desirable commodity, her surface replicated identically at will. Of course, Carozza’s role as nightclub performer exemplifies the routine objectification of women in a patriarchal society.
Carozza’s performance includes a large number of high kicks and two large ethnic-looking heads, which roll on stage and are equipped with overtly phallic noses. For the finale of the number Carozza stands on the noses while her dress is lifted off her from above, leaving her undergarments momentarily exposed. The overtly sexual nature of this act points to the idea of woman as sexually available commodity, whereas the ethnic props tie in with equating non-Western cultures with notions of the exotic, animalistic and sexual.
Carozza is therefore only shown as surface, first by the numerous posters and then by her performance. Significantly, the performance includes a medium length shot of Carozza looking coyly over her shoulder, in a very similar way as to how she is depicted on the poster. During her act she does not transcend her surface image, and indeed she barely does so at any later point in the film even when she is not engaging in stage performance. She appears to have little motivation other than her blind devotion to Mabuse, which even leads her to commit suicide at his command. Carozza is left as a flat, underdeveloped façade who is mainly used by Mabuse for the value of her good looks, for example when he asks her to seduce a rich man so that Mabuse can steal his money.
The nightclub clientele in Dr Mabuse is shown as mindlessly consuming overtly sexual performances or engaging in deviant behaviour such as adultery. The audience are shown to need bigger ‘shocks’ in order to still be titillated, numbed as they are in a modern, consumerist society. The positive response to Carozza’s performance indicates that a bona fide strip act is the only thing that will raise an interest with this bourgeois audience. Carozza herself, as previously indicated, problematizes identification due to her presentation as pure surface. The lack of motivation for her character’s actions inhibits spectators in their attempts to sympathise with her character.
The presentation of the nightclub space - which takes up only a small amount of the total running time of the film - positions the nightclub as just one in many spaces of leisure and entertainment available to Berliners. By making the setting in the nightclub space seem insignificant and incidental, Dr. Mabuse implies that these spaces, in which criminal activities could happen, are a part of modernity that is so ordinary it does not need to be commented on.
Spione
Spione, like Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, also centres around a male character who spends his time spying and setting up intricate criminal traps. For the majority of the film this character is known only as Haghi, a wheelchair-bound bank director who uses the bank as a cover for an extensive underground spy-network. Haghi has another persona, the clown Nemo. Haghi’s multiple identities are already a reflection of the multiple ‘surfaces’ one could inhabit in Weimar Berlin. In a culture largely defined by surface expressions, it is easy to hide your identity behind one or multiple façades.
There are two scenes in the film which involve Haghi as clown Nemo performing in a cabaret. In the first, where he is shown applying his make-up backstage, both the audience and the Secret Service are unaware of his ‘true’ identity as Haghi. In the second scene both the audience and the Secret Service know that Nemo is in fact Haghi; Nemo’s stage performance ends when he realises that he is surrounded by Servicemen from all sides. Faced with his inevitable arrest Nemo instead opts to commit suicide on the stage.
Like in Mabuse the nightclub scene is introduced by a display of posters advertising the act. In this case the audience is shown three drawings of Clown Nemo filling the cinema screen, bordered at the top and bottom of the frame with the repeated word ‘Scala’. This is the name of a famous Berlin nightclub; contemporary audiences would have easily made the connection that the drawings that are shown are posters on the outer wall of a club. This shot dissolves into one of a man sitting in front of a mirror, applying his clown’s make-up. The spectator sees the clown from behind and is thus drawn to his reflection in the mirror, another surface representation that underscores Haghi’s multiple identities. The props surrounding the desk such as the clown’s wig, hat and make-up are all surface embellishments which Haghi uses to obscure his identity. Throughout the whole scene the audience only sees Nemo’s face in the reflection of the mirror, fragmentising his body and equating it with the surface expression shown on the posters. Nemo, too, is a commodity people can ‘buy’ by buying a ticket to see his performance.
During the final performance the agents of the Secret Service arrive and take up positions in the wings and orchestra pit, aiming their guns at Nemo. Up until this point the stage has been presented as a unified space, but the shots of the other performers standing in the wings ruin the illusion of unity. Suddenly the film audience’s attention is drawn away from Haghi’s performance and asked to consider the artificiality of his act. Performers dressed as Indigenous Americans (or at least, the Western understanding of what Indigenous Americans looked like) and ballet dancers function as signifiers of other possible worlds that can exist on the stage. The audience is reminded that the stage is an empty surface on which any world can be projected, in the same way that can be done on the film screen. Bin this way, both the stage and the film screen are surfaces that allow audiences to be drawn into the illusion of a different world.
The climax of Nemo’s performance starts when he sees that he is surrounded by Secret Service agents. Nemo, who has used a small handgun as a prop earlier in his performance, now fires into the wings in an attempt to escape arrest. When he realises that this attempt is doomed, Nemo turns to face the camera and starts laughing manically, before shooting himself through the head. The final shots of the film show the audience cheering and giving Nemo a standing ovation. By ending the film with this image, the film provides a clear commentary about the mindless consumerism of the audience. They are unable to distinguish between act and reality and applaud Nemo’s desperate action. In line with Kracauer’s argument that films can provide a safe space for non-disruptive social critique, it can be imagined that Spione allowed film audiences to be outraged about the theatre audience’s response in the final scene, without extending this to their own situation. The film allows spectators to laugh at mindless consumerism, without asking of them to consider their own role as consumers of the film in question.
By making the main character of the film a spy who uses a nightclub persona in order to hide his true identity, Spione draws attention to the surface appearance of nightclub performers. The fact that the Secret Service characters, too, for a large part of the film are unable to see behind Nemo’s surface to his real identity, implies that in modernity everyone is obsessed with surface appearance, even those who are trained to do investigatory work. The popularity of both cabaret performances and films in Weimar society would seem underwrite that implication, as audiences flocked to see forms of entertainment that foregrounded surface. Although Spione presents this obsession with surface culture as problematic, it does so in the shape of a film which, in itself, is a surface expression.
Der Blaue Engel
Der Blaue Engel is one of the better-known depictions of Weimar nightclub spaces in film today. It was the first collaboration between Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg, and it launched Dietrich’s international career. The 1930 film tells the story of college professor Emmanuel Rath (Emil Jannings), who falls in love with cabaret singer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich). She is performing in the local inn called Der Blaue Engel, where Rath’s students go and see her. Rath visits the inn in order to catch his students out but falls for Lola instead. She is the undisputed star of the show and approaches Rath with frank confidence. When Lola agrees to marry Rath, he quits his teaching job and joins the travelling performance troupe to assist Lola in her performances. Eventually, Lola strikes up a relationship with another performer, which makes Rath increasingly depressed and results in his death.
As in Dr. Mabuse and Spione, the performer is first introduced via a surface expression. The opening shots of the film show a poster advertising Lola Lola on a window in the village. From the outset she is presented as a surface commodity. Rath notices that his students are swapping postcards during class which he confiscates. They are pictures of Lola, one of which has a fabric skirt attached to itself that the spectator can blow up in order to reveal her suspenders. Like Carozza, Lola’s image is reduced to a surface to be mass-produced and mass consumed. This clear objectification and fragmentation of Lola continues throughout the film. The poster seen in the opening shots is also shown on the walls of the inn and the backstage area where a large amount of the action takes place. This way the audience is constantly reminded of Lola’s reduction to a surface commodity, even when the ‘real’ Lola is also present in the frame. Her image is available for viewers to consume and project their fantasies on without having to regard her as a human being.
The stage area is not presented as elevated or separate from the auditorium, as is the case in the other two films discussed. It is not a blank canvas on which a unified fantasy world can be created. Instead, the stage is almost level with the rest of the space, and a number of female performers sit on the stage awaiting their turn to perform. There is also a constant interaction between the backstage area and the stage, which further undercuts the idea of the stage as a separate sphere. When Rath goes to meet her in her room, she continues to wear costumes and acts in the same way as her stage character. Lola’s persona on stage is also her persona off-stage. Where Haghi was allowed a transformation from person to persona in his dressing room, Lola is constantly only surface. This echoes the treatment of Carozza; female performers were obliged to remain objects for the consumption of others.
The constant equation of the performer with surface expressions of herself is also followed through in the frequent positioning of Lola in front of mirrors. During the many sequences set backstage she is often seen applying make-up or adjusting her clothes. Lola cultivates her surface appearance as she is acutely aware that this is what is providing her income. Unlike Rath, she does not look down on the audience members who do not want to see beyond surface appearances. This allows her to thrive in the nightclub atmosphere. Rath’s intellectual background on the other hand makes him frustrated and depressed and eventually drives him insane.
Lola is portrayed as a ‘vamp’ in the final section of the film, when she unscrupulously starts up a relationship with another man. This makes the final value judgement of the film decidedly against the appreciation of surface culture. Lola is portrayed as vapid and opportunistic, trading Rath in for a man who she believes will help her further her career. This moral stance that rejects Lola’s world of appearances, is difficult to harmonize with the fact that film itself is a medium of display. Der Blaue Engel attempts to negotiate this tension by presenting the performance space as the antithesis of Weimar modernity. The inn is dirty, full of vice and stuffed with ornaments and accessories. In this way the space becomes a signifier of stagnated values that can be criticized by those who have adopted the cleaner and clearer style of Weimar society; the judgement is not against surface culture per se but rather against a space that does not chime with modernist ideals.
At the end of the film Rath is forced to participate as an assistant in the magician’s act of the troupe’s leader, a role which requires him to dress up as a clown. Unwilling to perform but unable to refuse the overbearing boss, Rath allows the boss to transform him into a jester. In the rowdy audience people from all classes have gathered to see Rath’s decline from professor to performer. Whereas Lola is admired and seen as a major attraction, Rath’s previous profession leads to him being seen as a source of ridicule. The film on the one hand has a clear message that portrays cabaret and surface appreciation as insipid, yet on the other hand exploits surface culture by presenting Lola Lola as desirable. The film’s audience is asked to sympathise with Rath, while at the same time the woman who is the source of his downfall in the film is glamourized as a source of specular pleasure. The dirt and crowdedness of the nightclub space is used to elicit negative associations with Lola, that undercut her glamorized portrayal and allow for the moral message of the film to come through.
Conclusion
After exploring the depiction of nightclub spaces in three Weimar films, it is clear that there is no singular approach to the nightclub in these films. In both Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler and Spione the audience of the nightclub is criticised, which can be read as an attempt to diffuse film audiences’ uneasiness with surface culture. By making cabaret audiences the subject of ridicule, film audiences could justify feeling a sense of superiority. Der Blaue Engel takes this moral judgement even further, by portraying the world of cabaret as shallow and obsessed with appearances rather than intellectual development. Yet, the cultivation of Dietrich’s own screen persona undercuts this moral message by encouraging audiences to focus on surface once more. Der Blaue Engel is remembered best today, precisely because of Dietrich’s subsequent fame. In that respect the reduction of the nightclub performer to a surface signifier is what has led to lasting success of the film. These films highlighted the potential dangers of a society invested in surfaces but used a medium of display to do so.
Footnotes
[1] Siegfried Kracauer, 'The Mass Ornament', in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans. by Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 75 - 86 (p. 75).
[2] Siegfried Kracauer, 'The Little Shopgirls Go To The Movies', in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans. by Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 291-304 (p. 295).
[3] Janet Ward, Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2001), p. 158.
[4] Peter Jelavic, Berlin Cabaret (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 104.
[5] Kracauer, 'The Little Shopgirls', p. 295.
Works consulted
Gunning, Tom, The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (London: BFI, 2000)
Guttsman, Wilhelm Leo, Workers’ Culture in Weimar Germany: Between Tradition and Commitment (New York: Berg, 1990)
Jelavich, Peter, Berlin Cabaret (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996)
Kracauer, Siegfried, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans. by Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995)
McCormick, Richard W., Gender and Sexuality in Weimar Modernity: Film, Literature and “New Objectivity” (New York: Palgrave, 2001)
Sutton, Katie, The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011)
Ward, Janet, Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2001)