The Singing Ringing Tree (East Germany, 1957)

The East German children’s film The Singing Ringing Tree might have slipped under the internet’s radar had it not been serialized by the BBC for its Tales of Europe Television series, whereupon it gained a reputation as one of the most frightening children’s films ever made. No stranger to the idea that a children’s film can be terrifying—I’ve seen Santa Clause and the Ice Cream Bunny, after all--I tucked into it with an expectation of seeing just what had caused so many postwar British toddlers to wet their knickers back in the day—and came away with the conclusion that that particular generation of British toddlers had yet to have instilled in them the Churchil1ian stolidity that got their country through the Big One. You see, the film just isn’t scary—at least not in the realm of scary kiddie films, the ruler of which is unquestionably that master sadist Walt Disney, whose Snow White and Darby O’Gill traumatized my elder siblings to an extent that it was no wonder my parents had given up on his movies by the time I came around.

In place of scares, what The Singing Ringing Tree gives us is a carefully constructed alternate reality, achieved through the use of fanciful indoor sets, miniature exteriors, and surreal puppet creatures. This, combined with a recurring motif of pretty things being made, or revealed to be, ugly, might upset certain toddlers, given theirs was a personal reality so cozy and familiar that there was no relief in seeing it subverted. Personally, being a somewhat downcast, serious minded child, I was always willing to sign up for an escape from the everyday. So much so that my fantasy world of choice was that inhabited by the expressionless automatons of Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds, Stingray, and Captain Scarlet.

The film further departs from reality by making of its characters mere archetypes who are designated by their titles only: The Prince, The Princess, The King, etc. The Prince, played by Eckart Dux, is, of course, handsome, and starts the film by showing up at the King’s door and asking for the Princess’ hand in marriage. In a flip of the usual fairytale script, the King takes an immediate liking to the Prince. This is perhaps because he knows all too well that the Princess (played by the indeed bodacious Christel Bodenstein) is a ravening bitch. Presented by the prince with a jewel box brimming with pearls, she haughtily casts its contents onto the floor and demands that he bring her the Singing Ringing Tree (or “Das Singende Klingende Baumchen”, which sounds really funny when the cast members say it over and over again.) Everyone present laughs uneasily at this, because, in truth, no one knows where the Tree is, or whether it exists at all. Undeterred, the Prince marches off into the blinding matte painting that lies just beyond the throne room door.

After marching dutifully across the colorful sets (constructed in DEFA’s Brandenburg studios) that represent the world beyond the castle, the Prince comes upon Fairyland, which is ruled by a malevolent dwarf in a psychedelic onesie. The Prince tells the Dwarf that he is looking for the Tree and the Dwarf tells him that he has it—because, of course he does. The Dwarf gives him the tree with the caveat that, if it does not sing upon being presented to the Princess—because it will only sing if the Princess truly loves him—he must return it by midnight or become the Dwarf’s slave. In an odd fit of bravado, the Prince declares that he will return the tree on time or be “turned into a bear”, which must be the most nakedly prophetic line in film history.

Of course, the tree doesn’t sing, because, as I said, the Princess is a total bitch. So the Prince returns to the Dwarf, only to be transformed into that most fearsome of the forest’s predators by way of a patchy looking bear costume (it’s fun, but nothing on the bear that the Prince gets turned into in The Thrilling Sword.) The Prince makes for a particularly grouchy bear, grumbling his way through his daily tasks while befriending all the animals of the forest—including a giant goldfish that looks like a cross between a carousel animal and a parade float.

I’m going to skip over a couple more back-and-forth trips between the kingdom and Fairyland by saying that eventually the Princess is brought, kicking and screaming, to Fairyland, where the Prince/Bear takes her on as an unwilling pet. The first thing we learn is that all of the animals who are so dear to the Prince instinctively shy away from the Princess, because—did I mention she was a bitch? In fact, the Prince tells her, in not so few words, that, if she looked on the outside the way she was on the inside, she would look like total ass. The Dwarf, always willing to lend a helping hand, obligingly turns her into a green-haired (yet still somehow hot in a Nina Hagen kind of way) hag to illustrate this fact.

There follows a series of scenes in which the Prince teaches the Princess to be kind to the animals, over the course of which she gradually returns to her beautiful self—with the added bonus that she’s not so much of a bitch anymore. This transformation is completed when she rides to the Prince’s rescue on the back of the goldfish.

In the course of writing this review I learned that, when the BBC aired The Singing Ringing Tree, they broadcast it in black and white, which might explain how it might have had a somewhat more ominous tone. This, I believe, was part of a nefarious BBC plot to turn all of the former axis powers’ children’s films into blood curdling nightmares by means of changing their color palette. Still, I have to admit that, in it’s normal, colored form, I found The Singing Ringing Tree engaging, a little charming and, at times, even beautiful. See it at your own risk.

Hot Summer (East Germany, 1968)

East Germany's DEFA Studios brought a brave face to the task of emulating whatever global cinematic trends were necessary to compete for their audience with popular films imported from the West. In this they were largely successful, creating along the way unique takes on both the western and sci-fi genres. That said, Hot Summer, which was intended to be a socialist answer to AIP's Beach Party movies, must have been something of an uphill battle. The studio, dependent on government funding, had to obey their masters' edict that their films, while entertaining, had to tow the party line—a policy that resulted in musicals in which coverall-wearing workers did pirouettes on the production line. Meanwhile, films like Beach Blanket Bingo were as pure a celebration of American-style leisure as had ever been committed to film.

Evidence of this contrast can be found in the film's oft-reprised title song, which eschews celebrating sun, sand, and surf in favor of just telling us how incredibly hot it is (“the rays are merciless….we’ll get a mighty bad sunburn”)--almost to the point of praising the joys of heat stroke. The film follows two groups of teenagers--one all boys, one all girls, and each numbering about a dozen-- as they make their way to a seaside collective farm where they will spend the Summer. For the larger part of the film these groups are treated, not as collections of individuals, but as sort of collective gender masses that act in concert with their designated leaders. Those leaders are kai, played by Frank Schöebel, and Stupsi, played by Chris Doerk. Both Schoebel and Doerk, who were married at the time, were popular singers of the day, which means that Hot Summer forbodes From Justin to Kelly.

From the start, Hot Summer exhibits a confused attitude toward teenage sexuality. In contrast to the boy and girl crazy teens of the Beach Party movies, the boys and girls of Hot Summer regard each other with a puerile antagonism unbecoming to "teenagers" that are clearly well into their twenties. At one point, the boys set mice loose in the girl’s dormitory and, at another, steal the girls’ clothes while they are swimming. The early song numbers, which are shrill and brassy to a one, consist of the two groups facing off from opposite sides of a room and practically screaming the lyrics at each other.

Stupsi, for her part, is like a one woman Anti Sex League. Her signature song is a jaunty little ditty in which she opines that men are stupid apes not worthy of any woman's time. When one of the girls is mistakenly assumed to have slept with one of the boys, she is cruelly ostracized from the group. In this context, Sumpsi's boyish look and butch haircut can't help but make one wonder what was intended with all this.

Despite all this rancor, the boys and girls, once they arrive at their destination, dutifully pair up, as if obligated to do so by the kind of movie that this is. And with that, Hot Summer takes a turn toward the dark side. A love triangle that develops between Kai, his best friend Wolf (Hanns-Michael Schmidt), and Brit (Regine Albrecht), a pretty blonde, threatens to divide the group ("are we a collective," asks one of the boys. "Or just a gang?) Brit has a mildly hedonistic personal philosophy—expressed in the motto “i do what I love and love what I do"--that seems to infect the whole gang, demoralizing them to the point that they take a joyride in a boat belonging to the collective. They are busted by the police. Heads are hung and lessons learned.

A note on the songs in Hot Summer: as for those in the film's first half, I really can't say much more than that they are brassy and shrill, as well as a little manic. None of those qualities are alleviated by the fact that these songs are shouted like an accusation from across a room. Happily, at the movie’s midpoint, the quality of the songs miraculously improves, starting with a song sung around the campfire that is actually quite lovely. This is followed by the welcome addition of a Brechtian cabaret number and a couple of rock and roll tunes sung by Frank Schöbel that allow the young cast to dance in a normal, human manner.

As for the choreography in the rest of the movie, it darkens my heart to say that it is impossible not to laugh at it. It’s a style of dance that combines rhythmic shuffling, shoulder shaking, and the occasional arm wave to stultifying effect—and which achieves an almost caustic level of ridiculousness when performed by several cast members in tandem. Occasionally we will see a dancer embark on a cartwheel or somersault, the resolution of which we are not made privy to.

I enjoyed watching Hot Summer, although I can’t find much to say that would recommend it. When a film industry is subject to the kind of imposed limitations that East Germany’s was, it is sometimes fascinating, not for what it does, but for what it tries. Such is the case here.

The Friends of 4DK: Elomea (East Germany, 1972) by Keith Allison

As other, non-4DK related matters have been making demands on my time of late, I've reached out to some friends in the blogosfear to contribute guest posts. The first comes from my esteemed friend, colleague and boss over at Teleport City, Keith Allison.

Of the three science fiction films produced by East German studio DEFA that found their way to the United States, Eolomea is often considered the least of the three. It lacks the 1950s pulp appeal of The Silent Star and the eye-popping disco style of In the Dust of the Stars. Compared to those two brightly colored space adventures, Eolomea is a more somber affair set in a lived-in solar system where the wonder and daring of space travel has been replaced by workaday drudgery and blue-collar boredom. The space stations are less wonders of futurist architecture and more akin to a grubby bachelor pad. The cosmonauts of Eolomea are not bold venturers into the great beyond; they are mostly irritated guys who just want to do their time and get home, like a crew stationed at some remote Antarctic outpost.

Eolomea begins with one of those multi-cultural “general assembly meeting” that are usually convened to discuss what to do about the Mysterians. Scientists and associated bureaucrats on Earth are panicked when they start losing contact with their far-flung network of space stations. Unable to figure out what might be causing this (some sort of plague is suspected), they take the emergency measure of freezing all space flights. This order sits poorly with cosmonaut Dan Lagny (Ivan Andonov), stationed on a remote outpost with only one other ennui-wracked crewmember for company. Lagny is sick of space stations and endless voids, and his return to Earth is delayed by this new order. Luckily, space -- like the Soviet Union -- is pretty big, and most of the people on the outskirts of the colonized cosmos simply ignore orders from Earth.

Thus is Dan able to escape the confines of their little station and return home, where he can don space-age (1970s) leisure-wear and yell at the sky. His retirement is derailed when he meets scientist Maria Scholl (Cox Habbema), in charge of investigating the communications blackouts and uncovering the mystery behind the single cryptic message anyone has received from the space stations: the single world “Eolomea,” which seems to have no meaning. Despite his grouchiness, Dan is pressed into service once more. The investigation eventually uncovers something sinister to do with another prominent scientist and leads Dan, Maria, and their small crew to the littered and wrecked halls of one of the seemingly abandoned space stations -- seemingly.

The dramatic change in tone that sets Eolomea apart from other DEFA sci-fi films is thanks largely to it being one of the first Eastern Bloc science fiction films released in the wake of 2001: A Space Odyssey. That film effectively ushered in a new era, one less concerned with rocket models and monsters and more concerned with human drama played against the vastness of space. The first Communist response to 2001 was 1970’s Signale – Ein Weltraumabenteuer, a German production that places one foot in the pre-2001 world of space pulp and the other in awkward attempts at post-2001 intellectualism. That film is largely forgotten, falling as it does in the twin shadows of both 2001 and the Soviet response, Solaris, a stark and complex film that is as well-regarded and almost as well-known as 2001. Also existing in that shadow is Eolomea, based on a book by Bulgarian writer Angel Vagenshtain, released the same year as Solaris and promptly forgotten until recently.

Although its disjointed timeline and contemplations on the emptiness of space make Eolomea a more complexly structured film than Silent Star and In the Dust of the Stars, it’s still relatively accessible compared to Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The central mystery proves more solvable than the mind-bending freak-outs that comprise the ends of either of those movies. Like Solaris, Eolomea explores the effects of space and isolation on the human psyche, but Eolomea’s themes are more proletariat than the melancholy, metaphysical weirdness of Solaris. Here, the chief human emotion is not grief, but simple everyday boredom.

It’s not unexpected that Eastern Bloc science fiction in the 1970s, buoyed by the Soviet space program, would chose to dwell on this aspect of space exploration. In oversimplified summary, while the American space program went for flight and exploration, the Soviets went for space stations and orbiting settlement. The Soviet space station program kicked off in 1971 with Salyut-1. Both Solaris and Eolomea came out a year later. The effects of living in such an environment must have been as heavy an influence on the directions of both films. Once you have guys actually up there, it tends to scrub away a bit of the polish to expose the gritty reality of day-to-day space life: less proud cosmonaut pointing toward the stars, more bored cosmonaut with holes in his socks.

It seems at first a jarring change of tone for a Communist science fiction film, so full were they of can-do attitude and faith that adherence to core socialist principles would eventually see us achieve the stars. In Eolomea, we have achieved the stars, and it turns out it’s kind of dull. It starts to make more sense as the film progresses, however, and in the end Eolomea is about the importance of not letting the drudgery and bureaucratic red tape of space travel outweigh the profundity of the pursuit. Despite similar trappings, it’s a much more optimistic view of man versus the cosmos than Solaris.

Still, despite the ultimately hopeful “to boldly go” ending, Eolomea is rather a jarring shift from DEFA’sother sci-fi films. Trading in pop-art set design for grubby space stations, primary colored space suits for more workaday realistic ones, and scantily-clad space dancing girls for irritable cosmonauts with stinky socks might be part of what keeps Eolomea from attaining the same level of love shown the other DEFA scifi romps. It’s a fascinating and ambitious science fiction film though, and as long as you don’t go in expecting the non-stop visual disco of In the Dust of the Stars, Eolomea gives you a slow burning but engrossing mystery. And hey, it’s not all depressing space grind! There’s Cox Habbema in her future-bikini, Ivan Andonov in his space leisure-wear, a reel-to-reel robot, some cool spaceship and station miniatures, and of course space vodka. Lots and lots of space vodka.

The Murderers Are Among Us (East Germany, 1946)

The Murderers Are Among Us was the first film produced by East Germany’s DEFA Studios, as well as the first post-war German film period. You could also say that it was the first in a long line of German films to both explore the complicity of the common German in the horrors of Nazism while at the same time expressing the country’s collective guilt over same.

Director Wolfgang Staudte, unlike a lot of his fellow creatives, remained in Germany throughout the Nazi years, and made his living in part by appearing as a supporting player in some of the propaganda-freighted feature films then being made under the auspices of the party. Among these was the notorious Jew Suss, which, for those who don’t know, is exactly the kind of hateful screed – dressed up, of course, in rousing melodramatic trappings – that you might expect if you put someone like Joseph Goebbels in charge of your country’s filmmaking apparatus. It was Staudte’s remorse over this contribution to the Nazi cause that eventually lead him to pen the initial script for Murderers.

The film stars then newcomer Hildegard Knef in the role of Susanne Wallner, a young woman who returns to Berlin after a two year imprisonment in a concentration camp, only to find her apartment occupied by one Hans Mertens (Ernst Whilhelm Borchert), an embittered and tightly wound former army doctor who appears to be in the midst of a dedicated project to drink himself to death. Seeing as he is unwilling to leave quietly, Susanne opts to share the apartment with this nasty piece of work, and in time somewhat implausibly falls in love with him. Eventually we learn that Mertens is traumatized by something he witnessed while stationed on the Eastern front, a massacre in which innocent civilians, including a large number of women and children, were callously mowed down by German soldiers. When he learns that the officer who ordered these shootings, contrary to his expectations, is not only not dead, but living a life of middle class comfort in Berlin, he feels driven to personally see to it that the man pays for his crimes.

Staudte’s use of postwar Berlin’s bombed out landscape provides Murderers with a look that could be described as a sort of readymade expressionism, at once documentary and evocative. It’s one of the more textually justified uses of the classic noir style that I’ve seen, as both the city and its inhabitants, like the film itself, exist in the palpable shadows cast by recent history. That these places and faces should be obscured in the pall cast by the omnipresent, looming ruins around them seems about as effective of a means of conveying this as I could imagine. These surroundings also seem to energize the players, as the performances from the main cast are uniformly intense and committed.

Still, the picture that Murderers paints is a powerful, if not particularly deep-delving one, with Staudte clearly striving to keep his message neatly contained within the confines of a fast moving genre entertainment. And while the result is indeed satisfyingly taut, there are still instances in which that approach sacrifices some of those things that could have made Murderers a somewhat more successful picture. Most notable among these is the sad underuse of Hildegard Knef. While the film’s story is initially told from Susanne’s perspective, her character gets reduced to something of a cipher once the drama of Mertens’ past takes center stage. We never learn anything about her experience in the camps, and, while one might speculate as to the reasons a woman like her might fall for a man like Mertens, their relationship ends up feeling less like a means of illuminating the characters and more like an inevitable narrative cog, with Sussane ultimately being reduced to little more than the “good woman” whose love helps to redeem the wayward hero.

In the end, all of this only serves to make Murderers a less complex film than it might have been, though it is a strong and irresistibly watchable one nonetheless. Ever since my blogging about cult cinema has taken me outside my cloistered liberal environs and into occasional contact with the type of folk who could conceivably be leery of getting communist cooties, I’ve made an effort when writing about these old Soviet Bloc movies to preemptively enumerate whatever elements within them could possibly be perceived as propagandistic. In this case, though, I’m going to treat those potential reader like the grownups that they are and assume that they can recognize Murderers as a picture that stands tall on its own merits, despite whatever ideological filters it may have passed through in its birthing process. After all, it should be noted that Staudte initially sought Western backing for the film, and only approached the Soviets with his screenplay after being turned down by the other occupying powers, who didn’t take kindly to the idea of a reinvigorated German film industry so soon after the war’s end.

That said, I will say that the officials at DEFA were probably not displeased by the fact that the conscientious former soldier in Staudte’s story was a doctor, while the remorseless one was an industrialist. It should also be noted that those officials altered the director’s original ending, adding an explicit endorsement of handling war criminals through the court system, rather than by vigilantism. Nonetheless, what one ultimately takes away from The Murderers Are Among Us is not any product of politics or ideology, but instead the overwhelming and free floating sense of haunted-ness that enfolds both its characters and landscapes -- not to mention the very movie itself. That’s something that I think is relatable to anyone, no matter what they bring to the table. Though, of course, some of us are more haunted than others.

Cowboys und Indians

For the cover of their seminal debut album, Entertainment!, the British band Gang of Four, following the example of those wacky Situationists, took frames from an old Hollywood Western and turned them into a comic strip commenting on the white man's economic exploitation of Native Americans. The Sons of Great Bear, a first stab at the Western genre by East Germany's state-run DEFA studio, feels like a movie based on that comic. Read my full review, just posted over at Teleport City.