Friday, February 27. mo

) Cutiington

Continued From page 7

difficult. Cuttington is 120 miles
from the capital of the country,
where everything happens.
Government in Liberia is still
quite personalized, according to
Kurtz, and a man doing im
portant work would like to be
where he can easily contact, say,
the Secretary of State. Kurtz
gave an example of one man, the
only senior staff member who
was Liberian, who recently
resigned from the faculty at
Cuttington because he was ever
worked. He was overworked be-
cause the faculty considered it
important to have an African
viewpoint present on every com-
mittee. This man, a biologist, was
so busy with committee work that
he was unable to devote as much
time as he wanted to his disci-
pline. He is now teaching at an
American university.

Despite great handicaps,
Cuttington is providing a quality

JD'S RESTAURANT
“2V: Main

Man, . sn. 5 to lo p.m.
Sunday—Noon to ID PJm

education for its students, one
which, through the continuing
efforts of the facility and ad-
ministration, is becoming more
and more relevant to their needs
and to those of developing Africa.

Concert

Notes

The Grinnell Symphony 0r-
chestra will present its first con.
cert of the semester Friday eve-
ning February 27 in Roberts
Theatre. The concert, scheduled
to begin at 8:00 P,M,, will open
with “Siegfried's Rhine Journey
from Gotterdnmmerung" by
Richard Wagner. Also included
in the program are Handel’s
“Concerto Grosso No. 25” (better
known as the Water Music) and
Bach’s “Concerto No. 2 in E
Major for Harpsichord” with
James Wyly as soloist.

The following evening the New
York Brass Quintet will appear
on campus under the auspices of
the Grinnell College Concert
Series. The concert Will begin at
8:00 in Herrick Chapel. This
brass quintet, considered to be
one of the best in the country,
will be performing works from
the seventeenth through twenr
ticth centuries. This will include
such composers as Bach, Gabri-
eli, Schuller. and Bozza.

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SCARLET AND BLACK

Page Nine

Early German Films Are Presented To
Portroy Culture of Weimar Republic

in conjunction with the Symr
posium on Weimar Culture
(February 24th-March lst), five
films are being presented — The
Cabinet of Doctor Caligari”
(1920). “Metropolis" (1927),
“Berlin, Symphony of a Great
City” (1927), “Blue Angel" (1930)
and “Triumph of the Will" (1936).
Though each is of cinematic
importance, it was with a view
towards their cultural signifir
cance that their selection was
made. They embrace the
duration of Republican Ger-
many, and collectively document
predispositions in German
Culture which help to account for
the Republic's collapse.

This point of View, i.e.. film
as a sort of cultural barometer,
has been given form by Siegfried
Kracauer 7 From Caligari to
Hitler, A Psychological History
of the German Film his premises
are simple: 1) film, in the period
unde. conSlderation, is unique in
its mass audience, 2) being a
commercial venture, it must
satisfy some need of that mass
audience, and 3) the degree to
which a film satisfies such a
mass need can be assessed both
at the box office and by the
repetition of its motifs as a for
mula of success in other films.
The four Republican Films

ANOTHER
FIRST

Xirol Color
Prints at no
extra cosi-

Lenxlru
THARP'S
PHARMACY

qualify on both counts. “Triumph
of me Will," a product of the Nazi
Propaganda Ministry, is particu-
larly telling. In it, tendencies
which are discernible in the
Republican Films blossom into
a totalitarian nightmare.

Principal amongst these
tendencies is the “ornamental
use of humanity.” a des»
cription used by Kracauer
indicate the reduction of the
human content of a film to a
formal, even decorative, visual
pattern. This tendency, in films
like “Berlin, Symphony of a
Great City". extends itself
until the whole of reality is decorr
atively orchestrated. The net
result is that the intrinsic affinity
of the candid shot for unstaged
reality is submerged in the ab-
stract editing of the whole.

A comparison with post-
revolution Russian Films sheds
light on this point. Where editing
in the Russian Films emphasizes
the social content of the shots,
the German Films obscure that
content by editing solely on the
basis of the plastic content of the
shots. This decorative tendency
reaches its apogee in the
newsreels and war documenta-
ries of Nazi Germany. in them,
war itself is reduced to a
decorative panoply, a glorious
ornament in which no men die
and reality is the handmaiden of
an invincible Third Reich.

in the Weimar Years this
decorative principle motivated
not only the “documentaries.”
but even the screen dramas.
Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” the
city of the future, preiigures
Germany's own future. Masses

LEO‘S
STAN DARD

CAR STARTS
TUNE-UP 8r
LUBRICATION

of people are choreographed into
anonymous ornamental groups
much as the participants in the
Nurnberg Party Convention of
1934, the subject of “Triumph of
the Will." But in “Metropolis"
we encounter a second major
tendency of the Republican
Cinema, i.e,. a pattern of
rebellion and subsequent submis-
sion to aumority.

Kracauer notes that in the
German Films, the alternative to
authority is always portrayed as
chaos and never democracy.
Hence rebellion resolves itself
into ultimate resubmissiun to
authority. So with “Caligari,” so
with “Metropolis" and so with
the Weimar Republic. The au-
thoritarian psychology of
Weimar Germany as opposed to
the democratic form of its
political institutions is made!
poignantly clear by a reflection
told by Kracauer. A review ap-
Dearing in Vorwarts, the Social
)emocratic Party organ, shortly
after the premiere of “Caligari”
embraces the film’s authoritar»
ianism in toto and goes so far
as to underscore its progressive
virtue. The paralysis of the left
during the fascist rise to power
becomes perfectly clear when
one understands that they were
fatally torn between authoritar-
ian and democratic longings.

Correlated with this authori-
tarian regression is a strong
current of antirintéllectualism.
Rationality cannot be embraced
by authority and so must be
destroyed. The individual is
broken or submerged in the
Weimar films as he is Do be under
the Third Reich. Thus the
complete submission to authority
is achieved. In this regard, the
downfall of the high school
professor in Blue Angel is partic-
ularly releva nt,

Kracauer‘s analysis Works.
but, unfortunately, it is retro-
spective analysis published in

FILMS—
Continued on page 10

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