(via the sounds of whistlingand roaringengines)to amontagesequence depict-
ing various athletic competitions. Notwithstanding the superficial similarities
with the weekend sequences inBerlin, Symphony of aBig CityandMenschen
am Sonntag(1930,People on Sunday)byBillyWilder and Robert Siodmak,
these scenes of workers bicycling,running,swimming, androwing serveafun-
damentallydifferent purpose. They show not what Marx calls the reproduction of
labor power in the name of profit maximization but the training of the proletar-
ian bodyfor the overthrow of the capitalist system. As the cold, hardvoice of
Ernst Busch in the“Sport Song”admonishes the contestants:“Cometogether
in one body/ to fight together./ And learnto win!”
The workers’sport festival is the final destination for the characters in the
diegesis, but it is alsothe place whereprivatedesires become part of public
events and wherethe operative method inKuhleWampeis at its most powerful
and(perhaps unsurprisingly)least apparent.The documentary sequences, shot
without original soundtrack and edited in themanner ofacompilation film, are
presented here as the locus of reality and truth; they also function as the source
of the greatest emotional intensities in the diegesis. The lengthysequence even
includes an agitprop skitonhousing discrimination performed by the Rote
Sprachrohr asadirect commentary on the eviction of theBönike family. As The-
odore Rippey has noted, the spectacle of classmobilization serves as emotional
compensation for the matter-of-fact treatment of the central couple’sromance. In
fact,the formationofthe collective could be described as the film’strue love
story.⁵The juxtaposition of fictional and documentary modes is established
through the corresponding techniques of continuity editing,which relies on in-
visiblecuts for creatingatime-space continuum andguaranteeingemotional en-
gagement, and of analytical editing,which, in the form ofmontagesequences,
breaks time-space continuity to createsensory or cognitiveeffects. Meanwhile,
the movement of the main characters between both worlds,the world of family
drama and the world of class politics, defines the termsof engagement and
bringsforth the possibility of collective agencypreciselythrough the operative
nature of these formal differences. The point of contact between two paradigms–
analytical editing and continuity editing,documentary and fiction, and reality
and ideology–is openlythematized whenashot of workers discussing Hegel
on the shores of the Müggelsee is followed by one ofFritz and Anni renewing
their friendship based on shared political beliefs.
TheodoreF. Rippey,“KuhleWampeand the Problem of CorporealCulture,”CinemaJournal47.1
(2007): 3–25.
326 Chapter 18