and the vital interests of the state.”¹¹The Nazis banned the film forgood in
March 1933 because of its communisttendencies.
If stagingasporting event with Fichtemembers functioned as an integral
part of operative filmmaking, the filmmakers’meetings with the Prussian censor-
ship board served similar effects. In ways alreadylaid out in Brecht’sfamous
lawsuit against Nero-Film over GeorgWilhelm Pabst’s1931film adaptation of
Die Dreigroschenoper(Th eThreepenny Opera), the censors’arguments ended
up confirmingevery aspect of Brecht and Dudow’sinnovative approach to polit-
ical filmmaking.Inhis analysis of the earlier lawsuit,Brecht had described the
confrontation with the studio asacritical intervention into the conditions of ar-
tistic production under capitalism. TheKuhleWampeproject can be similarly
characterized asatestingofthe limits within which expressions of political dis-
sent werepossible. In recallingthe meeting, Brecht expressed delight about the
censors’objectionstothe overlymechanical wayinwhich the son’ssuicidewas
portrayed. Channeling theirvoices,heconcluded:“Theaudience will not even
want to stop [the son], as it were, which would be the expectedreaction in an
artistic, humane, warm-hearted representation. Good God, the actor does it as
if he wereshowing how to peel cucumbers. [...]Leaving the building,we[i.e.,
Brecht and Dudow] did not conceal our admiration for the astute censor.”¹²
Clearly, from Brecht’sperspective,the censors had performed their assigned
part inavery public debate on realism,modernism, and the politics of identifi-
cation.
Filmreviewers ended up playing similar roles by basing their arguments on
the political function of emotion. Their juxtaposition of the“bad”emotionman-
ufactured by the UFAdream factory and the“good”cognition trained in the
much-admired Soviet films established the basis for later scholarlyreadings
that automaticallyequated emotion with cooptation. Leftist filmmaking for
manycontemporaries meantmoving beyond the victim mentality of the so-
calledZille films, named after the famous portraitist ofBerlin’surban poor,Hein-
richZille, and rejectingthe surfeit of melodrama in social problem films likePiel
Jutzi’sMutter KrausensFahrt ins Glück(1929,Mother Krause’sJourneytoHappi-
“ErstesVerbot des Films,Film-Oberprüfstelle, 31 March 1932,”rpt.inBertolt Brecht,“Kuhle
Wampe:”Protokolldes Films und Materialien,ed. Wolfgang Gersch andWernerHecht (Frankfurt
am Main:Suhrkamp, 1969), 110.Asecond ban on9April confirmed the first,with finalapproval
of arevised cutversion givenon21April 1932.The collection includes the censorship protocols,
including those pertinenttothe abortion story.
BertoltBrecht,“Short Contribution on the Theme of Realism,”rpt.inBrechtonFilm and
Radio,ed. and trans. Marc Silberman(London: Methuen,2000),209. The book contains a
very useful scene segmentation of the film (209–258).
Kuhle Wampeand“Those Who Don’tLike It” 329