Angelos Koutsourakis - Rethinking Brechtian Film Theory and Cinema

Rethinking Brechtian Film Theory and Cinema

Angelos Koutsourakis

For Eszter

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Angelos Koutsourakis, 2018

Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4744 1892 8

The right of Angelos Koutsourakis to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

T his book has been many years in the making and I have benefitted from the support of many people and institutions. First, I would like to thank all my colleagues at the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures at the University of Leeds. I am particularly grateful to Paul Cooke and Alan OLeary for their support and mentorship. Paul also read and commented on drafts and I am truly obliged for his support. I am deeply indebted to former colleagues at the University of New South Wales, including George Kouvaros, Julian Murphet, Caroline Wake, Helen Groth, Sigi Jottkandt, James Donald, Sean Pryor, Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Edward Scheer, Lisa Trahair, Martin Fox, Linda Luke, Thomas Apperley, Mark Steven and Grace Hellyer, for all their support, kindness and generosity. The support from other Sydney-based academics, including Robert Sinnerbrink, Hamish Ford, Tara Forrest and Vrasidas Karalis, has been indispensable. My former colleagues at the University of Queensland were extremely supportive. Many thanks to David (the legend) Carter, Tom OReagan, Ted Nannicelli, Lisa Bode, Jennifer Clement and Joanne Tompkins. I am particularly grateful to Ted, who, despite coming from a different theoretical background, read parts of the book and offered incisive feedback on drafts. Darrow Schecter from the University of Sussex also read drafts and provided me with astute comments and helpful suggestions. I would also like to thank the following people for their conversations, objections, questions and advice: Marc Silberman, Nikolaj Lbecker, Ros Murray, Mathew Abbott, Alan OLeary, Elena Del Rio, Asbjrn Grnstad, yvind Vgnes, David Sorfa, Michael Wood, Hans Adler, Richard Rushton, Ian Aitken, John David Rhodes, Jussi Parikka, Nadine Boljkovac, Thomas Austin, Martin OShaughnessy and Adrian Martin. I am grateful to David Barnett for nurturing my interest in Brecht and for his inspirational work on the field.

The staff at the Brecht archive, das Archiv der Akademie der Knste, and the Berliner Ensemble archive were super helpful and accommodating. From the Brecht archive I would like to thank Erdmut Wizisla, Iliane Thiemann, Anett Schubotz and Helgrid Streidt. Many thanks to Elgin Helmstaedt and Nicky Rittmeyer from the Akademie der Knste. I am also grateful to Petra Hbner from the Berliner Ensemble archive.

Thomas Heise and Ulrich Seidl generously agreed to be interviewed by me and the conversations I held with these two filmmakers were truly inspiring and thought-provoking.

I am indebted to the two anonymous reviewers of the book proposal, whose incisive comments and suggestions helped me improve my arguments. Gillian Leslie, the commissioning editor for Film Studies at Edinburgh University Press, believed in this book from the very beginning and I am extremely obliged to her. Working with Richard Strachan from Edinburgh University Press is always a pleasure. I am extremely grateful to Stephanie Pickering for her great work in proof-reading the manuscript.

I am truly grateful to my partner, Eszter Katona, whose passion for life and cinema and whose intellectual curiosity are sources of inspiration.

Earlier versions of parts of this book were published in the following journals and books: parts of appeared as: The Ethics of Negation: the Postdramatic on Screen, in Substance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism 45:3 (2016), 15573. Reprinted here courtesy of University of Wisconsin Press. I am grateful to the reviewers and the editors of these journals/books.

General notes

Unless stated otherwise, German translations are mine.

References with no pagination are either online journals/resources or Kindle books.

The noun dialectics functions as both plural and singular. When used in the text, it is in the singular.

German terms left untranslated

Verfremdung: the process of making the familiar strange.

Verfremdungseffekt (+e in plural): defamiliarising effect.

Gestus (in plural the Latin Gestae): a social gesture that de-individuates characters and emphasises their social positions.

Haltung (plural Haltungen): postural attitude that also has social connotations.

Der Dreigroschenproze: The Threepenny Lawsuit, Brechts most significant film essay.

Abbreviations

BAP: Bertolt Brecht (2003), Brecht on Art and Politics, ed. Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles, trans. Laura Bradley (London: Methuen).

BBJ: Bertold Brecht (1993), Bertold Brecht Journals/19341955, ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim, trans. Hugh Rorrison (London: Methuen).

BBL: Bertolt Brecht (1990) Bertolt Brecht Letters/19131956, ed. John Willett, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Routledge).

BFR: Bertolt Brecht (2000), Brecht on Film and Radio, ed. and trans. Marc Silberman (London: Methuen).

BOP: Bertolt Brecht (2014), Brecht on Performance, ed. Tom Kuhn, Steve Giles and Marc Silberman (London: Bloomsbury).

BOT: Bertolt Brecht (2014), Brecht on Theatre, 3rd edn, ed. Marc Silberman, Steve Giles and Tom Kuhn (London: Bloomsbury).

GBA: Bertolt Brecht (19882000), Groe kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, ed. Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei and Klaus-Detlef Mller (Berlin and Frankfurt: Aufbau and Suhrkamp). I provide volume numbers in the references.

KWA: Konrad Wolf Archiv, Berlin Akademie der Knste. I provide archive numbers in the references.

Me-ti: Bertold Brecht (2016), Bertolt Brechts Me-ti Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things, ed. and trans. Antony Tatlow (New York: Bloomsbury).

SLK: Bertolt Brecht (1966), Schriften zur Literatur und Kunst, I and II (Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau). I provide volume numbers in the references.

SZT: Bertolt Brecht (1964), Schriften zum Theater, 17 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). I provide volume numbers in the references.

Figures

There was for a long time the rumour that Brecht was against the cinema. I have to contest this. This argument is totally absurd; whoever argues this, is either wrongly informed, or lies.

Alberto Cavalcanti

T here is a perplexing sequence in Jean-Luc Godards Allemagne anne 90 neuf zero (Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, 1991), in which Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) walks through the rubble of the Berlin Wall and witnesses a chorus performing Brechts 1938 poem In finsteren Zeiten (In Dark Times). The sequence parallels the choruss orthodox Brechtian performance with a dialogue between Caution and Count Zelten (Hanns Zischler). It concludes with Caution saying: In my opinion Count, Brecht cannot be staged like that (a linear sequence of events; the film implies that the dead and the ghosts from the past will keep on haunting us into the future. Thus, one way to interpret this puzzling sequence is that its key thesis is that Brecht becomes even more pertinent on the eve of the neoliberal turn. Yet, as Lemmy Cautions comment intimates, to understand Brecht we need to take him out of the museum, but also to challenge the canonical readings of his theoretical writings, so as to explore ways to make use of them in the present.