TOMASSO!
“To understand everything,” says Ilsa, the wannabe-glamorous, newstand lady around which much of the action of Ein Blonder Traum swirls, “is to forgive everything.”
This good natured paean to equanimity in the face of constant strife could in a sense be the running theme to this late-Weimar (1932) UFA musical starring Lilian Harvey, Willy Fritsch, and Willy Forst. No doubt calibrated to buck up a suffering populace in precisely the same manner that Warner Brothers’ Busby Berkeley musicals did on the American side of the Great Depression, Ein Blonder Traum appears to be the one great success of Paul Martin, its director. This is a film of unyeilding, unapologetic optimism which no doubt brought the appropriate dose of bubbly carbonation to a Berlin that was–as was virtually the standard state of affairs for much of the Weimar era– suffering under the grinding heel of yet another crushing round of mass German unemployment and homelessness. This clever, self-referential musical took some of UFA’s biggest stars, tossed them into a (albeit nicely dressed and made-up) ragged state of homelessness and urban poverty, and spun them on a path whereby they ultimately get to rag all over the supposed phoniness of wealth and the transitory nature of filmmaking success and Hollywood glamour.
Marching masses proclaim “Everyone will make it sometime . . . it only depends on yourself . . . Everyone who is able will be a success…”
But what is success, and what is happiness? Running underneath the sight gags and the clever slapstick is a bittersweet meditation on the fleeting nature of contentment in pursuit of real happiness. Nominally the tale of the competition between the two Willy’s (Forst and Fritsch), a couple of window-washer pals who are vying for the affections of perfectly-made-up homeless gal named Jou Jou who they brought into their homeless camp of deserted railroad cars, the film is a vibrant musical plate of happysadness, a series of portraitures that live in the moment, with the principals always managing to poignantly smile through a frown. . . to fight their way through the pull of anger or bitterness of disappointing circumstance to always find optimism and equanimity.
It’s a very sweet, extremely well made movie. This is one of those films whose situations probably appeared a lot grimmer when laid out in a scenario before filming, and before well made-up and glamorous stars inhabit the principal roles: two impoverished window-washers are living in broken-down abandoned old box-cars in the nowhere outskirts of the city, and take in a wayward young homeless girl without a soul in the world, who yet poignantly nurtures dreams of becoming a star on the other side of the world in Hollywood . . . ultimately the two pals get hold of a third abandoned boxcar, and set her up with her own abode in the humble little camp. As the young waif is not only attractive but talented, a romantic competition begins to inevitably ensue, threatening to tear apart a friendship that was forged and strengthened in the fires of poverty and deprivation.
There were no doubt gaggles of unglamorous window-washers making their rounds around Weimar Berlin, and they were no doubt barely subsisting on starvation wages, living in homeless camps, sleeping on park benches . . . and there were no doubt occasions where they–and others like them, employed or not– offered arrangements of convenience to down-on-their-luck, probably very dirty, very hungry females (and males) with nowhere else to stay. The situations were no doubt not-very-pretty . . . many were probably downright unsightly and terribly tragic. The fact is that there were hordes of such people in the Berlin of this time, and they were not anywhere near as optimistic as the glamorous trio at the head of this film.
Which is exactly the point. This film is NOT Die Verrufenen, Mother Krausens Journey Into Happiness, Berlin Alexanderplatz, etc etc. This is not–nor was it meant to be–Zille, or an angry film by Jutzi, who was every bit the contemporary of Paul Martin. This film is unapologetically good natured, deliberately unreal . . . and yet at the same time its principals sincerely speak for the downtrodden and the suffering when they proclaim “For once I want to be happy with my own heart! Somewhere in the world there’s a little bit of happiness…” (These lines are shouted in the face of a totem of power and prestige in a Lilian Harvey song-dance routine that is mind-bendingly tour-de-force.)
And so we come down to the core thesis of this film–while sincerely identifying with those masses of unemployed, the swarms of homeless dotting the park benches and camps and forests around Berlin, the authors (who included a young Billy Wilder) sought to soothe rather than to agitate. . . to induce genuine good-feeling instead of political energy and pathos-driven anger. To help them make it through to another–hopefully better–day, rather than reinforce the bitter truth of their grinding reality.
And, as Sullivan’s Travels makes perfectly clear, that is a perfectly noble endeavor.
And Ein Blonder Traum succeeds in this endeavor wildly!
* * *
I am keeping these comments brief, because I am going to let someone who knows far more than I do about this film, its director and its stars, speak.
I ask the listeners of schreckbabble to incline their ears to the superb commentary to Ein Blonder Traum, created by Tommaso. Dropbox download link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/svi1lfobkh18r98/Ein_blonder_Traum_-_Audiocommentary.mp3
ENJOY!!!!
HerrSchreck's House of Commentary 