1, 2, 4, 8, 16...

Despite my rather slow output of posts about Mabuse, the fact is, there are endless things to say about it. I mentioned style in a comment to Peter's post - the way it seems to blend older types of film styles - tableau staging, slow pace, exaggerated poses and so on (many of the things raised by David Bordwell in his writings on 1910s cinema) - with the faster, analytical editing of classical cinema... Having watched the film a couple times, in fact, I have to say Lang's blending of these styles - especially, his control of the pacing, of everything in the film - the speed of the action, the actor's movements, the editing - is absolutely extraordinary. There's a post there, that I hope I get to before the month is up... And building on that eclecticism - one of the daunting elements of the Mabuse films is how much is in them - realism and expressionism; serial crime stories and modern, self-contained stories; technology and magic; entertainment and art films; tight story telling and broad, documentation of the world as it is... So much.



For now though, I want to take a look at one element of the film's world - the use of doubles and parallels, in characters, situations, and so on. The double is one of the great themes of German films - it's obviously not limited to German art, but it's probably not an accident that we use the German word for a doppelganger. Doubles and Faust figures - which is a variation on the double: the devil who grants power and wishes in exchange for the soul... The two combined in Student of Prague, one of the foundational German films - with a Mephistophilis figure taking the student's reflection as his price....

Mabuse is also something of a Faust story, though with Mabuse playing all the parts... But it also contains, within it, a fairly elaborate system of parallels among its characters. Mabuse himself has a double in state prosecutor Von Wenk - the film alternates between them, they are matched adversaries - Von Wenk dons disguises, like Mabuse, trying to move, undercover, through the underworld... Around them, the other major characters are arranged in pairs, sometimes loose, but usually fairly explicit. Cara Carozza, the dancer, loved (once) by Mabuse and now by Hull the playboy, is echoed in the figure of the Countess Told, caught between Von Wenk and Mabuse, replacing Carozza in Mabuse's love (or lust, or desire, or whatever it is); both women end up prisoners, and the countess identifies with Carozza... Hull the playboy, meanwhile, is doubled by the Count - both are rivals with Mabuse for a woman; both are ruined at cards by Mabuse's hypnosis; both draw Von Wenk into the story, and lead him closer to Mabuse. Both die, at Mabuse's orders, but both deaths contribute to Mabuse's own fall.

Meanwhile, the film itself is a double - released in two halves (like Kill Bill, or Che!), with scenes and situations repeated between the two films (sometimes within one half of the film). Scenes, games, situations, shots, are all repeated, replayed, with variations. Here, it will be easier to show than tell:

Here for example, are two shots, one from the first half, one from the second, of the Countess Told: in the first, she is at a gambling den, where she watches, uninvolved, curious - in the second, she is a prisoner of Mabuse, held in a room by herself.... She is unconscious in this shot, and helpless - a prisoner (itself a parallel, at that point in the film, to Carozza, who is being held prisoner by Von Wenk...). The shots are almost mirrors of one another - she's in a similar position, facing the opposite direction - with the color schemes almost reversed (dark covers, white covers - or look at how her dark dress in the second shot rhymes with the white feathers in the first one):




Or another parallel - both Mabuse and Told haunted by ghosts. Told is ruined by Mabuse hypnotizing him to cheat at cards - he sinks into madness and drink, seeing visions, pursued around his house -



only to end up forced to play cards with his own ghost:



A situation Mabuse repeats, almost exactly. Pursued by ghosts -



Forced to play cards by ghosts - who accuse him of cheating - as Told's ghosts accused him... (and notice the screen directions of all these shots: Told on the right, looking left, as he's pursued, then on the left, facing the ghosts during the card game; and Mabuse on the left during the pursuit, on the right for the card game...)



Mabuse, though, is different from the rest. He may be part of the system of doubles and parallels, but he is outside it somewhat as well. The simplest reason is that he is his own double - he keeps replacing himself. And here, as in some aspects of the structure of the film, the doubling principal becomes a serial principal - he is not a double so much as a series. And a series that, as the film goes on, and especially as we move to the sequels (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, and onwards), becomes a mechanically reproduced series - first through words, but then through machines (loudspeakers and recordings) and so on. Copies of copies of copies, disembodied, dissipating into words, sounds, images... copies without originals... pages scattered on the floor.

Solidarity in character

This is my first actual post on the blog for a few reasons. I wasn't able to get the last film between Netflix and the Virginia Tech library (which does have a pretty good selection) but also because the first film brought some pretty intimidating posts. I studied film as my concentration in undergrad and have done some research on film as a grad student thus far, but it seemed like most of the contributors for The Emperor's Naked Army were very well versed in the filmmaker and much of the history behind the film. That said, I decided to no longer worry about that. The idea behind this blog is great and I'm just going to contribute as much as I can with my limited experience.

Enough of that. I watched The Fireman's Ball last night and laughed my ass off the entire time. Simply as a comedy, Forman did an incredible job. The facial expressions on the bald fireman alone (especially while dancing in the circle of marching beauties) were worth the price of admission.

Besides enjoying it purely as a comedy I was impressed by the use of comedy so well as a tool for political expression. Ed's post is great at showing how much of this there is only in one scene. The thing that struck me last night was also the lack of individual identities throughout the film. Some of this might be because I was relying on subtitles, but I don't think it's all that.

There were some individuals which stood out. The 86 year-old former chairman is one, as well as the victim of the fire and Ruzena's father. Other than that, it seemed that the more important identity of most of the characters was the group they were a part of. Some firemen were more recognizable and more important, but they were most importantly part of the fire brigade. This is accentuated more when one of them chastises another for returning a stolen lottery prize by saying that the reputation of the brigade is more important than any honesty.

Similarly, most of the party goers seem to be more important as members of the crowd than individuals. The symbolism of the groups is fairly clear. The firemen are the authority trying to maintain control and run the system (however poorly) and the crowd as the people -- who steal and end up in a state of chaos. When the fire breaks out and everyone rushes out to go watch, workers at the ball attempt to collect on bills, but because of the disorganization of the system and the force of the mob this is almost impossible. Once outside, the manager of sorts continues to go around to people, but it's clear that the system has failed in the goal of collecting on all the bills.

A trip to IMDB confirmed this sense of collective identity as the primary one (at least as one of Forman's tools) as most of the cast members listed are named only as "committee member" or "'Miss' contestant." This most reminds me, of course, of Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. I haven't seen many films from Russia or the (now former) USSR made before 2007's Night Watch, so this was the biggest connection I could make.

The use of collective characters, whether purely a result of soviet montage's influence or only influenced by it, not only makes the symbolism of each group stronger. It also makes the comedy stronger. Because I don't have to remember faces for names mentioned in the dialogue I'm able to concentrate on, and better appreciate, the wonderful action and interaction of each group involved in the beautiful chaos that Ed described so well.

Watching Fireman's Ball definitely makes me want to seek out Forman's other films, particularly The Loves of a Blonde, to see what his overall style is like. Great choice, Marilyn, and I hope to keep active in this community.