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THE FILM SINCE THEN
without incurring a fatal superficiality. And Dr. Kracauer not only discusses them fully : in doing so he, perhaps quite consciously, brings to light one of the gravest weaknesses of film criticism, of all film cerebration, to date.
The Blue Angel, Westfront 1918, Kameradschaft, M, Die Dreigroschenoper, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, and Kuhle Wampe stand with the finest and bravest films. Each made its creative contribution to the development of sound technique. All were conceived in a spirit of liberalminded realism, and most had direct liberal propagandist aims. That was enough for all contemporary and most succeeding commentators. What Kracauer alone of all film writers perceived is that while the intentions of these films were good, the thinking behind them was wholly inadequate to the task their directors set for themselves. Addressing an immature audience, they employed intellectual terms which could not possibly exert any emotional spell over that audience. In so doing, their directors revealed not only political ignorance but also — one might almost say — an anthropological ignorance which is a fatal weakness in a film-maker whose purpose is to change minds and prepare the way for action. Combating immaturity, their films showed unmistakable symptoms of immaturity. When the liberalism for which they stood met its downfall, it was possible to perceive that that external defeat was preceded by, perhaps caused by, an internal defeat.
There was devastating evidence of this throughout the dismal last years of the thirties, the most conspicuous being the speed and ease with which certain German film-makers, who only a few years before were identified with social progress, accommodated themselves to the Goebbels' scheme of things. (In writing this, it is, of course, far from my intention to denigrate those brave German film-makers who left their homes rather than serve fascism, and many of whom lost their lives in the struggle against it) The most extraordinary and baffling case of the ' accommodators ' is that of G. W. Pabst, one of the three or four greatest
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