Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 3 1944 39 CARL MAYER 1894-1944 An appreciation by Paul Rotha *iost writers who work in films are ilready writers of books and plays, or, at the east, they are journalists. Carl Mayer never wrote a play, a book or an article. He wrote snly in film terms. He was an integral product of the medium he loved and understood >o well. Through Robert Flaherty, I first met Carl Mayer, in London, in 1936, but I had respected the name since the early '20s. It had been a script credit on some of the famous German films of what has been ;alled the Golden Period. In Berlin in 1931 I had heard his name spoken with reverence ; but it was only later, when I came to know him so well, that I realised the full extent of "his influence. He was born at Graz, Austria, in 1894, one of three brothers. He wanted to be an actor, then a painter, but became a kind of story-editor at a local theatre. In Berlin in 1919 he conceived The Cabinet of Dr. , Caligari. Of that conception I wrote in detail .in World Film News, September, 1938. Here is his work only for the record : — 1919. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene. 1920. Genuine, directed by Robert Wiene. '1921. The Hunchback and the Dancer, directed by F. W. Murnau. 1 1921. Shattered {Scherben), directed by \ Lupu Pick. 1922. Backstairs {Hintertreppe), directed by Leopold Jessner. :1922. Vanina, directed by Arthur von Gerlach. ^1923. New Year's Eve {Sylvester), directed by Lupu Pick. 1924. The Last Laugh, directed by F. W. Murnau. 1925. Tartuffe, directed by F. W. Murnau. P.1926. Berlin, directed by Walter Ruttmann. 1 1927. Edge of the World, directed by Karl i Grune. \ 1927. Sunrise, directed by F. W. Murnau. Caligari and Genuine were the only two ' films to use expressionist painted back; grounds. This was not Mayer's idea, but that \ of the designers, Warm, Reimann, Rohrig. If you look at Caligari today, however, you respect it not so much for its sets or its formalised acting but for its story, and the way the camera is used to present the mad• man's outlook on the world. For Carl Mayer ! saw everything through the camera. It was the flow of images, the creation of atmosphere by selected details, the expression of \ character by visual means, that compelled .) him to write films which refused to use i printed titles to tell their story. With most other films, claim for this masterly technique would be given to the director, but because of his method of script-writing, Carl Mayer must take the major credit. His scripts were written in infinite detail, with meticulous instructions to director and cameraman. He frequently presided at the shooting and always had final say in the editing His script of Sunrise is circulated to this day in Hollywood as a model of structure and continuity. In the same way that he found himself logically writing scripts without titles, so he came to suggest the moving camera. That was in New Year's Eve. The camera had, it is true, been put on motor-cars and trains before that, but only for novelty's sake. Reminiscing, Carl told me many times how he fought with the problem of expressing time in that film. The clock in the town square dominated the story, which told the events minute by minute in the hour preceding midnight. "'Through the pages of my manuscript", he said, "the face of the clock tower moved closer and closer towards me. It had to move, to grow bigger. So the camera had to move. Guido Seeber mounted it on a perambulator. It was so obvious." The next year, he gave full vent to this new idea, and with the help of Carl Freund, The Last Laugh was a revolution in moving camerawork. Its showing in America lead to the ubiquitous use of the camera-dolly and the crane, now built with such elaborate mechanism. From a story aspect, Mayer's great contribution was his choice of subject and characters. One must remember that the popular German films in 1920-1924 were the lavish spectacular pictures, imitations of the Italian Salambo and Cabiria. Successes of the day were Anne Boleyn, Dubarry, Sumurun, and The Loves of Pharaoh, some of them financed by Hugenberg as anti-allied propaganda. Set against this kitsch, Carl Mayer's simple, warm, human approach to the relationship of a few individuals — usually drawn from a lower middle-class environment, often concentrated on the story of a single character — was a new sociological use of cinema. Berlin was also his conception, but he disliked Ruttmann's soulless handling of the idea and asked for his name to be stripped from the credits. Few of these films were commercially successful if compared with the flamboyant romances, but they were the films that made Germany famous. It was to their creators that Hollywood offered big contracts. Murnau, Gliese, Lubitsch, Freund Leni, Veidt, Jannings ; most of them sacrificed themselves on the Hollywood machine. To Carl Mayer, whose script of The Last Laugh was studied so enviously in America, Fox made a handsome offer to write Sunrise. He wrote it, in his own good time ; but he wrote it in Europe. He was a careful, patient worker. He would take days over a few shots, a year or more over a script. He would wrestle and fight with his problems all day and all night. He would go long lonely walks with them. He would never deliver a script until he was wholly satisfied that the problems were solved. He would rather cancel his contract and return the money than be forced to finish a script in the wrong way. He had iron principles arising from the film medium itself, and never once departed from them. His instinct and love for film dominated his way of living. Film mattered most and he gave everything, including his health, to it. To Paris he went with Elizabeth Bergner and Czinner in the early talkie days, and with them he worked on several films — Der Traumende Mund and Ariane. He came to England in 1932 and began a twelve year period of helping others. He took no screen credits here, except only on the film I made for The Times newspaper in '38 and '39, but did advisory work on Pygmalion and Major Barbara among others. His script of the East End no one would produce. His fascinating idea of translating Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer remained only an idea in script form. He gave much time to criticising scripts and cutting copies at Rotha Films and no technician can have failed to learn from him if they so wanted. To World of Plenty he contributed a great deal. Of the big commercial companies, only Two Cities recognised his talent and for them this last year, thanks to del Guidice, he acted as consultant. A few weeks before his death he received a letter from Dr. Siegfried Kracauer, from New York, who is writing for the Guggenheim Foundation a book on the social and political background of the great German films. Kracauer has realised the great influence of Carl Mayer ; almost every German film of the Golden Period leads back to his inspiration. Such men in this mad, money-crazy industry of ours are rare. Had he craved a fortune, his name in tall letters, Carl could have had it at a price he was not prepared to pay — liberty to write as and how be believed. He loved life with a happiness you do not find normally among film makers. He loved all films and could find something to talk about in the worst of pictures. Above all, he loved people — the people he met in cafes and trains and parks. He seldom read books and possessed but a dozen connected with subjects on which he was working. He devoured newspapers. His little money he gave away to make others happy. They are nearly all dead — that group which made German films so famous. Of them all, Carl Mayer's name will remain longest, for from him they drew their inspiration. He belonged to films like no man before him; his body died, July 1st, 1944, from cancer ; his name and work will live on.