Life is a Cabaret

	Still from The Blue Angel

A season of films accompanying the Max Beckmann exhibition. The trauma of the First World War, the upheavals of the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazis and the shock of exile left a profound mark not only on artists such as Max Beckmann, but also on German and world cinema. Beckmann saw the circus or fairground as a metaphor for human activity, and this programme can be seen as a series of cinematic 'variety acts' illuminating the context in which he lived and worked: welcome to the cabaret!

With thanks to the Goethe Institut Inter Nationes

EST denotes English subtitles

Friday 14 February
18.30
The Underdog (aka Man of Straw)/Der Untertan (Wolfgang Staudte, E. Germany, 1951) 107', EST
The complacency and corruption of Wilhelmine Germany was attacked by many artists of the period. This stylistically dazzling adaptation of Heinrich Mann's satirical novel chronicles the career of an ambitious young lickspittle with a yearning for authority.
£3.50 (£2 concessions)

Sunday 16 February
15.00
Titanic (Herbert Selpin, Germany, 1943) 87', EST
The sinking of the Titanic provided inspiration not only for painters like Beckmann but also for the myth-makers of the cinema. In this brilliantly crafted example of Nazi propaganda, the disaster is attributed to British capitalist greed. With an introduction by Simon Brown (bfi), including contemporary newsreel and feature film extracts.
£3.50 (£2 concessions)

Friday 21 February
18.30
The Other Side/Die andere Seite (Heinz Paul, Germany, 1931) 100', EST
The Other Side stands alongside Pabst's Westfront 1918 as an anti-war statement of powerful eloquence. Based on RC Sherriff's play Journey's End, it stars Conrad Veidt as an officer traumatized by his three years in the trenches.
£3.50 (£2 concessions)

Sunday 23 February
15.00
Rosa Luxemburg (Margarethe von Trotta, W Germany, 1986) 124', EST
A stirring portrayal of the passionate revolutionary who co-founded the German Communist Party and was brutally murdered in 1919. Exploring both the personal and the political, Rosa Luxemburg compellingly depicts the tumultuous aftermath of WWI.
£3.50 (£2 concessions)

Friday 7 March
18.30
Variety (aka Vaudeville)/Varieté (EA Dupont, Germany, 1925) c. 104'
Weimar cinema abounds in the circus and fairground imagery beloved of Max Beckmann. This seething melodrama of passion and jealousy, set among jugglers and acrobats, is justly famed for the spectacular cinematography of its trapeze sequences. With live piano accompaniment by Stephen Horne.
£3.50 (£2 concessions)

Sunday 9 March
15.00
The Threepenny Opera/Die 3-Groschen-Oper (GW Pabst, Germany-US, 1931) 112', EST
In Pabst's celebrated Brecht adaptation Mack the Knife, master of many disguises, presides over a world of sinister show. Incorporating elements of cabaret, country fair and backstage musical, with charismatic performances from Carola Neher (Polly) and Lotte Lenya (Jenny).
£3.50 (£2 concessions)

Friday 14 March
18.30
The Last Laugh/Der letzte Mann (FW Murnau, Germany, 1924) 75'
Murnau's tragi-comic masterpiece, set in 20s Berlin, about an elderly hotel porter demoted to the position of lavatory attendant. As in Beckmann's work, the great hotel with its permanently revolving door evokes the transitory nature of modern city life.
£3.50 (£2 concessions)

Sunday 16 March
15.00
The Blue Angel/Der Blaue Engel (Josef von Sternberg, Germany, 1930) 107', EST
Sternberg assembled some of the greatest stars of Weimar cabaret for this tale of an upright schoolmaster whose infatuation with singer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich) sees him reduced - literally - to the status of clown.
£3.50 (£2 concessions)

Friday 21 March
18.30
Hitler Youth Quex/Hitlerjunge Quex (Hans Steinhoff, Germany, 1933) 101'
Some English explanatory titles. Early Third Reich propaganda about a schoolboy who decides to join the Hitler Youth despite opposition from his brutal communist father - memorably portrayed by Heinrich George, the subject of a striking Beckmann portrait.
£3.50 (£2 concessions)

Sunday 23 March
15.00
Cabaret (Bob Fosse, US, 1972) 123'
Life is indeed a crazy cabaret in the Berlin of 1931 with Nazism on the rise. Fosse's great movie musical, based on Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin, captures the dying throes of Weimar decadence.
£3.50 (£2 concessions)

Friday 28 March
18.30
One More Kiss and He's Dead!/Beim nächsten Kuss knall ich ihn nieder! (Hans-Christoph Blumenberg, Germany, 1995) 82', EST
With Peter Fitz, Ulrich Tuker. A witty biopic of Reinhold Schünzel, director of such brilliant musical comedies as Viktor und Viktoria (1933) and one of the many filmmakers forced by the Nazis into a painful Hollywood exile. An intriguing study of the relationship between art and power.
£3.50 (£2 concessions)

Friday 4 April
18.30
Cry of the City (Robert Siodmak, US, 1948) 96'
With Victor Mature, Richard Conte and Shelley Winters. In this gripping New York thriller about a murderer with no place to hide, the city in all its glamour and squalor is vividly present. Giving fascinating glimpses of New York's immigrant communities, this is one of the great works of 'exile cinema' from German émigré director Robert Siodmak.
£3.50 (£2 concessions)

 
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