Little Man -- What Now?

 Frank Borzage's Little Man - What Now? (1934) is a Hollywood adaptation of Hans Fallada's internationally bestselling novel of the same name.  Fallada's book is now thought to be diagnostic of socio-economic currents in the Weimar Republic that had their confluence in Hitler and the Nazizeit.  (This is a largely a post  hoc propter hoc fallacy -- Fallada's book, a monument to the Neue Sachlichkeit, or "New Objectivity" esthetic in Germany, is grimly realistic story about unemployment and a pregnancy:  it reports on Nazi streetfighting and casual anti-Semitism because these elements are part of the landscape, like the Berlin streetcars, deluxe department stores, and detailed accounts of Naturism, that is, the German nudist movement. If anything, the book's inclinations are Leftist, the leading characters are all planning to vote KP.  In 1932, when the book was a sensation in Europe and America, I suppose one might have predicted that the political future in Germany belonged to Communists and Nudists.  The novel is apolitical and, in fact, following some historians' critique of the Weimar Republic, the book's rejection of all politics, or, better put, it's diagnosis of a sort of exhausted apathy that was the harbinger of the Nazis is historically significant: this is Peter Gay's interpretation of Weimar art in his celebrated book on German culture between 1918 and 1933, also, I think, both illogical and nonsensical -- an instance, as it were, of "blaming the victim" in historiography.)  As a Hollywood film, Borzage's movie is resolutely conservative; the script converts the book into a tract about 'turning the other cheek'  to oppression and is a document of the Great Depression -- it's a bit like a simple-minded urban version of The Grapes of Wrath, but with Tom Joad's fiery indignation internalized as self-hatred.  A better comparison is to King Vidor's The Crowd, another story about a marriage under economic pressure or that director's later Depression film Our Daily Bread.  Little Man illustrates the difficulties of making a movie about a purely passive hero, someone acted upon but not acting, and, despite the charismatic performance of Margaret Sullavan as the protagonist's pregnant wife, Lammchen, the movie isn't very compelling.  The hero, Pinneberg, is also badly miscast -- a matinee idol, Douglass Montgomery, plays the part and he's much, much too pretty for the role of the "everyman" as conceived by Fallada in his novel and Borzage in the film adaptation.  Simply put, the guy is so glamorous-looking in a late Silent Film star mode that his physical appearance wrecks the movie -- he's like a cowering, simpering Valentino and, sometimes, seems to be wearing more make-up than Maureen Sullivan.

"Uncle" Carl Laemmle puts his imprimatur on the film in an opening title, declaring the film is a timeless tale about how love enlarges a man -- this falsifies the entire concept of Fallada's novel.  Laemmle signs the treacle in the opening title, signifying that the film is an important production for Universal Studios.  And, in fact, in a classic Hollywood evasion, the "little man" in the title is construed to be the baby boy that Lammchen delivers at the end of the movie, carrying the child to term without ever appearing in the slightest to be pregnant -- again, this is a travesty of Fallada's book in which Lammchen's morning sickness, huge belly "hideous with blue and green veins", her hospital enema, and swelling breasts are all described with gynecological objectivity.  The film starts strong, and, as is the case with most Hollywood adaptations of beloved novels, stays pretty close to the book for the first half-hour before departing into another world altogether.  As a consequence, the first third of the movie, the part of the film closest to Fallada's grubby vision, is reasonably convincing and superior to what follows.  In a rainstorm, Lammchen meets her nervous boyfriend Pinneberg outside a gynecologist's office; it's raining and Lammchen's first appearance, a close-up of her with her face and lips wet, sidling up to Pinneberg at the streaming corner of the building is wildly romantic and glamorous.  A socialist is pontificating to a small crowd in the rain and, later, we see an aerial shot of mounted policemen breaking up the little rally.  There's some disapproving banter in the gynecologist's waiting room about the quixotic demand that the rich become poor and poor rich -- a mischaracterization, I think, of socialism and this is supposed to justify the police knocking down the protesters.  Two characters not in the Fallada book are introduced with a swirl of Russian-sounding music -- these are a burly Bolshevik husband and his timid, ailing wife. (The wife is played by the great Silent film star, Mae Marsh.)  These caricatures will re-occur from time-to-time in the movie to drive home the Hollywood picture's point that passivity is better than political activism.  Cutting off his wife's nose to spite his face, the Bolshevik (this is my characterization -- the film is evasive about politics) stomps out of the waiting room, feeling disrespected because Pinneberg, who has written a letter to the doctor securing an appointment, "jumps the line.".  (This episode establishes the oblique relationship between the source novel and the movie -- in the novel, the people waiting in the lobby grouse about Pinneberg being seen ahead of them, but no one walks out; this is part of Fallada's theme pitting working men against Angestellter, that is, "salary men" or White collar workers.)  In a nice shot rhyming with Lammchen's first glamorous appearance, the young woman now slinks around a corner in the gynecologist's office, disconsolate because she's unmarried and pregnant.  Pinneberg marries Lammchen (offscreen) and the two take up residence in a little town where he is working as a clerk at a business that sells potatoes, wheat and grain seed, and fertilizers.  The drunkard boss, Kleinholz, is scheming to hitch Pinneberg to his homely daughter.  Pinneberg needs the job and plays along with boss' conniving up to a point, concealing his marriage.  But, when his marriage to Lammchen is discovered (the two are canoodling near a pond in the country when the grotesque Kleinholz clan happens to encounter them), the boss' daughter insults Pinneberg and he responds with a threat against her; Kleinholz intervenes and, righteously  indignant, Pinneberg quits.  (In the novel, Pinneberg doesn't quit, but is fired -- in 1932 Germany, all employment was contractual and required thirty days notice before termination; so, in the book, Pinneberg keeps working for Kleinholz after his wife is disrespected to insure that he will be able to be paid unemployment compensation -- in Fallada's novel, Pinneberg is completely passive and all meaningful initiatives are the produce of the rather fierce Lammchen's activity.)  Pinneberg's mother sends a letter inviting the husband and wife to Berlin and the story, then, moves to the big city.  Pinneberg's mother is, bluntly stated, a pimp and procurer -- she's a faded bar girl.  She's living with a gangster Jachmann, who is a very gregarious, jolly, and kindly fellow.  (He immediately falls in love with Lammchen but treats her in a courtly, generous manner.)  Pinneberg, with Jachmann's help, gets a job selling men's clothing in a department store but isn't very good at this work.  In the department store, Pinneberg meets the charismatic Heilbutt who is an excellent salesman and serves as his mentor.  Heilbutt is fearless, possibly because it's mentioned (in a throwaway line) that's he's an avid nudist.  (Heilbutt is an important character in Fallada's novel; he's similarly important in the Borzage film, but in an entirely different way.  In the movie, Heilbutt, like Jachmann, is the young couple's benefactor and ends up affirming the dignity of enlightened Capitalism -- he sweeps in to the film in the final scene to hire Pinneberg in a new enterprise of some sort that he has inaugurated.  Fallada's novel shows Heilbutt to be an enterprising pornographer who sells pictures of his nudist buddies and himself to prosper; he helps Pinneberg by affording him a summer home and a little garden allotment in which to live in the last quarter of the novel, a part of the story that is not represented in any way in the movie.)  At the department store, Pinneberg is castigated for an ad his mother has placed inviting the lovelorn to her call-girl parties in the palatial flat where the young couple is living.  The Berlin apartment of the elder Mrs. Pinneberg is like a palace with enormous regal rooms without ceilings,, not the rather squalid suite of rooms described by Fallada in his book -- apparently, her call-girl business is flourishing.  Lammchen has been recruited to serve as a sort of scullery maid for the depraved Mrs. Pinneberg.  At a breakfast in which Mrs. Pinneberg is entertaining her patrons with a couple of whores, her son goes berserk, throwing a big platter of breakfast onto the floor and, then, brandishing a knife -- we've previously seen him breaking plates in a rage when his mother exploits Lammchen.  When Pinneberg discovers that he's unconsciously seized a knife and is threatening his mother, he's horrified -- this conflicts with his aspirations toward kindness and pacifism.  He gets fired, of course, when the department store imposes a quota on its salesmen.  When a movie star shows up in the men's department, Pinneberg desperately tries to sell him some clothing, but it turns out the arrogant actor is just slumming, doing research as to how a poor man "from the bad side of town" would act in an elegant department store.  Pinneberg grabs hold of the star demanding that he buy something and the actor complains about this importunity and the protagonist is fired.  Jachmann takes the young couple out on the town, but his crimes catch up with him -- he's arrested in the night club, but, thoughtfully, sends Pinneberg and Lammchen a few hundred marks so that they can pay the bill.   Lammchen has her baby in a strange, nasty-looking loft above a furniture store where the kindly Puttbreese, an old man who seems wed to a broken-down mare named Frieda.  (In the novel, Puttbreese is a bad alcoholic who rents the desperate couple a sort of squat that is sub-code and violates fire regulations, above a movie theater -- Fallada describes the place as a haven and "nest" that is rather cozy; Borzage gives the garret a terrace overlooking an elaborate painted panorama of the city with its domes and towers, but the inside of the place is like a "stable", as Pinneberg says, providing I think an allusion to Mary and Joseph that is not in the book.)  Out on the street and unemployed, Pinneberg misses his wife's labor and the birth of the "little man", in the "stable." (In the book, she spends ten days in a nearby hospital and the family is paid by the government for her hospitalization, a benefit for her incapability to work, an additional benefit to allow Lammchen to nurse the child, and the City of Berlin opens a savings account in the baby's name and deposits three marks there.  Of course, none of this can be shown in America where these sorts of benefits were, and are, unknown.)  He encounters the burly Bolshevik whose wife has now perished from inanition and gets involved in some street-fighting where, again, he's appalled to find that he's picked up some bricks to throw at the cops.  This momentary rebellion is too much for him and the film -- he rushes home to coddle the baby and the film ends with Heilbutt appearing to offer him a job.  In Fallada's source novel, the birth of the child occurs about 100 pages before the end of the book and the couple have many more adventures before the novel ends with the baby crying and Pinneberg still unemployed.  In fairness to the movie, Fallada's book often swerves into sentimentality in a rather unsettling way since most of the novel is uncompromisingly grim and sordid -- in both movie and book, love triumphs, although this triumph in Fallada's novel is decidedly compromised by the hero's unemployment and the family's poverty.  

Borzage's camera loves Margaret Sullavan and she's the best thing in this rather mediocre movie.  Douglass Montgomery has a good scene in whice he mimics the actor who has wasted his time rehearsing for his part as a "poor young man from the slums."  There is a brittle recursive quality to this scene:  an actor mimicking an actor who is, in turn, mimicking a rather florid style of silent film histrionics.  Sullavan seems almost naked in the scene near the lagoon where she is caught by the Kleinholz family embracing her husband -- of course, she's more or less fully clad but, somehow,  pulls off the feat of seeming to be nude; she has a spectacular derriere and legs and was the favorite actress of the film siren, Louise Brookes.  Her high-wattage sex-appeal is on display throughout the film.  In the novel, there's an indelible sequence in which Lammchen buys some smoked salmon, has a craving for the fish and eats it all before she can get it home -- this is too much of  a showpiece scene for Borzage and his scriptwriter to resist, but he stages the sequence with Sullavan riding on a carousel at a street fair and recounting her greed to her husband while whirling around on a carved white horse; the shot introducing her in this sequence has a surreal, astonishing beauty.  In the end, the picture preaches but doesn't enlighten -- it's not good to be a Bolshevik and injustice must never be opposed by violence.  By contrast, Fallada's characters all resolve to vote communist in the upcoming elections.