Machorka-Muff

Jean Marie Straub, credited with directing Machorka-Muff (1963) describes the film in an opening creidt as "An Abstract Visual Dream -- not a Story."  In fact, the picture has a complex narrative -- whether you regard it as a "dream" or story or, most probably, a nightmare is probably immaterial.  But it's worth knowing what happens in the movie.

Machorka-Muff is German military officer, an alumnus of Hitler's Wehrmacht.  It would do disservice to the man to call him a Nazi.  He's something more ancient -- a German aristocrat, inbred and arrogant, the scion of a dynasty whose male family members have always made war, or preparations for war, their trade.  Machorka-Muff (MM as I'll call him) is trim, exquisitely groomed, handsome and articulate -- he's also a thorough-going cad as far as women are involved, something to be expected of an aristocrat of his pedigree.  He is a staunch old-fashioned Catholic as well, a Conservative, and, somewhat out of sorts since sidelined after the German defeat in the recent world war.  MM comes to Bonn at night, surveys the town from his hotel room, and, then, has what he terms a "capitol city dream" -- he sees himself approaching three eerily draped statues on featureless stone plinths.  When he pulls aside the drapery, MM sees that the figure represent him, wearing a new, freshly pressed general's uniform.  MM has come to deliver a speech at the laying of a cornerstone.  (A military academy is being constructed over the cornerstone.)  In the morning after his strange dream, an old army buddy comes to see MM.  MM speculates as to whether he can seduce his buddy's wife -- in a voice-over he tells us that he enjoys "petite bourgeois erotics."   A politician appears in the hotel.  The army buddy is dismissed -- the two men have been nostalgically enjoying old war stories:  MM recalls with glee how his brigade was down to only 13 men and, then, "(he) had to have four of them shot for mutiny."  Good times as far as these guys are concerned.  The politician suggests that MM will be made a general, a particular honor since this will occur "in a democracy."  MM has an assignation with a girlfriend.  He is so happy about the prospect of being made a general that he wanders joyfully around Bonn, looking at various advertisements and window-shopping. A montage interlude ensues showing articles in various German newspapers about Adenauer reinstituting the Wehrmacht -- various theologians are quoted to say that Christians make the best soldiers and that Jesus would not have hesitated to raise an army for self-defense.  His girlfriend picks him up in her convertible and they go somewhere to have sex.  MM tells us on the voice-over that his girlfriend has been married previously seven times -- these seven earlier marriages equate to his seven war wounds.  Another politician appears at the place where MM and his girlfriend are staying -- the man has brought a general's uniform, a resplendent garment that everyone admires.  MM goes to where the cornerstone is being laid and delivers an address -- the military academy will be named after Marshal Hinlanger-Hiss, a commander who was unfairly traduced after World War II.  Hitler, affectionately known as "the Tapir", denounced poor Hinlanger-Hess because in a disastrous battle the general lost only 8,000 men.  Hitler concluded that a valiant defense would have killed at least 12,000 soldiers.  MM states that he's researched the matter and now knows that Hinlanger-Hiss' battle destroyed no fewer that 14,500 soldiers thus demonstrating the Field Marshal's courage, valor, and prowess in spilling the blood of his troops.  This serves to vindicate Hinlanger-Hiss and the new military institute is named after him.  A sad-looking little brass band plays a patriotic song and the cornerstone is laid.  MM and his girlfriend, then, attend Mass.  The priest notes that since all of her previous marriages were Protestant, none of them really existed, and, so, she can now marry MM in a grand church wedding.  MM and his new wife, married for her 8th time, go on a honeymoon to the Bodensee. She remarks happily:  "This is how I always feel as a new bride."  Someone suggests that there is opposition to the new Wehrmacht general, MM.   MM's wife responds vehemently:  "No one dares to oppose our family."  The film cuts to black on those words and the movie is done. 

Here is the most remarkable thing:  this complicated narrative, based on a novella by Heinrich Boell is about 18 minutes long.  Two of those minutes are devoted to the montage showing newspaper articles about re-arming the Reich.  MM's speech about Hinlanger-Hiss takes up about a minute and a half. And there are long sequences involving quotidian activities such as MM tying his tie, shaving, and participating ritualistically in the ceremonies associated with laying the cornerstone of the military academy.  Straub and his partner, Danielle Huillet (also his wife) were as red as could be -- card-carrying Communists if such a thing existed and, in public appearances, they have always been associated with a sort of Red Army faction/ Baader-Meinhof extremism.  Indeed, Straub dedicated his ultra-austere film The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach to "the peace-loving people of North Vietnam", categorically supporting "their struggle against American Imperialism".  Age didn't mellow him -- after the 9-11 attack on America, Straub told a crowd of reporters at Cannes that "there would never be enough terrorists in the world so long as there is a United States."  These sorts of pronouncements have a hysterical, irrational edge and, indeed, the plot in Machorka-Muff is grotesque to the point of absurdity.  But Straub and Huillet were also great filmmakers and the bizarre aspects intrinsic to Machorka-Muff are concealed, or moderated, by the exceedingly sober, documentary-style efficiency of this little film.  Straub doesn't emphasize his polemical points -- in fact, he cuts away from the juiciest stuff, leaving the audience to draw its own conclusions.  Unlike a director like Fassbinder or Terry Gilliam in a political film like Brazil, Straub eschews anything like melodrama.  His camera placement is always fanatically precise:  for instance, the camera looks down on Machorka-Muff when he reads his speech about Hinlanger-Hiss' prowess in getting his men killed -- there is a slight tincture of sardonic condescension in the way the camera is placed.  Straub uses a similarly high angle looking down on the pathetic military band and the equally inauspicious-looking corner stone, a nasty little box of brick in a muddy field.  The movie is intentionally materialistic -- there is no suggestion of anything like psychology:  people act exactly as we expect them to act:  stereotypes represent a kind of truth.  There is tiny cascade of mismatched close-ups when Machorka-Muff sees his new uniform -- the montage suggests joy so great as to be just slightly unhinged.  The scenes involving the dream, shot in high-contrast black and white, are undemonstratively surreal -- but the peculiarity of these images isn't dwelled-upon:  it's all the more surrealist for being matter-of-fact --Machorka-Muff isn't an imaginative man and the dream is only slightly interesting to him.  Indeed, given the short 18 minute running time, nothing is really emphasized or dramatized.  The editing is so sharp and exact as to be percussive -- you can feel the cuts in your belly.  Straub's materialism is dramatized by his use of actual newspaper articles, lovingly cut into a montage that is a bit demanding for a non-German reading viewer -- I could read the texts but not completely since the cuts are too quick to allow the person watching to study the print carefully (and the subtitles intervene to also block out some of the words.)  Other avowedly materialist aspects of the film are the de-dramatized, clinically lit TV-style locations, the advertisements in shop windows where Machorka-Muff lingers, and extended real-time scenes of him knotting his neck-tie or shaving or standing motionlessly as he reads his bizarre speech and testimonial in Hinlanger-Hiss.  The camera also lingers on the modest little corner stone -- not much of a monument to a bloodthirsty warrior whose exploits cost his army 14,500 men.  In the 1960's and early 1970's, there was an uncompromising Leftist opposition in Germany -- this opposition was so fierce that some of its exponents in the film world (particularly Volker Schloendorff and Fassbinder) couldn't exactly denounce the Baader-Meinhof gang for its depredations.  When Heinrich Boell, who wrote the novella on which the film is based, was asked what sort of monument to the German war dead he would endorse, he said that he would like there to be a plaque simply reading "Shit".  This is pretty extreme and Machorka-Muff is a testament to these cultural forces.