Helmut Kautner was a German film-maker highly regarded in his country but little-known in the rest of the world. (David Thomson in his Biographical Dictionary of Film describes Kautner as an estimable figure who make reputable and tedious prestige movies -- but Thomson, fond of magisterial declarations, seems to have seen only a couple of Kautner's thirty or forty pictures.) A chief obstacle to Kautner's evaluation is that, until recently, most of his movies were unavailable in subtitled DVD versions. Further, Kautner's first eight or nine movies were made under the auspices of the Nazis and, accordingly, are tainted by the historical circumstances of their production. Because Kautner was apolitical and, in fact, specialized in melodramas, Germans admire him for making war-time movies that are inoffensive -- they seem to be generally without propaganda. However, adopting an apolitical stance toward the National Socialists, that is, engaging in what Germans call the "inner emigration," doesn't appeal to most non-Germans who fancy that, if they were faced with the tyranny under which Kautner labored, they would have behaved more heroically -- this assumption has always seemed quixotic and unjust to me. In some respects, criticisms about Kautner echo Peter Gay, a cultural historian of the Weimar Republic, who has argued that German Innerlichkeit (that is, the tendency to withdraw from political reality into realms of soul-searching and romantic fantasy) led to the Nazi regime -- this also seems somewhat naive and simplistic in the context of the destruction of the Weimar Republic. Certainly, one of Kautner's signature films, Die Grosse Freiheit #7, released in 1944 depicts a Germany in which there is no war and no politics and that indulges in the wishful thinking that the characters' main concerns are not starvation, air-raids, and violent death, but rather navigating a romantic love-triangle. I think it's generally unfair and a bad critical practice to denounce a film for what it is not -- it's not reasonable to blame Kautner for choosing fo film a love-story instead of an anti-war tract for the subject of Die Grosse Freiheit #7. In other words, Kautner's film should be regarded in terms of the genre that it exploits (the romantic melodrama or "woman's picture") and not condemned for not channeling Fassbinder or Volker Schloendorff. (And it's worth noting that Kautner's film, addressing male-female relations in the context of prostitution, in fact, demonstrates the abuse of power that often arises in that context -- erotic desire is usually asymmetrical to the grief of one of the parties and this subject is integral to Kautner's 1944 film.)
The Germans are often commended for being great engineers and Die Grosse Freiheit #7 is very cunningly constructed, indeed, superbly engineered -- all of the film's moving parts fit together beautifully and the picture's structure relies upon leit motifs and symbols that reoccur with increasing significance throughout the picture. The plot is simple, but it is worked into an intricate pattern that is skillfully designed and that contains enough pathos and surprise to intrigue the viewer. It's also true that Kautner's carefully controlled mise-en-scene and the way that he develops themes is, indeed, a wee bit tedious -- he's so disciplined and thoughtful that the wilder aspects of the melodrama don't work as well as they should, although there are some spectacular flourishes including a penultimate dream sequence that unleashes a torrent of feverish fantasy just at the point where the film threatens to become most predictable. Die Grosse Freiheit # 7 ("the great freedom, # 7) is the address of a bizarre combination cabaret/hippodrome off Hamburg's notorious Reeperbahn -- that is, the center of the port city's red-light district. A seaman, Hannes, who has spent 18 years plying the waters of the world (most recently on a majestic schooner called the Padua), performs nightly at the cabaret; he is living, more or less, with Anita, a middle-aged red-haired floozy who runs the combination horse-show and night-club. Hannes plays the accordion and sings, much after the manner of a male Marlene Dietrich -- in other words, he growls out lyrics in a rich, deep baritone. (The songs are all Weimer-styled and decadent ballads, generally rife with ribald double entendres). Hannes is summoned from the stage mid-performance to attend at his dying brother's bedside. Hannes' brother is reprobate and he has got a provincial girl in trouble. Apparently, the brother has twice stolen (literally) Hannes' life-earnings and it's not clear what sort of awful illness is killing him. While Hannes is denouncing his brother, the poor fellow dies. The dead man's last wish is that Hannes care for the small-town girl that he has abandoned. Hannes travels to the girl's home dominated by a rustic-looking church, a place in which girls walk in lock-step. The young woman, Gisa, has been seduced and abandoned by Hannes' caddish brother and she is despised by everyone in the village -- she is viciously "slut-shamed" to use a modern locution by her own mother. Hannes rescues Gisa from her plight and sets her up as his roommate in Hamburg. Hannes is about 30 years older than the young woman and, at first, regards her with mildly amused irritation. He finds her a job in the dry-goods store where Gisa is courted by Georg Willem Koll, a importunate and aggressive young man who works as a welder at Blohm & Voss, the big shipyard in Hamburg. Gradually, Hannes falls in love with the girl and plans to propose to her. He decides to abandon his cabaret job and go into the business of leading Hafen Rundfahrt (a staple of Hamburg's tourist industry even in 1943 -- that is, conducting tours of the harbor on pleasure boats.) Hannes gets a wedding ring and plans to buy a vessel that he will rename after Gisa. But, alas, Gisa is not attracted to the older man and, in fact, begins a love affair with the welder, Koll. This leads to a triangle in which Koll and Hannes vie for Gisa's affections. In the end, Gisa ends up in bed with Koll -- German films are much more candid about sex in this period than Hollywood movies. Poor Hannes gets drunk, wanders about the desolate Reeperbahn in the middle of the night and, at dawn, departs on a beautiful sailing ship, the Paloma -- in the final shot, we see him grappling with the Paloma's great steering wheel.
This is a fairly slight story, but it's very intricately developed in its details. One example may suffice for many: early in the movie, one of Hannes' former crewmates (who adores him) gives the hero a model of the Padua in a bottle. Meanwhile, the real Pdua is moored in the harbor awaiting another trip to the South Seas. The ship imprisoned in the bottle is a symbol for Hannes' dilemma, a noble mariner trapped as a cabaret performer and confined by his affection for a disreputable, if somewhat, pathetic whore, the madame at the Grosse Freiheit. Hannes has a pet name for Gisa; he calls her La Paloma (the white dove) and at a key inflection point in the plot he sings the song La Paloma in a German version at the cabaret. Later, the ship in the bottle gets smashed when Hannes flies into a drunken rage when he learns that Gisa has gone dancing with Koll at an idyllic river-side plein-air ballroom. By this time, the film has clearly conflated the "white dove", Paloma, with the beautiful sailing ship with its huge white sails, the Padua. The broken glass that contained the Padua, then, rhymes with another shocking close-up in which Hannes, again enraged that Gisa has not appeared at his betrothal dinner, crushes a glass in his hand and cuts himself. The Padua in a bottle is echoed by a wooden statue of Hannes playing his accordion posted as a advertisement outside of the cabaret. In the astonishing dream sequence, Hannes meets his Doppelgaenger in the form of the wooden statue (it's like a ship's figurehead) that eerie figure invites him down a long sinister corridor. At the end of the corridor, we see the Gisa, that is, the tourist boat, which sets out on the river for a harbor tour (surely a humiliating trade for an accomplished deep-sea mariner) and, then, promptly sinks. At the end of the movie, the sadder, but wiser, Hannes is seen working as Helmsman on the beautiful tall-ship Padua as it plies the Seven Seas.
This movie is very famous in Germany and much beloved. It features Hans Albers, a matinee idol and greatly admired cabaret and ballad singer. (Albers is so beloved in Hamburg for his role in this movie that Jorg Immendorff, the German neo-expressionist, has made a statue of the actor as he appears in the movie, playing an accordion -- that statue stands in one of the seediest courtyards in the Red Light District, in the very center of the prostitution zone and is inscribed with lyrics from one of the signature songs in this film: "Half past Midnight on the Reeperbahn...") The acting is all excellent (Albers is lit so that his blue eyes shine with uncanny splendor) and Kautner works to keep things amusing on all levels -- there are dirty songs, riding stunts including a sailor mounted backward on a jackass, and, even, an impressive, if a little too choreographed, barroom brawl that involves men fighting over women but, then, battling for the sheer fun of it. (The film obsessively dwells on romantic rivalries: one of Hannes' shipmates gets entangled with a prostitute and, when she practices her trade with other men, tries to strangle her and there are shrewdly filmed confrontations between the young, tough but innocent, Gisa and the older madame from the bar and brothel; of course, this all occurs in the context of Hannes' rivalry with Koll.) The dream sequence with canted angles, double exposures, and grotesque imagery tinted dark blue is extraordinary, most of all because it isn't really programmatic -- that is, it defines the conflicts in the film but doesn't solve them. The men are all anxious to avoid entanglement with women, but, of course, love and romance and, therefore, commitment (entanglement) is what everyone is seeking in the movie. The camerawork is spectacular with foggy shots of Hamburg's harbor and a bravura sequence involving a thunderstorm at the open-air ballroom that looks like something by Jean Renoir. The movie is shot in rich and atmospheric Agfacolor and is resplendent in the DVD restoration (by the F. W. Murnau Stiftung) -- the colors are steeped in an amber glow, muted but still vibrantly pronounced. Fog- and ship horns bellow on the soundtrack. The many cabaret numbers are beautifully staged -- the soundtrack, however, is overly explicit in underlining the drama. Even the film's rear-projection work, visible in the harbor tour scenes, is superb -- and you get to see landmarks of Hamburg's Hafen before it was bombed into ruins, particularly the old Kaiserspeiche (Imperial Warehouse) on the point of land where the Elbe divides into its main channel and the host of canals leading to the depots in the city -- this is where the ElbPhilarmonie building is now located. Apparently, the film was made under very difficult circumstances. Operation Gomorrha in July and August 1943 destroyed Hamburg (and killed 34,000 people), ending filming on location. The movie's production was, then, transferred to Berlin Babelsburg where again the studios were bombed into rubble. The film's final shoots were done in Prague. When the movie was screened for Dr. Goebbels, he thought the picture was an insult to German womanhood and a celebration of prostitution. So the picture was censored in Germany and not shown there until after the War. The movie was released in the rest of the world, however, to considerable acclaim.
The Kino-Lorbeer DVD of the film has an interesting commentary track by Olof Moeller. Moeller tells jokes and raves enthusiastically about Albers -- he's a true fan -- and he explains the peculiar political and historical aspects of this film. The Nazi censors were concerned about the movie and demanded that the title, originally just Grosse Freiheit be clarified to be not a concept but an address -- hence, the addition of the #7 to the name. Moeller makes the interesting point that the Nazis were careful to provide "something for everyone" -- in other words, their regime was not uniformly detestable and party officials manipulated affairs so that even their enemies had to concede certain things to them. In effect, a film like Grosse Freiheit was made to be politically troublesome and, even, problematic -- the point was to create the illusion of freedom, not actual freedom. Albers was suspected to be anti-Nazi and the authorities' "tolerance" with respect to films like this was supposed to demonstrate that there was room in Germany for all types of politics, including the Weimar-era aspects of Kautner's movie. Moeller says that "German film history is not for people who like clear-cut narratives." In fact, post-war Germany was, in some ways, more censorious than the Nazis -- the scene clearly depicting a post-coital conversation between Koll and Gisa (their clothing is strewn all over the floor) was cut when the picture was finally released in Deutschland in 1948, Albers had a long career in German films -- he appears as a brash young thug in The Blue Angel and continued working in film through the sixties. Grosse Freiheit # 7 is his signature performance. Kautner delivered the eulogy at his funeral and said that Albers, the mariner, was merely resting before embarking on his greatest voyage, the trip to the Grosse Freiheit and, then, quoted the final lines in the film: "Calm seas and good sailing!"
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