G.W. Pabst could seemingly do no wrong in the German silent film industry. His string of silent pictures gained classic status, and his several excellent early sound features include the impressive musical The Threepenny Opera. The quality of Pabst’s work collapsed when the National Socialists took power — it’s not entirely clear whether he was trapped in Austria or stayed voluntarily.
1931’s Kameradschaft, or Comradeship, is as anti-Nationalist a picture as one could imagine, even after (according to historian Hermann Barth) its leftist sentiments were toned down considerably. It’s an unofficial follow-up to Pabst’s Westfront 1918 (also newly released by Criterion), a tragedy of trench warfare in WW1. It’s now ten years later but France and Germany are noncombatants in name only. The harsh surrender terms have crippled Germany and unemployment is high.
Based on an incident that took place several decades earlier, the thrilling story of a mining disaster is emotionally powerful, realistic and technically sophisticated. American technicians were often in awe of the precise work being done in Berlin — which is why so many German artists were welcome in Hollywood.
The storytelling is sophisticated as well. Pabst and his screenwriters sketch the situation in terms easily understood. A mining district is split between French and German territory. Unemployed German miners aren’t allowed through the border gate to look for work, but those with jobs are welcome to visit French beer halls. An underground fire in a French mine gets out of hand when a gas leak causes an explosion and a number of cave-ins, trapping an entire shift of workers 2,000 feet below. The traumatized French working community mobs the gates. When the rescue begins, the German miner Wittkopp (Ernst Busch) rallies his colleagues into forming a cross-border rescue group. He argues that their former enemies are still fellow miners, and national differences should be forgotten during emergencies. With the blessing of the mine manager, the Germans race to the French colliery with their more advanced equipment and volunteer their aid. Two more efforts are covered. Acting alone, an elderly retired French miner uses a secondary shaft to descend into the stricken mine, to try to locate his grandson. Three Germans working underground realize that their mineshaft has a passage that connects with the French mine, deep underground. It’s separated by a subterranean border barrier, reading ‘Frontiere 1919.’ Led by the emotional Kasper (Alexander Granach), the Germans take it upon themselves to break through and look for survivors. They find the old man and his grandson, but a subsequent cave-in blocks the exit.
Kameradschaft works first as a disaster picture.The French and German miners speak different languages but their aims, needs and fears are identical — men on both sides are most afraid of gas fires. Once on the French side, the Germans find themselves in an underground horse stable — the animals work way down in the depths, pulling ore buckets on little rail lines. Pabst’s set designers create spectacular, extremely realistic underground havoc. When the rescuers break through walls, it’s obviously real masonry. Enormous sets show vast expanses of tunnels and chambers that smash to bits as ceilings cave in. While men scramble to safety, a huge tunnel collapses chamber by chamber, with timbers and rocks that don’t look fake. When fire breaks out, we ‘feel’ the waves of pressure that break down brick walls and blast forth with tongues of flame thirty and forty feet long.
Although known for his expressionist silents — his The Love of Jeanne Ney is wonderful — before sound came in Pabst had already turned to a more realist mode, and then to essentially humanist pictures like the socially conscious Diary of a Lost Girl. He’s particularly good at sketching the human element in the story. The organizer Wittkopp doesn’t use slogans to inspire a rescue party, but appeals to his fellow miners’ professional self-respect. Our trio of beer-drinking Germans almost start a fight on the French side when language differences make one of them think he’s been snubbed by a French girl, Anna (Elisabeth Wendt). The next morning, Anna must run for an hour to reach the mine, fearing that both her brother and beau are trapped underground. The three jolly Germans take it upon themselves to initiate their own rescue effort, knowing that they’ll probably be punished for their initiative. And the old Frenchman climbs down endless wooden ladders to reach the affected chambers — he’s so ancient, we’re not at all certain that he’ll make it.
The altruistic Wittkopp is balanced by the Alexander Granach’s earthy, vulgar Kaspar, the kind of worker hero who acts out of stubborn instinct. Granach reminds us a bit of Italian actor Folco Lulli in Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear — he’s stout and strong, with a hearty disposition. Granach wasn’t a celebrated star, but he can claim at least three roles in enduring classics: Dreyer’s Nosferatu (1922), this film, and Fritz Lang’s American anti-Fascist picture Hangmen Also Die! Granach’s character in the Lang film has the same hearty-belligerent German attitude, even when playing a detective in the employ of the Nazi occupiers of Czechoslovakia.
Realistic details show the working conditions of the miners, who clean themselves not at home but in a large communal shower. They store their street clothes by locking them up in the air, on chains. The working families live humble lives. Anna loves a local miner but has decided to return to Paris to avoid a life of misery. In the film’s most emotional moment the German hausfraus rush to bid farewell to the rescue team. Wittkopp’s thin, passive-looking wife keeps pace with the rescue truck as Wittkopp explains why he must risk his life to help his brother workers. She smiles weakly, as if she has no choice but to approve even though her husband might not return. The visual is reminiscent of one of those weary Appalachian mothers from our own Depression-era photographic studies.
Kameradschaft qualifies as one of a number of early ’30s German films with a leftist message: nationalism and wars oppress good working men, who shouldn’t be restricted restricted by artificial political barriers or divided by self-interest and tribal rivalries. We hear plenty of grousing from the sidelines, of Germans that don’t trust Frenchmen and vice versa. One German worker asks if he will be insured if he’s injured on French soil. Pabst’s treatment of these scenes is simple and honest. Even a determined cross-national handshake scene, with a truck-in to hands clasped in solidarity, does not feel forced.
In 1930 there were plenty of political factions trying to drive wedges between Germans and Frenchmen. Considering the cruelties of the then- recent war, it’s heartening to see the comradeship on display. Of course, it’s an emergency situation — almost ninety years later, we cheer like children when firefighters from far away show up to help put out local fires. The message is thoughtful, not subversive: why can’t we cooperate like this in other ways? Yes, the formula is simplified, but it’s not false.
Pabst marshals his forces as would the director of a modern epic. The scenes above ground use large mobs of frightened relatives, with nervous guards and police holding them back. A meeting between workers and management on a set of steps is almost as stylized as Lang’s Metropolis. In a scene that feels like pure silent expressionism, a French miner running out of breathable air suffers a fit of delirium. When some German rescuers reach him, he thinks he’s back in the war fighting for his life. To illustrate his hallucination Pabst cuts directly to shots of trench combat (possibly from Westfront 1918). It’s a brilliantly shot and edited sequence.
