Kino

by Jürgen Fauth

  After the speeches, I was introduced. The newly appointed Minister of Culture and Propaganda was hunched over, with a piercing gaze and gaunt cheeks. He regarded my prosthetic leg, barely noticeable to the general public, with a connoisseur's eye. Goebbels knew movies and he knew cripples.

  “It's Kino himself,” he said to me. I held out my hand, but he flapped his. “Heil Hitler!”

  I took my hand back.

  “Your movies contain the seeds,” he said. “They are deeply flawed and yet point the way to a pure, perfect German film art.”

  “Deeply flawed?”

  I must have raised my voice, because the circle of uniformed bootlickers around us tightened instantly.

  Goebbels waved them off. “As groundbreaking as your films are, they are marred by imperfections and absurd ideas. Your flawed utopias only hint at the glorious destiny that awaits the German Volk. Once you outgrow your ambiguities, I am certain you will become a valuable asset to National Socialist film. One day, your work will live up to the power and ingenuity of the German spirit!”

  I was speechless. My films connected with Goebbels because the Nazis, too, wanted to bring about the world of their dreams. Yes, Goebbels recognized my incredible talent. Then again, the Reichspropagandaminister didn't understand a thing. My utopias had nothing to do with perfection because perfection is not something to strive for. All my movies were flawed, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Mapmakers always insert one wrong detail into their maps–a lake that doesn't exist, a county line that stretches a hilltop too far, a misspelled street name. It is a way to identify unauthorized copies, but it's also an opening through which the infinite rushes in: if one thing is wrong, then anything might be wrong. It's the same principle through which a single blank bullet calms the conscience of the entire firing squad.

  The missing leg had taught me about flaws early on, about living with limitations. I took it as a sign that I was special, and when I began writing for the movies, I figured that I wanted them to be like my body, unique through their mistakes and missing limbs. Watching a perfect movie is like climbing a smooth wall–there's nowhere for your fingers to grab hold. I was always looking for something broken, a scar, a sign of struggle or damage, something that didn't fit, a crack that would create a space for everything that wasn't perfect.

  The world saw later, in black-and-white footage from the liberated camps, the true face of German perfection. A vision of a rigid world without contradiction, where flaws and weaknesses were removed, suffocated, exterminated, and burned. My world would have all the freaks, homos, and Jews in it, and all the gypsies and pimps, Tauntziengirls and Bonzen, too. The innocent were blessed along with the sinners, and that's why everyone gets gold at the end of Tulpendiebe. Goebbels was no idiot, but he didn't understand art or truth–he dealt only in death and control.

  Horrified, I said my goodbyes and fled from the Kaiserhof.

  The next day, I was back on the set, shooting Silko's arrival on fog-shrouded Mulberry Island, when a bunch of SA thugs marched right through the studio gate and ordered the cameras turned off and production shut down, effective immediately by direct order of Hans Weidemann, vice-chairman of the Reichs-Film-Kammer.

  I was summoned to Weidemann's office, where the self-satisfied bastard explained to me that my film was on hold until the screenplay could be re-evaluated by the censorship office. He recommended changes involving Mulberry Island's anarchic pirate society and the ending. He made it clear that my continued employment in Germany's film industry–and that of my wife–depended on our cooperation. Then he congratulated me on having been singled out for praise at the Kaiserhof by Dr. Goebbels himself. That day, the Ufa board moved to fire every single one of its Jewish employees and anybody who'd ever belonged to the Communist party.

  I knew right away we had to leave–even if it meant walking away from the biggest movie of my career. I would not be censored. “It's blackmail,” I told Penelope when I got home. We were both drinking from very large snifters of Weinbrand. “It's unacceptable. We will not work for these goons! Scheiss drauf,” I said, lifting my drink. “To Hollywood!”

  I would have packed up and embarked on the next steamer west right then, but there was one problem: Leo, Penelope's father, the retired, widowed professor, had been stewing in anger and anti-fascist hatred ever since the Machtergreifung, and he didn't want to hear anything about leaving Germany. When he heard what had happened at Ufa, he worked himself into a state, waving a bottle of beer around by the neck. “It would be a grave mistake to abandon our country in its hour of need!” Already, he'd been beaten for shopping at a Jewish bookstore. He'd come home with a bloody head and his Reklam edition of Mother Courage torn to shreds, but the incident only strengthened his resolve. For Leo, leaving was out of the question, and the next morning, over rolls and soft-boiled eggs, Penelope told me in a calm, quiet voice: “Don't force me to choose between my father and you.”

  Maybe this is where I went wrong, all those years ago. Maybe that was the moment I made the crucial first compromise, committed the one sin that entailed the last doom. I can't say for sure, but as always, it was Penelope who pushed me further down the road that led away from my true calling. At the time, it seemed like a reasonable way to buy us time–I thought I could always change things back to the way they were. And so I agreed to the rewrites. I got good and drunk, took the script I'd slaved over, and started changing things around as if I were writing a greeting card. That is why I rewrote Pirates: for her and for her stubborn goat of a father. In her infinite generosity, Penelope even helped me! In my original draft, the free pirate nation on Mulberry Island had peacefully co-existed with a tribe of natives for centuries, but we knew Weidemann found this offensive–so we took them out. Deleted the natives, just like that. Then we changed the ending.

  The next day, I took the rewrites to the Reichs-Film-Kammer and was briskly informed that Herr Weidemann was in Nürnberg for the Reichsparteitag. I left my script on a receptionist's desk and slunk away.

  In the weeks after the Kaiserhof meeting, a great exodus began. Marlene and Sternberg were already gone, but now Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre, Billy Wilder, Joe May, Pasternak, Picator, Reinhardt, Weill, and the Siodmaks left. Pommer's contract was “terminated in view of the impossibility of realizing his productions under present circumstances.” He received a special visa from the Ministry of Propaganda, and was escorted to the next train to Paris by ministry officials. Werner Heymann, the director of the Ufa orchestra and composer on all my movies, was offered continued employment if he got baptized. Eric Charell's Odysseus film was shitcanned. They all took off. Lang later made up preposterous lies designed to make him look like a hero of the resistance, but the real reason he left was that Thea had humiliated him, and the Film Board had banned Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse from exhibition in Germany. The Führer of Cinema! I guarantee you that he came up with that title all by himself! For Lang, it would have taken courage to stay.

  Within the year, most of Germany's best talent had relocated to America. Others fell all over themselves jockeying for the newly available positions. Penelope was drinking too much, she got into shouting matches with her father and sat up in the garden in the middle of the night. I never knew which Penelope I would come home to: the fury who raged and ranted against the Nazis, or the maudlin wreck. All along, I kept making feverish inquiries in America. Pommer put in a good word for me at Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer. Walt Disney was said to have been a fan of Tulpendiebe. There was no word from the censorship office about Pirates; instead, Weidemann offered me a musical comedy called Luftschiffwalzer.

  In June, Steffen announced that he was celebrating his grand farewell. He was my oldest friend, but we hadn't seen each other much since he had fallen out with Penelope during the shoot of Jagd zu den Sternen. He'd moved into the Belvedere with Ray and given up pimping for a lifestyle of luxury and a creeping heroin habit. The new regime didn't look kindly upon homosexuals, and Ray left the country as soon as
the Nazis took over. Steffen explained that he'd stayed behind to take care of a few loose ends and would now follow Ray to New York–but not without one last blowout at the Belvedere.

  We asked Leo to join us for the party, but he preferred to stay at home with his Asbach Uralt and underground leaflets. I've often wondered how different all of our lives would have turned out if the stubborn old man hadn't been so reluctant to have a good time.

  When we got to the Wannsee, the villa was already filled with guests and music and food, an extravagant buffet, luxurious wines, even an American band. “How is he paying for all of this?” Penelope wondered. Indeed, the Belvedere had not seen such lavish entertaining since long before the stock markets crashed in twenty-nine.

  And yet, the guests–a mix of shady half-world characters and second-class artists–seemed ill at ease, overly careful about what they said and who they said it to. Nobody danced. During the halcyon days, the Belvedere had been a cauldron of recklessness, but there could be no doubt that the good times were over. In the west wing, where the opium smokers used to congregate, we ran into Ute the Mole Girl, dressed so conventionally I didn't recognize her at first. Awkwardly, she introduced us to her new husband, a dentist.

  “You didn't used to believe in marriage,” I said. Her husband's hair was parted just like Hitler's, and she mumbled something and pulled him away from us in a hurry.

  Out by the pier, Steffen danced to a jazz combo led by one of the last black trumpeters left in Berlin. The sun hadn't set yet but Steffen was zonked out of his mind already, an ivory cigarette holder in one hand, the other buried deep in the pocket of his white dinner jacket. He sang a tune, something by Duke Ellington, while Katja Berber danced naked in honor of her sister, who had been dead for years already. Steffen's good cheer felt desperate, as if he wanted to prove something.

  A dour young man who had witnessed the Nazi raid on Dr. Hirschfeld's institute stuffed his face with sausage and pronounced the affair “quite dreadful,” but Steffen shushed him.”No politics! Tonight, we celebrate!” He blew kisses on Penelope's cheeks and gave me one of his bear hugs.

  “To America,” I said, and we drank. “I'll miss you,” I told him, and it was true.

  Steffen's face was as ruddy as always but his eyes looked sadder than ever. I groped for words to cheer him up.

  “It's a temporary farewell, right? We'll see each other over there?”

  He nodded and tried to light a cigarette but his hand was shaking.

  “Soon, all of this will seem like a distant joke,” I said.

  He laughed at that and gave me a look that made me wish I could go with him. What a team we could have been–a fresh start, a new country, more opportunities than we would have known what to do with. Steffen toasted to friendship and we drank.

  Schumann, the winner of that year's six-day bike race, arrived. There was a polonaise, a French chef presented a cake decorated with a marzipan Statue of Liberty, and Steffen cut it. While we ate our dessert, a brash young man barged in on our conversation, introduced himself as the director of a film I'd never heard of, and broadly congratulated me on Luftschiffwalzer.

  “What is Luftschiffwalzer?” Steffen wanted to know.

  Luftschiffwalzer was an operetta about the journeys of the high-spirited musical crew of a zeppelin airship, the film Weidemann had offered me while I waited to hear about the fate of Pirates, but that wasn't what I told Steffen. I made a series of halting, half-guilty, half-angry confessions that I hadn't admitted to myself yet. I told him: “We're just holding them off.” I told him: “I'm not making Luftschiffwalzer.” I told him: “I'm not making Pirates either, even if they approve the rewrites.” I told him I was sorry. I told him I had no offers from America.

  Suddenly, Steffen was frighteningly sober, and he wasn't accepting apologies. He loudly demanded an answer: “Kino, is this true? You rewrote your movie for that pig Goebbels?”

  The room went silent. I felt drained, embarrassed, and tired. Everyone was listening now, and it was easiest to answer the question directly. “Yes. I did.”

  Steffen's red-rimmed eyes offered no solace, no friendship.

  “I had no choice,” I said. “I am Kino.”

  “You're not my friend,” he said. “You have to leave now. Go. Now.”

  And that was it, simple as that. There was no gushing outburst of Scheunenviertel slang and Romanian gypsy talk, no manic gestures. The very last words Steffen ever said to me were every bit as bitter as his first, at the Wintergarten, had been seductive. He was right, of course. It was time to leave. There was nothing left to be said.

  Penelope and I took our coats and left the Belvedere for the last time.

  I would never see Steffen again.

  When we came home that night, we found the house empty. Leo was gone, along with his political pamphlets. A stamped and signed document on the table informed us that he had been detained. The neighbors said they had watched as a Gestapo van arrived and three men in uniform had led Leo down the driveway. Abgeholt, that's what it was called: taken away, as if by a terminal disease or God's will.

  Penelope swallowed tears, but her face was stern. “Beliefs are not crimes,” she said. “We will get him out.”

  We sat at the kitchen table all night, unable to sleep. At dawn, we went down to Plötzensee prison to find out what Leo was accused of. We spent the day in drab offices decorated with swastikas, taking turns at restless naps on uncomfortable hardwood benches. Finally, we faced yet another brownshirt who adjusted his wire-frame glasses to better read Leo's file with seasoned disdain.

  It should not have been a surprise. Leo gave everyone who would listen an earful about the evils of the new government, and for years, he had submitted articles to the communist journal Vorwärts, now forbidden. I'd always known that he was risking his life, but he wouldn't listen. He was every bit as stubborn and stupid as his daughter.

  A hearing date was set, and the word “Sippenhaft” was mentioned, which meant Leo's family could be threatened with investigations as well. We left, dispirited. We knew that Penelope's father could not expect a fair trial. He would be lucky to get tried at all.

  There was more bad news waiting for us back at the house: Ute, pale and devastated, was waiting on our front steps. In the early hours of dawn, after the last guests had left the party, Steffen had sent the musicians and the help home, lit the chandeliers, put Whispering Jack Smith on the gramophone, and shot himself up with a lethal overdose of morphine.

  He left no note.

  Ute explained that he had been lying about Ray and New York–he had been dumped, left behind all alone with instructions to sell the villa and forget their affair. He'd been left to the Nazis and his own diminished devices, and he must have felt that he had nowhere left to turn.

  All I wanted at that moment was to take back the rewrites, take back that awful last time I'd seen him. But Steffen had always been savvier than me and I wondered if in killing himself, he had somehow taken control and shown the courage I lacked, and what was I supposed to do now? With my wife's father in a Nazi prison, what options did we have? Herr Dokter, my last true friend was dead, and I was trapped.

  With its rightful owner gone, the Belvedere was taken over by the government. Only a few short years after our last sad debauch, high-ranking Nazis met at another lakeside villa, just a little ways up the street, with the same gorgeous views of the sailboats and the lido, the same gentle waves lapping at their pier, and agreed on what they called the Final Solution to the Jewish question in Europe.

  Out of desperation, I contacted Thea von Harbou. She had, in fact, joined the Nazi party, but I hoped a fellow filmmaker and great artist might have valuable advice. I was not wrong: Thea liked to think of herself as a patriot, not a fascist. In the end, it was a useless distinction, but at that time, her loyalty wasn't total. She was concerned when I told her what had happened to Penelope's father, and I was glad I'd come to her. I remembered the time my leg had fallen off during Die Nibel
ungen and she saved me from Lang's wrath. Just being in her calming presence made me feel optimistic. I would gladly do whatever Thea suggested.

  “Silly Klaus,” she said with a wink. “Your worries are only a symptom of your need for drama. You want to be the center of attention, the special case, the outlaw. I am sorry for what happened to your friend, and of course I am also worried about your father-in-law. But do you really think sneaking away like Fritz will help, when you have every opportunity here, in Germany? Why would you run to America and pretend their system isn't ruled by special interests? Who do you think owns Hollywood? You may not agree with Goebbels's politics, but he is a man of discerning taste. The movies are always beholden to somebody–so why not stay home, where truly great things are possible? Accept Weidemann's offer, work for the glory of the German people. It is the only solution.”

  She poured me a cognac and patted my hand, as if I were one of her beloved lap dogs. What if she was right? At any rate, I felt that I had run out of options. The next day, I called Weidmann's office and accepted his offer to direct Luftschiffwalzer.

  Don't shake your head at me, Herr Dokter. At the time, it felt like the heroic thing–to hold out hope instead of stealing away like a coward. Hope for Leo, hope for Germany, hope for Pirates. Hope for Penelope and myself.

  A week later, word came down that my Pirates rewrites did not comply with RFK requirements. My older films were banned from public presentation. The verdict claimed that my work was admired “by socialists, communists, faggots, Frenchmen, and negroes.” My films were categorized as degenerate art. Under the exhibition ban, all prints were locked away in the Ufa archives. I appealed with the Reichspropagandaminister himself and petitioned Ufa president Hugenberg. I contacted Tobis Film. I even spoke to my brother Heinz about funding me independently, but nothing could be done–the verdict of the Reichs-Film-Kammer was final.