Lotte Eisner in Germany (1980)

It's difficult to say if I'm pessimist or optimist being so long alive. Or must be a sort of both. I have that feeling. It's very difficult to stay an optimist the whole time. Especially if you get older and see how the world looks around you. And see that they are preparing for third world war. Neither enough of two, I must say. [piano music] [Narrator:] Lotte Eisner is a film critic and historian. She was born in Germany and she worked there during the '20s for Berlin Daily newspaper. Now she lives in a small apartment just outside of Paris. It was here that she met the late Henri Langlois and helped him create his Cinémathèque Française. Since the war she's been a Director of the Cinémathèque which is now a vast archive and museum for world cinema. Her books and articles have covered all aspects of film, but she is especially focused on the period she knows best: the '20s in Germany. It was something - those '20s were something, which was really marvelous somehow. Just like The Roaring Twenties in America must've been interesting. My god, we were all young, you see? There were in Berlin, those costume balls. My father was very strict with me and didn't allow me, but one of my friends was allowed to go and I always made the costumes for my friend. I'd pin them together. I never liked to sew. But they were amusing. Only, poor things, they could never really get out of them again. I pinned them so tight. And... well... she went to this costume ball. The next day I asked her, "How was it?" And she said, "Well, I met a crazy young poet, he's called Bertolt Brecht. "And he give me his first play. It's not yet printed. It was written by hand. It's called 'Baal.' "Look at it and read it. And if you think it's good, then I'll have an affair with him." Well, I read it the whole night and was delighted and the next day I said to her, "Listen, he is going to be the greatest poet in Germany." And I was right about it. And... she never had an affair with him because at that time he was, - he had lots of women later on - but at that time he was still very timid. He wrote her lovely love letters which she gave now to the Brecht Museum. And... they never had an affair... but we were all friends with him, and that was interesting. [Eisner:] It is peculiar, I don't want to live in Germany. That's gone for always. But there is still something which ties me to Germany. And that's very peculiar that since I became older, I feel that stronger than before. It is perhaps, that I had my roots once in Germany, and now I am without roots. And it is something you can't explain, I believe. [Narrator:] The brief Golden Age of German film during the '20s produced classics like the prophetic "Nosferatu" by F.W. Murnau, the realistic "Joyless Street" by G.W. Pabst, and the expressionist masterpiece "Metropolis" by Fritz Lang, one of Lotte's oldest friends. [piano music] [Narrator:] Today in the Cinémathèque Museum this period is preserved in photos, set designs, and costumes. The museum is both an archive and a memory. Her memory of the times when she was there. [piano music] [Eisner:] The '20s were a curious time. There was the war had been lost, and people were rather unhappy in Germany. Like always, Germans, as soon as we are not happy and as soon as there is no material reason, we will come, somehow creating. That happened already during Goethe and Schiller - the time of Napoleon, and that happens in the '20s. [Eisner:] So we had young poets and young painters. [Eisner:] Berlin, this ugly town didn't look ugly to us because we were meeting interesting people. I met Pudovkin at a friend's and then later on when I was a journalist, I met Eisenstein. There was something new every day. When I met Eisenstein, I was swept off my feet. I never saw a man like him who knew all languages: French, German, English. I had read all books. And, you see, he didn't look small to me. He had this enormous head, like a lion. [Eisner:] When I got to know films, I went to see shooting, to learn something about the camera, and like that I could write. And that is the thing I did often. I'll never forget, it must have been '28. I began at '26, '27. And I went to see a film which Pabst was shooting. And there was an absolutely beautiful girl, Louise Brooks. And during the change of light she was reading a book. And I said, "What book can this beautiful girl read?" And she was astonishing because she had a sort - what the French call, "la presence". She was already very modern in her way. And I thought, "What is she reading?" And I look what she reads and see it's a translation of Schopenhauer, the German philosopher. I said, "That is not possible. That is a publicity stunt of Pabst. He knew I was coming." And 30 years later, I got to know Louise Brooks and we became great friends. And I said to her in '60 - in '58, I said, "Louise, did you ever read in '28, Schopenhauer?" She said, "But Lotte, my father had it in his library and when I came to Hollywood as a Ziegveld [sic] Girl - Ziegfeld Girl - I just said people don't read here. It's awful. How will I stay here?" [Eisner:] When I was in Berlin, there was also a sort of anxiousness, of malaise. And that's why the films have been so good in the '20s. And they never became any more like that. [piano music] One day in my office, came Leni Riefenstahl and she turns around and around and I knew she wanted something. And she said, "Oh Frau Doctor [?] I would love you to meet a wonderful man." Now I knew through Luis Trenker, the actor, that her men were really not wonderful. So I said, "Who is it, Leni?" And she said, "Adolph Hitler." And I said to her, "I don't want to meet this hard fellow." It was wrong of me. I ought to have gone to have tea with him as she wanted me to with a little bottle of poison. Then perhaps, there wouldn't have been Hitler but there would have been Himmler or Goering or Goebbels or somebody else. And I would have been the unknown Joan of Arc. Because I wouldn't exist anymore. They would have killed me. That was in nineteen hundred thirty-two, late '32. [Eisner:] Then the Nazis in the [?] Volkischer Beobachter wrote, "the Jewish Bolshevist journalist Lotte H. Eisner [?] has written that." And they said about me, "When heads will roll, this head will roll." So I said to my sister-in-law, "I will go away from Berlin to Paris." I had a sister married with a French fellow. And so I didn't even go home anymore. She packed - my sister-in-law packed my things. And I went off. And when I met my brother-in-law in Paris, he said, "Oh you are coming for a holiday?" I said, "Oh then it will be a rather long holiday, I suppose." [Narrator:] Lotte never lived in Germany again. Werner Herzog said, "I'm going to do 'Kaspar Hauser'." Oh I said, 'It's the only poem I know, student, I love it very much." So I quoted it to him and translated it to him. Yes, I can quote it still in French: "Je suis venu, comme orphelin Riche de mes seuls yeux tranquilles, Vers les hommes des grandes villes: Ils ne m'ont pas trouve malin. A vingt ans un trouble nouveau, Sous le nom d'amoreuses flames, M'a fait trouver belles les femmes: Elles ne mont pas trouve beau. Bien que sans patrie et sans roi Et tres brave ne l'etant guere. J'ai voulu mourir a la guerre. La mort n'a pas voulu de moi. Qu'est-ce que je fais en ce monde? Suis-je ne trop tot ou trop tard? O vous tous, ma peine est profonde: Priez pour le pauvre Gaspard." And he liked it very much and said, "That's what I want to show in my film." And then when he made the film, he dedicated it to me. To Lotte Eisner and those who had the courage to go out of Germany. But it was quite natural going. If I hadn't gone out, I would have been among the six millions they murdered. [Narrator:] During the Second World War, Lotte was able to save herself by hiding in the South of France using a false identity. For a while she stayed in a girl's school and worked as a cook. And for a time she hid in a chateau. This same chateau was used by Langlois to hide films from the Nazis. So she shared her hiding place with Eisenstein's "Potemkin" and Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator". Not only the film historian, but the films themselves were being hunted by the Gestapo. [Eisner:] When I went back to Berlin after the war, it was a strange town for me. Where we had lived, not a stone was standing anymore. And even the tear gas in itself. [?] There were no trees in the beginning. It had to grow all again. It was nothing was like the old days and we could look for "la recherche du temps perdu". I just said, "I have nothing to do in this building. Let's scram." I just hated it. It was after the war, when I went once to The Balena Ensemble and suddenly I see Ernst Busch, the actor of "Kuhle Wampe". He played their young worker. And the street singer in "The 3 Penny Opera". And of course, I knew him before so I said hello to him. And he was first very cool. Saying to me, "Since when are you in Paris?" I laughed and said, "Oh, since '33." Then he became very nice to me and said, "You see, I ask that of everybody, because I don't want to get - give my hand to a Nazi. "I want to know whom I give a hand to. So you have been here since '33, so I can accept you." And that was a good idea. And I told that to people when they've said, "Why didn't you go back to Germany again after the war?" And I said, "I would never go back because I don't know to whom I could give my hand." [Narrator:] After the war Lotte went to see the director G.W. Pabst in Vienna to obtain his original scripts for the museum. Pabst had stayed in Germany and continued to work under the Nazis. So I went it was in '46. It was the first time I went to Vienna, and I loved Vienna but I didn't love the idea to meet Pabst. And Pabst came, with upspread hands and said, "How wonderful to see you." And I said to him, "It's not your old friend, G.V. - G.W. It's the Cinémathèque who is sending me." And he said, "You don't believe all that stories about me?" I said, "My dear, I have to believe them." He said, "Wait a moment." Fetch the big bag and said, "Ask me questions." So I asked him, "Why were you in Vienna when Munich was?" And he said, "My father was terribly ill. See here the announcement of his death. Look at the date." So I said, "But why were you in Berlin when war broke out?" And he said, "My Father-in-law was very ill. Look at his death certificate. Look at the date." I said, "Why did you stay in Berlin?" He said, "Here are the [...] cabins of a ship for my two sons and my wife and me." "Why didn't you go to America?" "I didn't go because I lifted a heavy trunk and got a hernia. Look here is my operation." When I heard all that, I said, "Listen, I was accustomed through Brecht to read Edgar Wallace. And always a man with the most alibi is the culprit." He wasn't very happy about it. And perhaps it is that why we didn't get - he sold his scripts to the Munich Museum and not to us. [Narrator:] Since the war, her life is centered around her work at the Cinémathèque with Henri Langlois. There was even a visit to East Berlin where Langlois was mounting an exhibition about film. He was a master at putting up these exhibits and it was Lotte's job to supervise a costume display. And I was there before he came, and I couldn't find anybody to put up the costumes like we wanted. I knew how Langlois had somebody who... who in all his exhibitions... she was to know how to put up costumes. And we were stiff like soldiers. And I said, "Oh, those Eastern Germans." And I said to a man who was working with me, "Tell me, haven't you got some homosexual who has taste?" And the next day Langlois come, costumes were put up, and Henri said, "But my dear. I don't know what you want. They are amazing." I suggest I wonder what he did, and I asked him, "What did you do? It's excellent now." He said, "Well, I followed your advice. I had four different people who were going to put the costumes up. And I said to them, 'Who of you is a homosexual?' and one went like that. And I said, 'You are engaged'." And he really had taste and he knew how to do it. And the secretary said, "Oh, this woman, how could she say that? How could she talk about homosexuality?" And they were very offended about it. And we laughed heartily. It was a funny story. [Eisner:] In France, I said, "What will happen? Will there never be anything again in Germany, like the '20s?" [Narrator:] Recently German film has come back to life. A new generation of young German directors has finally picked up where the filmmakers of the '20s left off. Lotte was an early and enthusiastic supporter of this new movement. Directors like Wim Wenders, Rainer Fassbinder and especially Werner Herzog. [Eisner:] I am not astonished that Herzog has made a "Nosferatu." Thinking about Murnau, he wanted me to come and see the shooting for a sort of blessing. And so I went to Delft and there was a connection, which is something, which is unexplicable, which just is there. I have had the feeling that Murnau gave him a sort of blessing, through me. Well, Wim Wenders came to see me and I liked him very much. And we had also immediately, a sort of contact. He is, of course, completely different than Herzog. With Herzog, it is the "mise en scene" of landscape which impressed me so much. And with Wenders, it is a sort of new written... of people in cars, people in trains, people are always going from one place to another. And there is a sort of restlessness, which is also typical German. [Eisner:] Fassbinder is different again, than the two others. Fassbinder is a sort of violence, sometimes. He has this violence because there is so much stuffiness now in Germany. In this Germany which has been become a rich country, a little because of the - of the Americans who gave them too much money when they were poor. And there is a materialism on one side which the young Germans just hate. And that's why they are unhappy. And it is very funny, a German has to be unhappy to be creative. Yes, it is very peculiar. I have such feeling that suddenly I understand the young Germans again. And they are - there is some contact again. And I thought I would never give a hand anymore to any Germans, you see. [Eisner:] There are of course so many films I have seen and there's still so much to see. But you will never get really over with it. There are so many films which are lost which we will never see again. And you just know the names of them. It's quite sad, film history. Sometimes I have now the feeling, you know, this beautiful film, Japanese film, "The Woman in the Sand" ["Woman in the Dunes"]. She is digging along and digging along and she couldn't understand why. Well, I feel sometimes like this woman digging along, digging along. And that's my work at the Cinémathèque. If I ever write a memoir I would call my life, "Et tres brave ne l'etant guere." which comes from the "Kaspar Hauser" poem of Verlaine. And I like it very much because that has been my life. "And very brave without being it." Because I fought for things which one day perhaps will be lost. Heaven knows how long the Musee de Cinéma will exist. And heaven knows if in hundreds of years people will still see films of Murnau and Lang and Renoir. But all that we will know in future, so other people will know, not me. Could you take the light off? No it's this light, there. It's too hot. Thank you. I hope I wasn't too pessimistic. But film is really a fragile art. [piano music]