‘East and West’: German Tales of Idealism Betrayed

There’s nothing like a major political or military upheaval to stimulate filmmakers, and many East German and West German films made just before, during or after the crumbling of the Berlin Wall have much of the urgency, passion and energy of the films of Italian neorealism, postwar Japan, the early years of the Castro regime, and the short-lived Allende government in Chile. It’s therefore not surprising that “New German Films: East and West Together” is the American Cinematheque’s most exciting presentation to date.

Composed of 10 films and a symposium bringing together German and Hollywood directors, it will be presented over the weekend at the Directors Guild, 7920 Sunset Blvd.

East Germany’s “The Architects” (screening tonight at 7) is indisputably the masterpiece of the series. (“Forbidden Love,” an East German “Romeo and Juliet” love story, was not available for preview screenings.) In the intensity of its political protest and in its sophistication and style, “The Architects” recalls Andrzej Wajda’s “The Man of Marble” and “The Man of Iron.”

Set just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the film illuminates with brilliance and rage the frustration and despair facing the creative individual within the rigid, oppressive and tragically inefficient East German system. At 38, with only five bus stops and three transformer stations to his credit, an East Berlin architect (Kurt Naumann) at last gets the opportunity to design a planned community with a team of his friends.

All too aware that their country has some of the most sterile architecture in the world, the architect and his colleagues make their innovations in design and construction dramatically cost-effective, but new ideas prove only threatening to the bureaucracy. Writer Thomas Knauf and director Peter Kahane lay bare a paralysis of artistic imagination reinforced by a similar paralysis in the economy and industry; we are shown a society that can’t afford to retool or even to spend more on longer-lasting building materials. What gives the film special punch is that the filmmakers are mature enough to blame the system rather than the individual and to take note that not all is Utopia outside East Germany.

The theme of idealism betrayed that runs through “The Architects” permeates the remainder of the East German films and also through West German filmmakers Helga Reidemeister and Johann Feindt’s “In the Splendor of Happiness” (Sunday at 4 p.m.), which documents comprehensively the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the widely varying responses it elicits from East Germans; an auctioning off of sections of the Berlin Wall in a circus-like atmosphere contrasts sharply with bitter denunciations of members of the Stasi secret police.

A kind of darkly humorous companion film to “The Architects,” East German Dietman Hochhuth’s “Looking for Causes” (Saturday at 9 p.m.) charts the downward spiral of a 37-year-old documentarian (Peter Zimmermann) who after years of churning out films on long-dead historical figures at last gets the chance to do a film on “living people, after all.” The symbolic irony is that he innocently cannot resist trying to force his subjects, a disenchanted teen-age couple, to behave according to his preconceptions.

Also impressive are Helke Misselwitz’s “Garbage” (Sunday at about 5:30 p.m.), a documentary on a young East Berlin rock musician whose supportive mother marries a West German and moves to West Berlin and how history unexpectedly overtakes him, and Michael Gwisdek’s “Rendezvous in Travers” (tonight about 10:30), a fevered romantic triangle--be prepared for overwhelming quantities of Teutonic Angst --set in Switzerland in 1793 and involving a German intellectual who has cast his lot with the French Revolution. A parallel with events in East Germany on the question of personal responsibility versus social responsibility is clearly intended.

The best of the West German offerings, Reinhard Hauff’s “Blue-Eyed” (screening tonight at 9), tells compellingly of a highly successful middle-aged German businessman (Gotz George), a longtime Argentine resident, who in the late ‘70s tries to look the other way in doing business with the military junta.

Another notable West German film, Heiko Schier’s “Wedding” (Sunday at 7:30 p.m.) resembles “Diner” in its depiction of youthful disappointment but is much darker in tone; the film takes its title from a run-down section of Berlin. With “My War” (Saturday at about 10:45 p.m.), documentarians Harriet Eder and Thomas Kufus undercut with a dull, repetitive presentation a potentially fascinating subject: German World War II veterans and the amateur footage they shot while in uniform.

The filmmakers’ symposium, “A New Cinema After the Cold War?,” takes place Saturday at 11 a.m. with Maximilian Schell moderating. Information: (213) 466-FILM.