Brecht and Brechtian Cinema

Filmmakers, especially in Europe, who profess they owe something to Brecht are numerous, but his legacy has been appropriated in very different ways. For Italian post-war directors such as Luchino Visconti, Francesco Rosi, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ermano Olmi, and the Taviani Brothers, Brecht's influence was most apparent in novel, often anti-heroic ways of dramatising (national) history. In films like SENSO (1954), SALVATORE GIULIANO (1962), 1900 (1976), THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS (1978), and KAOS (1984), the historical process is depicted not only in the Marxist sense as the movement of conflicting class interests. Directors delight in that sensuous apprehension of lived contradiction one finds in Galileo, a play that more than any other of Brecht's theatre pieces has appealed to film professionals. Charles Laughton gave it its American premiere, produced by John Houseman and directed by Joseph Losey. Galileo may in turn even have been inspired by Hollywood biopics, judging from Brecht's praise for one of their chief directors, the German emigré William Dieterle.

French directors such as Jean Luc Godard and Jean-Marie Straub have transposed more specific Brechtian ideas into filmic terms: rethinking the question of pleasure and spectacle, developing filmic modes of spectatorial distanciation, and exploring the politics of representation in and through the cinema – in much the same spirit as Brecht reflected on the ideological implications of the traditions of bourgeois theatre. Straub, for instance, explicitly fashioned the acting style and verbal delivery of his protagonists after Brechtian precepts, but he also prefaced his first feature film NOT RECONCILED (1965) with a quotation from Brecht: ‘only violence serves where violence reigns’. He even adapted a prose work of Brecht, Die Geschäfte des Herrn Cäsar for his film, HISTORY LESSONS (1972). Godard's work from 1967 onwards shows an intense preoccupation with the theories of Brecht, which in LA CHINOISE (1967) surfaces in the form of extended quotations. It culminates in such explicitly Brechtian films as ONE PLUS ONE, BRITISH SOUNDS (1970), VENT D’EST (1970) and TOUT VA BIEN (1972).

In West Germany, virtually every director of the so-called New German Cinema makes reference to Brecht, either as a source to be acknowledged or a cultural presence to come to terms with.