learning to smile
by Douglas Messerli
Karol
George Egel and Paul Wiens (writers), Konrad Wolf (director) Sonnensucher (Sun Seekers) / 1958, released 1972
By
a fluke of Nexflix fulfillment, I watched East German director Konrad Wolf’s Sun Seekers on the 87th
anniversary of his birth. Celebratory as that may seem, however, only one of my
film guides, Ephraim Katz’s The Film
Encyclopedia, even mentions Wolf, and none of my several video guides gives
an entry to Sonnensucher, despite the
high reputation and importance of this film to East German and even Russian
cinema.
Seeing this masterwork so many years
after its creation, I was still struck by its powerful revelations and the
honesty—despite its seemingly naïve arguments that the motivation of the
German-Soviet mines were to protect the world from the American monopoly and
the outbreak of World War III—about life in this militarized outpost, which, at
times, almost reminds one of a town out of the American wild west.
But the high quality of Wolf’s
black-and-white images, particularly those set deep within the mines are what
particularly stand out, which, along with cinematographer-composer Joachim
Werzlau’s score—which alternates between modernist fanfares and unexpected jazz
interludes—are what makes this film so significant.
In a local Berlin bar, Emmi meets up with
an old friend, Jupp König, whom she has hidden from the SS as the two worked in
the circus, and who now is on leave from Wismut. Lotte also meets a young man
with whom she hesitantly dances until a fight breaks out between Jupp and
others, and the police are called. Both women, now arrested and lectured to by
East European social workers, are sent to Wismut, where, at least Emmi looks
forward to reencountering Jupp.
As the two women become acclimated to the
wild life of Wismut, we also begin to uncover the pulls and tensions taking
place among the males. One of the major pit bosses, the one-armed Franz Beier
(Günther Simon) first spots Lotte and orders her to his home where, presumably,
he will engage her in sex. But when she shows up and resists, he admires her spirit.
When asked whether she is a good girl or a whore, Lotte replies she doesn’t
care, to which Beier praises her. She must seek the most of out of life,
obtain, like himself, the highest of positions, he asserts; and, most
importantly, she learn how to smile. He frees her, untouched.
Soon the young miner Gunther (Willi
Schrade) also spots Lotte and almost immediately falls for her. At one dance,
he and the Soviet engineer Sergei (Viktor Avidushko) vie for Lotte’s
attentions, with Gunther, certainly the courser and less suave of the two,
winning out. But we soon recognize, despite her passive acceptance of Gunther’s
marriage proposal, that Lotte is more attracted to the handsome Sergei, who has
lost his wife, the same age as Lotte at the time of their marriage, in a savage
attack by the German SS.
One of the major problems of Wolf’s film
is that, while centering much his attention on the often strong-minded Lotte,
throughout much of movie she necessarily appears passive. Despite her instincts
at survival, she is also a young country girl without the wisdom of knowing how
to improve her condition in the world of shifting power-playing males in which
she has been thrust.
Sergei
may attract her, but Gunther, at least, has offered her marriage and a true
house. He even obtains a marriage license, but instead of returning home where
she has planned a celebration, he gets drunk, carousing with another woman.
Outraged by his brutal return, in which
he pulls down a new painting of a mountain goat (a creature, it is suggested,
that she resembles) she has just purchased, Lotte leaves him only to become
once more involved with the older Beier. This time he offers her a larger and
better home, a life far better superior as the pit boss’s wife, and she
accepts. At the same time, however, Beier’s life is changing for the worst. The
workers, dissatisfied with his seeming disinterest in their welfare begin to
rebel, the wily Jupp—who has now married his Emmi—intelligently defending the
boss. Tired of their ineffectual party leader, Wihrauch (Erich Franz), the
miners demand Jupp take on that position.
The Russians and East European leaders,
moreover, are fed up with the slowness of Beier’s “improvements” and his lack
of uranium production, forcing Sergei to play the mediator—since he speaks both
Russian and German—to be mediator between Beier, with whom he often seems to
detest, and party leaders. Wolf effectively presents these discussions in both
languages, in Russian (without translation) and German (with English
subtitles). Although the audience can generally glean the substance of these
talks, accordingly, we are put in very much the same position as the German
workers and Beier who cannot always entirely comprehend what they are being
accused of.
Beier’s problems become even more complex
as he arrives home to discover Lotte packing her suitcases. She is pregnant,
she declares, and the child is not his son. Once again, Beier, despite his sometimes
offensive manner, reveals himself as a man of some honor, as he insists she
unpack and stay: he will welcome the child into his own home. Suddenly a smile
spreads over the mostly glum face of the girl. In a real sense, Lotte and her
friend Emmi are the only ones who have truly found the “sun” which the others
so desperately seek.
Rescuers arrive, but too late for Beier,
who has died soon after his confession. The last scene of the film portrays
Sergei leaving the camp, as Lotte, child in hand, kisses him goodbye—almost
passionately in comparison with her tentative love-making throughout the rest
of the film.
As
she moves back to the city of Wismut, her small son behind her, the sun, for
one of the first times in this film, is truly shining.
Los Angeles,
October 21, 2012
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