The forgotten films of Gerhard Lamprecht, the veteran German director who made more than sixty films between 1920 and 1958, are being taken down one by one from the dusty shelves of history and rediscovered. The selection “Silent Drama: The Authenticity of Gerhard Lamprecht” brings audiences four silent films the director made in the second half of the 1920s. Shot in the years when German Expressionist cinema was making waves around the world, these films draw on the realist vein that developed and flourished with the New Objectivity movement, which emerged in Germany as a reaction to Expressionist aesthetics. Lamprecht’s films, which tell emotionally charged, melodramatic stories with broad popular appeal, are filled with realistic portrayals that reflect the everyday life and socio-economic climate of Weimar-era Germany. So what is reflected through the camera of Lamprecht, who bore witness to his time with an almost documentarian sensibility?

Scenes from 1920s Berlin

Lamprecht’s films, shot in real locations rather than in the studio and with amateur actors, are marked by an intense sense of place. With its streets and buildings, its dives and nightclubs, Berlin in Lamprecht’s films is more than just a background or a set; it lies at the very heart of the narrative. In Slums of Berlin (Die Verrufenen, 1925), the first film in the selection, Lamprecht turns his camera on the slums inhabited by petty criminals, prostitutes and street children. The film lays bare the misery of the poorest segments of society, who paid the heaviest price for the economic ruin caused by the defeat in World War I. Grimy children playing in the streets, hollow-cheeked old people and the homeless crowding the shelters enter the frame. In an interview, Lamprecht says that he recruited some of the extras who appeared in Slums of Berlin from the brothels and the homeless shelter in the area.

People Among Us (Menschen Untereinander, 1926), one of the films in the selection, focuses on the residents of an apartment building on one of the city’s busy streets: an ambitious undersecretary and his wife, who is sent to prison for hitting a pedestrian with her car; a jeweler; a woman who runs a matchmaking service; an elderly piano teacher struggling to pay the rent… Offering glimpses into the lives of these ordinary people, most of whom belong to the middle class, the film contains interesting observations on the urban life and lifestyle of 1920s Berlin. Another film in the selection, Under the Lantern (Unter der Laterne, 1928), paints a vibrant portrait of Berlin, with crowds filling the streets, avenues buzzing with trams and cars, department stores and cabaret shows, while also showing the ugly face behind the glitter of nightlife. At times Lamprecht’s films reflect the hustle and bustle of modern city life in such a realistic style that we feel as if we are watching a city-symphony documentary such as Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt, 1927).

Economic Contradictions

In Lamprecht’s films, the two different faces of Weimar Germany always stand side by side: on one side are those struggling with hunger and poverty in the slums, and on the other are members of the wealthy, privileged class living in luxurious villas. At times, as if to emphasize the enormous gulf between the two classes, Lamprecht makes striking cuts between the world of the poor and the world of the rich. For example, in the opening sequence of Children of No Importance (Die Unehelichen, 1926), one of the films in the selection, we first see rich children riding in a pony-drawn carriage in the showy garden of a mansion. The camera then cuts to Peter and Lotte, the illegitimate children watching them with great interest from behind the wire fence surrounding the garden. In his films, Lamprecht not only draws attention to the economic inequality in Weimar Germany, but also shows that it is by no means a remote possibility for anyone from the middle class to lose everything they have and fall into destitution. In Slums of Berlin, the plight of Robert, an engineer who finds every door closed to him after being imprisoned for perjury and who is driven to the brink of suicide by hunger and misery, reflects the fears of impoverishment and of losing one’s job, home and respectability felt by a middle class living in the shadow of the soaring postwar inflation, unemployment and economic depression.

“Fallen” Women

In Lamprecht’s films, men who fall on hard times can manage to get back on their feet through determination, perseverance and hard work, but Lamprecht’s “fallen” women are not so lucky. The inevitable end that awaits Emma, the kind-hearted prostitute of Slums of Berlin, and Else in Under the Lantern, who is forced into prostitution to earn a living after being left penniless by her father’s oppression and unfortunate coincidences, is illness and death. Still, Lamprecht’s films do not end on an entirely dark note. Both Children of No Importance, which tells the story of three children left to the mercy of a heartless, money-grubbing foster family, and Slums of Berlin and Under the Lantern have a “happy ending” that would satisfy mainstream audiences, despite the tragic deaths of some characters.

Lamprecht’s films about the suffering of fallen women and poor children are, in their broad outlines, built on melodramatic clichés. What sets Lamprecht’s films apart from classical Hollywood melodramas, however, is that they address the social issues of their time with a realism not found in Hollywood films. So much so that by looking at the films of Lamprecht—one of the rare directors who stayed in Berlin and kept making films during the Weimar period, in Nazi Germany as filmmakers left the country one after another, and afterwards—we can trace the transformations Germany went through.

Coşkun Liktor
*This article was written for the Culture Blog by Coşkun Liktor, writer for ALTYAZI MAGAZINE.