Episches Theater als Film. Bühnenstücke Bertolt Brechts in den audiovisuellen Medien (review)

Joachim Lang sets as his task a review of the adaptation of Brecht's stage plays for cinema and television. The main section of his book (77–347), sandwiched between a methodological introduction, conclusion, and bibliography, offers detailed analyses of representative examples of these audiovisual works, encompassing a range of diverse forms. The selection notably includes television, a medium often ignored by Brecht scholarship. Since 1986 an author and director of documentary films made for German television, Lang brought 20 years of experience in the media industry to a dissertation from which this book emerged. Six films from 1931 to 1969 are presented as a comprehensive cross- and long-section of the historical record. Given that criticism to date has focused on Pabst's Dreigroschenoper, Lang's project is a welcome attempt to embed that notoriously controversial film in the larger history of lesser-known Brecht adaptations.

The premise here is a paradox hinted at in the title. Epic theater as anti-illusionist stage performance conflicts with the mimetic potential of film, an art form uniquely capable of and conventionally focused on projecting the illusion of reality. How successful are these adaptations and by what measure? Lang's introduction lays out the challenge in terms of fundamental differences between epic theater and film in key areas that a medial transformation must negotiate (the space-time prerequisites, text, scenery, lighting, image, sound, montage, and acting). This process may involve media-specific changes; above all, however, to be successful it requires formal choices that resist the conventions of classical Hollywood cinema.

Proceeding chronologically, Lang first examines G.W. Pabst's cinematic film adaptation, Die Dreigroschenoper (1931). The discussion here, as in the other five instances, is based on careful study of the evidence at each stage of development, from the genesis of the theater play through the history of its stage productions to the production and reception of the film adaptation. On this particular 'minefield' the comparative analysis reveals fewer epic techniques in the film (with important exceptions like the Moritatensänger narrator), making it overall less radical than earlier versions, especially Brecht's screenplay. Nonetheless Lang shows that Pabst's judicious deployment of media-specific filmic means (e.g. camera, sound, and editing in the opening sequence) remains closer to Brecht's aesthetics than many critics in the polarized reception of this film have been willing to concede.

Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (1955), which some consider Brecht's most epic play, was transformed into a conventional film comedy with a colorfully decorated Schönwetter-Kulisse that, according to Lang, contradicts the author's aesthetic and political vision. Needless to say, Brecht's collaboration with the Brazilian director, Alberto Cavalcanti, on this project ran into serious trouble.

Television enters the history of Brecht adaptations with Lang's analysis of Der kaukasische Kreidekreis (1958), as an example, in the early years of this audiovisual medium, of the Stuttgart style in the 1950s. Broadcast live from the studio of the Süddeutscher Runkfunk, director Franz Peter Wirth called it a pioneering effort to develop a new mode of adaptation, the televised Live-Spiel as an art form between theater and cinema. Distinct from these, the technology of small-screen television favored medium- to close-range camerawork at a shot distance normally held to be counterintuitive for epic theater. Yet Lang's insightful analysis of the love scenes between Grusche and Simon in this Kreidekreis adaptation demonstrates that proximity can also effectively generate critical distance. After all, filmic techniques have meanings that are not absolute, but rather defined anew in every scene. Even close-up shots of lovers on the television screen can produce epic effects.

Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1961), the posthumous record of Brecht's production at the Berliner Ensemble, is for Lang more than documentary filmed theater. Manfred Wekwerth and Peter Palitzsch, the directors and longtime Brecht assistants, sought to preserve the stage...