I have seen this movie at some time in the past. It was long enough ago that all memory has faded. It's about Gyula Balogh, a dockworker in Seeland. He's a member of the local union, and he convinces his fellow workers it is time to strike for better wages. This brings him into conflict with his brother, a police officer. Balogh has an aged mother, a bedridden wife, a young daughter, and they all live under appalling circumstances.
After I look at a movie and before I write my review, I look at other people's writing on it. I was surprised to read one writer, whose opinion I respect, cite David Shipman's opinion that the writer-director of this movie, Werner Hochbaum, was one of the great artists of this period.... and confess he had never heard of him. How could this be?
I think it's related to the idea of "confirmation bias", our tendency to notice evidence that supports our beliefs, and ignore what opposes it. This movie shows great sympathy to the socialist impulses of the strike, it uses up-to-date Soviet Academician techniques. Therefore, during the Nazi era, the film maker and his films fell into desuetude, and has not yet been reappraised generally as being a great work. During the Nazi era, powerful movies were made, such as TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, which are now reviled because of their heralding of Nazi ideals.
Is great art dependent on it reaching the correct real world conclusions, whatever they be? Was this movie junk from 1933 through 1939, and great work before and after? Was TRIUMPH OF THE WILL great art until the outbreak of the Second World War, and not thereafter? Is Griffith's THE BIRTH OF A NATION bad film-making because we disagree with its conclusions, and Nate Parker's film of the same name great film-making because we agree with it? What if our political opinions are reversed? Can we even speak of art in cinema if it is something besides making us feel good about our opinions and ourselves? Are we merely shouting nonsense at each other in the name of an 'art' that does not exist?
Well, maybe, but in that case, I'm talking nonsense about nonsense, and you can stop reading four paragraphs ago. I'm going to offer the thought that every movie is its own story, its own world, with its opinions and conclusions unique to that movie. Art consists of convincing the audience, even if only for the length of the movie, that the world of that movie is real enough to live in: that it has something to say to the audience that needs to be heard, and the ability to convince that audience, if only for a little while, that it is true.
It's a disquieting thought, because it leads to the conclusion that this movie and Leni Riefenstahl's are great art, and so are Griffith's and Parker's -- if you like Parker's; I haven't seen it yet. Great art does not confirm our preconceptions. It makes lies of them, and we are never the same again.
All of this leads me to the conclusion that this is good late-silent film making, but not great art. If it were, I would have remembered it.
