Envisioning Socialism: Television and the Cold War in the German Democratic Republic by Heather L. Gumbert

Author:Heather L. Gumbert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press
Published: 2018-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

The discontinuous narrative was one of many modernist and “distancing” effects the production used in the camerawork, editing style, and mise-en-scène.94 For example, Stahnke used point-of-view shots that forced the audience, used to voyeuristically observing television action from behind the fourth wall, to take Fetzer's place during his most traumatic experiences. We see this during his struggle with the train conductor (played by Fred Düren), when Düren “fights” with the camera, for example, and when Fetzer fearfully boards the fishing boat, in a high-angle shot as the camera unsteadily descends the boats' steps toward the fisherman seated at his dinner table. Viewers, used to watching an orderly sequence of medium and close-up shots of people and their faces, were instead confronted with a seemingly random flow of shots, often in extreme close-up, of feet, hands, clothing, and even inanimate objects Page 127 → around which the action took place, most notably lamps, light bulbs, and lanterns. Stahnke used high- and low-angle shots, intensifying the mood of fear or menace in particular scenes (as above). Some scenes were shot askew; in some shots, parts or the entirety of the actors' heads lay outside the film frame. Superimposed images suggest Fetzer's innermost thoughts: when Fetzer imagines the West, for example, the screen is filled by an extreme close-up of his right eye, over which images are superimposed of him and his expensive car, or surrounded by beautiful women, representing the riches of the West. The editing style was differently paced than most contemporary television, with both long and increasingly rapid short cuts, smash cuts, and a disorienting circling swish pan.95

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