Homo Cinematicus by Killen Andreas;

Author:Killen, Andreas;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2017-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

The Aufklärungsfilm Between Deterrence and Incitement

Seen in this light, the issue was cast as one of properly calibrating effects, as Curt Thomalla, the scriptwriter for The Effects of the Hunger Blockade on National Health (1921) and False Shame, stressed. Thomalla’s contribution to the history of the enlightenment film has been noted in earlier chapters. Trained as a neurologist, he became an influential filmmaker who over the course of a twenty-year career in this field repeatedly pushed the frontiers of cinematic enlightenment into new terrain. Thomalla also argued that feature films would benefit from employing the services of medical or scientific advisers, whose expertise could easily be woven into any film; modern motion pictures, he wrote, were so full of illness, accidents, and death that hygienic instruction could be incorporated into them without disturbing the treatment in the slightest.39 Much of Thomalla’s career reflected this impulse to align the medical expert’s gaze with that of the film camera.

Thomalla’s entry into this field occurred at the end of the war, when he first became interested in the uses of medical film while serving in a military hospital. At the end of the war, Thomalla was put in charge of the medical archive of the newly created UFA’s Cultural Film Department before later going on to head the RAHV’s film archive.40 From the early postwar years onward, he collaborated on films on venereal disease, tuberculosis, accident prevention, and numerous other topics. Many of these films followed a straightforward format, emphasizing didactic instruction and relying heavily on the visual conventions of the scientific instructional film: x-ray and microscope images, charts, graphs, and statistical information.41 Mindful of the need to make concessions to his audience, however, Thomalla also proved quite willing to experiment with integrating more dramatic or narrative elements into his films.42 Like Kiliani, Thomalla viewed the most effective enlightenment as that which took place at a level below the audience’s conscious awareness. Drawing on his wartime experience of treating soldiers with suggestive methods, he stressed throughout his career the need to take into account the role of unconscious forces in the mental life of individuals and masses, arguing that both doctor and politician ignored these forces at their peril.43

At the same time, Thomalla also remained highly attuned to the moral and other perils associated with motion pictures. As early as 1919, he signaled that proper appreciation of the role of censorship would be of central importance for the Aufklärungsfilm’s success, and he returned repeatedly to this issue throughout his career, often prefacing his written commentary on his films with assurances that they had been subjected to “rigorous scientific controls.” In the late 1920s, reflecting back on the genre’s checkered history, he invoked its baptism of fire amid what he called the “time without censorship, the terrible time (die zensurlose, die schreckliche Zeit).”44 Even while vesting transformative powers in their alliance with this medium, medical specialists like Thomalla were repeatedly compelled to pay obeisance to the moral sensibilities of audiences and censors.

As part of this process, Thomalla continually refined his strategies for preempting criticism of his films.

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