I started mentally preparing for Berlin soon after Boston. I was happy with the PR but it wasn't the breakthrough I was hoping for. I've also developed a trend of underwhelming summer training followed by disappointing early fall racing I was eager to address. I began gathering training input from friends while I focused on my club's road circuit and some other races. This yielded some great personal results, including a big step forward in trying to break 1:10 in the half marathon. The club also shot to the top of the standings. Things were certainly going well, however I found myself racing nearly every weekend. I know where that path leads, so I limited myself to just three races and one relay over what would be a 15 week cycle. The Mt Washington Road Race was my last race before Berlin training. It was a humbling experience. I did next to zero specific elevation training, but I look forward to running it again. Before the start though, I saw someone who looked a lot like my high school cross country coach; someone I hadn't talked to in five years. Sure enough it was him! A couple hundred miles away from home, among the thousands of participants, this was quite a surprise. We talked a great deal about running longevity and how hardly anyone from the schools throughout the conference were still running as adults. His lasting advice to me was, "only a fool coaches himself". I took that to heart. I hadn't followed a specific training plan since Boston 2018. In less than a week, I had a personalized plan from a teammate and was ready to get to work.
Training
The plan followed a structure: each week had a mileage range, Tuesdays and Friday were complementary workout days, days before workouts would include strides, Sundays were long runs, and the rest was up to me. I had certain guidelines, such as how many doubles in a week I was allowed and what warmup and cooldowns should look like. The flexibility I had for three days of the week made it feel not so restricting (I'm a stubborn sonofabitch), the workouts were challenging, but sustainable, and weekly mileage was a notch above my Boston cycle. The hardest part early on was acclimating to the summer heat. I was a participant in an ongoing heat study at the university I attended and found out despite my small build, I do really poorly at regulating my core temperature. To account for this, I would cut goal paces or repetitions back to prevent bonking. I followed this plan to a T, even at the expense of some group workouts and runs. I had a lot of trust in the process. Twice though in July, I was seduced by the allure of setting a mile PR at my club's annual track series. Each of the last four track seasons I'd bettered my mile time, but not this season. I ran identical 4:37's essentially giving up after 800m in each. I did get to meet Molly Huddle, which was nice. The tole an all out mile takes led me to my first rest day of the cycle. I would go almost two months until another day off. I was really in the zone for training; goal paces and weekly distances were slightly exceeded and I was keeping up supplemental gym work and stretching. My first fitness test was a 10mi race as part of the road circuit. I finished way off of goal, but the weather was extremely oppressive. The month of August deserves a good amount a reflection. There were many positive training developments, but at the same time, the foundation was splintering. I ran over 400mi in a month for the first time ever with some of the toughest workouts I've attempted. I also started volunteer assistant coaching at a local high school xc team where a friend of mine is the head coach. It's been an incredibly rewarding experience with a great group of kids. The highlight of the month was undoubtedly a relay team consisting of no_more_luck, my coach for the cycle, another teammate and friends tearing up the inaugural RiMaConn Relay. We averaged 5:29/mi for the 95mi, beating every other team by hours. I personally took full advantage of my 4.5mi last leg's downhill. However, there were some hiccups. This year's Falmouth Road Race, my second fitness test, went very poorly. Through a very fortunate set of circumstances, I was entered as an elite for the race, but did little to justify the designation. In even worse conditions than the 10 Miler, I bonked hard. Luckily, the BARTC crew and I met in espressopatronum 's stomping grounds for some needed lobster quesadilla therapy. In general, tight muscles were taking longer to loosen up and pain would linger. The training was still ramping up and I was determined to follow the plan. In hindsight, it's easy to say I should've pulled back here, however it was still nowhere near as reckless as my infamous Chicago 2018 cycle. The darkest cloud though, descended months before. In my professional life, I found myself in a situation that was causing me a large amount of stress and after consideration, decided I would leave. Overtime I succumbed to the negativity associated with being on the job market and hatred for the day-to-day of the situation. I wasn't going to the gym, I was more irritable but at the same time indifferent to many things around me, and it took disproportionate effort to go run. I was however determined to have running be a constant source of cleansing. This process didn't resolve until just before I left for Berlin. Even when it was clear I was making a move that would hopefully bring better life balance, leaving coworkers I had become friends with over the years was its own somber experience. The boiling point was my third and final fitness test, the New Haven 20k. This race is very special to me; it's second only to the Manchester Road Race in terms of racing prestige in Connecticut and the associated 5k was my first ever road race -- 16 years ago. That said, I fucking hate it; it's always too hot, the finish is a painfully long straight away, and there's one hill that always gets me. The weather this year however was perfect and given the tightness in my legs, I was going to take it out easy for the first 10k, HM effort for the next 5k and close out with hard effort. I never got past the first part of the plan. Everything felt nice and relaxed for the first 5k, but I just couldn't loosen up. After 10k I was feeling an intense pulling in my groin and slowed passed Boston marathon pace. I hobbled to the finish and knew I was in trouble. This was supposed to be my peak week, containing the hardest workout and longest run of the cycle. I skipped the workout and took long overdue rest days. I began seeing my PT on a weekly, then twice-a-week basis. I splurged on sport massages, I took stretching and rolling more seriously, but the groin pain wouldn't go away. I attempted a planned 10 x 1k workout alternating clockwise and counter-clockwise and taking breaks. I got through it, but it wasn't pretty and it would be the last workout of any kind I did before the race -- with three weeks still to go. I never questioned if running the race was in jeopardy. Again, this wasn't Chicago bad, but I knew I would have to abandon the plan and try to heal. I couldn't bare see my Strava log get littered with rest day holes so I stopped looking at it. I also had to bow out of the heat study and contemplated if I should continue coaching. Mentally, I reached a breaking point. It was hard to get excited for the race and the negativity I espoused got worse, so said my fianceé. I knew things were getting better though. I was indeed switching jobs and would travel to Berlin in between that period (i.e. no more professional stress) and I was responding well to the PT and rest. I tried to focus on the positives. Setbacks are an inevitability in this sport and I had made it the whole year without even a slight one. I hit the elliptical to keep my aerobic base and finished a goal of mine to run every road in my town. Soon enough I was en route to Germany.
Race strategy
I started training with a goal of 2:25 to 2:26 in mind. Breaking 2:26 was my Boston goal and I felt strongly that better training and a faster course should yield higher expectations. I settled on a sub 2:25 goal and made 5:30 my marathon pace for training purposes. Given the difficulties of the past month, I lowered expectations: leave with a souvenir PR or at the very least enjoy the racing experience. I would still attempt my original goal but I had taken as many rest days in September as I had the whole year until then; how would that affect me? I did far less race prep than usual. I didn't obsess over the weather forecasts and only checked it a handful of times so I'd know what to pack. I didn't do much course research and had no idea of the topography. Berlin has a reputation for being a fast race for a reason. Of course my extreme taper weighted towards this attitude, but it was for the better. There was no need to stress over factors out of my control. My fueling strategy would change from Boston. I hoped to get my hands on the new Maurten caffeine gels, which would eliminate my use of caffeinated gum, nuun and other gels I usually have. After reading Maurten's suggested strategy (which is bullshit designed to sell their $50 boxes) I found the recommendation to preload with their 320 mix the night before intriguing. I planned to do that and take a normal gel at the start followed by alternating caffeine/normal gels roughly every 8mi or as needed.
Pre-race
My dad and I left in the afternoon to get to Boston for our red-eye flight to London and then to Berlin. We were meeting my college roommate at Logan and my aunt would be waiting for us in Berlin. The trip over was fairly uneventful and with my entourage assembled we got to the hotel in Potsdamer Platz. about a km from the start area. We got in too late to do much other than grab something to eat, however I did have a little shopping to do -- for my race shoes… You see, I ordered the Next%s on launch day in July. Without checking the fit I stowed them away until the day before I left. Luckily I tried them on for a few marathon paced mile reps and noticed my toes hit the front immediately. I still went on the run but barely made it through a mile before I got frustrated with the developing blisters and headed back. I finally identified the problem; I was sent shoes in women's sizing. Really should have caught that mistake, but fortunately the nearby Nike store had plenty in stock. The following morning I went out for a run in Tiergarten. Pain levels were good, but still registered. When I got back we went on an informative walking tour and then hit the expo. It was in a closed airport and the expo itself was half in the open air hangers and half indoors. Hands down it was the coolest and largest race expo I've been to. There were no Kipchoge challenges this year, but it had pretty much everything else including a suspicious looking mascot. I got my hands on my precious caffeinated gels and we made some regional food and beer stops on the way back. I was able to get vegan currywurst and it was… ok. Dinner was at a Thai restaurant and the rest of the night was spent at the hotel hot tub. Friday morning I met Simsim7 for a shakeout run; a long anticipated event years in the making! It was a huge mental boost just to have the company of someone with similar ambitions. Afterwards my posse and I caught a train to Lubbenau and went kayaking through the calm Spree river. It was a fairytale-like setting where you could make stops along the way for food and beer, only spoiled by a downpour of rain that caused us to haul ass back. I guess that was the reason we were literally the only ones kayaking. Our Uber driver had recommended an Ethiopian restaurant that we ended up at for dinner and it was excellent. Once again the night was finished off at the hot tub (this was a theme). Nerves started to set in on Saturday. Race associated running and rollerblading events were going on in the city giving a preview of what was to come. I went on my standard pre-marathon shakeout and my friend and I went to the free Berlin Wall and Nazi history exhibit. The whole thing was free to the public and better than many history museums I've been to. There was so much information, we spent hours there and still didn't read through everything. Later in the day we ended up near the Reichstag and we ate at a German restaurant where I got my pre-race cheese fix in the form of a cup of melted brie, cranberries and bread. From there it was back to the hotel to get my stuff together and get some sleep. As I often do, I woke up well before my race alarm but with more restful sleep than I usual. I packed my gear bag, had some breakfast in the lobby and headed to the start. I ended up at the start so early, they weren't even letting anyone in for another 15min. Those who know me personally will find this hard to believe. I had ample time for stretching; too much time actually. I was reluctant to check my bag and lose my layers so at some point I just killed time sitting in the park. When I finally parted with my stuff, I noticed a BMW with the trunk popped and a small crowd. It was a race official offering everything from headbands, socks, sunscreen, salt, anti-chafe oil, gels and bars -- all free! I thought it was pretty cool, but the scene was like a pack of vultures slowly closing in on a carcass. The optics of runners taking stuff they clearly didn't need because it was free were not the best -- I snagged a headband. After briefly waiting in a long bathroom line, I realized I needed to find other means of relief. In the walk to the start, there was a 50m stretch of road cleared for runners to warm up and fencing against the park bushes. I peed through the fence. Rounding the corner, however was a communal urinal just steps away from the corral -- I never claimed to be a role model. Finally at the corral, I spotted Simsim7 and chatted while stretching and watching the wheelchair athletes start. A guy came up to me and started asking me a question. I couldn't understand a word he said so I just said, "sorry, English" to which he replied, "it's wot I'm speakin' ". Yes, he was Scottish. I took my Maurten gel lined up for the corral with a fellow New Englander I know from back home and took my place at the left start section behind the elite women. I was definitely feeling anxious, but oddly more calm than in past races. This was going to be what it is was going to be; I can't say I was ready, but here goes nothing.
Miles [1] to [7]
Navigating the crowd at the start was easy. I was only three rows back from the elites and once I popped out to the far left (far right in the video) I was free to settle into my pace. When viewing the race on TV, the split around the Siegessäule is one of the neatest features of the course and it was really cool to participate in it. There’s a median that maintains the split for over a mile but I crossed over sooner. Aside from the lead women’s pack, which attracted a bunch of sub-elite male runners, it was slim pickings to form a group. Three other runners followed me over and we fell into a rhythm. The weather for the day was pretty good for marathoning: overcast conditions in the upper 50s. The only drawback was the sustained 12mph SW wind, but inevitably it would help throughout the twisting nature of the course. It’s only the headwinds you notice though. Narrow lines formed behind the lead pack to draft and I selfishly made sure I had at least two bodies (to the left of the guy in red) in front of me. Shake out runs with my watch GPS were all over the place so I made sure to use my Stryd pod for pace and distance. It was definitely more accurate, but a tad under for elapsed distance. Though this was good because it tricked me into thinking I was running a few seconds per mile slower than reality. I have a habit of taking races out a little too quick so I wanted to make sure the first 5k split wouldn’t be under 17min. I hit the mat at 16:55 -- eh close enough. What really started to worry me was the lead women’s pace car clearly in sight displaying km splits, distance and projected finish time. Trailing about 30sec from the car, I could see a projected finish of 2:22:XX. My concern going into the race was that I would feel the lack of last month’s training the most in my endurace. I didn’t want to spend energy needlessly this early on. Still, I felt comfortable with the effort, with my pack, and with having the luxury of reading the pace car ticker. I trained for a 5:30/mi marathon pace and I wasn’t about to abandon it now. 5:32 - 5:30 - 5:34 - 5:31 - 5:24 - 5:28 - 5:30
Miles [8] to [13.1]
Crossing the Spree River a few times were the only semblances of hills. The miles clicked off with ease and we found a cohesion in the group about taking turns to block the wind. The massive group following the lead pace car was slowly but surely gapping us. At the same time, runners were peeling off and were getting reeled in by our pack. Each corner the car would briefly disappear and when we got around, it seemed a new runner was fading. At the 16km marker I could feel myself in need of a gel and reached for a caffeinated Maurten. I had no idea how it would taste or how I would react to the 100g of caffeine. I usually dose in 20g or 40g sets during a race. Luckily, it only had a slightly different after taste and I definitely felt reenergized soon after. By this point, I was primarily leading the pack and quickly getting frustrated with it (I’m a hypocrite). I could see flashes of 5:40 and 5:45/mi around 18km on my watch and decided to kick it back to 5:30/mi or faster for a bit. It wasn’t too aggressive and it created the separation I wanted. The course support was really lively through this stretch. There were cheerleaders, bands and DJs playing all kinds of music, and people shoulder to shoulder on either side. Having names on the bib allowed a nice personal touch from supporters. I lifted my arms a few times to engage the crowds and keep myself in good spirits. I received another boost after seeing my friend and my dad shortly after. I crossed the 20k nearly 3mins faster than New Haven and then 13.1mi only a minute off my PR. 5:31 - 5:34 - 5:33 - 5:30 - 5:30 - 5:28(1:11:45)
Miles [14] to [20]
The mob following the lead women’s pack was dropping hard past the halfway mark. I noticed I was feeling the effort a little more myself, but remained composed. The lack of mile markers definitely took getting used too. At 5km and 8km intervals I was able to more quickly reference my watch distance to the course and because I was attempting to maintain 17:00/5k splits it wasn’t so bad. In fact, having a marker roughly every half mile seemed to make the race go by quicker -- for a time. Hitting 25km was relieving. I took my second caffeinated Maurten and mentally registered that I had just 10mi to go. I was still running alone and catching up to the shedding carnage from the lead pack when just a mile later I felt another uptick in perceived effort. I worried I had hit the wall, that my fears of lost endurance were a reality, and that I was in for 8mi of Hell. Moments later, an English spectator shouted “almost up the hill!”. I realized that yes, I was running up maybe a 1-1.5% grade incline, the one “hill” of the course. Elevation was a forgotten concept. I was able to shake off fears of a Berlin Wall almost immediately, with the help of another caffeinated Maurten. With mile 20 approaching, I focused on picking off more runners ahead. Taking it up another notch was definitely a gamble at this point in the race. I was honestly feeling great though and had precedence I could keep it up from other marathons, albeit not running near this fast. 5:29 - 5:30 - 5:29 - 5:33 - 5:33 - 5:25 - 5:23
Miles [21] to [26.2]
I caught a few more elite women nearing the 35k mark. At this point in the race, only two runners had passed me since 10k and I was determined to keep it that way. Ever since breaking the top 100 in Boston, I had an ambition to repeat that feat in every world major I could. I ticked off a couple more sub 5:30 miles and it was getting harder to keep myself engaged. I got lost in my thoughts calculating the distance I had left. With 4mi to go I was too aware that this is where things in Boston really started to fall apart. I made a left turn towards Potsdamer Platz, to the familiar 38k mark near my hotel. Maintaining consistent effort through 2hrs my mind got greedy and assumed 2:23:XX was almost assured. 10mins later, my heart rate started to spike. I needed a boost to get me through the last 3mi, but a Maurten would be too much. Ever since my first sub 3hr marathon I’ve relied on Untapped maple syrup packets for just these occasions. I fumbled around in my Spi belt, bit open the packet and inhaled the syrupt. Almost immediately I could not get in a breath. I started gasping for air and came to a complete stop. In that moment, my lust for 2:23 vanished. As the seconds went by with me keeled over, coughing up dark amber spit I left like the train to any positive race result was leaving the station. In reality, I spent only 10sec stopped. There were three men dying fast and I dug deep to get my legs moving. The course takes six 90 degree turns in the last mile and a half. Each one I desperately hoped would bring the Brandenburg Gate in view. I got passed by a few runners, but also caught a few. Rain was steadily falling as I drove my arms forward. Well aware I was still on target for sub 2:25, it was still hard to keep my legs churning against the intense exhaustion, even after seeing my dad and friend again. Finally passing through the Gate was a lot less thrilling as I had imagined, much like the turn onto Boyston; I just wanted the damn thing to be over. I had nothing left for a kick, but made even and then passed a runner in front of me. I couldn’t physically express how happy I was crossingthe finish, but I was elated! 5:25 - 5:27 - 5:35 - 5:46 - 5:46 - 5:53 - 5:36 (0.2mi)(2:24:31)
Post-race
I made my way through the finish area, waiting for my friend from New England and Simsim7 to finish. Waves of emotion hit me as the reality of the situation sunk in. I walked through the finisher area to the gear check trying to take it all in. I couldn't believe I held it together. I couldn’t believe given how poorly the last four weeks had gone, that I still hit my goal. I could feel the dark cloud lifting. After I got my stuff, and grabbed a celebratory beer. It was a kind I had never heard of: "alkoholfrei" but I downed it as fast I could with the hopes the buzz would warm me up. Well that buzz never came and I soon realized why... I headed to the medal engraving and then back to the hotel. It was raining hard and my hands were too cold to operate my phone so for a few hours I was alone with my thoughts about the race; no one to talk to, no social media comments to read. I enjoyed the time to reflect. Later, we went out with my friend from New England in Alexanderplatz at a German restaurant and then to a bierhaus. It was a fun night where I consumed three liters of beer, followed by a strong cocktail back at the hotel. All in all, a pretty good day.
What's next?
This all could’ve gone much differently. I still don’t know how after taking as many rest days in the month of September as I had all year, with lingering pain, I was able to run a solid race. If I had truly hit a wall at mile 17, or couldn’t continue at mile 23, I doubt I would even have had the resolve to write this report. Before the race my psyche was weak and efforts to get out of the rut seemed futile. In hindsight it seems silly, but I was certain my training was squandered. It’s important to highlight these psychological struggles both in moving forward to future training cycles and for personal growth. Running can switch from rewarding to disparaging within a week. Relying on it as a foundation of stability in my life is a dangerous game. It’s uncomfortable to think about how my attitude would be right now if a different scenario played out. However, that performance was possible because I didn’t break in the face of adversity and never lost complete belief in my training. I have no shame in how much better I feel because of that and for the first time since New Jersey 2018, I am truly proud of my efforts in a marathon. Upcoming, I plan to finally participate in the New England’s Finest program at the Hartford Half Marathon, in less than two weeks post race (assuming all systems are a go) and am already signed up for three more marathons: Tokyo 2020, Boston 2020, and the prestigious Bass Pro Shop Conservation Marathon next month in Springfield, Missouri. The latter was a backup marathon and I have family in the area. I don’t anticipate putting in a super hard effort, just enough to take home some prize money and support my dad, who missed Boston by 62sec with the cutoff this year. Aside from those, I plan to run the Manchester Road Race and possibly USATF Club XC Championships in December. Thanks for reading!! This report was generated using race reportr, a tool built by BBQLays for making great looking and informative race reports.
You need to come in, we have a huuuuge problem (and that was only the beginning)
English is not my native language, so please excuse any strange wording or typos you might encounter. A bit of background information beforehand: Back in the 1990s - the dinosaurs here will remember the days, when everything was so much simpler... - I had a nice job with a branch of a big banking / real estate company in Hamburg (Germany), 70km from where I studied at university. Basically, I was required to come in one afternoon a week to take care of any problems the users (all 20 of them) might have encountered in the meantime, check the backup tapes etc. - and most of the time there was really nothing difficult to do. As they didn't do any cash transactions or the "usual" banking stuff but only long term investment and real estate deals, transactions were usually not time critical but involved huge numbers (want to guess what successfully marketing 12 whole office floors within the then-new Sony Center at Berlin Potsdamer Platz, real prime location in the German capital, netted the company and the managers involved?) What made this job special were three advantages I never encountered again anywhere else.
The clock started when I left my apartment to travel to work and stopped when I returned there, unless I decided not to go directly and was allowed to put in a hypothetical amount of travel time on the time sheet. They even covered the cost of public transport to and from work... apparently my predecessor had had that deal with them and they never changed it. So, without lifting a single finger doing anything productive, I always earned at least 4hrs wages + travel expenses (again, not for "business travel" but just commuting) just by deciding to show up. Nice. But then again, to them it was "peanuts". Usually, this worked out to my advantage - I tailored my working days to fit my university lecture schedule, so it was more or less a paid trip to town, work as long as I wanted (or the wallet / bank account needed) and leave in time to enjoy the evening.
I got paid a ridiculous amount of money for stupid tasks. Although I did study computer sciences at university at the time and had even gone the extra mile to get my MCSE (Windows NT 4.0 and SQL Server 5.?, long since expired), this didn't have much to do with the day to day work in a Novell Netware 3.12 / Windows NT 4.0 environment, dealing with everything from printer stoppages, missing paper, stuck tapes and Windows profile setup to scanner issues... I got paid 40 Deutsche Mark / hour, which translated (exchange rate from 1997) to US$27 / hour and, taking 20+ years of inflation into account, maybe double that in today's value. No degree (yet), no formal training, some self-taught skills and plenty of trust in my abilities and honesty...
I was, although nerdy / shy, the most popular guy in the local branch. For the secretaries (btw, back then they were picked more for looks than for ability, which made my work both fun and frustrating), I was the only male who was not openly "superior" in the company hierarchy and rubbing their noses in it, and I didn't expect them to go to bed with me to "celebrate" especially successful business deals. For the sales department, I was the guy who could, with a bit of "witchcraft", create fantastic presentation folders and slide shows for their real estate projects. For the legal department, their outlook and mine were closely aligned vis-a-vis data confidentiality and the importance of reliable backups. And the branch manager somehow had the impression they were exploiting me and so he got me to tag along when they went out to celebrate... (blowing just 1% of a RE deal bonus payment on food and liquor can take surprisingly long). During all my time there, I never had to go get my own cup of tea (it always appeared mysteriously at my elbow, white, one sugar, usually accompanied by the secretary with subjectively the most urgent problems) - something the girls flat out refused to do for anybody else - never had trouble accessing any computer even if the really important people in charge were usually reluctant to let anybody interrupt their work, and once even got the branch manager's beamer (a really nice BMW 840 or 850) to take home over the weekend because I had missed the last direct train and he didn't want me to have to wait for a connection...
All in all, people there were strange, friendly, earned ridiculous amounts of money, and usually we got along splendidly. But there are some tales that are too good not to tell... The Cast:
me - obviously me, the part-time IT guy...
SR - one of our hot shot sales reps, in his 40s - one of the guys who can sell water to a fish and make them feel they got the better end of the deal, unless you got to know him (think used car salesman, but on a huge scale with business deals in the millions), and usually a good guy unless under pressure
BM - branch manager, with a keen sense of self preservation
Remember, it's the 90s, so internet, e-mail etc. were rather basic compared to today and vaguely frightening to the older colleagues. It was a Saturday, which is not considered to be a normal working day in Germany, so nearly all shops were closed (back then, retail shops were usually open only before noon on Saturdays, not at all on Sundays). Enter SR, calling me at home from his mobile phone (btw, hugely expensive back then, like $1,50/minute) to tell me he needed support, pronto, because obviously I had not fixed his problem the week before and he needed to prepare a slideshow for an investors' meeting that very evening. I racked my brain about any unfinished business, but couldn't remember any critical issues or any issues at all related to SR's computer... As I presumed it was more of a layer 8 issue - he was good at selling, but not at dealing with technology - I tried to get more information than just "my computer won't start", until finally he admitted he had moved the computer around in his office and as the cable wasn't long enough from the new location he had exchanged the network port for the similar looking telephone port (both RJ45, but one ways hooked up to the data switch and the other one to the telephone system) and vice versa, which nicely explained the conversation we had using his mobile phone, running up a decent bill... and when asked to undo his changes, he flat out refused to do it because he was not (in his words) "a janitor", and no, he needed his normal computer to do the work, using another one was absolutely impossible. He had had that situation since the previous Monday but hat worked externally for a few days without telling anybody about his problem - and a problem we don't know about, we can't fix, which would have been really easy. So he wanted me to come in extra, which was not covered in my contract, and told me he would square it with BM. Knowing SR, his promises are only worth anything as long as he needs you, I insisted on getting authorization from BM who was not amused at all to be called away from whatever he was doing that day to authorize overtime. A short description of the situation was needed, BM was seething and muttered something about deducting the additional expense from SR's bonus (so it wouldn't cost him or the company a penny) - and since we didn't have anything in the contract, he went full hog and authorized me coming into work by taxi ($200 each way), quadruple overtime (yay!) and, if I needed more than 3 hours to fix the problem, a full meal in the really excellent restaurant next door and, if more than six hours, overnight hotel accommodation nearby. I didn't feel particularly exploited that day... Arriving at the office was a bit anti-climactic at first - I expected SR to be frantic because of the approaching deadline, but this genius had finally understood what a "network" means, so he had been working on another person's computer all the time, and was nearly done preparing his slides, even apologized for being rude on the phone in the first place. "Repairing" his computer took me only a short trip to the server room to grab a slightly longer cable... but then the problems really began. Back then, slides were slides, as in physical slides, not powerpoint etc. - and for a presentation, we were able to transfer data directly from the computer to 35mm film using a special (and really expensive) film recorder with a breathtaking resolution of IIRC 640x480. First off, he hadn't announced his intention to create slides to anybody, so the stocks of film were basically empty and (Saturday afternoon in Germany...) he wasn't able to get any from the photo store he usually went to. Being more open-minded, I suggested getting some from one of the kiosks catering to tourists nearby, as they sold film as well... it never occurred to him that you could get it there as well. But... even with film, where would he get that film developed without any businesses being open? The normal "1 hour rush job photo" labs were closed... SR started to get nervous to the point of screaming incoherently at the wall... until it occurred to him that in the red light district (Hamburg's famous Reeperbahn and St. Pauli), there are photo artists who will not trust their photographs to be handled by a commercial lab, so they certainly will develop their own films and might be persuaded somehow to do it for us as well. How he came across that particular bit of knowledge...? We'll never know. Imagine 20y/o me, the prototypical nerd, a big wad of cash in hand, first of all going to the red light district, which I only knew by reputation and some of those "look but don't touch" trips teenagers do with their friends to prove their masculinity (ha ha), asking around for "photographers" (apparently the ladies of the night thought I wanted to be photographed in the act and started quoting prices for their services)... finally finding one guy agreeing to develop the film and create the slides... and coming back with receipts stating e.g. "taxi from to ") and "sex pictures - express service" - this being Germany, you have to have proper receipts to be reimbursed, and I presume even prostitutes wouldn't bat an eyelid being asked to give a receipt for services rendered. We got ripped off, paying more than 100DM (US$70) for developing that film... but in an emergency... In the end, we did it, finished everything in time for the presentation and even had a good laugh about it before SR went to do his presentation - no idea whether he sold anything that day. On that one day, I earned more money than in a whole month otherwise, and got to learn a lot about life and the economy as such. A few weeks later, for some reason or other :) , SR and I had some explaining to do to some guy from headquarters about the "funny" receipts... took some months, but BM got it cleared up in the end. EDIT: removed three typos
"Unorthodox" - Netflix series tells story of young woman’s flight from Hasidic Jewish community in NYC
Unorthodox Trailer - https://youtu.be/-zVhRId0BTw Unorthodox, a four-episode series on Netflix, tells the story of Esty Shapiro, a 19-year-old unhappily married woman in Brooklyn who leaves her Jewish ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community, traveling to Berlin to find her mother and begin a new life. The series is loosely based on Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, the 2012 memoir by Deborah Feldman. Feldman, who collaborated with Anna Winger and Alexa Karolinski, the creators of the television series, now lives in Berlin. However, as explained in Making Unorthodox, a brief program accompanying the series, the present-day scenes of Esty in Berlin are “entirely made up.” Unorthodox, directed by Maria Schrader, is an international effort. It was produced in Germany, but uses mostly Israeli actors, and much of its action is set in Brooklyn. Much of the dialogue is in Yiddish, the language used by the Hasidim. The Brooklyn exteriors are filmed on site, but the interiors have all been filmed in Berlin. The story begins with Esty’s flight from the Williamsburg neighborhood that is home to thousands of Hasidic families from the Satmar sect. It then proceeds through a series of rapid flashbacks and the intercutting of scenes between Brooklyn and Berlin. Wed at 18, it takes months before Esty (Shira Haas) is able to consummate her marriage to her husband Yanky (Amit Rahav). Increasingly unhappy, and discovering that she is pregnant, she decides to leave without telling Yanky. Using papers given to her previously that grant her German citizenship through her maternal grandparents, she sets off for Berlin. The family consults a rabbi (Eli Rosen), and Esty’s husband is dispatched, along with a somewhat older cousin, Moishe (Jeff Wilbusch), to bring his wife back. Meanwhile Esty has begun to see possibilities for a new life in Berlin, and the series concludes with a confrontation between the new and old traditions. Many questions are left unanswered, including Esty’s impending motherhood and other details about her future. The series, fast-paced and suspenseful at times, is strongest in its portrayal of Hasidic life. This includes the arrangement of the marriage between the two teenagers who have never met; the first, stilted conversation between Esty and Yanky; some glimpses of the lives of families and young mothers; and Esty’s close relationship with her grandmother, Babby (Dina Doron). The acting is wonderful, especially Shira Haas, who is some five years older than the teenaged Esty, but perfectly depicts both the fragility and the determination of the character. One of the more extended scenes is that of the boisterous and joyful wedding of Yanky and Esty, with men and women celebrating in separate circle dances. Esty’s mother Leah (Alex Reid), whom Esty has not seen for many years, watches from just outside the festivities, before she is spotted and escorted out of the building. Esty’s happiness does not last past the wedding night. She is unable to consummate her marriage with her somewhat naïve and uncomprehending husband. At their first meeting, she had told him that she was “different.” She is interested in music, but in the ultra-Orthodox world women are not allowed to perform, not even to sing publicly. Esty is alienated from the other young wives, all giving birth on a nearly annual basis and none having any interests apart from their husbands and children. Esty, like the others, has no skills, no connections to what the ultra-Orthodox term the “secular world.” As her mother-in-law wonders angrily and impatiently after Esty’s disappearance is reported, “Where would she go?” Before her wedding, Esty lived with an aunt and her grandmother. She is referred to as an orphan. Her father, who has a drinking problem, is treated by the community with contempt and plays no role in her life. Her mother has been ostracized and left the family long ago, later establishing a same-sex relationship in Berlin. Some knowledge of Hasidism, a religious revivalist movement within Judaism that began in the 18th century, is helpful in understanding the dilemma facing Esty Shapiro and others. Hasidim, today divided into numerous sects, are characterized by an extreme religious conservatism and insularity. The characteristic dress and rituals derive from but are not always identical to those of Orthodoxy. The various branches of Hasidism constitute about 5 percent of the world’s Jewish population of nearly 20 million. The Satmars, one of the newer sects, was founded in Hungary in the early 20th century. It is now the largest of the branches of Hasidism, with tens of thousands of adherents in the US, mainly in New York City and the nearby suburb of Monsey, New York, tens of thousands more in Israel and smaller numbers elsewhere. As the documentary One of Us (also on Netflix) explains, only two percent of the Hasidic population leaves the community. The fanatical obscurantism is reinforced by a combination of social insularity and ostracism of those who stray. In many cases they pay a high price. Fathers as well as mothers usually lose custody of their children, and in some cases even any involvement in their children’s lives. The doctrine of the “status quo” in custody cases means that courts usually rule that the best interests of the children dictate that they should continue to be raised as they have been up to the dissolution of the marriage. The ultra-Orthodox authorities turn to high-priced and experienced lawyers to ensure this outcome. While the social backwardness and the mistreatment of those who question ultra-Orthodoxy is made very clear in Unorthodox, the lives of its adherents are depicted with some sensitivity. The historical basis for the continuing grip of Hasidism is also suggested, as in a scene in which Esty comes across her grandmother crying, the old woman explaining that she was thinking of her parents and her entire family, all lost in the Holocaust. The Satmars suffered immensely at the hands of the Nazi genocide, and one of the consequences of that tragedy has been to reinforce the argument that extremely large families are needed to replace the “lost souls” of that period, and also that children must not be “lost” to the religion in the cases of divorce. Those who are brought up in the sect find it difficult to cut their ties. The parts of Unorthodox that are set in Berlin are far weaker. There is a sleekness, a glamorized quality to life, as soon as Esty sets foot in the city and begins to walk its modern streets, including the areas around Potsdamer Platz and other areas that have witnessed growing prosperity—at least until the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, the viewer is meant to look on this with the same eyes as Esty, who has hardly ever left Williamsburg, much less the United States. This is a legitimate approach at the outset, but the problem is that Esty’s fairy-tale life in Berlin continues without much pause. Some of this stretches the bounds of credulity. Esty has her mother’s address, but decides to walk the streets for a while, runs into a music student at a nearby café, and then is introduced, in a Cinderella-type series of scenes, to a group of students who immediately welcome her, with few questions asked. Later that same evening, she sneaks into the music school where they study, where she spends her first night in Berlin. The students, including an Israeli, an Algerian, a Nigerian, a Yemeni and a German, call to mind the admirable West-Eastern Divan Orchestra founded almost 20 years ago by famed conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim along with Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. While the multicultural and international atmosphere is certainly welcome, Esty’s connection is not believable. There is also an element of complacency and self-congratulation in the one-sided depiction of Berlin. Much of it does not ring true. These plot devices highlight a version of middle class modernity that is available only to a small section of the population. Certain scenes set in Berlin, such as those dealing with the attempt of Yanky and Moishe to track down Esty, are more effective. Both the sincerity and naïveté of Yanky and the cynicism and crudity of Moishe are communicated. In another Berlin scene which strikes a more honest note, Leah finally explains to her daughter why they have been separated for so many years. She tells Esty that she was at her wedding only about a year earlier, but was forced to leave. She also explains how she lost Esty in a court case, after leaving her alcoholic and abusive husband, when her daughter was no more than four years old. Esty, who has always been told that her mother deserted the family, is at a loss for words. The world of the ultra-Orthodox is not often depicted, and there are many similar stories around the world, including some even more tragic. Despite its weaknesses, Unorthodox deserves a broad audience.
FAQ and information for visitors. (Feel free to comment if anything is still unclear)
Tickets You can buy your online tickets here. There is an option to print out the tickets yourself (exceptions are games against Bayern and Dortmund), so you can buy them from all over the world. If you don't have a German address tickets can be sent to, there is also the option to have your tickets deposited at the east entrance of the Olympic stadium, so you can just pick them up at matchday. If you don't want to buy them online you can go to one of the many fanshops throughout the city and buy them there. The ticket includes a fee for public transportation, enabling you to use all forms of public transportation (includes buses, subway and the S-Bahn) for free starting 5 hours before kick off and ending at 3am the following day. The most dedicated fans are located in the East curve (or Ostkurve), so if you really want to soak in all of the atmosphere you should buy seats near it (block P for example). If you are going to the game with your family there is also a dedicated "family block" (block A). Kids under the age of 14 are free. These tickets can only be bought in fanshops though and verification of age is required. Getting to the Stadium The Olympiastadion has it's own subway station (line U2) as well as it's own S-Bahn station (lines S3, S5, S75 and S9). You can take the train directly from stations such as Zoologischer Garten, Potsdamer Platz and Alexanderplatz. To plan your individual journey you can simply use this handy tool. Just enter your current location and your destination and it will immediately tell you what the fastest route is. Inside the stadium If you have any trouble finding your seats feel free to approach one of the stewards. They will tell you where to go. You can buy beer inside the stadium, but at matches classified as high risk (such as Schalke for example) there will only be alcohol free beer available. Of course all kinds of soft drinks are available as well. If you're visiting in a colder month hot drinks like hot chocolate and tea will warm you up. There are several food stands scattered around the stadium where you can find whatever fast food you might desire. There are far more options than just the traditional grilled sausage. Smoking is also tolerated inside the stadium Before and after the match If you want to have a drink or a little snack before or after the match there are several bars close to the stadium such as "Zum Hecht" or "Preußisches Landwirtshaus", which will be packed with fans on matchdays. If you arrive via S-Bahn you'll find small stands with benches outside that sell beer and the traditional Stadionwurst (grilled sausage) on your way to the stadium. Remember that public drinking isn't prohibited in Germany so feel free to drink your own beer on your way to the stadium. Please keep in mind that this is a Hertha subreddit and not a Berlin subreddit. For general information on what to do in our city you can take a look at berlin for useful information for visitors
Travelling through Central Europe. Please critique my itinerary!
I'm travelling by myself for the first time in September, and I'm planning a trip through six cities - Amsterdam, Berlin, Krakow, Prague, Budapest and Vienna. I'm arriving Sept. 1st, and coming back at the end of September. Here is what I have planned/researched so far. Arrive on the 1st
Amsterdam (3 full days)
To do/visit:
Canal trip
Van Gogh Museum (would love to visit stoned)
Rijksmuseum
Red Light District Tour
Vondelpark
Anne Frank House?
Where to stay:
Flying Pig Downtown/Uptown Hostel
Generator Amsterdam
ClinkNOORD
Places to eat:
Brown cafes
Fly in the evening of the 5th
Berlin (5 full days)
To do/visit:
Free walking tour (New Berlin)
Brandenburg Gate (try early morning)
Berlin Wall/East Side Gallery
Checkpoint Charlie
Hitler's bunker
Holocaust memorial
Get museum pass
Reichstag tour (book early)
Potsdamer Platz
Museum Island
Freidrichstrasse
Tiergarten
Topography of Terror
Holocaust museum
Stasi museum (take English tour)
Schloss Charlottenburg
Day trip to Potsdam
Kulturforum
Kreuzberg
Graffiti tour?
Field Station Teufelsberg?
Sneak into Spreepark
Jewish Museum
Deutsches Historisches Museum
Where to stay:
EastSeven Hostel
Grand Hostel Berlin
Wombat City Hostel
Generator
Places to eat:
Burgermeister
Currywurst
Street Food Thursday
Nightlife:
Berghain
Beer gardens
Shopping:
Absinth Depot Berlin
Fly on the 11th
Krakow (3 full days)
To do/visit:
Auschwitz
Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory
St. Mary's Basilica
Wieliczka Salt Mine
Old Town square (Rynek Główny)
Jewish Old Town
Wawel Castle
Rynek Underground
Where to stay: Best to stay in or around Rynek Główny
Fly out on the 29th Looking at it, there's tons of depressing stuff in my list of sites to visit; I'm interested in 20th century, and know less about earlier history, so feel free to suggest tourist attractions I might have missed... but I also want to do things that aren't necessarily tourist attractions, and are off the beaten path...I guess I want to experience it all! Anyway, I really appreciate any thoughts/suggestions/tips/criticisms you can offer! Edit: Thanks a bunch to everyone who replied! I added some of your suggestions in the italics above. I'm very excited about this trip! Edit Edit: Constantly making changes to my itinerary. I now have the dates set in stone and have added Amsterdam to my list.
Tripadvisor Berlin | Best Places To Eat and Things To Do | World Travel ...
ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ In this weeks World Travel Blogger and Life Experiences Vlog 2019 - Ep. 8, We head to my 2nd home out of Fayetteville, NC and that is Berlin, Germany (click link). Berlin is my Germany home away from home and I must say dam it felt so good to be home. This Berlin trip we ate a lot of very tasty Berlin food that I included in the video, that I am 100% will satisfy your appetites. As your YouTube tripadvisor, I wanted to share with you guys a couple travel tips to help your trip to Berlin if you decide to take one a little easier. During this particular 3 days in Berlin trip, we also sightseeing tour of Berlin which will be included in part #2 of this video series. It was way to long for one video, so I had to break it up. I especially hope everyone enjoys the timelapse video created by Lukas Kuth, his information is located below, I am absolutely in love with it and fits perfect. Berlin is the German capital city of Germany and me being a city guy, I had to make a short trip to Berlin before my next adventure. I hope you guys enjoy the video, I tried to show as much as possible from Brandenburger Tor, to checkpoint charlie, to potsdamer platz sony center, to the reichstag, and many more attractions. Being it my home away from home I tried to give as much information as possible where you can save the most money while having the most fun. Enjoy and and let me know what you thought in the comments or any suggestions that you may have yourself. OneLove https://preview.redd.it/rkpvbhcklxt21.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=d162994d70eff2881cc9de98c2ae83732c4a9b00
Black haired Austrian HB9 at the trolley station I see her sitting down and immediately approach (3 second rule) I make eye contact with her and ask if she can speak English (simple opener in a foreign country) She says yes and I proceed to give premise (direct method) I tell her I saw her just now and I thought she was stunning so I had to come talk to her or else I would have regretted it. (While keeping eye contact) I don't wait for her to respond, instead I go right to asking her if she's from the area (avoiding reaction seeking behavior) Turns out she is from the area and goes to the physical therapy school in my neighborhood. I compliment her for her choice of study and tease that she's just doing it because she likes having an excuse to touch people. But it seems that by then I went too far (perhaps because I gave her validation twice without throwing in a neg) she shit tests with "I'm sorry I have a boyfriend". Given that it was already 2 minutes into the interaction and I had already given validation and premise in the opener. This is why I took it as a shit test, responded, and kept going. My response to this shit test was to hold eye contact, smirk, and say "it's ok, I'm not the jealous type". She didn't end the conversation then, she instead started feeding the conversation. She asked me what my name was, responded when I asked her what she does in her free time. Turns out that she is one of the rare women who lives in Berlin and has never been to a single night club. (Berlin is legendary for it's nightlife) These are the kinds of women you can only meet while daygaming. but that didn't stop me from holding my frame and being willing to walk away from the interaction. I neg her with: your hair is quite long, is it real? She smiles and tells me it is real. The conversation continues in the trolley. I always wait until we are both in the train/bus/trolley when doing these approaches, before I ask where the girl is going to. Purely as a logistical question, and I frame it that way. Turns out we happen to be going to the same place, potsdamer platz. However, I didn't take into account that there are 2 connections possible to get there from our trolley line. I got caught up in the conversation and the stunning girl, and realized only as the Trolley stopped at the station that this was my connection. Given the mindset that I was in, that I would rather be willing to let this chance go than stay and be dependent on outcome. I cut the interaction there, told her that this is my stop, and waved her goodbye as I stepped out of the trolley. Now I wouldn't recommend to do this, and I won't do it in the future. I should have gone for a number close earlier, in case of such a situation arising. But still a good experience to look at and hopefully whoever is reading learned something. In the end I'm not butt hurt that I didn't get the Girl, though I realize that logistically it would have been great to have a girl like that in my neighborhood even as just a friend. For social proof, as a pivot. Once again I hope that the reader learns something from this. Constructive criticism is always wished and appreciated. Thank you, -Kalin Kessler
[Better Know a Movement] The World of Film Noir, week 3: The German Connection (part 1). Discussion thread/schedule.
Pull down the shade. Pull down the shade! Put out that light! You have any idea where I’ve been all day? In a movie, watching a newsreel -- of myself gettin’ burned alive. I watched it ten times, twenty, maybe. Over and over again, I don’t know how much. The place was packed. They like it. They get a big kick outta seein’ a man burned to death!
Spencer Tracey predicting the world of noir to come in Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936)
When Hitler was kind enough to nurture the oddly specific and painstakingly thought-out prejudices Germans showed towards their Jewish citizens, a lot of German Jewish talent (and Austrian, Hungarian, and others working in Germany), in every field one could have an expertise in, really, found themselves out of a job and facing, you know, probably death (Phillips, 15). In retrospect, it might seem silly, in an anthropic principle kind of way, to say that the “Jewish” part of the famous “German Jewish emigre” contribution to noir is important. It’s in the name because the only filmmakers fleeing from Germany to the states would be the one who needed to (so, it’s a distinctly Jewish talent that flooded to the states, but… of course it was. What else would it have been?). But, in order to keep it a soundbyte, the German Connection to noir is treated reductively enough to be rendered inaccurate: “German expressionism is a forerunner to noir!” Absolutely. But the link to noir is a chain of Jews, whose relationship to their identity as every possible combination of Germans, Jews, German Jews, Western European Jews (which comes into play when their new American studio exec bosses were frequently the “lowly” Eastern European Jews), male Jews, non-practicing Jews, and now emigre Jews, was what they brought to the table when they came to the states. In Germany, the Jewish citizens historically felt like outsiders because they were treated as such. At every moment, one could rely on an intellectual to justify anti-semitism, and Jews soon found themselves advancing the world of German art while simultaneously being denied a full “German” status socially. “By rejecting bourgeois values and aligning themselves with a radical movement they helped gestate and propel, German and Austrian Jews were able to embrace German culture without abandoning the Jewish tradition; indeed, for a time, Expressionism seemed the place where ‘the German-Jewish symbiosis’ came ‘the closest to being realized.’” (Brooke, p.39) Okay, so expressionism becomes a term in the first few years of the twentieth century. It was a European method of art, displayed in painting, architecture, music, theater, film, anything. The Germans eventually came up with a distinct style of their own. (Brooke, p. 38) German Jews had a knack for being on the cutting edge, which implies a lot; a lot of them lived in newly formed major cities like the vastly different Berlin and Munich, which means a large percentage of the German Jewish population had modern jobs that these modern cities afforded them. Art dealing, politics, music, theater, film. This new attachment to the modernized city provided a new outlook: “the notion of the street is as a force ‘out there,’ out of the protective womb of family routine, and as an enticement through the images of desire that our bourgeois everyman sees of a flirtatious couple across the street silhouetted on his living room ceiling.”(Dickos, p.19) Expressionism was originally tied to nature, expressing what the artist felt inside about the external subject matter onto it. But these artists, who were now living in densely populated asphalt jungles and despised by their non-Jewish countrymen, felt an understandable paranoia about their situation. It’s not all that surprising to find guys like Ludwig Meidner, “The Prophet of Doom,” crank out this kind of art (Brooke, p.40). In comparison to the noir to come, Andrew Dickos says in A Street With No Name, “The transformation is derivative, for the German cinema sought to transform nature, the objective force, into the product of the mind, an imagined world, and the film noir has taken this cue in transforming its milieu into the paranoia of its characters, perceiving, as they do, their entrapment in a threatening world obscured of clarity.” (p. 16) And this filmic derivative found its derivative in expressionist theater, where lighting and sets were designed around the mantra from Thus Spake Zarathustra (“What does my shadow matter? Let it run after me! I—shall outrun it!”) and the wartime budgetary constraints, as employed by the mastermind behind it all, stage director Max Reinhardt (Brooke, p. 42, 45). The femme fatale fully develops here, too. One tactic Gentile Germans used to shit all over the Jews was harping on the historical notion of the feminine Jewish male. He’s a teacher, a scholar, non-athletic, with glasses, a circumcised penis (kind of like a clitoris, in their minds), and a wife with more rights than a non-Jewish woman (thus, closer to a man). Jewish men were wimps, and Jewish women were dangerously powerful. Ever notice that German Jewish directors frequently used artists, and not detectives, gangsters, or boxers, as the main leads in their American noir? (Brooke, p. 11) Ironically, the most mentioned contribution of German expressionism to American noir in the 40’s-50’s was the use of expressionist lighting techniques (exaggerated shadows, low key lighting, etc. Philips, p. 37, for example), the one thing that expressionism didn’t actually contribute to American noir. American cinematographers were well aware of these techniques, and had been employing them in American movies since around the same time as expressionists were employing them in theirs. What was contributed were the camera movements and placements, exaggerated set designs, as well as the thematic elements of the paranoia toward women, the fear of being lost in a modern world, that kind of thing. So, when you see Litvak’s utter distrust of the mere idea of telephones in Sorry, Wrong Number, or Lang’s pitting frickin Edward G. Robinson as a sensitive painter against a much more worldly woman in Scarlet Street, we’re not seeing one-offs. These few guys’ works collectively made up the majority of American noir masterpieces, and they were not simply making great versions of status quo templates. They were making very personal stories, whose greatest connections are with other German Jewish emigres. However, the directors’ shared lack of personal religiosity (despite religion by birth), newly shared “refugee” mentality at conflict with the normal competitive attitudes of the business, and collaborations in Hollywood with Weimar actors, composers, cinematographers, set designers and editors created a bubble within the bubble of noir. This offers more of a compare/contrast glimpse to the movies of their time, and not necessarily a hard and fast, “these movies were different” stance. (Brooke, p.21) Okay, so the connection (you know, aside from the obvious fact that Expressionist directors moved to the states to make noir):
Hollywood and German timelines synching up.
Schrader’s three phases of wartime (‘41-46), postwar realism (‘45-49), and psychotic action/suicidal impulse (‘49-53), coincides perfectly with the shift from Expressionism, to its opposite Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) under Weimar, and the monsters/serial murderers of the roughly ‘20’s-30’s, respectively. (Brooke, p.19)
The echoes of budget constraints due to wartime is pretty nifty, too.
Criticized for the extravagance of his stagings while the country was asked to sacrifice for the war effort, and faced with wartime shortages in materials and financial resources, Reinhardt was forced to match invention to necessity. Innovative lighting effects, from this perspective, Eisner suggests, were “the only means of disguising the mediocrity of the ersatz materials used for sets and of varying the intensity of the atmosphere to suit the action.” (Brooke, p.45)
The possible settling of the expressionism/poetic realism/American noir lineage.
From an historical perspective, the transmutation of Expressionism into expressionism in the Kammerspiel/street film also counters a further challenge to the Expressionist-noir connection leveled by Marc Vernet. His deconstruction hinges on two main points: “first, that the ‘expressionist’ image is relatively rare in the period 1941–45 . . . and, second, it can also be found, and at least as frequently, in the films of the preceding decades.” Both points founder, however, on a fallacious premise; namely, “the contradiction that exists in putting expressionism together with the realism of the decors or situations that supposedly define film noir.” As I have shown, functional expressionism is precisely the means by which Weimar cinema achieved the symbiosis of Expressionism and realism, and to more concertedly psychological, symbolic, and phantasmic ends than the earlier American, Danish, French, and Russian filmmakers Vernet marshals as exhibits against the Weimar expressionist legacy. (Brooke, p.56)
In my eyes, the noir revisionists feel the need to tug too far in downplaying expressionist influence. They want to shift the center by the usual means. Brooke is just trying to keep the center where it is by tugging equally too far in the traditional direction. Expressionism influenced camera placement and movement, not lighting. Both camps are both right and wrong, and it’s baffling why they refuse to be honest. If a revisionist wants to go beyond downplaying expressionism, they’ll upsell French poetic realism in the 30’s. The traditionalist counters that poetic realism is influenced by expressionism (Brooke, p. 106). The point is that all of these authors have an agenda, a predetermined answer against which other conflicting, predetermined stances are pitted (which goes against the evolutionary approach to noir we’re taking). The more probable, realistic answer is shockingly, shockingly, found by someone with less of a stake in the debate. A guy writing about early American cinematographers trying to establish themselves as artists as well as laborers. “Of course, this is not to say that noir is reducible to Expressionism. Rather, the style was marked by a tension between its equally palpable realist and expressionist impulses.” (Keating) Boom. Thank you, Mr. Keating. Okay, onto…
Screening Notes
Originally, this was going to be a way too jam-packed entry. I had close to a dozen movies, and this topic has a ton of information that would take an entire chapter’s worth of writing just to introduce. The vote to screen Double Indemnity was the final straw. We’ll give ourselves some breathing room and make this a two-parter. Next week we will discuss the individual directors themselves and how their German and Jewish identities affected their American movies individually and as a group, as well as how it affected the Hollywood and noir landscape as a whole. And, how Fritz Lang might have sort of maybe killed his wife.
Also, the copy of Die Strasse that I got had no sound (it's a silent movie anyways), so I made a playlist of some Schoenberg, a German Jewish emigre expressionist composer. I watched the movie with the playlist going in another tab, and it was pretty damn nifty.
It tells the story of one night in which a middle-aged man is lured away from his happy home into the thrills and dangers of the city streets. The city is an expressionistic nightmare, a dangerous and chaotic place. The unfortunate man encounters thieves, prostitutes, and other predators. But the real threat to security and order is the street itself. In one scene, the bumbling man passes an optometrist's shop on a crooked, deserted street. The moment his back is turned, an enormous neon sign of a pair of eyeglasses, blinks on. The street itself is alive and watching.
Sat, Jan 23 @ midnight, 8:10am, 4:20pm
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Sun, Jan 24 @ 12:30am, 8:40am, 4:50pm
Fury (1936)
Fritz Lang
Joe Wilson (Spencer Tracy) is an innocent man wrongly accused of a horrible crime while on his way to meet his fiancée, Katherine Grant (Sylvia Sidney). Held at a local jail, Joe is confronted by a frenzied mob and presumed dead after a massive fire. When his attackers aren't brought to justice, Joe, who narrowly escaped the blaze, resurfaces, intent on revenge. Katherine tries to dissuade him from carrying out his vengeful plan, but Joe's anger isn't easily dampened.
Sat, Jan 23 @ 1:40am, 9:50am, 6:00pm
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Sun, Jan 24 @ 2:10am, 10:20am, 6:30pm
Double Indemnity (1944)
Billy Wilder
Insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) gets roped into a murderous scheme when he falls for the sensual Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), who is intent on killing her husband (Tom Powers) and living off the fraudulent accidental death claim. Prompted by the late Mr. Dietrichson's daughter, Lola (Jean Heather), insurance investigator Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) looks into the case, and gradually begins to uncover the sinister truth.
Due to a telephone glitch, Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck), a controlling heiress confined to a wheelchair, overhears a conversation about a plan to kill a woman. Unable to leave her home or reach her husband (Burt Lancaster), and written off by the police, Leona struggles to uncover the truth through a series of phone calls that only lead her deeper into a mystery, which may involve her college rival, Sally (Ann Richards), and a scheme to sell pharmaceuticals on the black market.
Figured a thread to allow folk to arrange for opening weekend meetups would be handy, especially where there's a lot of travelling to be done! Maybe it can be stickied? I won't be adding any backer-only information to this! That should stay on Kickstarter :) So, the releases: DIGITAL RELEASE - March 14
Worldwide! For everyone! "Digital downloads of the Veronica Mars movie will be available to the general public on Flixster, iTunes, Amazon, and other digital retailers beginning on March 14"
Kickstarter backers should receive an email at some point after midnight in your timezone for your download from Flixster. - IT'S HAPPENING
Chicago: Cicero, Crestwood, Country Club Hills, Ford City, Hobart, Galewood, Lake in the Hills, Michigan City, Naperville, New Lenox, Niles, Quarry, Northbrook Court, Randhurst, River East#, Schererville (12 & 16), South Barrington, Streets of Woodfield, Vernon Hills, Village Crossing, Woodridge, Yorktown
Cincinnatti: Newport on the Levee, West Chester
Cleveland: Ridge Park Square
Columbia, SC: Dutch Square
Columbus, OH: Dublin Village, Easton Town Center, Grove City, Lennox
Dallas – Fort Worth: Firewheel Town Center, Grapevine Mills, Highland Village Irving Mall, Mesquite, Northpark#, Parks @ Arlington, Stonebriar Mall, Valley View
Danbury, CT: Danbury
Denver: Arapahoe Crossing, Bowles Crossing, Brighton, Castle Rock, Cherry Creek, Flatiron Crossing, Highlands Ranch, Orchard, Southlands, Twenty Mile, Westminster Promenade
Detroit: Fairlane, Forum, Gratiot, Great Lakes, John R, Livonia, Southfield
Indianapolis: Bloomington, Castleton Square, Columbus, Indianapolis, Kokomo, Muncie, Richmond, Traders Point, Washington Square,
Jacksonville: Orange Park, Regency Jax
Kansas City: Barrywoods, Independence, Parkway, Studio#, Town Center
Las Vegas: Rainbow Promenade, Town Square
Los Angeles area: Atlantic Times Square, Burbank, Century City#, Citywalk Stadium, Covina, Del Amo, Downtown Disney, Galleria at South Bay, Glendora, Marina Pacifica, Montebello, Norwalk, Ontario Mills, Orange, Promenade, Puente Hills, Rolling Hills, Santa Anita, Santa Monica, Tustin, Tyler, Victoria Gardens
Lubbock, TX: Premier Cinema~
Madison, WI: Desert Star, Fitchburg
Miami: Aventura Mall#, Sunset Place
Milwaukee: Johnson Creek, Mayfair
Minneapolis – St. Paul: Arbor Lakes, Coon Rapids, Eden Prairie Mall, Inver Grove, Rosedale, Southdale Center#
Mobile, AL: Destin Commons
Montgomery, AL: Festival Plaza
New Orleans: Elmwood Palace, Westbank Palace
New Jersey area: Aviation, Bay Plaza, Bay Terrace, Brick Plaza, Clifton Commons, East Hanover, Freehold Metroplex, Galleria Metroplex, Garden State#, Jersey Gardens, Menlo Park, Monmouth Mall, New Brunswick, Newport Centre, Palisades Center, Port Chester, Rockaway, Roosevelt Field, Seacourt, Stony Brook, Wayne
New York area: 19th Street East, 34th Street, Empire, Jips Bay, Lincoln Square, Village
Washington, D.C.: Georgetown, Hampton, Hoffman, MJ Capital Center, Potomac Mills, Rio Cinemas, Tysons Corner Center#
Vancouver, WA: Vancouver Mall~
Vero Beach: Indian River
OTHER COUNTRIES - to be added as and when information is available edit: added Australian rumour edit 2: update German release date, add Sweden edit 3: add Australia details, Mexico edit 4: additional Australia edit 5: added Norway and Germany (many many thanks to KeladryofMindelan) edit 6: digital release details
I've been in Berlin for a few months now, reading extensively about the city's recent history and exploring it's lesser known monuments and buildings. I really like to come across small tidbits of history that don't make the guides. What are some nice hidden gems in the city, outside of the bars and the tourist spots?
For instance, a friend pointed out that street signs are different between east and west, although the western signs are replacing the eastern ones when they need to be.
The door numbers work differently between east and west.
There's also special road paving marking where the wall used to be, something I had not noticed until recently.
The two T-34/85 tanks in Tiergarten were allegedly the first to enter Berlin.
The Führerbunker (and the location of Hitler's death) was filled and an unmarked parking lot was built over it. A small sign was added there eventually.
There's a small Quebec flag floating near the Brandenburg because the government holds an office there, for some reason.
There is a man playing the third movement of Winter in an accordion near Potsdamer Platz, and he's amazing.
Driving through Southern/Western Germany. Where to stop for sightseeing?
Dear Germans, I'm a Siebenbürger Sachse who does speak some German, but is still embarrassed when mispronouncing words, picking the wrong articles and generally misunderstanding things, so don't be too upset with me if I stick with English for this post. In a couple of weeks I shall be moving to Belgium for work, and crossing Germany in my car. I have to enter through Passau, and then I can pick my own route. The shortest seems to be through Frankfurt and Köln, but I can also go more South, through Heidelberg and onto Luxembourg. I want turn this into a little road trip and stop in 4-5 locations on the way, maybe 4 hours for each. Take photos, get a feel of the place, have lunch, walk around and gaze at the buildings... I have 1 day at my disposal from Passau to somewhere in the middle, where I'll sleep (near Frankfurt perhaps), and 1 other day from there to reach Belgium late at night. Maybe 1 extra day if there are really a lot of things on my list. So what to do? Where to stop? What to see? I traveled to Bayern and Ba-Wü several times, but only as a kid, and to Eastern Germany just once, so although this won't be my first time in the country, I really need some expert advice on those little gems strewn along the way. I love history and architecture, both old and contemporary. I spent all my free time in Berlin last year just walking up and down the streets, breathing the air in Pariser Platz, climbing up the Siegessäule, feeling leaves under my feet on little sidewalks in West Berlin, taking a seat in the Gedächtniskirche, admiring the pink pipes in Potsdamer Platz... I do know most of these things sound horribly touristy, but it was my first time there and something I had wanted to do for many, many years - couldn't leave without going to these places. I would be equally keen to see the skyscrapers of Frankfurt and walk on the old streets of a little medieval market-town. Since I will be driving, it will probably take more time to get off the autobahn and pop into central Frankfurt for a visit. Need to park outside the center, take public transportation, get back, get onto the autobahn etc., so I'm also considering logistics. What would be your top picks along that route, for a 2 or 3-day trip? Or is it just a bad idea to do this by car, all things considered? Edit: Pictures! Hallstatt, AT: http://imgur.com/a/pn0ut Deggendorf & Regensburg (guest appearance from a shop sign in Romanian!): http://imgur.com/a/9PkBH Bamberg: http://imgur.com/a/2aJFa Frankfurt & Bonn: http://imgur.com/a/F00DU Thanks again to everyone and for everything. Especially for mentioning Bamberg, it was a little gem of a town I would have completely missed without your help!
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[Germany] May 1, 2017: The work struggle knows no boundaries! - FAU-IAA via r/worldanarchism
The FAU calls on 1 May 2017 to focus on solidarity with migrants who, like us, are workers, but as migrant workers are particularly vulnerable to current political conditions and are exposed to capitalist exploitation . On this page, we will inform you about the activities of the FAU syndicates around May 1st. Here you can find the FAU around May 1st Berlin Friday, 28.4. 7 pm, FAU-Gewerkschaftslokal, Grüntalerstrasse 24, 13357 Berlin, Germany Class struggle knows no boundaries! Labor disputes by Migrant * in the FAU Berlin An event in the run-up to the international action day on the subject of work and migration on 1 May. With workers from the FAU Berlin. In English. Saturday, 29.4. 14.00 clock, Leipziger Platz (S Potsdamer Platz) CUSTOMER: Worker knows no limits! Within the framework of the International Day of Action "Migration und Arbeit" and On the eve of May 1, the FAU Berlin calls for a demonstration at the "Mall of Shame". There will be controversy on labor in Berlin, among others the Grupo de Acción Sindical, Berlin Migrant Strikers, Critical Workers and Oficina Precaria. We will also inform you about the current state of the wage lawsuit against the owner of the Mall of Shame! more info Bochum / Dortmund / Duisburg Events and events in the Ruhr area in May 2017 29.04., Dortmund: From 12:00 - Anarchist park festival in the Blücherpark with FAU participation ( More information) 01.05., Duisburg: 11:00 - Anarchosyndicalist block on the 1st May demo, court court in Hamborn 01.05., Duisburg: From 12:00 - FAU stand on the 1st May Fest at the Nordlandschaftschaftspark 12.05., Dortmund: 19:00 - Film "Economia Col-lectiva", Black Pigeon, Scharnhorststrasse 50, 44147 Dortmund 18.05., Duisburg : 19:00 - "FAU - how does it work?" Introduction to the work of the FAU for interested persons, Syntopia, Gerokstr. 2, 47053 Duisburg 26.05., Bochum: 18:30 - Film "Ende der Vertretung", Social Center Bochum, Josephstr. 2, 44791 Bochum Dresden Friday, 28th of April: Demonstration of Workers Memorial Day, further information will follow Hall The FAU Halle participates in a campaign against so-called "refugee integration measures". People with a toleration status, without work permits or access to intensive language courses, may be required to take part in such measures. This means: for an hourly wage of 80 cents per hour, 30 hours per week of lakes, sports grounds and their own accommodation green areas and the like - forced labor despite work prohibition, another deprivation under the cover mantle "Integration". Hamburg The FAU Hamburg is participating in the "Transcontinental May 1" campaign with a solidarity partnership with plant workers of the Margaret's Hope Tea Plantation in Darjeeling (India). Under the motto "1world1struggle" global exploitation chains are to be brought into consciousness. More info and call for transnational 1 May Friday, 28.04.201.7 20:00 (admission from 19:00), Libertarian Cultural and Action Center Black Cat (Fettstraße 23) Input and film screening on working conditions at Margaret's Hope tea plant (Darjeeling, West Bengal). Monday, 01.05.2017, 10:30 clock (start of the demo 11:00 clock) The general May 1 demo enrich with an anticapitalistic, antinational, DGB-critical block. Tuesday, May 2, 2017, 3:15 pm, Gebrüder Wollenhaupt GmbH (Gutenbergstrasse 33-35) Let solidarity become a reality! Rally in front of the Wollenhaupt GmbH brothers (tea wholesaler) to show solidarity with the Plantagenarbeiter_innen in Darjeeling in the struggle for better working conditions. Hanover The General Syndicate of the FAU Hannover will be represented on the central Hanoverian 1. May demo with a transparency on the subject of migration and work and the ensuing festival with an infostand. Jena Sunday, April 30, 3 pm, wood market The evening before May 1 Call: https://www.direkteaktion.org/termine/jena-vorabenddemo-zum-1-mai-30apr2017 Karlsruhe The FAU Karlsruhe will be on the 1st of May at 10.00 am at the congress center with an infostand. Muenster The FAU Münsterland provides information on the labor disputes and self-organization of migrants and collects them with a subsequent concert for their solidarity fund, which can be used to support work struggles: Friday May 5, 6:30 pm Baracke, Scharnhorststr. 100 "There is power in the Union" - 7.00 pm info and short films about the work and self-organization of Migrant *, 20.15 hrs concert with Einmannjan (songwriter), Thee Evil Bad (punk), part of the Crowd BBQ, cocktails, DJs Call of the FAU: The work struggle knows no limits! Europe-wide and beyond, populist parties and movements are growing in a breadth as we have not experienced in the last decades. What makes this populism? Behind the rejection of some symbols of capitalist globalization, such as free trade agreements or the euro, there is a nationalism that does not call into question the globalized capitalist exploitation. This nationalism divides what belongs together, and at the same time pounds together into supposed interests, which in reality is divided by class antagonisms. Solidarity against racism and exploitation! Migrant women in particular are particularly affected by exploitation and deprivation. Through the racist immigration policy some are banned from work, some also with labor constraints. Others do not have any papers, but they are forced to bring themselves and their families. In illegal employment, however, they can hardly enforce their rights and are exposed to the arbitrariness of their "employers". But even if the jobs are "legal", they are often precarious: in the areas of gastronomy, cleaning, care and construction, labor law violations in the form of dummy, wage dumping, "cold" dismissals and wages are the order of the day. However, the established social partnerships show only limited interest in organizing (illegal) migrants, or supporting them in the fight for bad habits and legal obstacles. Rather, their focus on the occupying forces and the security of the city deepened the social divisions, while the spiral of precariousness continues to spiral. On the other hand, we can only help one thing: let us not oppose each other as "native" against "foreign" workers, as regular workers against precarious workers, as a "location" against the others Living conditions and for a world without exploitation and domination! Immigrants need combative trade unions! Against the new walls on the borders and in the minds, we must join together to organize solidarity and mutual aid - as in the case of our colleagues from Romania, exploited under the scandalous working and living conditions on the construction site of the shopping center Mall of Berlin The organization in the FAU and the joint labor struggle led to the baptism of the Mall of Shame as a symbol of migrant exploitation in Germany. In this way, we were able to answer the social climate of the agitation especially against migrant workers from South-Eastern Europe with an example of successful resistance. We also see the convergence of exclusion and lowering of labor standards in the current efforts to oblige refugees to work underemployed, which consequently affects all workers negatively. We should fight here as a working class, not only for the freedom of movement of all people, but also for state-organized exploitation. We workers need combative trade unions! In the internationalist tradition of May 1 and Anarcho-Syndicalism, we call for solidarity with migrant workers. Protest and fight together against precarious working conditions, against capitalist exploitation and against the racist immigration regime. Only with a cross-border trade union practice can we resist capitalism. Together we will build bridges where other walls would be built! [This text may be used more widely and used for flyers]
Ich suche nach einem Plakat... I'm looking for a poster...
Als ich in Berlin war habe ich einem Plakat gesehen, das aus 4 Fotos von Potsdamer Platz untereinander besteht. Ganz oben war einem Bild aus 1984 glaube ich, darunter einem aus 1989, 1990 und 2004. Die Fotos waren von derselben Blickpunkt gemacht - aus dem Gedächtnis der Richtung der DB Konzernzentrale. Kennt jemand diesem Plakat und weißt wo ich ihm kaufen kann? When I was in Berlin I remember seeing a poster made up of 4 pictures taken of Potsdamer Platz one above another. The top photo was from 1984, then 1989, 1990 and 2004 I think. They were all taken from the same point which is now somewhere in the direction of the DB building. Does anyone know the one I'm talking about and where I could buy a copy?
When Hitler was kind enough to nurture the oddly specific and painstakingly thought-out prejudices Germans showed towards their Jewish citizens, a lot of German Jewish talent (and Austrian,Hungarian, and others working in Germany), in every field one could have an expertise in, really, found themselves out of a job and facing, you know, probably death (Phillips, 15). In retrospect, it might seem silly, in an anthropic principle kind of way, to say that the “Jewish” part of the famous “German Jewish emigre” contribution to noir is important. It’s in the name because the only filmmakers fleeing from Germany to the states would be the one who needed to (so, it’s a distinctly Jewish talent that flooded to the states, but… of course it was. What else would it have been?). But, in order to keep it a soundbyte, the German Connection to noir is treated reductively enough to be rendered inaccurate: “German expressionism is a forerunner to noir!” Absolutely. But the link to noir is a chain of Jews, whose relationship to their identity as every possible combination of Germans, Jews, German Jews, Western European Jews (which comes into play when their new American studio exec bosses were frequently the “lowly” Eastern European Jews), male Jews, non-practicing Jews, and now emigre Jews, was what they brought to the table when they came to the states. In Germany, the Jewish citizens historically felt like outsiders because they were treated as such. At every moment, one could rely on an intellectual to justify anti-semitism, and Jews soon found themselves advancing the world of German art while simultaneously being denied a full “German” status socially. “By rejecting bourgeois values and aligning themselves with a radical movement they helped gestate and propel, German and Austrian Jews were able to embrace German culture without abandoning the Jewish tradition; indeed, for a time, Expressionism seemed the place where ‘the German-Jewish symbiosis’ came ‘the closest to being realized.’” (Brooke, p.39) Okay, so expressionism becomes a term in the first few years of the twentieth century. It was a European method of art, displayed in painting, architecture, music, theater, film, anything. The Germans eventually came up with a distinct style of their own. (Brooke, p. 38) German Jews had a knack for being on the cutting edge, which implies a lot; a lot of them lived in newly formed major cities like the vastly different Berlin and Munich, which means a large percentage of the German Jewish population had modern jobs that these modern cities afforded them. Art dealing, politics, music, theater, film. This new attachment to the modernized city provided a new outlook: “the notion of the street is as a force ‘out there,’ out of the protective womb of family routine, and as an enticement through the images of desire that our bourgeois everyman sees of a flirtatious couple across the street silhouetted on his living room ceiling.”(Dickos, p.19) Expressionism was originally tied to nature, expressing what the artist felt inside about the external subject matter onto it. But these artists, who were now living in densely populated asphalt jungles and despised by their non-Jewish countrymen, felt an understandable paranoia about their situation. It’s not all that surprising to find guys like Ludwig Meidner, “The Prophet of Doom,” crank out this kind of art (Brooke, p.40). In comparison to the noir to come, Andrew Dickos says in A Street With No Name, “The transformation is derivative, for the German cinema sought to transform nature, the objective force, into the product of the mind, an imagined world, and the film noir has taken this cue in transforming its milieu into the paranoia of its characters, perceiving, as they do, their entrapment in a threatening world obscured of clarity.” (p. 16) And this filmic derivative found its derivative in expressionist theater, where lighting and sets were designed around the mantra from Thus Spake Zarathustra (“What does my shadow matter? Let it run after me! I—shall outrun it!”) and the wartime budgetary constraints, as employed by the mastermind behind it all, stage director Max Reinhardt (Brooke, p. 42, 45). The femme fatale fully develops here, too. One tactic Gentile Germans used to shit all over the Jews was harping on the historical notion of the feminine Jewish male. He’s a teacher, a scholar, non-athletic, with glasses, a circumcised penis (kind of like a clitoris, in their minds), and a wife with more rights than a non-Jewish woman (thus, closer to a man). Jewish men were wimps, and Jewish women were dangerously powerful. Ever notice that German Jewish directors frequently used artists, and not detectives, gangsters, or boxers, as the main leads in their American noir? (Brooke, p. 11) Ironically, the most mentioned contribution of German expressionism to American noir in the 40’s-50’s was the use of expressionist lighting techniques (exaggerated shadows, low key lighting, etc. Philips, p. 37, for example), the one thing that expressionism didn’t actually contribute to American noir. American cinematographers were well aware of these techniques, and had been employing them in American movies since around the same time as expressionists were employing them in theirs. What was contributed were the camera movements and placements, exaggerated set designs, as well as the thematic elements of the paranoia toward women, the fear of being lost in a modern world, that kind of thing. So, when you see Litvak’s utter distrust of the mere idea of telephones in Sorry, Wrong Number, or Lang’s pitting frickin Edward G. Robinson as a sensitive painter against a much more worldly woman in Scarlet Street, we’re not seeing one-offs. These few guys’ works collectively made up the majority of American noir masterpieces, and they were not simply making great versions of status quo templates. They were making very personal stories, whose greatest connections are with other German Jewish emigres. However, the directors’ shared lack of personal religiosity (despite religion by birth), newly shared “refugee” mentality at conflict with the normal competitive attitudes of the business, and collaborations in Hollywood with Weimar actors, composers, cinematographers, set designers and editors created a bubble within the bubble of noir. This offers more of a compare/contrast glimpse to the movies of their time, and not necessarily a hard and fast, “these movies were different” stance. (Brooke, p.21) Okay, so the connection (you know, aside from the obvious fact that Expressionist directors moved to the states to make noir):
Hollywood and German timelines synching up.
Schrader’s three phases of wartime (‘41-46), postwar realism (‘45-49), and psychotic action/suicidal impulse (‘49-53), coincides perfectly with the shift from Expressionism, to its opposite Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) under Weimar, and the monsters/serial murderers of the roughly ‘20’s-30’s, respectively. (Brooke, p.19)
The echoes of budget constraints due to wartime is pretty nifty, too.
Criticized for the extravagance of his stagings while the country was asked to sacrifice for the war effort, and faced with wartime shortages in materials and financial resources, Reinhardt was forced to match invention to necessity. Innovative lighting effects, from this perspective, Eisner suggests, were “the only means of disguising the mediocrity of the ersatz materials used for sets and of varying the intensity of the atmosphere to suit the action.” (Brooke, p.45)
The possible settling of the expressionism/poetic realism/American noir lineage.
From an historical perspective, the transmutation of Expressionism into expressionism in the Kammerspiel/street film also counters a further challenge to the Expressionist-noir connection leveled by Marc Vernet. His deconstruction hinges on two main points: “first, that the ‘expressionist’ image is relatively rare in the period 1941–45 . . . and, second, it can also be found, and at least as frequently, in the films of the preceding decades.” Both points founder, however, on a fallacious premise; namely, “the contradiction that exists in putting expressionism together with the realism of the decors or situations that supposedly define film noir.” As I have shown, functional expressionism is precisely the means by which Weimar cinema achieved the symbiosis of Expressionism and realism, and to more concertedly psychological, symbolic, and phantasmic ends than the earlier American, Danish, French, and Russian filmmakers Vernet marshals as exhibits against the Weimar expressionist legacy. (Brooke, p.56)
In my eyes, the noir revisionists feel the need to tug too far in downplaying expressionist influence. They want to shift the center by the usual means. Brooke is just trying to keep the center where it is by tugging equally too far in the traditional direction. Expressionism influenced camera placement and movement, not lighting. Both camps are both right and wrong, and it’s baffling why they refuse to be honest. If a revisionist wants to go beyond downplaying expressionism, they’ll upsell French poetic realism in the 30’s. The traditionalist counters that poetic realism is influenced by expressionism (Brooke, p. 106). The point is that all of these authors have an agenda, a predetermined answer against which other conflicting, predetermined stances are pitted (which goes against the evolutionary approach to noir we’re taking). The more probable, realistic answer is shockingly, shockingly, found by someone with less of a stake in the debate. A guy writing about early American cinematographers trying to establish themselves as artists as well as laborers. “Of course, this is not to say that noir is reducible to Expressionism. Rather, the style was marked by a tension between its equally palpable realist and expressionist impulses.” (Keating) Boom. Thank you, Mr. Keating. Okay, onto… **** Screening Notes ****
Originally, this was going to be a way too jam-packed entry. I had close to a dozen movies, and this topic has a ton of information that would take an entire chapter’s worth of writing just to introduce. The vote to screen Double Indemnity was the final straw. We’ll give ourselves some breathing room and make this a two-parter. Next week we will discuss the individual directors themselves and how their German and Jewish identities affected their American movies individually and as a group, as well as how it affected the Hollywood and noir landscape as a whole.
It tells the story of one night in which a middle-aged man is lured away from his happy home into the thrills and dangers of the city streets. The city is an expressionistic nightmare, a dangerous and chaotic place. The unfortunate man encounters thieves, prostitutes, and other predators. But the real threat to security and order is the street itself. In one scene, the bumbling man passes an optometrist's shop on a crooked, deserted street. The moment his back is turned, an enormous neon sign of a pair of eyeglasses, blinks on. The street itself is alive and watching.
Sat, Jan 23 @ midnight, 8:10am, 4:20pm
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Sun, Jan 24 @ 12:30am, 8:40am, 4:50pm
Fury (1936)
Fritz Lang
Joe Wilson (Spencer Tracy) is an innocent man wrongly accused of a horrible crime while on his way to meet his fiancée, Katherine Grant (Sylvia Sidney). Held at a local jail, Joe is confronted by a frenzied mob and presumed dead after a massive fire. When his attackers aren't brought to justice, Joe, who narrowly escaped the blaze, resurfaces, intent on revenge. Katherine tries to dissuade him from carrying out his vengeful plan, but Joe's anger isn't easily dampened.
Sat, Jan 23 @ 1:40am, 9:50am, 6:00pm
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Sun, Jan 24 @ 2:10am, 10:20am, 6:30pm
Double Indemnity (1944)
Billy Wilder
Insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) gets roped into a murderous scheme when he falls for the sensual Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), who is intent on killing her husband (Tom Powers) and living off the fraudulent accidental death claim. Prompted by the late Mr. Dietrichson's daughter, Lola (Jean Heather), insurance investigator Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) looks into the case, and gradually begins to uncover the sinister truth.
Due to a telephone glitch, Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck), a controlling heiress confined to a wheelchair, overhears a conversation about a plan to kill a woman. Unable to leave her home or reach her husband (Burt Lancaster), and written off by the police, Leona struggles to uncover the truth through a series of phone calls that only lead her deeper into a mystery, which may involve her college rival, Sally (Ann Richards), and a scheme to sell pharmaceuticals on the black market.
Von einer leeren Brachfläche zum belebten Ausgehviertel: Das ist der Potsdamer Platz in Berlin - mittten im Herzen der Stadt. Every February, Potsdamer Platz is at the centre of the Berlinale, the Berlin film festival. But that’s not the only time of year when it attracts film fans. The CinemaXX is a large multiplex cinema. At the Arsenal, art-house enthusiasts can get their fill of experimental works and cinema classics. According to Tripadvisor travelers, these are the best ways to experience Potsdamer Platz: Third Reich Berlin WalkingTour - Hitler and WWII (From $23.18) City Sightseeing Berlin Hop-On Hop-Off Bus & Optional Boat Tour (From $19.52) 3-Hour Berlin Highlights Bike Tour (From $34.17) Berlin Self-Drive Trabi Tour with Guide (From $64.65) Berlin's Potsdamer Platz is the most striking example of the urban renewal that turned Berlin into the "New Berlin" in the 1990s although it is not, strictly-speaking, a square. The area today consists of the three developments known as Daimler City (1998), the Sony Centre (2000) and the Beisheim Centre (2004), which literally transformed the ... Potsdamer Platz Berlin S-Bahn 3 min. Potsdamer Platz Berlin U-Bahn 4 min. Rental Cars See rental cars from $17/day. Best nearby. 106 Restaurants within 0.3 miles. 39 Other Attractions within 0.3 miles. Restaurant Facil (896) 1 min $$$$ International. Vedang - plant burger (Mall of Berlin) (536) 6 min $ American. Mabuhay - Indonesian Restaurant ... Book your tickets online for Potsdamer Platz, Berlin: See 4,766 reviews, articles, and 3,332 photos of Potsdamer Platz, ranked No.91 on Tripadvisor among 1,082 attractions in Berlin. Lesen Sie auf den Seiten der Jahreszahlen, was in Berlin und am Platz, zu welcher Zeit geschah: 1871, 1907, 1920 und mehr…. Der Potsdamer Platz ist eine Verkehrsdrehscheibe im Zentrum Berlins im Bezirk Mitte, Ortsteil Tiergarten, von der mehrere große Straßen ausgehen. Potsdamer Platz: Informationen, Adresse, Verkehrsverbindungen. Der Potsdamer Platz wurde nach der Wiedervereinigung neu bebaut. Das Ensemble aus Hochhäusern und futuristischen Neubauten bildet ein ganz eigenes Stadtviertel. Streetfood am Potsdamer Platz. Die Food-Trucks kommen und bringen Streetfood an den Potsdamer Platz! Egal ob zur Mittagspause, den Snack zwischendurch oder ein frühes Abendessen – freuen Sie sich auf ein vielfältiges Angebot an frisch zubereiteten und leckeren Speisen. Berlin's most modern square. The Potsdamer sq was the most important and busiest sq of the pre WWII era Berlin. It's named after Potsdam, a very important city and capital of the Brandenburg state. During the WWII it was totally demolished with no single brick standing, and after the division of Berlin was.
Berlin in 4K Potsdamer Platz【4K】Walking Tour ★★★★★ - YouTube
The Sony Center is a Sony-sponsored building complex located at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Germany designed by Helmut Jahn. It opened in 2000 and houses ... There are many ice cream parlors in Berlin. But none of them is like Caffe et Gelato in the Potsdamer Platz Arkaden. The Potsdamer Platz Arkaden is the shopping mall of Potsdamer Platz. And Caffe ... 🌎 Potsdamer Platz Berlin, GermanyIn this video, we will take you around Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, one of the business, shopping, and nightlife districts... Potsdamer Platz (Potsdam Square) is an important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin, Germany, lying about 1 km (1,100 yd) south of the Brandenburg Gate and the ... Potsdamer Platz (Potsdam Square) is an important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin, Germany. It’s just down the road from the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag ... In this travel guide video we are visiting Potsdamer Platz, Sony Center, Kulturforum, Philharmonie, Deutsche Kinemathek, The Berlin Wall, Karl Liebknecht Mem... Potsdamer Platz is an important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin, Germany, lying about 1 km south of the Brandenburg Gate and t... 1920s Berlin Street Scenes, Postdamer Platz from the Kinolibrary Archive Film Collections. To order the clip clean and high res or to find out more visit htt... I made this video when I lived in Berlin in Potzdamer Platz and I wanted to make a video to share with my family and friends who couldn't visit what my life ... A look at the centre of Berlin back through time! Credit to the Image Owners Featured.
