Individual destinies at Alexanderplatz: Berlin in a frenzy
A New Year’s Eve film from 1939 shows Alexanderplatz as an intensive care unit. This film is like a mirror of Berlin in the 1930s.
IMAGO / Arkivi
It’s raining non-stop. Everything is in a hurry. With their coat collars turned up, passers-by hurry through the urban chaos between street canyons, subway tunnels and S-Bahn viaducts. Small traders and easy girls hope for sales. A gentleman in mittens sets up a telescope in the crowd. A look at the overcast sky costs ten pfennigs. Maybe he’ll rip open. And maybe you can even see into the future?
The rarely shown film “Silvesternacht am Alexanderplatz” takes place on the night of the turn of the year 1939. The focus is on a couple of friends with very different ambitions. While Reinhardt wants to end his life, Dr. Storp fulfills his duty as doctor on duty in the emergency room. He persuades his suicidal buddy to join him on the night shift, hoping that confronting the harsh reality will bring him to his senses. Now, before Reinhardt’s eyes and those of the audience, a dazzling, abysmal panorama of individual fates unfolds. A fatal hit-and-run accident becomes a turning point for the friends, so that they can go through their lives with open eyes in the future.
Richard Schneider-Edenkoben has routinely staged this New Year’s Eve carousel. Excellently cast right down to the supporting roles, the wide range of plots and characters is skilfully held together as a result. As an effective trick, it is possible to use the rescue station, which is drifting more and more into chaos, as an interface and Dr. To draw Storp as a person who is struggling himself. The film is worth seeing today mainly because of the (partly involuntarily) conveyed zeitgeist. What can be experienced here is a Berlin that has disappeared and, despite all the overwriting, still has an impact today. Restoration and modernity flow into one another here. Right next to a kitschy “Berolina” sculpture is Peter Behrens’ bold office and commercial building of the same name.
Both the city and the film are fast-paced, but never forget that petty squabbles are being fought behind the facades that can tip over to hair-sharp tragedies of classic proportions. Sometimes even something of the blues of a Franz Biberkopf flashes – admittedly without the sharpness of Alfred Döblin.
There are no concrete anti-Semitic cases, not a single Nazi uniform or flag can be seen in this film. Once it is mentioned that thanks to the new era, the demimonde is finally a thing of the past. Which sounds a bit alibi – because there are a lot of prostitutes to see. When the camera pans over the shops on Alexanderplatz, a lot goes through your head. At that time, some of the companies had long since been “Aryanized”, as had the entire German film industry. By the way, during the shooting, the Nazis did not just stage films. The pogrom of November 9 also took place at this time.
“New Year’s Eve at Alexanderplatz” will be shown on December 28 at 3:45 p.m. in the Eva-Lichtspiele.