Kino Page 2

  “So he really did work for the Nazis.”

  “Well,” Dr. Hanno said. “Ufa was brought under the control of the propaganda ministry–technically, he was still working for the studio, not the party. There really wasn't a choice if you were going to make films. Unless you left.”

  “Which he did.”

  “Right, but he didn't emigrate until 1943, which brought significant problems entering the US He settled in Santa Monica and worked as a screenwriter. Bouts with depression, public drunkenness, run-ins with the law, drug addiction. Throughout the 1950s, occasional work in television commercials. He made one last movie in 1963, The Pirates of Mulberry Island, his only American film. It opened on September 10, 1963. The next morning, he was found dead ‘by self-inflicted gunshot wound.’ Survived by his wife Penny and son Detlef.”

  “My father.”

  “Yes, of course.” Dr. Hanno was watching her. “And what about your grandmother?”

  Mina shrugged. “You know more about my family than I do. She's batty. Father can't stand her. We went to visit her once for Christmas, and it was a nightmare. She threw things at me. I was frightened.”

  Dr. Hanno studied Mina carefully. She wiped a smear of garlic sauce from her chin.

  “None of Kino's German work survived. No screenplays, no work prints, no set design sketches, nothing. All we have are contemporary sources–newspaper notices, advertising, press releases, and reviews–to give us an idea of what his movies were like. Even from the scant evidence, it is clear that your grandfather was a polarizing figure. The reviews of his early films, especially Tulpendiebe, were either terrible or over-the-moon raves. Later, this changed.” He pointed to his backpack. “I brought a few–maybe I can translate for you?”

  “Of course.”

  Dr. Hanno pulled out a folder and rifled through a stack of papers. “From what we know, Tulpendiebe is a love story set during the tulipomania, in the seventeenth century.”

  “The what?”

  “The tulip craze. In those days, Holland was a major economic power, and people were speculating on tulip bulbs. It was the original bubble, and your grandfather used it as the backdrop for a romantic love story. As a trend, expressionism had largely run its course by 1927, and there was a new taste for realism called ‘neue Sachlichkeit.’ But from what we know, Tulpendiebe is more of a fable, shot entirely in the studio, and Kino was accused of relying on outmoded tricks. Film-Welt called it ‘worthless escapism.’ ‘Cloudcocooland,’ one headline said. Filmkurier attacked it for getting historical details completely wrong and even pointed out that the film was ‘questionable, botanically speaking.’ Worse, in the politically charged atmosphere of the time, nobody agreed on what it meant. There seemed to be a message to it, but none of the extremists liked it: the Freikorps paper Deutscher Sturm noted that it was done in the ‘American style’ and called it a ‘shameful call for class warfare.’ The communist Rote Fahne said it was ‘bourgeois’ and ‘likely to distract from the true struggle.’ Moderates and socialists worried that it was reactionary and anti-democratic. Here's Licht-Bild-Bühne from August 6, 1927: ‘With his first cinematic feature Tulpendiebe, young director Klaus Koblitz has given us a cheerful fairy tale that is certain to please nobody but children, dimwits, and certain French Dadaists. The plot is hair-raisingly absurd and ludicrous. Next to the profound artistic works of talents such as Carl Meyer and Fritz Lang, it appears like an infantile prank.’”

  “Ouch,” Mina said. It pleased her, though, to know that here was a scholar, this Dr. Hanno, who knew so much about her grandfather. What if, instead of the drunken loser her father made him out to be, her grandfather had been an important artist after all? Someone to be proud of? Dr. Hanno seemed to think so.

  “We also know that the film was a success. ‘A poetic dream of a movie, lucid and full of meaning,’ Berliner Zeitung wrote, and there were many more reviews like it. Later, people would call him a visionary and, briefly, here and there, a genius. The public liked it, too–Tulpendiebe did well enough financially, and your grandfather continued to make movies until he left the country.”

  There was a pause. Their eyes met, and Mina knew they were both thinking the same thing: did the other films survive, too? Somebody had kept this one all these years–why not the others? Mina shook the idea off, exasperated. “Why was I sent this? Who wanted me to have it? What am I supposed to do with it?”

  Dr. Hanno leaned forward and spread his hands over the cans like a magician casting a spell. “Have you told anyone else?”

  Mina shook her head. “Just you, somebody at the film museum in New York, and a professor at UCLA film school. And of course Sam, my husband, but I don't think he really understood. His fever is so high. Too high.”

  “So you'd say word got out?”

  It hadn't occurred to Mina to keep the film a secret. She shrugged. She did not want to feel guilty for one more thing. “I suppose word got out.”

  “Your husband is ill,” Dr. Hanno said. It wasn't a question. He was prompting Mina. She told him the name of the disease but he looked at her blankly.

  “Our honeymoon was ruined. We should be on the beach right now.”

  Mina was tired. She wondered why she was telling this stranger so much. She felt an overwhelming need to brush her teeth, wash the garlic taste from her mouth. She wanted this conversation to be over. Sam's fever wasn't any of Dr. Hanno's business. Though she had just told him about it, hadn't she? She needed to sleep.

  “You came here to screen the movie without your sick husband,” Dr. Hanno said, explaining it to himself. He looked up at her. “Congratulations.”

  Mina nodded, not sure what he was congratulating her for. Her marriage, or her dedication to Kino? All she wanted was for him to leave, but Dr. Hanno had one more thing on his mind.

  “I have arranged a projectionist for tomorrow morning at the museum. Would it be okay if I watch with you? I would very much like to see the film.”

  “Of course,” Mina said, irritated by his good manners. “Why do you think I called you?”

  After Dr. Hanno left, Mina cleaned up the remains of the Döner dinner. She wanted to call Sam at the hospital, but wasn’t it the middle of the night in New York? She took a small bottle of vodka from the minibar, poured it over ice into a plastic cup, and drank it quickly. She lay on her unmade hotel bed and missed Sam. He'd always been the one who had gotten sick, from the time they'd met in Mr. Domino's art history class. Sam was a digital artist, and she had already been skipping out of the law curriculum. Their first winter together, he spent weeks in bed with the flu, and when Mina came to visit they had sex between his damp sheets while he sniffled and blew his nose. It hadn't bothered Mina then.

  But the dengue fever was the sickest she had ever seen anybody. It scared her, seeing Sam delirious, out of his mind with an overheated brain, and if she was honest with herself, she was glad she didn't have to be in that room with him anymore. In sickness and in health, those had been the words during the ceremony. Mina hadn't paid much attention at the time.

  She felt the vodka work on her head, her muscles. “Kino!” Dr. Hanno had said, holding the brittle celluloid between his fingers, as if that explained anything. She wanted to laugh at his enthusiasm, but his passion for the movies made her feel better about her own curiosity.

  Mina wanted to go home, to be there when Sam's fever broke, but first she needed to see her grandfather's silent movie. Somebody had picked her, had decided that she, Wilhelmina Koblitz, should have it, and now she had to see for herself if it was any good.

  Chapter 4

  From: mina.koblitz@gmail.com

  Date: Monday, May 12, 2003

  To: samiam@eclecticarts.com

  Subject: Jesus Fuck Piss

  I'm cold, confused, and wide-awake, and I can't fucking believe what happened.

  Don't even bother reading this email whenever you get it–stop reading and call me. You still haven't called me. The nurse refused to wake you even thoug
h it's a reasonable hour where you are. She said your fever is unchanged. Jesus Christ. Shouldn't you be better?

  Since I can't talk to you, typing to you is the next best thing, and explaining things might help me figure them out, anyway. And there's nothing much I can do until the sun comes up.

  This day's been awful from the start. First thing this morning, I went downstairs to find something to wear, and the smug receptionist tells me, “Fräulein, it is Sunday, and according to the law, stores are closed today all over Germany.” As if I am stupid. So I'm still wearing my skirt, and it's even colder today.

  Back up in the room, there's a message on my phone. I'm hoping it's you but instead I get “Mina, this is your father. Call me as soon as possible. It's urgent.” And then he gives his damn phone number like he does every time. A minute later, he called again, so I picked up, feeling sheepish because I hadn't talked to him since the disaster at the reception. Dad knew something was up, and when I told him I was in Berlin he suspected it had to do with grandfather right away. He might be a class A prick, but my father's not an idiot. He kept dropping pregnant pauses, so I told him the whole story. Stupid and I knew it, but I am a terrible liar.

  He immediately started yelling about lawyers and copyright and protecting the family's interests. “Don't let anybody near the film, don't let anybody see it, don't let anybody handle it, and definitely don't screen it!” For a second he sounded like he was getting on the Concorde, but then he must've remembered some important business meeting, and he was like “you come home this very minute.”

  I haven't taken orders from my father in years, but he tries. I told him I'd stick to the plan and come home on Monday. I had to hang up because he wouldn't stop shouting. He called back but I didn't answer.

  Dr. Hanno sent the projectionist to pick me up, an ugly man called Frank who didn't offer to help with the cans. His little eyes darted every which way, and all he said was “Guten Morgen.” The streets were wide, with tall old buildings and the occasional bombed-out church. Construction everywhere you look, and graffiti like before Giuliani. Dr. Hanno was waiting for me at Potsdamer Platz–picture downtown Hartford, all glitzy boring skyscrapers and a ridiculous glassed-in courtyard. He had three guys in suits with him.

  “Frau Koblitz,” he said, sheepish, “the gentlemen from the museum board respectfully ask to see the movie.”

  They had short white hair, square European executive glasses, leather suitcases. Given the right circumstances, they probably projected power and wealth; to me they looked like pathetic corporate functionaries. I can't remember their faces. “You've got to understand, young lady,” they said, “we simply couldn't miss the opportunity.”

  I had just hung up on my father and I definitely wasn't going to get bullied by a bunch of old Germans. I told them no. “Out of the question.”

  “We are sorry?” they said. One of them was playing uncomfortably with his tie, another had a cell phone call on hold.

  I said, “I need to protect the interests of my family.”

  Dr. Hanno appeared flustered. “These gentlemen are members of the board,” he repeated, like that was going to make a difference to me. I told them I could just pack up and go back home, no problem. Dad would have been proud of me. They were angry, clearly, but they decided to play nice. They smiled and mumbled something about understanding perfectly and shuffled off.

  But Dr. Hanno was worried. “It's always better to accommodate the gentlemen from the board,” he said.

  I'm sure that kind of thinking is how he got to be director of the Kinemathek at his age.

  “How did they know about Tulpendiebe?” I asked.

  “I had to file a special request for using the facilities on a Sunday.”

  “So you'd say word got out?”

  Dr. Hanno looked ashamed, and he didn't speak while we rode a glass elevator up to the screening room. We sat in the back row, leaving one empty seat between us. Dr. Hanno gave a signal to the projectionist, who peeked out of the booth with his beady eyes, the lights went down, and the movie started. The only sound was the hum of the Doppelnocken projector and Dr. Hanno's breath–there was no score and no piano player. It was just us and the images.

  Between Dad's call and the old men from the board, my mood was shot. Before, it had almost been a fun quest, you know, finding a special projector back in the old country, talking to important professors, the mystery of it all. But Dad really upset me, and those men in suits pissed me off. It was cold in the screening room, and I could feel a headache coming on. Young lady, that's what they had called me, and I already wished that I'd been more rude.

  Anyway, the movie.

  I don't know what I expected, honestly. Something ponderous and silent, German expressionism or whatever. It started with the logo I'd already sort of seen in our apartment, holding the film up to the kitchen lights. Then, a pair of huge eyes: a close-up of a little girl, staring straight into the camera. Her father, whose face we don't see, Peanuts-style, is reading her a bedtime story. The cover of the book he's reading from supplies the title credit: Tulpendiebe.

  Right away, Dr. Hanno started to whisper to me like a real-life DVD commentary track. How back in the twenties, framing devices were all the rage, Dr. Caligari being the most obvious example. He translated all the intertitles, even the one that said “Holland, Anno 1636.”

  The main part of the movie is set in a picturesque Dutch seaside town, canals and fields and windmills and so on, but it's all done in the studio with painted backdrops, making it look stylized, like a kid's book, with extras in clogs and bonnets and pantaloons. Fake, but sort of charming. Would have been better in color.

  The story is about an acrobatic young sailor, a strapping fellow from out of town who is arrested because he mistakes a precious tulip bulb for an onion and eats it for lunch, along with his herring. You see, there's this tulip craze in Holland and people are speculating on them for ridiculous amounts of money. The sailor is brought before the Duke, who is losing his grip because he is worried about his sick daughter. A villainous merchant known as the tulip notary is really in charge and advises the Duke to send the sailor to prison.

  There's a big trial scene with a lot of speechifying that was especially annoying because there was a triple delay: first, the actors mime talking on screen, then the words are displayed in German, then Dr. Hanno translates for me, and that's when I can finally put it all together. They say stuff like, “He is the one who stole the tulip!” I repeated that one out loud because it was so absurd: “He is the one who stole the tulip!”

  Get this: Dr. Hanno shushed me.

  Somewhere around here I'm starting to wonder. Guy gets arrested for eating a flower? This is what I came to Germany for? The best thing about the movie was the Duke's beautiful daughter, Lilly: wispy blonde hair, porcelain skin, giant saucer eyes, kissable lips. She's suffering from a mysterious wasting disease. Naturally, the sailor falls in love with her on first sight, and I kind of did, too. I feel like I've seen the actress before. She looks out of place, almost like nobility, like Cate Blanchett or Katherine Hepburn maybe.

  In jail, the sailor meets an Englishman who is also locked up for stealing a tulip–he dissected it out of scientific curiosity. They escape and go to the tulip exchange together, which is this place where people are speculating in flowers like it's the stock market. Among the crowd on the trading floor, they meet the Widow Gustafson, an old woman who is trying to convince people not to trade everything they own for a tulip bulb. She shouts, “Your prosperity is based on an illusion!” but nobody listens. As it turns out, she is the widow of the explorer who first imported the flowers from Constantinople, and hidden away back at her house, she has actual tulips in bloom. There was an elaborate montage of close-ups showing the flowers from every possible angle. I have to admit, they looked pretty good, even in black and white. So, the widow, the sailor, and the Englishman conspire to end the tulip craze. The sailor's in love with the Duke's daughter, Lilly, and somehow
he figures out that he can heal her with the tulips. He rips them up and eats the petals and it makes her laugh.

  It's possible that I napped for a little while at this point. I remember a lot of sneaking around and subterfuge and intrigue, and somehow the sailor, the widow, and the Englishman cause a run on the tulip exchange. Everybody is trying to sell their worthless tulips. The tulip notary deploys soldiers to keep order, there's rioting, and he flees with all this gold to a windmill. Of course there had to be a windmill, right?

  The sailor and the tulip notary fight, somehow the windmill catches fire, and there's a big conflagration. At one point, the sailor is hanging from the burning, spinning blades. The people who have lost everything in the tulip crash come marching up, the windmill collapses, and the sailor jumps to safety while the tulip notary gets crushed under the flaming ruins. The townspeople just stand and watch as he dies, screaming. It's a really graphic moment, the guy pinned under the burning piece of wood, twisting and turning in agony as he dies.

  The sailor, the Englishman, and the widow distribute the tulip notary's gold to the townsfolk and order all the tulip bulbs to be planted. In the end, the windmill is rebuilt in a big field of blooming tulips, and everybody lives happily ever after. Then you see that the man reading the book to the little girl in the framing story is the sailor–he's married to Lilly, they've got a daughter, and they live in the windmill. The end. That's it.

  When the lights came up, Dr. Hanno was euphoric, his face and neck covered in red splotches. He was gushing: “Incredible, just incredible. The visual storytelling anticipates Cocteau and Welles. For 1927, for a man of his age, your grandfather's grasp of the possibilities of cinema was astounding. History books will have to be rewritten. If we can show that DeMille and Abel Gance saw this movie, we will have to reevaluate their innovations.” And so forth.