Lothar Lambert & Wolfram Zobus – 1 Berlin-Harlem (1974)
Quote:
The title refers to the postcode 1000, which was valid for the whole of West Berlin at the time and was often abbreviated to 1. In larger cities, the number of the postal delivery district was placed after the place name. This resulted in designations such as “1 Berlin 36” or “1 Berlin 44”.
The ban on the film at the Lambert retrospective at the 1982 Toronto festival was immediately reflected in the film “Fräulein Berlin”, which was made there at the time: The protagonist who travelled to the festival reports that her film “Monster Woman” was not allowed to be screened.
Probably because of the oral sex that Dietmar Kracht performs on Conrad Jennings at the Wannsee lido – a scene that was criticised by many critics at the premiere for being too blatant – the film has not been shown on television to this day.
Film Synopsis
A black man stationed in West Berlin quits his service in the US army and moves in with his (white) girlfriend, who already has a small child by another dark-skinned man. After an argument with her family, he also falls out with her. Although he finds a job and new accommodation, he continues to encounter racism, which also manifests itself in sexual intrusiveness.
Content (CONTAINS SPOILERS)
First a quote: “I am the man / I suffered / I was there – whitman”
A plump pub landlady with a voluminous hairstyle addresses a black GI sitting at the bar: [more]
Lothar Lambert remembers (2009)
Like our previous films, “1 Berlin-Harlem” was made without an elaborate script. There was one because of the film funding – fifty thousand marks from the Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film – but Zobus left the only copy somewhere on a pub crawl and we improvised again.
We looked for an actor for the leading role via the “BZ”. But then Claudia Barry, this disco queen, got in touch. I thought she was so great that we added a role for her. Many scenes were also added when Fassbinder was involved. The fact that the master was there meant that people like Brigitte Mira, Günther Kaufmann and Ortrud Beginnen could also be brought in.
I never chased after the various celebrities who still appear in my films today. I first got to know some of them through interviews I did as a journalist, and later it always turned out that they appeared in my circle of acquaintances. Stefan Menche was friends with Peter Chatel, whom I also got to know that way and simply asked him to ask Fassbinder if he wanted to take part. Without me having spoken to him, he then turned up with Ingrid Caven. I had already interviewed him in Cannes and met him at the premiere of Praunheim’s “Berliner Bettwurst”. He had given me his mum’s phone number, but I didn’t do anything more with the contact. I think I’ve missed many opportunities like that in my life.
During the filming, for which we of course had no permits, there were no problems anywhere, not even at Bahnhof Zoo or in front of the Andrews Barracks, the US barracks in Lichterfelde, where the Federal Archives are now located. We also filmed undisturbed at the Wannsee lido, although the possible use of dildos in various films is left to the viewer’s speculation. Because of the oral sex scene, however, “1 Berlin-Harlem” was not allowed to be shown at the Retro in Toronto. I refused to take the scene out, so we discussed censorship in the cinema instead. The subject of black people and sex was already a taboo back then, and then gay sex on top of that, that just multiplies. That’s probably why the film was never shown on television. Even when we presented the film at the Abaton in Hamburg, the auditorium emptied rapidly when Dietmar Kracht started performing fellatio.
I don’t even know what Conrad Jennings, the leading actor, thought of it. He was such a difficult guy, which was also reflected in the role. He really was a programmer at Siemens. He had previously been under psychiatric treatment with this famous psychiatrist Laing, whose innovation was to live in a flat with his patients (which is later found in a similar way in “What you never wanted to know about women”). Maybe that’s why he went to Berlin, to get away from his problems. Our love affair had ended and the film was, so to speak, a reappraisal of this failed relationship. As I said, Zobus and I were looking for an actor with the “BZ”, but shortly beforehand I had told Conrad about the project, and to my great astonishment he was prepared to play himself, so to speak. So it was actually a bit unfair to let other applicants audition, but we tried to get as many of them as possible into supporting roles. One of them was Cullen Maiden, who sang Porgy in the Komische Oper in East Berlin at the time – he played the activist in the Vietnam round. About a year ago, I got a call from someone who said: “I was in a psychiatric institution with Conrad Jennings, he’s been dead for fifteen years now, died of a heart problem.” After the film was shot, we never met again. My need for a dialogue with him was over. I don’t even remember if he ever saw “1 Berlin-Harlem”.
Critical comments
“1 Berlin-Harlem” is the crowning glory of Lothar Lambert and Wolfram Zobus’ joint film-making. In comparison to their previous works, it is a film that seems “big”: With an independent, long opening credits sequence (to this day, Lambert has treated opening and closing credits rather stepmotherly), with a parade of celebrities, “clean” sound and specially written music, of unusual length (Lambert’s films are often only just about full-length, the 97 minutes of “1 Berlin-Harlem” was only surpassed over forty years later by the documentary “Verdammt nochmal Berlin”), also distributed in the “normal” 35 mm cinema film format and meeting with a remarkably great response.
The latter may have been due in particular to the topic that most people saw addressed here: the everyday and often latent racism in contemporary West German society, which was barely recognised by the “perpetrators”. Admittedly, this claim was somewhat thwarted by the fact that the main character – as is so often the case with Lambert – was modelled on the personality of his actor. The ex-GI who embarks on an odyssey through West Berlin in the seventies seems aimless and inaccessible. He likes to say that he needs time for himself, but he doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. He is very sensitive when it comes to how people treat him and is annoyed when people make demands of him. On the other hand, he also treats his fellow human beings quite rudely and only seems to be interested in them to the extent that he needs them. Of course, members of all kinds of minorities also have a right not to be easy to care for. However, in view of his character, the problems of the rather taciturn protagonist can easily be dismissed as at least partly caused by himself, as difficulties of a relationship-disturbed, introverted, egocentric outsider with a low frustration threshold, often independent of his skin colour. In addition, the worst and most widespread form of racism towards people with black African roots appears to be that they are assumed to have a particularly high sexual potency. Something that, just like being regarded as an object of lust, could also be perceived as flattery, at least from today’s perspective.
Like various other Lambert works, “1 Berlin-Harlem” is preceded by a quote and the film is structured by intertitles. Right in the first few minutes, the main actor undresses in front of the camera, completely, and you can see everything. As with the other nude scenes, this not only reflects a desire for provocation or for what has only recently been allowed to some extent, but also an endeavour to be honest: why not show what it is like, why frantically pan away, look for “discreet” image sections, why not let people appear naked where they are naked – in their bedroom, for example? The same applies to sex scenes, of which at least the one at the Wannsee lido still seems to disturb many viewers today. One wonders why. After all, in addition to this near-rape of the protagonist by a complete stranger, there is another gay sexual intercourse that is shown in great detail, but nobody seems to have been upset about it. (You wouldn’t expect any protests about heterosexual intimacy anyway).
Lothar Lambert’s subsequent works are again more experimental in character and seem like further finger exercises. It was only half a decade later with “Die Alptraumfrau” that he succeeded in making a comparably “great” film, which was immediately followed by other of his best and most important films.
1.Berlin.Harlem.1974.480p.WEB.x264.mkv
General
Container: Matroska
Runtime: 1 h 43 min
Size: 685 MiB
Video
Codec: h264
Resolution: 852x480
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Frame rate: 24.000 fps
Bit rate: Variable
BPP:
Audio
#1: 2.0ch AAC LC
https://nitro.download/view/E17D6E5D7F096E0/1.Berlin.Harlem.1974.480p.WEB.x264.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/34652FAE1B50210/1.Berlin.Harlem.1974.480p.WEB.x264.EN.srt
Language(s):German, English
Subtitles:English
