Film society screens classics to celebrate 80th anniversary

When The Blue Angel screens in Dunedin next week, it will be cause for celebration. An opportunity to see Marlene Dietrich’s career-making turn as Lola Lola — “a performer in a cabaret dripping with atmospheric Weimar sleaze” — on the big screen comes around only rarely. It will also be an opportunity to remember important battles fought and won over censorship, as Dietrich’s risqué role was originally regarded as beyond the pale in the conservative New Zealand of the time. So, it’s no surprise that the screening comes courtesy of the city’s resident lovers of film, the Dunedin Film Society, which is celebrating 80 years of opening windows on the world and broadening the minds of those who look through them. The society has two German films lined up this month, courtesy of the Goethe-Institut, to mark the beginning of its 80th-anniversary year — both screening for free at Rialto. First up is The Blue Angel next Wednesday, followed by the 1922 version of Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror a week later. Both represent important moments in film history, Dunedin Film Society president Alister McDonald says. “The Blue Angel is a key title in New Zealand film censorship history. And in the case of Nosferatu, it's the first Dracula film. It's essentially the first vampire film — and they made it without getting permission from Bram Stoker's estate.” That was also almost its undoing, as the Bram Stoker estate took legal action and most copies of the film were destroyed. Fortunately, though, not all of them. It is an important example of German Expressionism in film, McDonald says. “When I saw that it was going to be available this year, I absolutely wanted Dunedin film fans to have the chance to see it.” It might well be that it has never before been shown on the big screen in the city. [Missing Credit]Max Schreck as Count Orlok in 'Nosferatu'. The Blue Angel did make it into the cinema here. But only years after it was made, and even then with restrictions attached. “It was finally allowed into New Zealand in 1954, having been made in 1930. So, almost 25 years until New Zealand audiences were allowed to see it. And, in fact, it was only film society audiences who were allowed to see it at that point.” The relationship between Dietrich’s character, the provocatively attired nightclub singer Lola Lola, and the stuffy Prof Immanuel Rath, played by Emil Jannings, who falls for her, apparently posed a razor’s risk to our social fabric. Dietrich is famous in the English-speaking world for her performance of Falling in Love Again in the movie, though The Blue Angel was filmed in both English and German and it is perhaps the German song she sings that has the racier lyric: “I am from top to toe, ready for love”. McDonald says he expects it will be the German version they will show, given it’s the Goethe-Institut providing the reels. It’s a movie that captures a particular time in German history, he says. “That whole Berlin cabaret world, which of course is captured in Cabaret, the American cabaret musical and movie. That's exactly the milieu that it is coming out of.” It was a world abruptly proscribed shortly thereafter, when the Nazis took power. “Those two films have distinctive parts to play in world cinema history,” McDonald says. “And both by major German directors, F.W. Murnau in the first case and Josef von Sternberg in the second case.” Nosferatu is a silent film and it is really only the film society now that preserves the opportunity to see them in a cinema setting, he says. “And going to The Blue Angel again, the film society movement in New Zealand has played a key role over the decades in getting New Zealand censorship liberalised. There were a number of cases where the Federation of Film Societies imported important films and fought censorship battles to eventually allow them to be screened.” Other notable victories, going back to 1946, included Battleship Potemkin, the Soviet film by Sergei Eisenstein, the great Russian director and film theorist, which tells the story of a Russian naval crew who mutiny in order to support the Russian Revolution of 1905. “We had been allied with the Russians in the war, but as soon as the war finished, the Cold War curtain came down.” So, Soviet cinema wasn't to be seen in main street New Zealand cinema screens. However, the censor had to admit that it was a film of significance, McDonald says. The country’s film societies continued to push back against censorship based on politics and prudishness over the decades. Swedish films I am Curious (Yellow) and I am Curious (Blue) fell foul of the censor in the 1960s, the Federation of Film Societies finally getting access to them the following decade — on the proviso they were shown only to film society members. The films contained some “adult content”, providing the pretext for the restriction, but also challenged the Swedish state from a left-wing perspective, McDonald says. At the time, 11% of the societies’ titles were screened as “Restricted to Film Society Members Only”, the RFS restriction. Another, La Grande Bouffe, a French film in which four wealthy friends meet to eat themselves to death, also took some years to make its way past the censor. “It's utter gluttony on all levels that they indulge in over the weekend in a château. So, it's a satire on a consumerist Western society.” At about that time, the federation passed the baton on to the New Zealand International Film Festival — itself a spin-off from the federation — to continue the struggle for access to the best of the world’s cinema. Long-running director of the New Zealand International Film Festival, Bill Gosden, fronted several such battles. “So, there's a long history there of the film society movement endeavouring to broaden the range of options that New Zealand viewers have.” The arguments were that the films were demonstrably important, whether artistically or politically. “And arguing that an adult audience should be entitled to see them and make up their own mind about the content. Eventually that argument prevailed and you now have a censorship system which largely operates on a warning basis — alerting people in advance to the content they're going to see, should they choose to go and see the film, rather than stopping them seeing it outright." However, it wasn’t just a matter of championing the sexually or politically charged. World cinema was always part of the purpose. Going right back to the Dunedin Film Society’s origins in the 1940s, it worked with the cinema-owning Kerridge family to bring in prints of major European titles that would not otherwise be screened as part of a standard cinema programme. In March 1947, Robert Kerridge screened six films from a shortlist provided by the society (at that time called the Dunedin Film Institute) at his High St cinema. “So, that first film festival in 1947 is the first in Australasia. It's not until 1952 that Melbourne, a city probably 20 times the size of Dunedin at that point, gets a film festival. “The society's job then and now was to help publicise and promote the festival, and again to educate the audience as to what they were going to be seeing.” That educational role survives to this day in a “sneak peak” session organised by the Dunedin Film Society ahead of each year’s Whānau Mārama New Zealand International Film Festival. This year it will be fronted by Ryley Atkinson, who has served as vice-president of the New Zealand Federation of Film Societies and last year served on the festival’s selection panel. He will discuss 10 films of particular importance from this year’s line-up of about 75 titles. The Dunedin Film Society itself is in good shape with almost 300 members, about 100 turning out at a time for its weekly screenings in the University of Otago’s Colquhoun lecture theatre, McDonald says. That’s off its high-water mark of 1000 back in 1947, but still evidence of the popularity of its work. “It's not a cult, it's a full-scale society,” McDonald remarks. What it offers members today is the chance to see cinema classics, the chance to see foreign films, the chance to see English language art house films, a second chance at some of the NZIFF titles that don't get a cinema re-release and the occasional premiere. “Last year we had a film called Eileen, which stars Miranda Harcourt's daughter, Thomasin McKenzie, which had obviously not done the business and so the distributors hadn't put it into New Zealand cinema release. And the first chance to see that film in Dunedin on a big screen was at the society.” And all for a subscription of $70 a year for the waged, or $60 for the unwaged. About a third of the price of other centres’ film societies. Added to which, Dunedin members get a say in the year’s line-up, then sit with each other to enjoy the show. “You can sit at home and watch a small screen, or even a wall-sized screen, but it's a different experience to come out and experience that film on a bigger screen, realistically, in a cinema setting with better sound, and communally,” McDonald says. “You're having the experience with other people in a way that you're probably not in the comfort of your own lounge.” The 80th anniversary screenings Wednesday August 5 The Blue Angel, at Rialto Dunedin Wednesday August 12 Nosferatu, at Rialto Dunedin Both films supplied by the Goethe-Institut. Because seats are limited, those interested should reserve theirs by emailing dunedinfilmsociety@gmail.com.