529 - Kameradschaft (Comeradeship), Germany, 1931. Dir. G.W. Pabst.
Gluck Auf!
Good luck for . . .
The understood object of the preposition is "a new lode."
Good luck for a new lode.
May lodes of ore be opened.
I wish you luck in opening a new lode of ore.
Wittkopp stares into the camera. He seems to be speaking to us.
We have to go over there, he says.
The fellow miner, now showered and dressed in clean clothes, salutes him. He intends to leave. To go home for the day.
Dann gluck auf, he says. Then good luck for.
He keeps walking. Wittkopp stops him.
Don't go just yet.
What is it?
You're on the rescue team.
What?
We are in Germany. On the border of France. The French mine has just had an accident. 600 men are trapped. The German miners are talking about it as they wash up at the end of the day.
It was originally one mine. Until the German-French border got moved as a result of the war. And the new border was drawn right through the mine.
Have you ever gone skiing at Heavenly? Above Tahoe. While skiing, you may be in California or you may be in Nevada, and you might not know in which state you are at any given moment.
It would have been the same kind of situation in the mine except that the government authorities placed an iron gate in the tunnel on the boundary line.
With a clear marking on the cross beam 2,500 feet below the earth's surface.
On the French side. Frontiere 1919.
On the German side. Grenze 1919.
And the French have been having trouble with their fires. Gas has been escaping, so that when they detonate dynamite, the fires flare up. The Germans have been feeling the heat on their end.
And then the accident came today. The fires caused cave-ins. And the Frenchmen are trapped.
Our German miners are standing in the clothes drying area of a great shower room. There are so many miners that the room is like a train station lobby. With four-story tall open ceilings. A vaulted roof. And skylights across the top. Hundreds of long chains hang from pulleys from the top of the building, where the men attach their washed, wet clothes and pulley them up to the high ceiling to hang near the skylights and dry.
Hundreds of men can shower at the same time. Hundreds of sets of clothing can hang from the ceiling at the same time.
Wittkopp is standing at a row of chains, where he has been sending clothing up to dry. More than 50 chains fill the screen at one time, with him framed behind them. He is clutching them. Looking through them. Appealing to the miner who is trying to go home.
What are the French to me?
A fellow miner agrees with him.
Think they'd help us?
More join in. They hold grudges.
We know the French! From the Ruhr occupation!
(After World War I, The Treaty of Versailles required the Weimar Republic to make reparation payments to France in the (adjusted) hundreds of billions of dollars. They could not make the payments, so the amount was cut in half. Yet it was still in the (adjusted) hundreds of billions of dollars. When they defaulted, France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr Valley in an effort to force their hand.)
Wittkopp stops them.
Boys, what do we care about generals? A miner is a miner.
A miner is a miner.
This is the theme of the movie.
Do you think the French will pay you a pension if you're hurt over there?
Wittkopp responds.
What about the men down there who can't get out? Don't they have wives and children?
The men continue to argue.
. . . Till you're trapped down there with no one to help you.
He turns the men around. Organizes a rescue team. Wittkopp will get the job done.
Anton. Fritz. One after another, they begin to change their minds. They begin to line up. They prepare to go.
Not everyone joins them. "Cowards needn't come." But plenty do. Like John Wayne recruiting men in Red River.
The men go to the bosses. They request gear and transport to go to the French mine. These are the men who have just gotten off the early shift. They are supposed to be going home.
The boss asks what this is about.
Wittkopp answers him.
We're volunteering.
Wittkopp will get the job done.
The boss gives them permission and provides them with gear. The men fill up two large stake-bed trucks and begin their ride to and across the border.
On their way out, their families line the streets. They know the risk their husbands, fathers, and sons are taking. The air is sober. Death is in the air.
A woman runs out with a sack lunch.
Gustav, you haven't eaten yet.
She hands it up to a man on the truck.
Thanks, mother.
Another woman runs alongside the truck holding her toddler by the hand. Her husband appeals to her.
Anna, half the miners over there are trapped. We have to go. They have wives and children too. Don't cry. You have to understand.
She does understand. And she still cries. She holds their child up to him to hug him, as if, just in case, to say Goodbye.
The trucks move on.
The Germans are marching to France not to attack them but to rescue them.
Last night some German miners crossed the border into France to enjoy a dance hall. They ordered three beers and three schnapps. As they tried to say it in French, the French waitress told them she spoke German and took their order in German. It was a moment to see the two cultures coming together, trying to understand one another.
One of the men, Wilderer, saw a French girl across the room. Francoise. She was with her brother Jean and her boyfriend Emile. She and Emile danced.
Wilderer saw Francoise across the room and wanted to dance with her. So he walked over and asked her to dance. She asked Emile to interpret for her. He told her the man wanted to dance. She said she was tired and did not feel like dancing anymore. She tried to tell Wilderer but he could not understand her. So she told her brother to tell him in German. He did.
Wilderer heard her say the word German and thought she said she did not want to dance with him because he was German. He grew insulted. He wanted to start a row. His friends stopped him. They also stopped him from drinking any more. They exited.
The next morning, this morning, Francoise boarded a train to return to Paris. As it began moving she found out about the accident at the French mine. Both Emile and Jean worked there. She tried to jump off the train but somebody stopped her. So when it arrived at the next stop, she jumped off, abandoning her suitcase, and found a nun to drive her back to the Thibault mine.
The nun asks if she has family in the mine. In a poignant answer, she says, "My brother and . . . his friend." As if she cannot tell the nun that perhaps she is living in sin.
The French miners stand in line to get on the elevator. The elevator goes deep into the shaft. They go down to work the rescue.
Jacques, an older miner trapped below, goes through the mine looking for his grandson Georges. He carries a lantern. He calls for Georges. He finds a body. It is not Georges. He finds a body. It is Georges. He weeps. But then he hears a heartbeat. Georges is alive. Jacques rejoices.
The German miners in their stake-bed trucks, their backs burdened with gear, approach the French border. The driver slows down. He will need to stop and show papers and explain his business and unload everyone and allow them to check all the men. This will take too long. Every minute counts. So a miner standing in the truck bed shouts at him.
Don't stop! Step on it! Keep going!
He does. He races through the border. Breaks the gate arm.
A guard fires his gun into the air. His colleague stops him. He tells him they are the German rescue team. The miners wave back. The French guards stand in appreciation.
The French rescue team arrives down below. They wade into the water. The water comes up to their chests.
At the gates of the French mine--
The wives and families stand above and watch. Hundreds of them.
Our rescue teams are down there, so there's still hope.
The ambulance comes out. They have Albert.
Rose, it's your husband.
Rose goes to Albert. He lies in the ambulance begrimed with soot. She embraces him.
Francoise goes to Albert.
You were with Jean and Emile. Please tell me.
He tells her.
They are all down below. Nothing but bodies.
She rejects his answer. Maybe he is wrong. She grows hysterical.
We have to save them. Let's storm the gates!
Francoise leads the families forward. Like Joan of Arc. They storm the gates.
Security is overwhelmed. He is about to be crushed by the desperate mob.
Call the supervisor. We have to notify the troops.
Notify the troops! Francoise hears him. She hears the word troops. She thinks they are going to shoot on them. She rallies the mob even more.
Inside the compound.
Germans. I can't believe it.
The German rescue team is at your disposal.
Bon Chance!
Gluck Auf!
Wittkopp will get the job done.
Back at the German mine, the second shift is on lunch break. They wish they could help.
If we didn't have to work, we could meet them halfway.
Kasper decides to go. They are already deep below the surface, but he remembers that the mines connect underground. And he knows where. He was here during the war.
Wilderer is with Kasper. He has a grudge about last night. He does not want to go. Then he does.
Jacques carries Georges. He makes it up to the stables. Yes, underground stables. Horses pull coal carts underground. And they have stables with stalls and hay where they stay. Jacques puts Georges in a stall by the large horse. He pulls down hay to make a pallet on the floor.
The three German miners find the iron grate. Kasper says, "We broke through here during the war. It's all one pit."
Wilderer hesitates. If anyone finds out, we'll be fired tomorrow.
Kasper does not care.
You can stay here, sweetheart.
A German rescuer meets a French miner underground. He announces their intentions to help.
The men shake hands. Pabst moves in on a close-up on the handshake. He holds. It resonates.
The three men arrive at the crossbeam with the steel bar gate. The one 2,500 feet down.
Then we see elsewhere in the mine Emile pulling up Jean. They are alive.
Up top at night. All the women stand silently. In the dark. A bell tolls four tolls. Another bell tolls another two. 4:30 am?
Emile tapes on a pipe with his wrench.
We follow the pipe. Trace it as far as we can go. He keeps tapping. No answer.
The three Germans make their way in.
What a mess!
Remember Tommy Lee Jones' entrance in The Fugitive? He said, "My, my, my, what a mess." In 1993. Kasper says it here in 1930.
The three German men find a white horse in a tunnel. He will know his own way back to the stable. They use him. He leads the way.
They find a man lying still upon the ground. They check him. He is dead.
Back at the stable, Jacques works Georges' arms. Like physical therapy. Georges awakens. Opens his eyes. Sees the horse. Sees the old man. Smiles. It's Bijou! He knows the horse.
The other horse, the white horse, pulls the cart. Along the tracks. One of the men talks to him. The other says the horse does not know German. The first one says sometimes horses are smarter than humans.
They find the old man. One of them thinks he is a ghost. They enter the stable with the other horse.
This is Georges, my grandson. I found him.
The men speak German. The man speaks French. They struggle to understand one another.
As they sit there, the ceiling begins to fall, with water dropping down in torrents. The horse tries to break free.
They men are now waist-deep in water.
Elsewhere in the mine a man taps, discouraged, getting slower. Giving up. A German rescuer finds him. He sees the German gas mask. He gets confused. He thinks he is back in the trenches. Watching the Germans throw grenades at him. "Shoot 'em all down!"
We cut to his memory. A battle scene. We see a German soldier attacking him in battle. They fight.
We cut back to the mine. The French miner has attacked the German miner in the same way as his memory. Pabst has matched the blocking of the memory on the battlefield to the present reality of the mine. The French miner rips off the German rescuer's gas mask. He collapses. The German miner tries to revive him. It appears he is dead.
Elsewhere, a cart gets out of control. It crashes. It crushes a man. Two German men pull him out. Maybe he can be saved.
The three German men swing a wooden beam hanging through a chain at the brick wall until they penetrate it. Jacques goes through. He says the air is better in there. They pass the kid through the wall.
Up top.
The German rescue team comes up the elevator. All are accounted for. They think they are finished. No one is looking for Jacques and Georges, let alone three German miners who came through underground and are not part of the trapped crew or the rescue team.
The heroes may become the victims.
The three men come to a cave-in at the main tunnel. Large stones. Blocked. Jacques tries to speak to them. They try to speak back.
One of them expresses his despair.
Then we'll just ride this trolley to heaven.
But then they hear the phone ring.
A male operator plugs in lines to try to reach someone down below. He gives up.
One of the three men finds the phone. On the other side of a fence. In a corner. He calls back.
The operator tells his supervisor it is only bodies down there. Then he gets the call.
5 men trapped in the railcar room!
They say it in German. They say it in French.
Oui! Oui! Cinq hommes. Funf Manner.
Up top.
The rescuers learn there are five more men.
On your feet, boys. There are still men down there. Let's go!
They go back down.
The German rescue team goes down towards the railcar room. near the stables. It is blocked.
In there? Yes. In there.
They have their work to do.
Tapping.
The three men hear it. They tap back.
Georges, you here that? They're coming for us.
That's right! They're coming!
Missing insert.
Berliner Tagesblatt, front page, article.
Release of wounded German rescuers from the hospital.
A band is playing.
One of the three Germans tells his story.
What can I say? We were as good as dead.
What do you think I did then? I got on the phone and told the director, Sir ,at least send some chewing tobacco to our funeral.
A truck arrives bringing rescued men.
Jean. Emile. Francoise greets them.
The French speech--
Comrades, we're all united as miners. That's why you brought me up from down below. And it's because we're all united that our comrade Kasper tore open the bars in Area 1315. And because there are only two enemies on our side of the border--gas and war. We're all united as miners.
We won't say farewell. Just until we meet again.
Au revoir!
Auf Wiedersehen!
The German speech--
It doesn't matter if you're German or French. We're all workers, and a miner is a miner. But why do we only stick together when we're in trouble? Are we to sit idly by till they fill us with so much hatred that we shoot each other down in another war? The coal belongs to us all, whether we shovel it on this side or the other. And if those above us can't come to an agreement, we'll stick together, because we belong together!
Long live our French comrades.
Gluk auf!
We go back to below the mine. To the underground border. 2,500 feet down.
Frontiere 1919. Grenze 1919.
Everything's in order once again. Everything must be in order.
That should hold. You have the paperwork ready?
Yes.
They stamp the papers at the same time. They salute. They exit.
We hold on a view of the iron bars. A cage.
We slowly pull out.
das Ende.
It is 1931, and Pabst has delivered a stirring film to promote harmony between Germany and France. The story is gripping. The camera work is accomplished. The message is moving.
We do not have to fight. The Germans and the French can get along.
We feel the power of it. We buy into it. We believe it.
On May 10, 1940, Adolf Hitler attacked France. On June 14, the Germans occupied Paris.
Just nine years after this movie was made.
* * * *
German miners came to assist their French counterparts.
Their comrades.
When over 1,200 miners were buried alive.
A man sets dynamite. He detonates it. Everything seems normal. Until-
The fire comes up the tunnel.
* * * *
On April 14, 1967, the Bee Gees released their single "New York Mining Disaster 1931." Their first international hit.
It was about the Aberfan Mining Disaster of 1966. 144 people died.
On November 17, 1931, G. W. Pabst released his film Kameradfschaft in Berlin.
It was about the Courrieres Mining Disaster of 1906. 1,200 people died.
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