Freebie Film Tip #2: An Absurdist's Take on the Absurdly Cheerful

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Freebie Film Tip #2: An Absurdist's Take on the Absurdly Cheerful

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Today's film: Frank Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life, courtesy of Open Culture and Youtube.

A word about Open Culture: it's a great source of online freebies. It's a safe site, it loads well, without too much intrusive monetisation, and it's got a variety of resources. Elektra's going crazy with it – language lessons, audio books, textbooks, etc. And, of course, fil-ums, for us addicts. The kinds of fil-ums we're eager to see: the avant-garde, the unusual, the furrin, the downright weird.

Like this great idea about Franz Kafka. The film is described as 'absurdist'. That's about it. What if Franz Kafka, author of The Metamorphosis (1915), had stumbled into the world of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946)? Lovely. As an homage to Expressionist film-making, it's brilliant. Since it's a Youtube link, you'll have to click three times to see it all, but at 25 minutes, the whole film isn't that long. Settle back and enjoy.

Oh, and they won a BAFTA award.

A few words about Franz Kafka. He may not be a household name – at least, not in a sane household. But if, like me, you are a student of German literature, he is a haunting presence. We couldn't get through our undergraduate years without a study of the gloomy master from Prague.

My first semester:

Professor Gänsefleisch: Herr Kowalski, where was Kafka born? (Only he asked it in German. Professor Gänsefleisch never spoke English, ostensibly because we needed the practice – in reality, because he was embarrassed about his accent.)

Kowalski (in very bad German): In Czechoslovakia.

Professor Gänsefleisch: Idiot! (This is the same in German, only it sounds more impressive.) WHEN was Kafka born?

Kowalski: Er, 1883.

Professor Gänsefleisch: And WHEN was Czechoslovakia founded?

Kowalski: Er…

Professor Gänsefleisch: October, 1918! Franz Kafka was born in the AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE!

And so on. Kafka was a trap for more than one unwary student. I don't remember who it was – it wasn't Kowalski – but some Idiot or other went into his oral exam, for his master's degree, having read a large amount of the literary backlog in translation. Definitely a no-no. He was outted by Kafka.

Professor Gänsefleisch: What works of Kafka have you read, mein Herr?

Student, confidently: Ich habe Kafkas 'Die Metamorphose' gelesen.

Professor Gänsefleisch: PAH! QUATSCH! In German, it is called Die Verwandlung.

Back to the drawing board. . . Kafka didn't inspire dread in serious German students only. Language beginners hated the fellow, as well. You see, Kafka's style is deceptively simple. He's much easier for a beginner to read than, say, Siegfried Lenz. Lenz writes in dialect and uses lots of technical terminology, as I remember from trying to work through Der Mann im Strom, a book about Hamburg divers, back in high school. Kafka writes simple sentences like:

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

Simple, straightforward, not a page-long sentence (with the verb on the next page) like Thomas Mann would write. But herein lies the problem: That's the first sentence of the story.

An insect in the process of being trapped in amber.

My student came in, discouraged. She was a nice young lady, so I felt bad about it.

Student: Herr Gheorgheni, I'm never going to learn German. I'm hopeless at it.

Me: Why, Suzy, what's the problem? Did you do the translation for today?

Student: I did, but what I got was, 'When Gregor Samsa woke up from a restless dream one morning, he found himself in his bed, transformed into a monstrous insect.' I'm never going to understand this language.

Me: Er, class? There are a few things I need to explain about German literature. . .

It wasn't all bad. In the late 1960s, hippies decided that Kafka and Hesse were groovy. The delightful Heidi from Berkeley kept the department's enrollment at an all-time high by offering survey courses in these two abstruse writers, who the 'tune in and turn on' crowd were sure were bead-wearing gurus. (Kafka was a bank clerk with mental problems, while Hesse was a missionary's kid.) We loved it – Kafka and Hesse, plus Dr B's course on 'Siegfried for footballers', kept the German Department 'relevant'.

All of these useless reminiscences have absolutely nothing to do with this delightful little experimental film, other than to explain why anybody who has studied German literature would find it wonderfully funny.

Enjoy.

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