This is an early Nazi propaganda film, and quite a heavy one. It is set in 1932, mostly in Berlin, where communists, social democrats (SPD) and Nazis were battling in the streets. The hero, Hans Westmar (original working title was "Horst Wessel", the (in)famous SA martyr, but the title had to be changed) is a student, who later gives up his study to work as a taxi driver, "to be nearer to the working class people" (though I suppose they wouldn't ride in a taxi too often).
The bad guys are the communists, depicted gleefully as ugly, speaking with bad accent, and having a feminist woman in their round. They try to organize the workers into resistance against the Nazis, with their apartment buildings decorated with red flags and banners.
In what is supposedly an election campaign, the Nazi SA dares to march through the workers' quarters. Brutal street-fighting ensues, and in the end Hans Westmar is dead, and ceremonially buried.
That's basically all there is to the story, with a lot of more details, of course: showing foreign influences in Berlin's night club scene, for instance.
But more interesting is the reception history: I think Goebbels himself banned the film some years later, as it was just too bad, unconvincing propaganda. In 1945, the film was banned again by the victorious allies - and to this day, 65 years later, in Germany it is still blacklisted by the Murnau Foundation as "Vorbehaltsfilm", only allowed public showing in controlled environment, with a speaker to explain it all.
Then again, there's the internet, archive.org in particular, which offers this film for free download. Low resolution image, bad and spotty sound - but still, one can watch it unsupervised by Murnau, and form one's own opinion. It sure is a bad movie, but still interesting to get a better understanding of the Nazi times.
The bad guys are the communists, depicted gleefully as ugly, speaking with bad accent, and having a feminist woman in their round. They try to organize the workers into resistance against the Nazis, with their apartment buildings decorated with red flags and banners.
In what is supposedly an election campaign, the Nazi SA dares to march through the workers' quarters. Brutal street-fighting ensues, and in the end Hans Westmar is dead, and ceremonially buried.
That's basically all there is to the story, with a lot of more details, of course: showing foreign influences in Berlin's night club scene, for instance.
But more interesting is the reception history: I think Goebbels himself banned the film some years later, as it was just too bad, unconvincing propaganda. In 1945, the film was banned again by the victorious allies - and to this day, 65 years later, in Germany it is still blacklisted by the Murnau Foundation as "Vorbehaltsfilm", only allowed public showing in controlled environment, with a speaker to explain it all.
Then again, there's the internet, archive.org in particular, which offers this film for free download. Low resolution image, bad and spotty sound - but still, one can watch it unsupervised by Murnau, and form one's own opinion. It sure is a bad movie, but still interesting to get a better understanding of the Nazi times.