KOHLHIESEL'S DAUGHTERS / I DON'T WANT TO BE A MAN

Film Patron Jenni Zylka's introduction to Lubitsch's female characters

My name is Jenni Zylka, I am a film journalist, film curator and film buff.

The Ernst Lubitsch evening featured three remarkable female characters.

First, KOHLHIESEL’S DAUGHTERS from 1920, in a version digitally restored by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation with Bertelsmann’s support, featuring Germany’s first film star Henny Porten in a double role. I would like to draw your attention to the make-up right away: the hairstyles of the sisters Gretel and Liesel Kohlhiesel, daughters of the gnarled Kohlhiesel farmer in the Bavarian Alps sometime in the 19th century, are symptomatic of the characters and the times.
As the elegant Gretel, Henny Porten wears her hair in a farmer’s plait, later called a French plait, braided closely around her head: refined, skillful, neat. Not only does she know how to remove the froth from her beer in a ladylike manner, she can also clean house, beautify herself and, above all, smile. Her coarse sister Liesel, on the other hand, reluctantly twists her hair into a rudimentary knot – which, incidentally, also features in the 1962 film version of the story, worn by Lilo Pulver.
This loose bun is currently back in fashion among young women. Known as an “undone” or “messy bun,” it is meant to express a relaxed, “so-what” attitude towards alleged beauty rules. Liesel herself is, in fact, one would say today, relaxed and couldn’t care less about conventions: She swaggers like a cowboy, eats like a horse, drinks like a sailor. Nothing against cowboys, horses and sailors, but she is a conspicuously unladylike lady. The two male protagonists of the film, the sturdy Peter Xaver, played by the world’s first Oscar winner Emil Jannings, and Paul Seppl, played by Gustav von Wangenheim with his fine features and endearing dimples, both focus their gaze/attention – of course – on Gretel at first, but then Seppl devises a plan that ends up making all parts of the foursome happy. As you will see in a moment.
There is without a doubt a lot of misogyny and simplification in this rural romp loosely based on Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” – after all, Liesel has to be “tamed” and dominated, cannot remain who she is in order to get a man, but instead has to transform herself into a submissive woman who doesn’t talk back. But surely you don’t believe that a Liesel Kohlhiesel, embodied by the tough comedienne Henny Porten, will maintain this submissive attitude after her marriage? And if I have the right measure of Xaver, that’s a good thing: Here, two people have found each other who truly love each other. For Lubitsch, Xaver’s fisticuffs, which must rightly be deplored, also symbolized the equal strength of the partners.
Moreover, although Lubitsch, a city dweller, shows a traditional understanding of roles in KOHLHIESEL’S DAUGHTERS, his humoristic jabs are directed with even more relish at farmers and their supposedly hearty, rural way of life. His country bumpkins are truly in for a bumpy ride with their kin. At the same time, Lubitsch paints an impressively diverse picture of women, as we will see even more clearly in this evening’s second film, I DON’T WANT TO BE A MAN from 1918. So outraged was society by its cheeky female protagonist, the first teenage rebel in film history, that the film was banned for young people at the time. Comedic talent Ossi Oswalda as Ossi, the niece of a councilor of commerce, whose bigoted guardians forbid her to do anything they themselves do, and who flouts these rules by smoking, drinking, playing cards and letting herself be courted: sweet-talking students sing the lewd hit “Ja wenn das der Petrus wüsst” (“If only Saint Peter knew”) under her window. And because this is not just a coming-of-age story, but also a cross-dresser movie and comedy of errors, Ossi goes on a heroine’s journey that is really something. She dresses up in men’s clothes, struts along Berlin’s Ku’damm, goes to party at the Mäusepalast, comes to realize that while men are rough, women are ruthless, drinks too much and smokes cigars. As a result, when she finally meets her love interest, she is quite inebriated, but nevertheless senses that he is The One. Later, these two people, identified as male at the time, kiss intimately, on the mouth – and Lubitsch never resolves who knew, at the time of the kiss, what exactly the other person really is or wishes to be.

So I DON’T WANT TO BE A MAN is highly complex LGBTQ+ material. Because the film expands the perception of both women and men. And is not only a strong example of Lubitsch’s imagination and inventiveness, but also of his perhaps unconsciously dormant knowledge that nothing can be set in stone when it comes to gender constructs. And that cinema and comedy are fantastically suited to loosening tight gender rules in order to finally break them for good, with or without undone buns and cigars.

But a silent movie without music is only half the story: The Austrian conductor, pianist, organist and composer Florian C. Reithner has often been heard and seen at the UFA Film Nights. In 2015 he was commissioned by Bertelsmann to create a new score for Murnau’s 1930 film TABU. He composed the music for MOUNTAIN OF DESTINY and then played the organ with the Metropolis Orchester Berlin as a soloist at the UFA Film Nights in 2022. His new composition for KOHLHIESEL’S DAUGHTERS was performed by the Metropolis Orchestra Berlin under the direction of Burkhard Götze. After a 15-minute break between the films, the Ensemble Narrativ, formed especially for I DON’T WANT TO BE A MAN by violinist, violist and composer Maria Reich and Florian C. Reithner, made its debut.

This text has been slightly redacted

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