Mysteries of a Barbershop

1923 film

Mysteries of a Barbershop

Karl Valentin as the Barber

Directed by| Erich Engel
Written by| Bertolt Brecht, Karl Valentin
Starring| Erwin Faber, Karl Valentin, Max Schreck, Blandine Ebinger, Josef Eichheim, Annemarie Hase, Kurt Horwitz, Liesl Karlstadt, Hans Leibelt, Carola Neher, Otto Wernicke
Music by| silent

Release dates

* 1923 (1923) (created, but not released until rediscovered in 1972)

Running time

| 33 minutes (one reeler)
Country| Germany
Language| (subtitles) German

Mysteries of a Barbershop (‹See Tfd›German: Mysterien eines Frisiersalons) is a comic, slapstick German film of 33 minutes, created by Bertolt Brecht, directed by Erich Engel, and starring the Munich cabaret clown Karl Valentin and leading stage actor Erwin Faber. Brecht reportedly did not write a complete shooting script, but rather produced "notes" and "parts of a manuscript" (according to Faber) for this short, silent film and intended the actors to improvise the action.[1] Although the film was not considered a success by any of its creative team, and consequently was never released as a profit making film to the public, it has been recognized and acknowledged—since its re-discovery in a Moscow archive in the 1970s—as a considerably important German film.[2]

## "A Little Joke" by Bertolt Brecht

[edit]

In an interview with Erwin Faber, who played Dr. Moras—the "romantic star" of the film—it was clear that Mysteries of a Barbershop was intended by Brecht in this, his first attempt at filmmaking, to be nothing more than "just a little joke."[3]

Mysteries of a Barbershop was created during a month-long pause before the beginning of rehearsals for Bertolt Brecht's early drama, In the Jungle of Cities at the Munich National Theatre, in February 1923. Brecht and Erich Engel (the director of In the Jungle), assembled a cast that included Karl Valentin, Liesl Karlstadt (Valentin's cabaret partner), Erwin Faber (the leading actor in Munich at the time and star of Brecht's three staged plays in Munich – Drums in the Night, In the Jungle of Cities, and the forthcoming Edward II), Max Schreck (soon to be a leading film actor in such films as Nosferatu), comic actor Josef Eichheim, character actor Kurt Horwitz, Carola Neher (later to play the lead in Brecht's Happy End and the role of Polly in the film of Threepenny Opera) and the cabaretist (and wife of songwriter, Friedrich Hollaender), Blandine Ebinger. The group improvised a series of comic and mock-romantic scenes, which, according to one critic, "contains enough cruelty jokes to have made WC Fields envious."[4]

## Plot

[edit]

The plot revolves around Dr. Moras (Faber) who visits a barber (Valentin), who accidentally shaves Moras to look like a Chinese person, and then mistakenly cuts off Moras' rival's head, which is sewn back on, and ends with a sword fight—"The Duel"—in which Faber is triumphant, actually saved by the barber's assistant (Ebinger), and Ebinger and Faber embrace in a happy ending in a mysterious Senegalese Salon.

The finale of Faber and Ebinger kissing illustrates one of Brecht's first uses of the mock-romantic "happy ending" that would become a signature of Brecht's work throughout the years of the Weimar Republic.[5]

One critic aptly called the short film "dadaesque absurdity combine[d] with clownesque slapstick."[6] Another reviewer called it "Karl Valentin meets Dada and the Marx Brothers."[7]

## Production

[edit]

* Director: Erich Engel (with a little help from Bertolt Brecht)
* Script: Bertolt Brecht (with Karl Valentin and quite possibly Erich Engel)
* Actors: Erwin Faber, Karl Valentin, Max Schreck, Blandine Ebinger, Josef Eichheim, Annemarie Hase, Kurt Horwitz, Liesl Karlstadt, Hans Leibelt, Carola Neher, Otto Wernicke.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ See "A Brecht-Valentin Production: Mysteries of a Barbershop", by W. Stuart McDowell, Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Winter, 1977), p 4.
2. ^ "A Brecht-Valentin Production: Mysteries of a Barbershop", W. Stuart McDowell, Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Winter, 1977), pp. 5.
3. ^ "Acting Brecht: The Munich Years," by W. Stuart McDowell, in The Brecht Sourcebook, Carol Martin, Henry Bial, editors (Routledge, 2000) p. 71 - 83.
4. ^ Acting in the Cinema, James Naremore. (Performing Arts, 1988), 115.
5. ^ For a detailed account of the plot of the film, as well as its creation, see "A Brecht-Valentin Production: Mysteries of a Barbershop", W. Stuart McDowell, Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Winter, 1977), pp. 2-14.
6. ^ "Carnivalesque meets Modernity in the film of Karl Valentin and Charlie Chaplin," David Robb, Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film. (Performing Arts, 2006), p. 93.
7. ^ "Press Portal: a Service of the Bavarian News," (Bayerischer Rundfunk), 23 May 2007.

## External links

[edit]

* Mysteries of a Barbershop at IMDb
* Mysterien eines Frisiersalons (1923) on YouTube

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Bertolt Brecht

Dramatic
works|

* Baal
* Drums in the Night
* A Wedding
* Driving Out a Devil
* Mysteries of a Barbershop
* In the Jungle of Cities
* Edward II
* Man Equals Man
* Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer
* The Elephant Calf
* Little Mahagonny
* The Threepenny Opera
* The Flight Across the Ocean
* The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent
* Happy End
* Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
* Der Jasager / Der Neinsager
* The Decision
* Saint Joan of the Stockyards
* The Exception and the Rule
* The Mother
* Kuhle Wampe
* The Seven Deadly Sins
* Round Heads and Pointed Heads
* The Horatians and the Curiatians
* Fear and Misery of the Third Reich
* Señora Carrar's Rifles
* Life of Galileo
* How Much Is Your Iron?
* Dansen
* Mother Courage and Her Children
* The Trial of Lucullus
* Mr Puntila and His Man Matti
* The Good Person of Szechwan
* The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
* Hangmen Also Die!
* The Visions of Simone Machard
* The Duchess of Malfi
* Schweyk in the Second World War
* The Caucasian Chalk Circle
* Antigone
* The Days of the Commune
* The Tutor
* Die Verurteilung des Lukullus
* Report from Herrnburg
* Coriolanus
* The Trial of Joan of Arc at Rouen, 1431
* Turandot
* Don Juan
* Trumpets and Drums

Poems, songs|

* "Reminiscence of Marie A."
* "Alabama Song"
* "Pirate Jenny"
* "What Keeps Mankind Alive?"
* "Solidaritätslied"
* "Einheitsfrontlied"
* "Kinderhymne"
* "Die Lösung"

Theories and
techniques|

* Epic theatre
* Lehrstücke
* Non-Aristotelian drama

* Complex seeing
* Defamiliarization
* Demonstration
* Fabel
* Gestus
* Historicization
* Interruptions
* Not / But
* Refunctioning
* Separation of the elements

* Messingkauf Dialogues
* The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre
* A Short Organum for the Theatre
* Street scene

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