Der Kinoerzähler (1993)

Somewhere in provincial Germany: Around 1930, the cinema narrator has a dying profession. This is all the more tragic because he does what he does with passion: the aging man performs live narration for the silent films being shown and accompanies some scenes with his own music, playing the violin. But now a new era is knocking at the doors of the “Apollo” cinema, and that spells bad news for the narrator: sound films are demanding admission, heralding the end of his profession. For his wife, Marie, who never had much sympathy for her husband’s life in the shadowy realm of flickering images and often argues with him, this loss is insignificant. The cinema owner, Theilhaber, soon switches entirely to sound films and no longer needs the film enthusiast, so the old man with his obsolete profession is soon out on the street. At least his considerably younger lover, Marga, is still on his side, but she cannot find the cinema narrator a new job either. Money is tight, and before long all hope rests on their daughter Klara, who is supposed to make advances to the landlord so they can at least get the rent reduced. The cinema narrator finds his greatest comfort in his little grandson, Paul. The two are inseparable. With the boy in tow, he travels to Potsdam-Babelsberg, intending to make one last, almost touchingly naive attempt to somehow avert the inevitable: namely, to convince the powerful film-makers that sound films will not prevail in the long run and that people must resist the decline of the art of (silent) cinema. The cinema narrator is not even granted an audience, but there he meets Paul’s father, who comes galloping up on a white horse in grand style. He had once abandoned Klara and the boy, and is now a successful actor—of all things, in sound films. When Paul’s grandfather sees how fascinated the boy is by his father’s glittering life in front of the cameras and microphones, he knows that he has now lost for good. When the National Socialists march through the streets, hope briefly stirs once more in the cinema narrator. Might Hitler’s government rediscover silent film as a high art and support it? But reality turns out differently. The “Apollo” cinema goes up in flames because a highly flammable nitrate-film print catches fire, and burns to the ground. The Jewish cinema owner, Theilhaber, is expatriated: the authorities summarily exclude him from “Aryan-German” society.