Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Acting
BERTOLT BRECHT
b. Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, Augsburg, Germany,
10 February 1898, d. 14 August 1956
Bertolt Brecht is a central figure in twentieth-century theater.
A playwright who moved into directing to have an influence
in the production of his own work, Brecht’s first plays
reflected the influence of dadaism and expressionism. He
began directing in 1924 and had his first success in 1928
with The Threepenny Opera. Active in German theater until
Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Brecht spent the next fifteen
years in exile. During this period Brecht wrote the plays for
which he is best remembered, but his work was rarely
produced until he returned to (East) Germany. In the 1950s
touring productions of Brecht’s plays had a salient influence
on Roland Barthes, Jean-Luc Godard, and others interested
in modernist aesthetics and left-leaning politics.
Brecht’s writing on theater practice also had a
profound influence on theater and film. By the 1970s,
Brecht’s critique of conventional theater provided a model
for politically engaged cinema that featured aesthetic
experimentation. Sustained interest in Brecht’s call for
experimental stage practice still prompts filmmakers and
stage practitioners to explore alternative relationships
between performer, director, and audience.
Brecht is best known for defining distinctions between
epic theater and mainstream dramatic theater. According to
Brecht, the two types of theater have different objectives—epic
theater is designed to illuminate the operations of social and
political power, while dramatic theater accommodates people
to existing social realities. Epic theater does not have a fixed
style or set of techniques, and the logic for selecting and
combining aesthetic elements is different from that used in
dramatic theater. In epic theater, dramatic, visual, and aural/
musical elements are placed in counterpoint to emphasize the
constructed nature of representation itself. By comparison,
dramatic theater orchestrates dramatic, visual, and aural/
musical elements to create a coherent and emotionally
engaging reflection of the world as it is defined by the
traditions and myths that serve the interests of those in power.
In Brecht’s productions, actors’ gestures and vocal
expressions were presented in spatial and/or temporal
counterpoint to other performance and staging elements.
At any moment, disparities between lighting, scenic,
musical, and performance elements called attention to the
concrete reality of the elements themselves. Rather than
coming together to create a seamless stage picture, the
disparate performance and staging elements kept meaning
in play and made the entire theater event strange. Building
on Russian formalists’ concept of ‘‘making strange’’ and
the Prague School’s theories on the social function of art’s
‘‘foregrounding effect,’’ Brecht used the term
‘‘verfremdungseffekt’’ (alienation) to describe the effect of
visual, aural, and comedic/dramatic collage techniques
that keep audiences attentive to connections between
social realities and the situations presented onstage.
Throughout his career, collaboration was integral to
Brecht’s work as a playwright and director. He worked
closely with individuals such as director Erwin Piscator,
composer Kurt Weill, actress Lotte Lenya, and actress
Helene Weigl, with whom he founded the Berliner
Ensemble in 1949. The Threepenny Opera (1928), Life of
Galileo (1937), Mother Courage and Her Children (1941),
The Good Person of Setzuan (1943), and The Caucasian
Chalk Circle (1948) are among his best-known plays. After
fleeing from German-occupied countries in Europe,
Brecht lived in southern California from 1941 to 1947.
During that time, he collaborated occasionally with actors,
directors, and screenwriters working in Hollywood. He
chose to leave the United States in 1947 after turning in a
remarkable performance before the House Un-American
Activities Committee as the eleventh unfriendly witness in
a group that later became known as the Hollywood Ten.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Kuhle Wampe (1932), You and Me (1938), Hangmen Also Die
(1943)
FURTHER READING
Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Film and Radio, edited and
translated by Marc Silberman. London: Methuen, 2000.
———. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic,
edited and translated by John Willett. London: Methuen,
1964.
Esslin, Martin. Brecht: The Man and His Work. New York:
Norton, 1974.
Lellis, George. Bertolt Brecht: Cahiers du Cinéma and
Contemporary Film Theory. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Research Press, 1982.
Walsh, Martin. The Brechtian Aspect of Radical Cinema.
London: British Film Institute, 1981.
Cynthia Baron
20 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM