Retrospective: Münchner Gruppe
What Life Should Be All About
The "Münchner Gruppe" (Munich Group) meant a lot to a lot of people at different times. Which is pretty extraordinary, since it hadn't even existed for longer than half a decade. And maybe not even that, really. After all, Max Zihlmann claims that the Münchner Gruppe had never existed at all. The one thing that did exist was a group of guys who made films together for a while. Unless they were going to the cinema together, chasing chicks, playing pinball or drifting through the day like the protagonists of their films, that is. That's what it was all about: Leading lives that were congruent, or at least compatible, with the films they were making, and vice versa.
In the beginning, the Münchner Gruppe consisted of Rudolf Thome, Klaus Lemke, Max Zihlmann, Peter Nestler, Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet. In 1965, they all signed the "second Oberhausen manifesto", in which they protested against the rejection of their films and the nepotic academism of the "Young German Film". That was the only time they had acted as a group: Nestler has no connection to "Lemke-Thome-Zihlmann", who had been brought into the group by Straub. Straub and Huillet, on the other hand, had been the mentors and gods of the three, and they loved listening to them and getting closer to the much admired Nouvelle Vague simply by being close to them. (After all, Straub knew Godard). But "Thome-Lemke-Zihlmann" had never worked with them. (The only exception being Thome's cameo appearance as a waiter in 1964's "Nicht versöhnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt wo Gewalt herrscht").
However, Thome and Zihlmann had already been in touch with Eckhart Schmitt, a fellow critic who wanted to change everything about German Cinema. Inspired by the films of Howard Hawks, Otto Preminger and Nicholas Ray, he had come to love Cahiers du Cinema. Then along came Lemke, and immediately, he had to choose between Schmidt and "Thome-Zihlmann". And so he did, leaving Schmidt to his own devices.
Now things got really complicated. "Thome-Lemke-Zihlmann" was a nucleus that attracted other individuals: Among them May Spils and Werner Enke, Marquard Bohm, Niklaus Schilling, Martin Müller, Veith von Fürstenberg, Roger Fritz and Marran Gosov, to name but a few. Most of them had worked with Thome and Lemke before, others would do so later. Enke participated in several films by Lemke, Schilling worked the camera for Thome and Lemke every now and then, Bohm became the axiom of the early cinema by Thome. Still, they retained their own, independent attitude towards cinema.
"Thome-Lemke-Zihlmann" along with Nestler, Straub and Huillet were the true Nouvelle Vague, offering the utopia of an unalienated life. This new cinema was aware of reality and relaxed in its staged materialism, to which grass, wallpaper and a smile were all the same. In a now forgotten and precious way, it was even bourgeois. "Thome-Lemke-Zihlmann", along with Spils, Schilling and others - that was Swinging Munich: arch contemporary, nonchalant, cool, cosmopolitan and often uncouth. Then again, they were moony, insane and a bit cold every now and then, their models were made of both flesh and wood. The sheer range of it all gives an idea of their genius.
Around 1970 things fell apart. The 1968 student movement had gone down the drain, and the first feature length films were living proof that they all had wanted something different, even though things weren't that far apart, either. This led to the first real catastrophes. Things turned serious, money became important. Some were successful, others weren't. Then Lemke moved to Hamburg, Thome to Berlin, Straub and Huillet to Italy and Nestler to Sweden. Still, something had changed in German cinema.
