Karl Marx in film
Encyclopedia
Karl Marx and his idea
s have been represented in film in genres ranging from documentary
to fictional drama
, Art house and comedy
.
The Marxist theories of socialism
, communism
, class struggle
, ideology
and political economy
influenced early Soviet-era filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov
and Sergei Eisenstein
. Eisenstein’s theory of montage
owed its “intellectual basis to Marxist dialectics”. However, in addition to his philosophical influence on 20th century cinema
and film-makers, Marx’s life
and times
and his principal works have all been represented in film as subjects in their own right.
Eisenstein’s project, dating from 1927, to film Marx’s book
Das Kapital
was never realised, although in more recent years the German
film director
and author
Alexander Kluge
completed a lengthy homage to Eisenstein’s unrealised film entitled News from Ideological Antiquity: Marx - Eisenstein - Das Kapital.
In the 1960s
French new wave
directors, notably Jean-Luc Godard
, used Marxist themes in their work, including in the films Week End, La Chinoise
and Tout va bien
.
In the 1970s
the Serbian
director Dušan Makavejev
made films which were critical and/or satirical of Marx and Marxist ideology.
In 2007 it was reported that the Haiti
an director Raoul Peck
was writing and directing a Karl Marx biopic about Marx's early life, although the film is yet to be released.
The 2011 documentary film Marx Reloaded
combines a Marxian analysis of economic crisis with satirical animation
sequences involving Marx and Leon Trotsky
.
husband and wife who decide to escape to the countryside for the weekend only to be confronted there by the social contradictions of their consumer
lifestyle. The film makes frequent references to Marx and revolution
, reflecting the wider social issues of French society at the time of its production.
), who refer to Marx and Marxist themes.
”, rather than a conventional and linear narrative
. Instead of representing Marx’s book Capital
, the film is therefore a study of the difficulty facing Eisenstein, or any other director, in trying to represent such a work and the ideas contained in it.
Apart from the more conceptual passages in the film - whose overall running time is a lengthy 570 minutes - comedian Helge Schneider
impersonates Marx in several scenes.
theorist Jason Barker
, is a partly animated documentary film which investigates the contemporary relevance of Marx’s ideas in the context of the global economic and financial crisis of 2008—09. The film asks whether “(we) should ... accept the crisis as an unfortunate side-effect of the free market” or whether there is “another explanation as to why it happened and its likely effects on our society, our economy and our whole way of life.” The film interviews several leading Marx-inspired philosophers and critics including Michael Hardt
, Antonio Negri
, Nina Power
, Jacques Rancière
, Peter Sloterdijk
, Alberto Toscano
and Slavoj Žižek
.
In addition to its Marxian analysis the film follows “The Matrix
-themed cartoon adventures of Karl Marx, lost in an Alice-style commodity
-induced nightmare with only one way out.”
s of the BBC TV comedy
series Monty Python’s Flying Circus include sketches depicting Marx in modern-day settings, and which lampoon the presumed gravity of his thinking. In one episode Marx competes in a TV quiz show
for a lounge suite but fails to win when the show's host poses him a prosaic question about football.
Dušan Makavejev
Jason Barker
Jean-Luc Godard
Marx Reloaded
Sweet Movie
Week End
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
s have been represented in film in genres ranging from documentary
Documentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
to fictional drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
, Art house and comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
.
The Marxist theories of socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
, ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
and political economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
influenced early Soviet-era filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov
David Abelevich Kaufman , better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov , was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist...
and Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
. Eisenstein’s theory of montage
Montage
-Filmmaking:*Montage , a technique which uses rapid editing, special effects and music to present compressed narrative information*Soviet montage theory in the 1920s-Other:* Montage , Documentary television series from 1960s and 1970s...
owed its “intellectual basis to Marxist dialectics”. However, in addition to his philosophical influence on 20th century cinema
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and film-makers, Marx’s life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
and times
Times
The Times is a UK daily newspaper, the original English language newspaper titled "Times". Times may also refer to:In newspapers:*The Times , went defunct in 2005*The Times *The Times of Northwest Indiana...
and his principal works have all been represented in film as subjects in their own right.
Eisenstein’s project, dating from 1927, to film Marx’s book
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
Das Kapital
Das Kapital
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
was never realised, although in more recent years the German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
Alexander Kluge
Alexander Kluge
Alexander Kluge is an author and film director.-Early life, education and early career:Kluge was born in Halberstadt, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany....
completed a lengthy homage to Eisenstein’s unrealised film entitled News from Ideological Antiquity: Marx - Eisenstein - Das Kapital.
In the 1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
French new wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
directors, notably Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, used Marxist themes in their work, including in the films Week End, La Chinoise
La Chinoise
La Chinoise is a 1967 French political film directed by Jean-Luc Godard about young revolutionaries in Paris.-Plot summary:La Chinoise is a loose adaptation, if not parody, of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1872 novel, The Possessed...
and Tout va bien
Tout va bien
Tout va bien is a 1972 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin and starring Jane Fonda and Yves Montand.-Overview:...
.
In the 1970s
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
the Serbian
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
director Dušan Makavejev
Dušan Makavejev
Dušan Makavejev is a Serbian film director and screenwriter, famous for his groundbreaking films of Yugoslav cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s...
made films which were critical and/or satirical of Marx and Marxist ideology.
In 2007 it was reported that the Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
an director Raoul Peck
Raoul Peck
Raoul Peck is an award-winning Haitian filmmaker, of both documentary and feature films, and a political activist. Briefly, in the 1990s, he was Haiti's Minister of Culture.-Biography:...
was writing and directing a Karl Marx biopic about Marx's early life, although the film is yet to be released.
The 2011 documentary film Marx Reloaded
Marx Reloaded
Marx Reloaded is a 2011 German documentary film written and directed by the British writer and theorist Jason Barker. Featuring interviews with several well-known philosophers, the film aims to examine the relevance of Karl Marx's ideas in relation to the global economic and financial crisis of...
combines a Marxian analysis of economic crisis with satirical animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
sequences involving Marx and Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
.
Week End
Jean-Luc Godard’s Week End is a story of a bourgeois ParisianParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
husband and wife who decide to escape to the countryside for the weekend only to be confronted there by the social contradictions of their consumer
Consumer
Consumer is a broad label for any individuals or households that use goods generated within the economy. The concept of a consumer occurs in different contexts, so that the usage and significance of the term may vary.-Economics and marketing:...
lifestyle. The film makes frequent references to Marx and revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
, reflecting the wider social issues of French society at the time of its production.
Sweet Movie
In Sweet Movie, directed by Dušan Makavejev, a boat with a giant Karl Marx figurehead sailing along a river is a consistent narrative motif. The film includes several characters, such as 'Mr. Kapital' (played by John VernonJohn Vernon
John Keith Vernon was a Canadian actor. He made a career in Hollywood after achieving initial television stardom in Canada.-Early life:...
), who refer to Marx and Marxist themes.
News from Ideological Antiquity
Alexander Kluge’s News from Ideological Antiquity: Marx - Eisenstein - Das Kapital, is an experimental film which explores “the Marxian attention to the production, distribution and consumption at work behind the phenomenological surface of everyday life and experience.” The film is composed of what the Marxist critic Frederic Jameson calls “fragments”, akin to “Freudian free associationFree association
Free association may refer to:*Free association , a clinical technique of psychoanalysis devised by Sigmund Freud*Free Association, a musical group formed by David Holmes for the Code 46 soundtrack...
”, rather than a conventional and linear narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
. Instead of representing Marx’s book Capital
Das Kapital
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
, the film is therefore a study of the difficulty facing Eisenstein, or any other director, in trying to represent such a work and the ideas contained in it.
Apart from the more conceptual passages in the film - whose overall running time is a lengthy 570 minutes - comedian Helge Schneider
Helge Schneider
Helge Schneider is a German comedian, jazz musician and multi-instrumentalist, author, film and theatre director, and actor....
impersonates Marx in several scenes.
Marx Reloaded
Marx Reloaded, written and directed by the BritishUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
theorist Jason Barker
Jason Barker
Jason Barker is a British theorist of contemporary French philosophy.Most notable for his translation and introductions to the philosophy of Alain Badiou, Barker draws on an eclectic range of influences, from Neoplatonism to Lacanian psychoanalysis....
, is a partly animated documentary film which investigates the contemporary relevance of Marx’s ideas in the context of the global economic and financial crisis of 2008—09. The film asks whether “(we) should ... accept the crisis as an unfortunate side-effect of the free market” or whether there is “another explanation as to why it happened and its likely effects on our society, our economy and our whole way of life.” The film interviews several leading Marx-inspired philosophers and critics including Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt is an American literary theorist and political philosopher perhaps best known for Empire, written with Antonio Negri and published in 2000...
, Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri is an Italian Marxist sociologist and political philosopher.Negri is best-known for his co-authorship of Empire, and secondarily for his work on Spinoza. Born in Padua, he became a political philosophy professor in his hometown university...
, Nina Power
Nina Power
Nina Power is a British philosopher, writer, journalist and academic. She is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University. She is the co-editor of Alain Badiou's On Samuel Beckett and his Political Writings....
, Jacques Rancière
Jacques Rancière
Jacques Rancière is a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris Jacques Rancière (born Algiers, 1940) is a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee...
, Peter Sloterdijk
Peter Sloterdijk
Peter Sloterdijk is a German philosopher, television host, cultural scientist and essayist. He is a professor of philosophy and media theory at the University of Art and Design Karlsruhe. He currently co-hosts the German show Im Glashaus: Das Philosophische Quartett.-Biography:Sloterdijk's father...
, Alberto Toscano
Alberto Toscano
Alberto Toscano is a cultural critic, social theorist, philosopher and translator best known to the English-speaking world for his translations of the work of Alain Badiou, including Badiou’s The Century and Logics of Worlds...
and Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
.
In addition to its Marxian analysis the film follows “The Matrix
The Matrix
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
-themed cartoon adventures of Karl Marx, lost in an Alice-style commodity
Commodity
In economics, a commodity is the generic term for any marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Economic commodities comprise goods and services....
-induced nightmare with only one way out.”
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
At least two episodeEpisode
An episode is a part of a dramatic work such as a serial television or radio program. An episode is a part of a sequence of a body of work, akin to a chapter of a book. The term sometimes applies to works based on other forms of mass media as well, as in Star Wars...
s of the BBC TV comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
series Monty Python’s Flying Circus include sketches depicting Marx in modern-day settings, and which lampoon the presumed gravity of his thinking. In one episode Marx competes in a TV quiz show
Quiz Show
Quiz Show is a 1994 American historical drama film produced and directed by Robert Redford. Adapted by Paul Attanasio from Richard Goodwin's memoir Remembering America, the film is based upon the Twenty One quiz show scandal of the 1950s...
for a lounge suite but fails to win when the show's host poses him a prosaic question about football.
Marx Filmography
Films in which Karl Marx is represented and/or in which his ideas or principal works comprise the main narrative theme:Fiction
- 1967 Week End. Directed by Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
.
- 1968 Mohr und die Raben von London (Moor and the Ravens of London). Directed by Helmut Dziuba.
- 1974 Sweet MovieSweet MovieSweet Movie is a film by the Yugoslavian director Dušan Makavejev. The film follows two women: a Canadian beauty queen, who represents a modern commodity culture, and a captain aboard a ship laden with candy and sugar, who is a failed communist revolutionary. Director of photography is Pierre Lhomme...
. Written and directed by Dušan MakavejevDušan MakavejevDušan Makavejev is a Serbian film director and screenwriter, famous for his groundbreaking films of Yugoslav cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s...
.
- 2009 Karl Marx, in production. Directed by Raoul PeckRaoul PeckRaoul Peck is an award-winning Haitian filmmaker, of both documentary and feature films, and a political activist. Briefly, in the 1990s, he was Haiti's Minister of Culture.-Biography:...
.
Documentary
- 2008 Karl Marx - Ein Philosoph macht Geschichte (Karl Marx: A Philosopher Makes History). Directed by Gernot Jaeger and Carsten Jaeger.
- 2011 Marx ReloadedMarx ReloadedMarx Reloaded is a 2011 German documentary film written and directed by the British writer and theorist Jason Barker. Featuring interviews with several well-known philosophers, the film aims to examine the relevance of Karl Marx's ideas in relation to the global economic and financial crisis of...
. Written, directed and produced by Jason BarkerJason BarkerJason Barker is a British theorist of contemporary French philosophy.Most notable for his translation and introductions to the philosophy of Alain Badiou, Barker draws on an eclectic range of influences, from Neoplatonism to Lacanian psychoanalysis....
.
Art film
- 2008 Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike - Marx/Eisenstein/Das Kapital (News from Ideological Antiquity: Marx - Eisenstein - Das Kapital). Directed by Alexander KlugeAlexander KlugeAlexander Kluge is an author and film director.-Early life, education and early career:Kluge was born in Halberstadt, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany....
. - 1999 Wandering Marxwards . Directed by Michael Blum and produced at the Banff Center for the Arts, Alberta, Canada.
Comedy
- 1970 Monty Python’s Flying Circus, episode 25: 'World Forum - Communist Quiz'.
- 1972 Monty Python’s Fliegender Zirkus, episode 2: 'The Philosophers' Football MatchThe Philosophers' Football MatchThe Philosophers' Football Match is a Monty Python sketch depicting a football match in the Olympiastadion at the 1972 Munich Olympics between philosophers representing Greece and Germany...
'. Directed by Ian MacNaughtonIan MacNaughtonEdward Ian Macnaughton was a Scottish former actor-turned-television producer/director, best known for his work with the Monty Python team...
.
See also
Cinema of the Soviet UnionCinema of the Soviet Union
The cinema of the Soviet Union, not to be confused with "Cinema of Russia" despite Russian language films being predominant in both genres, includes several film contributions of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union reflecting elements of their pre-Soviet culture, language and history,...
Dušan Makavejev
Dušan Makavejev
Dušan Makavejev is a Serbian film director and screenwriter, famous for his groundbreaking films of Yugoslav cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s...
Jason Barker
Jason Barker
Jason Barker is a British theorist of contemporary French philosophy.Most notable for his translation and introductions to the philosophy of Alain Badiou, Barker draws on an eclectic range of influences, from Neoplatonism to Lacanian psychoanalysis....
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
Marx Reloaded
Marx Reloaded
Marx Reloaded is a 2011 German documentary film written and directed by the British writer and theorist Jason Barker. Featuring interviews with several well-known philosophers, the film aims to examine the relevance of Karl Marx's ideas in relation to the global economic and financial crisis of...
Sweet Movie
Sweet Movie
Sweet Movie is a film by the Yugoslavian director Dušan Makavejev. The film follows two women: a Canadian beauty queen, who represents a modern commodity culture, and a captain aboard a ship laden with candy and sugar, who is a failed communist revolutionary. Director of photography is Pierre Lhomme...
Week End
Sources
- Frederic Jameson in New Left Review, July-August 2009.
- Karl Marx: Ein Philosoph macht Geschichte at Amazon.
- 'World Forum - Communist Quiz' in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, episode 25 at YouTube.
- Mohr und die Raben von London at the Internet Movie Database.
- News from Ideological Antiquity at the Goethe Institut.