War of Art Film Notes

• Only thing left standing was the theater after the war in Berlin.
• He laughs when approving of things
• Process - looks like bad acting
• It's like showing people a new building, but starting from the plumbing lines
• A play is like a film
• moving from frames
• sequences are like short narratives
• like a montage
• How you work, for who you work, has a lot to do with who you are
• Class acts as a constraint, in a way...
• Mix historical periods together for the purpose of having the audience not affiliate the costumes and what time period that the costumes are trying to present.
• The play was a cry of pain
• Brecht was a great writer
• from teenage years
• He was disconnected from the government (?)
• Changed the way that the German language could sound
• "These people live by the harm that they do, not by the good."
• Brecht wanted to search for something that was bigger than himself, and he submitted himself to that.
• "Countries are changing more that we change our shoes"
• War is good business.
• War gives, and it takes away
• 8-9 people that brecht has met in a PoW camp were actors
• they made an acting stage in the camp
• They made everything from scratch
• Technique that was used by the director
• Mother courage stayed in the same spot for a big switch change
• showed that she was in the same moment for the whole time, even until that moment in time
• this was after she told the officers that it wasn't her son that was brought back dead
• Theatre has a power but it's not a direct power
• it has influence over what people think
• a revolution
• "Change or die."
• Brecht's parents threw all they had away because things in Germany were heating up too much
• Brecht goes into exile
• Brecht was running for a majority of his young life from the invasion of Germany
• it was his own country
• He didn't want to be a part of it all
• He was Jewish
• FBI had spied on Brecht and his family while they were in America
• Brecht had created plays that he thought he wouldn't even be alive to see
• Brecht was questioned in the Mcarthy trials
• Artists were all killing themselves as they were losing their jobs even though they weren't being convicted of being communists
• 'Hollywood Ten' were all put into prison
• Brecht left America the day after the Trial
• All virtues are dangerous
• meaning?
• It's not virtue that pays in this world, it's wickidness.
• People use god to get away with murder
• Brecht had emotional things in plays, yet put a twist in it.
• Mute daughter gets shot
• soldier comes in and throws a tantrum on the ground
• Everybody laughs
• This breaks the 4th wall
• Gives the audience something to think about
• Brecht had an idea about characters with virtues
• It's the virtues that will kill them
• It's their good traits that will ultimately kill them in some way
• It's not the characters that should change
• instead, the people around them are the ones that should be changing
• We're all going to die unless we all come together
• "to those not yet born"