8/10
The Difficult Life of the Working Class in Berlin
14 November 2010
In 1931, in Berlin, the desperate brother of Anni (Hertha Thiele) can not find a job and is pressed by his unemployed father Franz Bönke. He commits suicide and sooner his family is evicted for nonpayment of rent. Anni's boyfriend Fritz (Ernst Busch) helps them to move to the summer camp Kuhle Wampe that had become a homeless camp, in the outskirt of Berlin. When Anni gets pregnant, Fritz promises to marry her, but he calls off the wedding after the party. Anni aborts and moves back to Berlin, where she finds a job with other youths in an association that promotes sports.

"Kuhle Wampe oder: Wem gehört die Welt?" is an interesting film that shows the difficult life of the working class in Berlin in times of the Great Depression. I have just watched this film on a DVD released by the Brazilian Distributor Versátil and I found difficult to understand parts of the narrative. However, the running time of the foregoing DVD is only 68:30 minutes and in accordance with the information of the IMDb, the original version has 80 minutes running time; the German censored version has 76 minutes; and the American version has 71 minutes. Therefore, it would be unfair to criticize the fragmented narrative that was cut from the film of the director Slatan Dudow. I read that this film was censored in 1932 and banned by the Nazis in 1933 accused of communist tendencies. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Kuhle Wampe ou A Quem Pertence o Mundo?" ("Kuhle Wampe or To Whom the World Belongs")
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