"Kuhle Wampe oder: Wem gehört die Welt?" or "To Whom Does the World Belong?" or just "Kuhle Wampe" is a German movie from the early 1930s and this one will have its 85th anniversary next year and actually came out one year before the Nazis came into power in Germany. The strongly left-wing messages from this movie make it no surprise that it got banned right away then. It is a black-and-white film still, but it has sound, which was not a given by 1932, but fairly common already. Pretty much all the Nazi films afterward have sound, many of them color as well. It is a bit tough for me to properly evaluate this film. First of all, "Kuhle Wampe" is an area here in Berlin, but I must say the term is really unknown today and people talking about a "Wampe" are mostly referring to a big belly somebody has. In general, looking at the title, this film is not half as impactful in terms of the Berlin areas it depicts and is about as I hoped it would be. Other than that, I had problems with the film starting as a drama with a main character committing suicide, but then, the longer it goes, it moves more and more into documentary territory and especially the last scene with the talk about coffee could be seen as 100% documentary-style (if the line delivery by some had not been that bad). This development also takes away from the emotional impact. It was really difficult to care for Herta Thiele's character or anybody from the supporting cast. Luckily the film only runs for slightly over an hour, so it does not drag that much. Still, this does not make it a good film either. I do not recommend the watch.
