My recollections of December 31st in Berlin are a little jumbled. Hopefully I’ll get this right and if not Ez can help me fill in any gaps.

Our first goal for the day was to head back over to the Filmmuseum. It was interesting. I didn’t know exactly what to expect. It focuses pretty heavily on German film, past and present, though there’s also an entire section on Ray Harryhausen and special effects (I think Ez wrote that those bits were special exhibits, but they are in fact a part of the museum’s permanent collection). There’s a section on Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, which I must see a.s.a.p. as it’s a big gap for me as a lover of old movies.

Still from Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920)

There are also entire sections on films under the Weimar Republic, Metropolis, propaganda films, Marlene Dietrich, German filmmakers in exile in America during the Nazi era, and modern German cinema. It was interesting to discover that some of my favorite character actors from the 30s and 40s were in fact German or Hungarian actors in exile–for example, Felix Bressart (Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, To Be or Not to Be) and S.Z. Sakall (Christmas in Connecticut–Mr. Hunky Dunky himself!, Casablanca, In the Good Old Summertime)… not to mention one of my favorite directors ever, Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble in Paradise, Ninotchka, To Be or Not to Be, etc.).

Ezra describes the section on Nazi-era German films on his blog. It’s one of those things–so fascinating. It’s like this train wreck that never should have happened but you can’t look away. At first I didn’t even realize that visitors were supposed to pull out the drawers tucked into the wall. It was only when I saw another visitor doing so that I realized. If the museum didn’t arrange the Nazi-era section that way, it would take up way more space. I can’t help thinking that reflects their complicated relationship with that part of their history. They’re not proud of it, exactly, but they know it’s important and they know that it fascinates people. The museum notes next to each display are certainly written from the viewpoint that what the Nazis did was terribly wrong and a sad, disturbing tragedy. But at the same time, putting their vast collection in that little room and keeping the displays largely put away in drawers definitely gave the whole thing a relatively low profile. Very interesting.

The Marlene Dietrich collection is massive and takes up two rooms (or was it even more?). They are obviously proud of their Berlin-born star. Their collection includes costumes and items from her films, outfits from her personal wardrobe, letters, photographs, and personal effects like her make-up box. It was pretty neat. For anyone who loves her the way I love Garbo or Bette Davis it must be a shrine.

The section on Harryhausen totally reminded me of Nora and her dad. Harryhausen was responsible for all of those fabulously goofy effects in Clash of the Titans, which I might never have seen had it not been for Nora. Nora, if you ever go to Berlin, I think you’d enjoy the Filmmuseum.

One of Ray Harryhausen’s creatures

After the museum, we needed a little refueling. The Sony Center is in a pretty touristy area, so we decided to stick with Billy Wilder’s, the bar/cafe adjacent to the Filmmuseum. Apparently Billy Wilder was Austro-Hungarian (he was born in an area of what is now Poland) and wrote a lot of scripts for German films until Hitler came to power. At that point, like many other Jewish filmmakers during that era, he emigrated to the U.S. (via Paris) and moved in with Peter Lorre in Hollywood. The Germans seem to love him, though–possibly because he directed A Foreign Affair with Marlene Dietrich, which takes place in Berlin. We had little coffees and shared some apfelstrudel. It was quite nice, but so crowded. We had a heck of a time trying to get the attention of the wait staff so that we could get our check. Oh well, there are worse places to be stuck for an extra 20 minutes.

Billy Wilder’s

If I’m not mistaken, we then caught a bus back into the Tiergarten en route to the Bauhaus Archive. Unfortunately, it turned out to be closed for the holiday, so we were only able to enjoy it from the outside.

We resolved to return on Thursday.

At this point I get a little fuzzy on what we did next. I think we ended up on a ferris wheel–or was that the previous day? Well, one of those days we rode a big ferris wheel at twilight.

We returned to our hotel that night via Savignyplatz, where we noticed lots of nice little shops and restaurants. We decided to go to a tapas place in Savignyplatz for our New Year’s Eve dinner. It was festive, though I must say a couple of the vegetarian dishes were a little disappointing. We had a good time, though.

Ezra on New Year’s Eve, having fun at the tapas restaurant

On our way home from the tapas restaurant we stopped at the petrol station convenience on the corner and bought a bottle of champagne (or was it cava?) and a bag of decadent German cookies. On our way out, we encountered a bunch of people walking around setting off firecrackers. Apparently fireworks that are not legal (at least, not for an average citizen without some kind of license) in most places I’ve been in the U.S. are both legal and popular in Berlin. We watched (and admittedly chuckled at) some of the New Year’s concerts and such on TV, but mostly we drank our champagne and gazed out our window at the fireworks people were shooting off the roofs of surrounding buildings. Lots of other people with windows off the courtyard were doing the same thing. The firecrackers were bouncing off the buildings. It was noisy and raucous and the kind of thing that I LOVE about traveling… I think it’s something I won’t be experiencing any time soon here at home.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Blather, art, dining, films, wide world of vacation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.