a review of

Now that was... kinda interesting. A socialist film co-written by Bertold Brecht making deliberate use of almost documentary-style realism (some really fascinating albeit depressing Weimar-era Berlin cityscapes in here), musical numbers and interludes as well as some classic brechtian distancing effects ("Verfremdungseffekt") meant to provoke some reflection on the audience's part about what they're seeing. The hopelessness, poverty and exploitation of labor in the failing weimar republic gets contrasted with youthful idealism, community and activism, culminating in a political debate in the final scene that's still gonna resonate with contemporary viewers in an otherwise very dated film. The rich, the well-off, the political establishment, they all have little incentive to change the world because the world is already working pretty much in their favor. The film's protagonist Anni tells it to their faces who she thinks is gonna change the world: Those who are fed up with it.