In Bertold Brecht’s seminal work Mother Courage and Her Children, in scene ten, Ann Fierling (named Courage) and her daughter Kattrin stop their cart in front of a peasant’s hut. From inside the hut they can hear the song of what can be assumed to be a mother singing a lullaby to her child. They pause to listen before continuing on and the scene ends. This scene represents the power of a moment in a work of art to draw one in and alienate one at the same time. The song, the pause, seem to indicate a significant moment and yet it leads to nothing. It is just another moment in a long string of them. As an audience we believe it is significant to plot and lean in, but then it serves it not and we pull back. A parallel can be drawn between this moment and Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter. In it, we see a very similar scene as to what occurs with Mother Courage and her Daughter. John and Pearl have long been fleeing Mr. Powell for some time in their skiff. They alight near a farm house and see a light in the window. They hear the song of a woman, likely a lullaby. They stop and listen for a moment. We are drawn in as an audience, believing that this is the moment perhaps of salvation for these children. But instead, after listening, John ushers them into the barn to sleep. We pull back to think about what just happened.
Interestingly, there exist other parallels between both the style and content of the two pieces when taken in the context of verfremdungseffekt. Brecht believed that to make an audience think about the events on stage, the play ought to distance or alienate them from the action (I find alienation a problematic term, so I will use distancing instead). Brecht applied various means to bring about this effect including, but not limited to: revealing the apparatus, breaking the 4th wall, music/singing, mimicry (in place of inhabiting the character), stark juxtaposition of dramatic and comic moments, and narration that reveals the end from the beginning. When used appropriately these elements pull the audience out of their quasi-hypnotic state and allow them to think about the events and judge them. This helps the audience not assume inevitability of events (which we can easily trace back to Greek Tragedy). The audience then thinks that since the events are not inevitable, other choices could have been made.
Within the film there are several instances and elements that utilize this verfremdungseffekt to distance the audience from the action and allow for reflection. One of which is the use of expressionist lighting. While it might seem contradictory to conflate one stylistic choice with another, it is not a far cry to claim that the use of that lighting within a non-expressionist piece (structurally or theoretically) draws attention to the apparatus. This is especially true considering the inconsistency of utilization of said apparatus. This expressionist lighting used in specific scenes of horror, like the murder of the mother, in contrast to realistic lighting in other scenes (including night-time ones) makes the audience aware of the use of lighting. This pulls us out and we then can reflect on what is being said about the events happening, instead of what is going to happen.
Another instance is in the representation of the mother’s corpse in the car in the water. Rather than a dreadful image of a mutilated corpse, we are shown a peaceful, and, in fact, beautiful image of the mother, bathed in shimmering light and water as her hair and dress flit picturesquely in the current. This juxtaposition in what is seen with the content of the moment pulls the audience out once again. Death is portrayed almost as an idealized beauty rather than the horror that it is. We can then reflect on the nature of death and even murder.
This moment can also bring to mind Helene Weigel’s famous silent scream. When Mother Courage’s son is brought to her dead, she is unwilling to show her emotion, her terror, at the sight of his lifeless body. Weigel turned her head and screamed without sound. This was to show the emotion of the moment and was a means of revealing the apparatus, showing the artifice. The silent peace of the dead woman in the river, is a torsion of Weigel’s silent moment of terror. Once again, the intent is to distance the audience, in this case to think about death in another way.
Perhaps the most interesting moment of distancing is in the confrontation between Mrs. Cooper (a Mother Courage in her own right) and Mr. Powell. There is legitimate tension as he sings outside the house and Mrs. Cooper sits with her shotgun in the house. The children sit on the the steps and the oldest walks over to Mrs. Cooper with a candle, the light of which obscures the view of Mr. Powell. When she moves away from the window it reveals that Mr. Powell is no longer sitting outside the house. This moment creates intense suspense. The audience is drawn in, asking what will happen. The voice of Powell is heard in the house. Chaos. A shot is fired. Then occurs the break, the distance. Powell runs hootin’ and hollerin’ from the house into the barn. Instead of a dramatic death, or violent retribution, the response is intensely comical. The audience pulls back and laughs. This distance incites reflection on the rightness of individually meted out justice.
It might be a fool’s errand to seek correlation between Brecht and a horror film from the 1950’s, but perhaps there are things to be learned from the connections to be made. Perhaps there is more of horror in Brecht and more of Brecht in than previously realized. The film is effective in both providing thrills and causing reflection, which is precisely why this correlative relation matters.
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