PRODUCTION WINDS DOWN

Carl Schmitt: We know that the war was over six months earlier; it finished probably in June of 1944 when the Allies landed at Omaha Beach . This was the final countdown to the end, but still, they were keeping it to the very last moment. I mean, there are stories that Goebbels was still looking for uniforms for the victory parade after the war in April or March, but everybody knew the war was over; it was just a question of time.

MRH: For the creative technicians that worked on the film, I noticed that Norbert Schulze was the composer that was supposed to write a score for Life Goes On . He had already worked on Kolberg, but because Life Goes On remained unfinished, did he managed to write anything close to a complete score?

Carl Schmitt: No. He died recently, but I talked to him once before, because he was still around in 2001. Firstly, he didn't want to talk about anything; he'd done so many interviews and was fed up, but he said he was to start work on Life Goes On, but he never actually wrote anything for the film.

MRH: He may have had some rough ideas sketched out, but nothing was recorded.

Carl Schmitt: Exactly, because they approached him, and he knew that was the next film after Kolberg , but apart from some rough ideas, he didn't write anything.

SURVIVING FOOTAGE

MRH : My last question deals with the end of the documentary where you lead up to a search at the DEFA archives. They weren't able to find anything, but it's interesting that among German film historians, Life Goes On is a key film on their list of lost films. Can you elaborate on why it's so vital they find any vestiges?

Carl Schmitt : [It's because] there are no materials. What exists is the script, which is at the Deutsches Kinemathek in Berlin (which I read, but isn't really interesting), and the five production stills; they've never been able to find anything deeper.

But I think the problem is with the DEFA archives... I spoke to one guy, and he said it will take years [to find any footage] – maybe ten or twenty years – because there's so many rows of film lying around which have not been looked at; in East Germany, they were just locked away... Nobody looked at them, so it might be that clips and parts of Life Goes On will turn up one day. It might be possible.

The other idea is that there's a letter which I found in the archives which read, ‘Please send the unfinished materials as soon as possible to the DEFA studios because we want to recut Life Goes On,' which means we want to use the bits and pieces which are there, and cut it into other films. If this is the truth, then it would be much more difficult to find, because you probably have ten other films where you might find clips from Life Goes On, but you have to know what you're looking for; otherwise, you won't find it.

MRH : Near the end of the documentary, you interviewed two adults who admitted they found some of the footage in Lüneburg as kids. Was that something that was in the book itself, or was that a discovery that you came across in your research?

Mark Cairns : The two people hadn't been found. There were rumors that the film had been burned by children, and I think the newspaper article came out after the book. People in that area had read the article, and had come forward subsequently. I don't think they were in the book.

MRH: You see the footage being taken out of the cans, the strands being set alight, and then these two embarrassed grownups standing before your cameras saying, ‘Yeah, we did that.' It's one of the funniest and saddest moments in the film.

Mark Cairns : Yes. I was just thinking of the music we used for that sequence. It was an actual piece of UFA music, a period piece; it just suited what we were playing during the editing, and I realized I had to use it for that sequence because it was so sad.