Sabine von Maydell

Volker Schlöndorff transposes Bertolt Brecht’s late-expressionist work to latter-day 1969. Poet and anarchist Baal lives in an attic and reads his poems to cab drivers. At first feted and later rejected by bourgeois society, Baal roams through forests and along motorways, greedy for schnapps, cigarettes, women and men: ‘You have to let out the beast, let him out into the sunlight.’ After impregnating a young actress he soon comes to regard her as a millstone round his neck. He stabs a friend to death and dies alone. ‘You are useless, mangy and wild, you beast, you crawl through the lowest boughs of the tree.’

In the 26th century the inhabitants of Utopia have so lost their individuality, which varies in number. They live in glass houses (this was written before the invention of television), which allows the political police, called “Keepers” can easily supervise them. They all wear the same uniform and usually turn to each other or as a ”cipher-so” or "UNIFEM" (uniform). They feed on artificial food and rest hour marching in fours in a row the anthem of the One State, pouring out of the loudspeakers. As they are allowed to put a break on the hour (known as the ”sexy time“), draw the curtains of their glass houses. At the head of the One State is one called The Benefactor, which are replaced every year the whole population, usually unanimously. The guiding principle of the State is that happiness and freedom are incompatible.