Miner at the Lever (1961)
People and machines in German coal, ore and potash mining
“Miner at the Lever” provides impressionistic insights into the world underground in various mining sectors in the Federal Republic of Germany at the beginning of the 1960s. The film relies entirely on the impact of its images and music.
The film
Busy traffic in Essen city center and in an unnamed potash mine, mining in hard coal mines or open-cast lignite mines, extraction or processing: “Miner at the Lever” presents mining operations as a largely mechanized and automated, clean working environment in which miners no longer perform hard physical labor, but work as operators of modern machines. This is a familiar narrative in the cinematic self-portrayals of the mining industry from this period. The structure of the film also follows mining production logic in principle. Its style, however, sets it apart from other, conventional representational films in the industry: “Miner at the Lever” completely dispenses with commentary and sounds. It presents its images only accompanied by music that underlines and comments on the intended visual statement with an aestheticizing intent, but also sets counterpoints and sometimes seems artificial. While a bass occasionally resonates discreetly in the background, the unmistakable sounds of a Hammond organ dominate, an electromechanical instrument named after its inventor Laurens Hammond, which was widely used in popular music in the 1960s and 1970s.
Film contexts
“Miner at the Lever” is one of a total of three films produced in 1961/62 by Monta-Film GmbH on behalf of the Wirtschaftsvereinigung Bergbau eV, the umbrella organization for the entire German mining industry. Also in 1961, “Treasures beneath your feet” was produced, a representative film that presented the various mining sectors in the then Federal Republic in detail and comprehensively as modern and economically relevant industries. In 1962, the hard coal section was separated from this, supplemented and released as a separate film. In both cases, the music was by the Austrian film composer Rudolf Perak (1891–1972), who specialized in documentaries. The film footage in “Miner at the Lever” can also be found in “Treasures under Your Feet” for the most part, but the background music was commissioned from Erik Landy, who also contributed the music to the documentary films “A Rise Without Example” and “In a New Era” by the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government in 1961/62, as well as to “Steel Mats in Concrete” by the Construction Steel Mats Association, but nothing else is known about his biography and work. The choice of composer Landy and his
Music underlines the artistic ambitions of “Miner at the Lever”, which, in keeping with a contemporary trend, clearly wanted to be more of a work of art than just a functional, utilitarian film, and was intended not least for relevant film festivals. It won first prize at the 2nd International Industrial Film Festival in Turin in June 1961 and was given the rating “Particularly Valuable” by the State Film Evaluation Board in Wiesbaden. In contrast, the two films “Treasures Underneath Your Feet” with their conventional design were primarily aimed at the interest-driven self-portrayal of the industry to a broad public that was hardly familiar with mining, and can thus be seen as utilitarian films of the industry in a conventional sense.
Dr. Stefan Przigoda, Mining History Documentation Centre (montan.dok)
Filmographic information
Producer: Monta-Film GmbH, Munich
Client: Economic Association of Mining e. V., Bonn
Year of production: 1961
Music: Eric Landy
Book: Bert Brandt
Director: Bert Brandt
Camera: Dieter Liphardt
Language: German
Runtime: 10 minutes
Format: 16 mm light tone, color
Archive: Mining History Documentation Centre/Mining Archive Bochum of the German Mining Museum Bochum
Awards: “Particularly valuable” rating from the Wiesbaden Film Evaluation Board; 1st prize in category F (films about social welfare) at the 2nd International Industrial Film Festival in Turin, 25-28 June 1961
Contact
Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum
Mining History Documentation Centre (montan.dok)
Dr. Stefan Przigoda
At the Mining Museum 28
44791 Bochum
Stefan.przigoda@bergbaumuseum.de
Traffic in a potash mine (still from “Bergmann am Hebel”)
Miner in the mine watchtower (still from “Miner at the Lever”)
Loading work underground with a bucket loader (still from “Bergmann am Hebel”)