Something I first noticed about Vlado Kristl's "Arme Leute" was the oddness of the sound-image relationship. Though there is a stampede of shouting, gesticulating men the shouts often did not match up exactly with shots of the men shouting and would cut out to silence. A large "tin can" (I don't know what the object was -some sort of metal container) is being dragged on a rope by a lone man, the sounds played while this man walks with his can sound like guns being fired or little explosions. These sounds also cut out to silence. As the movie continues sounds of explosions are matched up to people's movements. It was weird, and interesting, to watch people move around in a situation where there were no weapons to the sound of weapons. Silence was important to the movie for multiple reasons. One reason is that it connects with the presence of a film director and another figure, perhaps a producer or designer, in the very beginning and end of the film. Unexpected moments of silence jarred me from following the narrative as I saw it. The silence suggests the artifice of the film medium, or filmmaking, or the making of narrative films (I don't know what...). The unnaturalness of the sound element (especially the mixing of sounds with silence) also matches up with some tightly designed, aesthetic shots of the crowd of men lying on the ground below some stairs (or on the stairs. I can't remember clearly.) their white shirts and black pants making a pattern that made me think of computers, organization, sterility, mass-producibility. These men looked like code or segments of DNA.
I just searched for a translation of the title. It appears to mean "poor people". I am still thinking about what was going on in this movie. The title is making me look back at film a little differently -I'm wondering how what I saw fits with what I think "poor people" means.
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