Between Two Wars

"A film about the time of the blast furnaces--1917-1933--about the development of an industry, about a perfect machinery which had to run itself to the point of its own destruction. This essay... on heavy industry and the gas of the blast furnace, convinces through the author's cool abstraction and manic obsession, and through the utilization of a single example of the self-destructive character of capitalistic production: 'The image of the blast furnace gas is real and metaphoric; an energy blows away uselessly into the air. Guided through a system of pipes, the pressure increases. Hence, a valve is needed. That valve is the production of war material.'

Between Two Wars is also a film about the strains of filmmaking and a reflection on craft and creation. Farocki distances himself radically from the thoughtless sloppiness of average television work. The clarity and the precise ordering of his black and white images, which do not illustrate thoughts but are themselves thoughts, are reminiscent of late Godard. The poverty of this film--its production took six years--is at the same time its strength."

--Hans C. Blumenberg, Die Zeit (2 February 1979)