Loss of Sensation has to be one of the most gloriously bonkers films that you are ever likely to come across. Yes the acting is clunky in places, yes the direction is equally so, and yes the politics is smothered on in Barbara Cartland style, but that's all part of what makes it so much fun.
The film starts off with a scene that mirrors what Chaplin was doing in
Modern Times and Clair in
A Nous La Liberte around that time. The film's protagonist, Jim Ripple, is called in to take part in a time and motion study. Workers stand not at a straight production line, but in the centre of a series of round ones carrying out some never explained action on an unnamed piece of machinery. At intervals the top-hatted and cigar smoking capitalist bosses crank up the speed until eventually one man is driven mad.
Feeling ashamed by his role, Ripple retreats to a bar to get drunk. Then inspired by the evening's entertainment, a puppet show to the accompaniment of an avant garde jazz sound track, he has a lightbulb moment. He will build a robot to carry out all the hard tasks in the factory. Only his inspiration goes even further. Just as the puppets danced to modern jazz, so will his robots. And so he builds a series of 10 foot tall robots, that he controls by playing his saxophone. And these aren't delicate little robots like Maria in Metropolis. They're powered by petrol engines, and rev up noisily like WW2 tanks.
OK the film eventually makes its way to the expected struggle between the workers and the bosses but never in a way that is so clunkily obvious as its politics.
And for a bit of background info, this was one of the last films produced by Mezhrabpomfilm, an organisation originally set up by German communists to help famine relief in Russia, but which subsequently diversified into becoming one of the most interesting film production companies of the time. It was eventually shut down at both ends in the mid thirties, by the Russians for being too foreign, and by the Germans for being too communist. The Berlinale ran a retrospective on their work in 2012, and the accompanying documentary, Die rote Traumfabrik, is up on You Tube. Only in German, but the clips are clearly labelled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezhrabpomfilm" target="_blank
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEDxi6ODZx0" target="_blank