The phoniness of modern culture, and the hype merchants who peddle it, was recently the target of a scathing attack by Julie Burchill. The way to subvert this, she advised in her Guardian column, was to return to the stroppy values of the adolescent, always on the hunt for eclectic and original talents to pit against the jaded tastes of their elders. She cited Velvet Underground and Dorothy Parker as icons. She could just as well have added the name of Agnes Bernelle, for Bernelle has been providing an alternative to mainstream schlock for years.
Every now and then she is "discovered" again - or "taken up" as she calls it - but yet, outside a band of loyal devotees, she has never quite received the acclaim she deserves, either as a performer or actress. Still this year will in some ways redress the balance. A major documentary is being screened on RT E next month, she has two cameo roles in Irish films - one with Brendan Gleeson, called Sweetie Barrett - and she will give a number of cabaret performances with a new collaborator, Reinhard Kuhnert, whom she met last year in Galway.
The documentary, a collaboration with her long-time friend, television director John Comiskey, (he used to light her shows in the 1980s), is a marvellously evocative portrait, both of Bernelle and of her home town of Berlin. Much of the footage was shot before the wall came down, so it has a certain nostalgic quality.
Part social history, this gem of a film portrays one individual life against the backdrop of momentous times. It is also a homage to the lost art of political cabaret, and, finally, it is a loving tribute to Bernelle herself, showcasing her humour, playfulness, resilience and talent. The camera trails her through the haunts of her gilded childhood, records her reminiscences and captures her unique talent as she coquettishly serenades an unruly beergarden audience. By the end of the evening she has them eating out of her hand and they are bombarding her with requests.
Although Bernelle and her family fled the Nazis in 1936, she did not find the filming traumatic. She had already returned to the city a number of times. Nonetheless a number of incidents did bring home to her her family's fortuitous escape. She and the crew spent one whole day wandering about in a cemetery on the eastern side of the city.
"There was this extraordinary thing," recalls Bernelle, "a lot of rich Jewish families who were buried there had these very elaborate tombs, really ornate, and then suddenly it all stopped, and that, of course, was the time when they were all gassed. That brought it all home rather forcibly." Agnes and her mother, as wife and child of a Jew, could doubtless have experienced a similar fate had the Bernauers not been granted refuge in England.
The film also recreates her role as a wartime broadcaster, she was all of 16 at the time, and her smoky voice must have fired the dreams of many a young German man. She had never really taken her part in the war effort that seriously but while visiting the museum devoted to those who died resisting Hitler, she read the story of a young man executed for listening to Allied radio broadcasts.
"This affected me very badly because I used to do those. I suddenly realised when I read this poor chap's story that it wasn't just funny. It was very, very serious and for some people, indeed, fatal." Nonetheless both the making and now the screening of the film have been something of a catharsis and a tying-up of loose ends.
Coincidentally this month also sees the erection of a plaque in Berlin to her father, Rudolf Bernauer. It is a belated accolade to the man who was a key figure in the Berlin theatre and composer of the lyrics of some of Germany's most popular songs. It is small consolation to his beloved daughter, who played Trilby to his Svengali in her younger days, but it is consolation nonetheless.
Despite the fact that the hype merchants have overlooked both her father and herself, Bernelle is probably one of the most philosophical souls you are ever likely to meet. At 75, she has re-embarked on the film career she precociously began at the age of seven, with the role of a small boy in Eine Tolle Ballnacht. She also composed satirical verse at that tender age and could count Marlene Dietrich's daughter, Maria, among her playmates in the urbane and sophisticated atmosphere of 1920s Berlin. Her home was filled with music and love and beautiful things and she was the adored pet of her papa.
Perhaps it was the great good fortune of her loving childhood that shored her up for the adversities that were to come - penury in London, a stormy marriage, conflict between motherhood and career, at times reducing her to despair. She has been in the front row of history - both political and theatrical - yet remains disarmingly low-key about her career and her tumultuous private life. As well as being a youthful contributor to wartime propaganda, as the disc jockey codenamed "Vicky", she played with Orson Welles on radio, was associated with Peter Cooke, Jonathan Miller and other stalwarts of the 1960s satirical scene in London and in Dublin was at the heart of the nascent beginnings of the Project Theatre.
She can look back on friendships with Claus von Bulow, King Farouk of Egypt and assorted aristocrats, European and English, as well as actors, artists and eccentrics galore. Add to that a sojourn as chatelaine of Castle Leslie in Co Monaghan, during 24 years of marriage to Desmond Leslie and, latterly, a long and happy relationship with historian Maurice Craig. She still exudes the elegance of a middle European and, as a famous beauty, cannot resist flirting.
Despite the old-fashioned continental charm, she is also quintessentially modern. Hence her attraction for stars as diverse as Marc Almond, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Marianne Faithfull and Philip Chevron who produced her album, Father Is Lying Dead On The Ironing Board. A recent convert to the "Agi" fan club is Jack L. Like her, he is a performer with prodigious talent who defies easy categorisation.
One suspects this has been part of the trouble for Bernelle. Few people have known quite what to do with her and what she deprecatingly calls her "slightly out-of-the-way songs". And, ironically, she has become renowned for the part of her repertoire she least respects. She ruefully admits that it is a mystery to her that she has been forever associated with cabaret when she has done so many other things.
"I never used to care at all about my cabaret. The straight theatre was what I wanted. But in the last few years I've looked at this and decided it was rather silly. And I have given it a little more importance in my life."
Like it or not she is regarded as a Brecht interpreter par excellence. But again she is characteristically modest about this.
"I would like to think I am a keeper of the flame. I've never really dared put myself in that category. I had tea with Barbara Brecht, his daughter, a few years ago and I apologised to her. I said: `You know, Barbara, people are always holding me up as this great Brecht expert and you must get very annoyed about it. I don't really know that much about it. And I may have offended against his style.' And she replied: `Father had no style!' "
She believes the need for biting satire is as great today as it was in Brecht's time. While pessimistic about the political climate in Europe, she is heartened by the appreciation of younger audiences.
"The young of today are enormously interested in the political aspect of cabaret. When I first started to do my Brecht shows in London I could only ever do them in the centre or in a capital city. The audience was mainly middle-class, middle-aged. Now it has totally changed. My audiences, on the whole, are very, very young. Some of them are the grandchildren of my first audience. And the interest among young performers is extraordinary.
"Marc Almond, Elvis Costello; these are pop stars and they are fascinated by the music. They took me up and they've been very helpful to me. Not because of me or my great performance but because of the material. They are fed up to the back teeth with stuff where they repeat a line 15 times and that's supposed to be a lyric."
Right now she still retains a number of pressing ambitions: to stage Brecht's Mother Courage in this year's Dublin Theatre Festival and to find a custodian for her large archive of cabaret material amassed over nearly 40 years.
Apart from theatrical concerns, she is rather anxious about this country's response to refugees and has taken up the cause of a Burundi couple. Looking out at the sea from her Sandymount home, she muses on a less happy fate had her family not been granted refuge in Britain.
"In 1936, if the British had sent me and my family back to Hitler's Germany, I wouldn't be sitting here today." England welcomed her and Ireland has been her home since she moved here with Desmond Leslie in 1964.
"For many years I was like one of Chekhov's Three Sisters wanting to go back to Moscow. With me, it was `when will I go back to London?' But now I wouldn't go back if you paid me. All I ever want when I'm away is to get back to Ireland."
The Berlin Of Agnes Bernelle will be screened on RT €1 next Wednesday at 10.10 pm.
