Directory of World Cinema: Germany

Description

From bleak expressionist works to the edgy political works of the New German Cinema to the feel-good Heimat films of the postwar era, Directory of World Cinema: Germany aims to offer a wider film and cultural context for the films that have emerged from Germany—including some of the East German films recently made available to Western audiences for the first time. With contributions by leading academics and emerging scholars in the field, this volume explores the key directors, themes, and periods in German film history, and demonstrates how genres have been adapted over time to fit historical circumstances. Rounding out this addition to the Directory of World Cinema series are fifty full-color stills, numerous reviews and recommendations, and a comprehensive filmography.

Introduction: German Cinema and the Vicissitudes of History

Film Pioneers

The Films of the Skladanowsky Brothers

Arnold Fanck (1889–1974)

Then and Now: Berlin Symphony, 1927/2002

Festival Focus

The Berlinale: Berlin International Film Festival

Scoring Cinema

The Music Films of Straub/Huillet

Fantastic Film 

Adventure Film

Der Heimatfilm

Comedy

Foreigners and Guest-workers

Queer German Cinema

Vergangenheitsbewältigung

Rubble Film

War Film

Historical Drama

Political Drama

The Berlin Wall 

Sujets

• Directories
• Película fotográfica
• Reference
• Heimat
• German Expressionism
• Cold War
• New German Cinema
• Directory
• East Germany
• History of film
• Berlin Wall
• Guerre froide
• Heimat (1984)
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841505824
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Volume 9
DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA GERMANY
Edited by Michelle Langford
First Published in the UK in 2012 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2012 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2012 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Publisher: May Yao
Publishing Manager: Melanie Marshall
Cover photo: Krabat 2008/Brass Hat Films/7 Pictures Film/Kobal
Cover Design: Holly Rose
Copy Editor: Michael Eckhardt
Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
Directory of World Cinema ISSN 2040-7971
Directory of World Cinema eISSN 2040-798X
Directory of World Cinema: Germany ISBN 978-1-84150-465-0
Directory of World Cinema: Germany E-ISBN 978-1-84150-582-4
CONTENTS
DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA GERMANY
Acknowledgements
Introduction: German Cinema and the Vicissitudes of History
Film Pioneers
The Films of the Skladanowsky Brothers
Arnold Fanck (1889-1974)
Then and Now: Berlin Symphony , 1927/2002
Festival Focus
The Berlinale: Berlin International Film Festival
Scoring Cinema
The Music Films of Straub/Huillet
Fantastic Film
Essay
Reviews
Adventure Film
Essay
Reviews
Der Heimatfilm
Essay
Reviews
Comedy
Essay
Reviews
Foreigners and Guest-workers
Essay
Reviews
Queer German Cinema
Essay
Reviews
Vergangenheitsbew ltigung
Essay
Rubble Film
Reviews
War Film
Reviews
Historical Drama
Reviews
Political Drama
Reviews
The Berlin Wall
Essay
Reviews
Recommended Reading
Online Resources
Test Your Knowledge
Notes on Contributors
Filmography
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Editing this first volume of the Directory of World Cinema: Germany has been no small undertaking. When I agreed to take on this challenge, little did I know that I would find such an amazing scholarly community who share my passion for German cinema and who would meet the task with such enthusiasm and generosity. My heartfelt thanks goes out to all the contributing authors for their committed scholarship, collegiality, punctuality and patience. Without you, this volume would certainly not exist. To Louise Malcolm, who provided expert editorial assistance and kept things ticking along at crucial moments, I extend unending gratitude. I would also like to thank my colleagues and students in the School of English, Media and Performing Arts at the University of New South Wales for generating a supportive and inspirational atmosphere in which to work. I extend a special note of thanks to my friend, mentor and colleague Professor George Kouvaros for his continued encouragement and support. A heartfelt thanks goes to my family and friends for doing without me on those many weekends spent behind the keyboard. And I owe my deepest gratitude to my devoted partner Adrian. Thanks for the morning coffee, the endless cups of tea and always knowing when to make me take a break.
The editorial team at Intellect have, as always been amazing to work with: May Yao, Melanie Marshall and Michael Eckhardt, you have my sincere thanks for your patience, support and expert guidance. A note of thanks must also go to Intellect intern, Emily Chard for the last-minute help with the quiz. I would also like to thank John Berra for his encouragement and advice in the early stages.
Finally, I thank all the German film-makers whose works have entertained, thrilled, mystified and challenged audiences for more than a century.
Michelle Langford
INTRODUCTION
GERMAN CINEMA AND THE VICISSITUDES OF HISTORY
If any national film industry could be said to have weathered the great vicissitudes of twentieth century history, German cinema must spring immediately to mind. After its modest beginnings in the late nineteenth century with the early experiments of the Skladanowsky brothers and a false start interrupted by the Great War, German film-makers, writers, producers and studios have continued to confront tempestuous times: two world wars, the Nazi period and the Holocaust, the Cold War, the terrorist movements of the 1970s, the establishment of the European Union and re-unification are just a few of the events that either sent the German film industry into upheaval or inspired change. Not only has German cinema survived, at times it has even thrived. From the rich aesthetic and commercial success of the Weimar period (1918-33) to the hard-edged politically and socially conscious works of the Young and New German Cinemas of the 1960s to early 1980s, through the 1990s cinema of consensus (Rentschler 2000) and the current era of, on the one hand, the proliferation of small, independent German production companies and, on the other, the spread of international co-productions, German film-makers and producers have shown a great capacity for invention and re-invention.
In the Weimar period following the First World War, the German nation was faced with its own humiliating defeat, political turmoil, high inflation and a massive war debt. The film industry, whose chief pre-war competitors were Denmark and France, now met with strong competition from the United States. In the immediate post-war years, Hollywood dumped both its new product and back catalogue into German cinemas, assisted largely by its block-booking practices and international distribution networks that were well established by the end of the war. With the nation s cinemas awash with relatively cheap Hollywood product, German producers struggled earnestly not only to re-establish themselves, but to compete with the economic and cultural might of Hollywood. In his far-reaching study of the rise and legacy of Weimar cinema, Thomas Elsaesser highlights the important role played by producer Erich Pommer and the UFA (Universum Film Aktien Gesellshaft) studio in the relative success of German cinema of this period. UFA was, for a time at least, able to successfully combine the seemingly opposite imperatives of art and commerce (Elsaesser 2000: 109). Under the helm of Pommer, UFA, which had acquired along with a number of other major studios Decla-Bioskop in 1921, was responsible for the production of some of the most memorable art films of the era, as well as some of the most successful genre films. Amongst its artistic and commercial successes we find one of Germany s first major international post-war hits, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1920), as well as numerous films by Fritz Lang ( Destiny [1921]; Metropolis [1927]) and F. W. Murnau (Nosferatu [1922]; Faust [1926]). Frequently labelled as expressionist cinema, this cycle of films played a number of important roles in the Weimar industry. On the one hand, they appealed to high art and had roots in Germanic cultural traditions such as Romantic art and literature as well as fairy-tales and legends, which lent the films a certain level of cultural specificity and respectability. This was important in raising the cultural legitimacy of film as a medium more generally and making it respectable for consumption by bourgeois audiences. This phenomenon was not unique to Germany as many nations, including the US, struggled to raise the status of cinema out of its lowly beginnings in vaudeville, peep shows and the fairground in order to attract a broader, more literate, respectable and ostensibly more massive audience. In America, this largely involved industry regulation of film content to ensure that films were suited to a family audience, although the tight industry-wide regulations of the Hayes Code were not introduced until 1930. In Germany, there was a drive to align cinema with the arts, and numerous intellectuals and cultural commentators rallied against sceptical, moralising scaremongers in the nation s newspapers and journals during the so-called Kino-Debatte (1909-29). Some, including Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin and George Luk cs attempted to come to terms with the ambivalences (between art and commerce) with which the medium of cinema confronted them. If cinema deeply troubled intellectuals and moralists alike (for quite different reasons of course), the industry appeared to manage this ambivalence with greater ease. To some extent the move toward literary and artistic precursors assisted not only to raise the cinema s artistic profile, but could also be used as a way of differentiating German films from international (mostly US and French) imports. This product differentiation would also provide the necessary edge to market German films internationally as somehow uniquely German . It is this marriage of art, commerce and national imaginary that gave rise to some of the films reviewed in the first section of this volume under the heading The Fantastic .
While many accounts of German film history frame works like Caligari, The Golem (Boese and Wegener, 1920), Waxworks (Birinski and Leni, 1924) or Faust as expressionist films, I have elected to group them into a rather loose generic category that allows the films in part to transcend their ties to a specific historical moment or artistic movement, and see them in terms of a generic legacy that re-emerges at various moments of German film history. As Elsaesser points out, many of these films carried titillatingly sensationalist titles (2000: 18) which more than hint, I would argue, not only at the rather sensational, fanciful, fantastic, magical and devilish subject-matter, but also at the way they make full use of the tricks and special effects available to the cinematic medium at the time. Indeed, the fact that heavy investment in scientific research and development of special effects techniques helped to bring these fantastic tales to the screen is