Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Critics rarely associate popular film with German cinema, despite the international success of such films as Das Boot (1981), The Never-Ending Story (1984), Run, Lola, Run (1998), and recent German comedies, all representing a rich body of work outside the parameters of high culture. This very success compels the authors of Light Motives to take an unprecedented look at German popular film across the historical spectrum and to challenge the tendency among critics to divvy up German film, like Germans themselves, into the Good and the Bad. Together the essays reexamine popular film production along with larger cultural, historical, and political meanings suggested by the term "popular."
Most critical accounts have focused on the golden era of Weimar film and the New German Cinema of the 1960s and 70s leaving much of popular film by the wayside. This volume attributes the division to such sources as Frankfurt School dictates, Goethe Haus film offerings, and state-funded film production during the 1970s, which promoted high-culture art films to broadcast the success of West German democratization.
The essays challenge the traditional shape of German film history, while offering in-depth analyses of films that have until now been beyond the pale of critical attention. What emerges is a "Never-Ending Story" of oft-repeated obsessions, overlapping generic forms, omnipresent or subtle nods to Hollywood, and myriad political concerns irreducible to a unified message or aesthetic form-all bearing witness to the vibrancy of German culture.
Synopsis
Light Motives undertakes a long overdue critical reassessment of German popular cinema, challenging the traditional view of German film history and offering new ways to think about popular cinema in general.
Critics rarely associate popular film with German cinema, despite the international success of such films as Das Boot (1981), The Never-Ending Story (1984), Run, Lola, Run (1998), and recent German comedies, all representing a rich body of work outside the parameters of high culture. This very success compels the authors of Light Motives to take an unprecedented look at German popular film across the historical spectrum and to challenge the tendency among critics to divvy up German film, like Germans themselves, into the Good and the Bad. Together the essays reexamine popular film production along with larger cultural, historical, and political meanings suggested by the term "popular."
Most critical accounts have focused on the golden era of Weimar film and the New German Cinema of the 1960s and 70s leaving much of popular film by the wayside. This volume attributes the division to such sources as Frankfurt School dictates, Goethe Haus film offerings, and state-funded film production during the 1970s, which promoted high-culture art films to broadcast the success of West German democratization.
The essays challenge the traditional shape of German film history, while offering in-depth analyses of films that have until now been beyond the pale of critical attention. What emerges is a "Never-Ending Story" of oft-repeated obsessions, overlapping generic forms, omnipresent or subtle nods to Hollywood, and myriad political concerns irreducible to a unified message or aesthetic form--all bearing witness to the vibrancy of German culture.
Table of Contents
From Ernst Lubitsch to Joe May : challenging Kracauer's demonology with Weimar popular film / Christian Rogowski -- Regulating hidden pleasures and "modern" identities : imagined female spectators, early German popular cinema, and The oyster princess (1919) / Janet McCabe -- The carnival of humiliation : sex, spectacle, and self-reflexivity in E.A. Dupont's Variety (1925) / Richard W. McCormick -- "Postcards from the edge" : education to tourism in the German mountain film / Nancy P. Nenno -- From "Mr. M" to "Mr Murder" : Peter Lorre and the actor in exile / Gerd Gemèunden -- The heroine of Fascist virtue? Kristina Sèoderbaum in Veit Harlan's The sacrifice (1943) / Antje Ascheid -- Placing Green is the heath (1951) : spatial politics and emergent West German identity / Alasdair King -- Sexual reorientations : homosexuality versus the postwar German man in Veit Harlan's Different from you and me (175) (1957) / Alison Guenther-Pal -- Negotiating the popular and the avant garde : the failure of Herbert Vesely's The bread of those early years (1962) / Hester Baer -- Exotic thrills and bedroom manuals : West German B-film production in the 1960s / Tim Bergfelder -- The politics of the popular : Trace of the stones (1966/89) and the discourse on stardom in the GDR cinema / Stefan Soldovieri -- Beleaguered under the sea : Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot (1981) as a German Hollywood film / Brad Prager -- Crime and the cynical solution : Black comedy, critique, and the spirit of self-concern in recent German film / John E. Davidson -- Unification horror : queer desire and uncanny visions / Randall Halle -- Picture-perfect war : an analysis of Joseph Vilsmaier's Stalingrad (1993) / Robert C. Reimer -- Fantasizing integration and escape in the post-unification road movie / Elizabeth Mittman -- "Honor your German masters" : history, memory, and national identity in Joseph Vilsmaier's Comedian harmonists (1997) / Lutz Koepnick -- Angst takes a holiday in Doris Dèorrie's Am I beautiful? (1998) / Margaret McCarthy -- You can run, but you can't hide : transcultural filmmaking in Run Lola run (1998) / Christine Haase.