Jaimey Fisher
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037986
- eISBN:
- 9780252095238
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037986.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter analyzes the films of Christian Petzold. Over the past twenty years and across eleven feature-length works, Petzold has established himself as the most critically acclaimed director in ...
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This chapter analyzes the films of Christian Petzold. Over the past twenty years and across eleven feature-length works, Petzold has established himself as the most critically acclaimed director in Germany. Five of his last eight films have won Best Film from the Association of German Film Critics (2001, 2005, 2007, 2008, and 2012). It is not only the critics, however, who admire Petzold's work: his breakthrough The State I Am In (Die innere Sicherheit; 2000) won the Federal Film Prize in Gold, the equivalent of a best-film prize for its year, an unusual recognition for an art-house film. His films consistently explore new and transformational modes of individualities, especially the compromised, even tainted, character of desire in the wake of economic adaptability, accommodation, and mobility. This kind of adaptability, productive desire, and subsequent movement are emphatically historicized in Petzold's cinema, in which history regularly intrudes upon individuals' dreams, fantasies, and desires as well as the spaces they inhabit.Less
This chapter analyzes the films of Christian Petzold. Over the past twenty years and across eleven feature-length works, Petzold has established himself as the most critically acclaimed director in Germany. Five of his last eight films have won Best Film from the Association of German Film Critics (2001, 2005, 2007, 2008, and 2012). It is not only the critics, however, who admire Petzold's work: his breakthrough The State I Am In (Die innere Sicherheit; 2000) won the Federal Film Prize in Gold, the equivalent of a best-film prize for its year, an unusual recognition for an art-house film. His films consistently explore new and transformational modes of individualities, especially the compromised, even tainted, character of desire in the wake of economic adaptability, accommodation, and mobility. This kind of adaptability, productive desire, and subsequent movement are emphatically historicized in Petzold's cinema, in which history regularly intrudes upon individuals' dreams, fantasies, and desires as well as the spaces they inhabit.
Paul Grainge, Mark Jancovich, and Sharon Monteith
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748619061
- eISBN:
- 9780748670888
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748619061.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses the competitors of the American film industry. The German film industry competed most successfully with America in that its domestic productions outweighed foreign imports in ...
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This chapter discusses the competitors of the American film industry. The German film industry competed most successfully with America in that its domestic productions outweighed foreign imports in the 1920s, and Britain put up a very good fight at the box office, with 1927 its annus mirabilis. However, protectionist measures would characterise a decade in which national cinemas sought to hold their own against Hollywood's incursions into other national cinemas. The American challenge to European and other cinemas was also underwritten by the federal support that the American film industry received from the US Government's Commerce Department, designed to support a developing industry. The chapter also includes the study, ‘Social Mobility and the Fantastic: German Silent Cinema’ by Thomas Elsaesser, a revisionist study that pays tribute to two classic film studies of the era — Siegfried Kracauer's sociological From Caligari to Hitler (1947) and Lotte Eisner's aesthetic study The Haunted Screen (1969). Elsaesser critiques what had become their ‘consensus’ view of the cinema of the period.Less
This chapter discusses the competitors of the American film industry. The German film industry competed most successfully with America in that its domestic productions outweighed foreign imports in the 1920s, and Britain put up a very good fight at the box office, with 1927 its annus mirabilis. However, protectionist measures would characterise a decade in which national cinemas sought to hold their own against Hollywood's incursions into other national cinemas. The American challenge to European and other cinemas was also underwritten by the federal support that the American film industry received from the US Government's Commerce Department, designed to support a developing industry. The chapter also includes the study, ‘Social Mobility and the Fantastic: German Silent Cinema’ by Thomas Elsaesser, a revisionist study that pays tribute to two classic film studies of the era — Siegfried Kracauer's sociological From Caligari to Hitler (1947) and Lotte Eisner's aesthetic study The Haunted Screen (1969). Elsaesser critiques what had become their ‘consensus’ view of the cinema of the period.
Linnie Blake
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719075933
- eISBN:
- 9781781700914
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719075933.003.0011
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores two recent works of experimental, historically grounded and hence political German films that effectively encapsulate the conceptual and critical agenda. They are Jörg ...
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This chapter explores two recent works of experimental, historically grounded and hence political German films that effectively encapsulate the conceptual and critical agenda. They are Jörg Buttgereit's Nekromantik and Nekromantik 2. These films are not only more thematically complex and technically sophisticated than is popularly supposed, but they also share a set of artistic and ideological concerns more usually associated with the canonic auteurs of the Young German Cinema and the New German Cinema of the turbulent years of the 1960s and 1970s. In both Nekromantik films then, Buttgereit was keen to expose the highly manipulative nature of the film medium—specifically in the second film's depiction of heterosexual pornography and the first's re-creation of the slasher horror genre. Buttgereit not only produced stylistically inventive and conceptually sophisticated works of modern horror cinema but also offered a new model of German subjectivity for a post-reunification age. It is a considerable achievement for one whose films have been widely banned, critically neglected and commonly viewed as low-budget shockers of little artistic and intellectual merit. Such attitudes, needless to say, are entirely predictable responses from a still wounded, still traumatised national culture unable yet to engage with Buttgereit's unflinchingly radical stance.Less
This chapter explores two recent works of experimental, historically grounded and hence political German films that effectively encapsulate the conceptual and critical agenda. They are Jörg Buttgereit's Nekromantik and Nekromantik 2. These films are not only more thematically complex and technically sophisticated than is popularly supposed, but they also share a set of artistic and ideological concerns more usually associated with the canonic auteurs of the Young German Cinema and the New German Cinema of the turbulent years of the 1960s and 1970s. In both Nekromantik films then, Buttgereit was keen to expose the highly manipulative nature of the film medium—specifically in the second film's depiction of heterosexual pornography and the first's re-creation of the slasher horror genre. Buttgereit not only produced stylistically inventive and conceptually sophisticated works of modern horror cinema but also offered a new model of German subjectivity for a post-reunification age. It is a considerable achievement for one whose films have been widely banned, critically neglected and commonly viewed as low-budget shockers of little artistic and intellectual merit. Such attitudes, needless to say, are entirely predictable responses from a still wounded, still traumatised national culture unable yet to engage with Buttgereit's unflinchingly radical stance.
Evan Torner
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380383
- eISBN:
- 9781781381557
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380383.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses East German/Polish science-fiction co-production Silent Star (Der schweigende Stern, 1960), the world’s first film to feature a mixed-racial spaceship crew, in terms of ...
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This chapter discusses East German/Polish science-fiction co-production Silent Star (Der schweigende Stern, 1960), the world’s first film to feature a mixed-racial spaceship crew, in terms of socialist conceptions of race and gender. Director Kurt Maetzig conceptualized the expensive film, based on Stanislaw Lem novel Astronauci (1951), as an anti-racist epic leveled against nuclear war. Yet the resultant production made only tokenist attempts at integrating its multi-racial, multicultural cast into a believable, agentic space crew, remaining otherwise firmly entrenched in a German film tradition of racial performance and asymmetrical gender relations. The chapter uses new archival and press research to address the depiction of racial and international unities in this utopian film. It examines the ideology behind socialist multiculturalism, and how the production and aesthetics of the film itself model such a worldview with all its dilemmas intact.Less
This chapter discusses East German/Polish science-fiction co-production Silent Star (Der schweigende Stern, 1960), the world’s first film to feature a mixed-racial spaceship crew, in terms of socialist conceptions of race and gender. Director Kurt Maetzig conceptualized the expensive film, based on Stanislaw Lem novel Astronauci (1951), as an anti-racist epic leveled against nuclear war. Yet the resultant production made only tokenist attempts at integrating its multi-racial, multicultural cast into a believable, agentic space crew, remaining otherwise firmly entrenched in a German film tradition of racial performance and asymmetrical gender relations. The chapter uses new archival and press research to address the depiction of racial and international unities in this utopian film. It examines the ideology behind socialist multiculturalism, and how the production and aesthetics of the film itself model such a worldview with all its dilemmas intact.
Jaimey Fisher
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037986
- eISBN:
- 9780252095238
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037986.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter presents an interview with Christian Petzold, which mainly took place in July 2011, with a shorter followup in October 2012, at Petzold's office in Berlin. Topics covered include where ...
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This chapter presents an interview with Christian Petzold, which mainly took place in July 2011, with a shorter followup in October 2012, at Petzold's office in Berlin. Topics covered include where Petzold grew up; the first film he can remember seeing in a movie theater; the atmosphere in Berlin when he arrived to study literature; his decision to transfer to the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin; his collaborations Harun Farocki; how he finds Farocki's nonfiction films; the impression left by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany in 1990; and the influence of genre films such as Detour on Cuba Libre, Near Dark on The State I Am In, and Driver on Wolfsburg on his own films.Less
This chapter presents an interview with Christian Petzold, which mainly took place in July 2011, with a shorter followup in October 2012, at Petzold's office in Berlin. Topics covered include where Petzold grew up; the first film he can remember seeing in a movie theater; the atmosphere in Berlin when he arrived to study literature; his decision to transfer to the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin; his collaborations Harun Farocki; how he finds Farocki's nonfiction films; the impression left by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany in 1990; and the influence of genre films such as Detour on Cuba Libre, Near Dark on The State I Am In, and Driver on Wolfsburg on his own films.
Laura Heins
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037740
- eISBN:
- 9780252095023
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037740.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Focusing on German romance films, domestic melodramas, and home front films from 1933 to 1945, this book shows how melodramatic elements in Nazi cinema functioned as part of a project to move affect, ...
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Focusing on German romance films, domestic melodramas, and home front films from 1933 to 1945, this book shows how melodramatic elements in Nazi cinema functioned as part of a project to move affect, body, and desire beyond the confines of bourgeois culture and participate in a curious modernization of sexuality engineered to advance the imperialist goals of the Third Reich. Rather than reinforcing traditional gender role divisions and the status quo of the nuclear family, these films were much more permissive about desire and sexuality than previously assumed. Offering a comparative analysis of Nazi productions with classical Hollywood films of the same era, the book argues that Nazi melodramas, film writing, and popular media appealed to viewers by promoting liberation from conventional sexual morality and familial structures, presenting the Nazi state and the individual as dynamic and revolutionary. Drawing on extensive archival research, this perceptive study highlights the seemingly contradictory aspects of gender representation and sexual morality in Nazi-era cinema.Less
Focusing on German romance films, domestic melodramas, and home front films from 1933 to 1945, this book shows how melodramatic elements in Nazi cinema functioned as part of a project to move affect, body, and desire beyond the confines of bourgeois culture and participate in a curious modernization of sexuality engineered to advance the imperialist goals of the Third Reich. Rather than reinforcing traditional gender role divisions and the status quo of the nuclear family, these films were much more permissive about desire and sexuality than previously assumed. Offering a comparative analysis of Nazi productions with classical Hollywood films of the same era, the book argues that Nazi melodramas, film writing, and popular media appealed to viewers by promoting liberation from conventional sexual morality and familial structures, presenting the Nazi state and the individual as dynamic and revolutionary. Drawing on extensive archival research, this perceptive study highlights the seemingly contradictory aspects of gender representation and sexual morality in Nazi-era cinema.
Archibald David
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780719078088
- eISBN:
- 9781781704592
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719078088.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores the East German film Fünf Patronenhülsen/Five Cartridges, looking at the way it corresponded with the then-ruling Socialist Unity Party's desire to construct an anti-fascist ...
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This chapter explores the East German film Fünf Patronenhülsen/Five Cartridges, looking at the way it corresponded with the then-ruling Socialist Unity Party's desire to construct an anti-fascist national heritage, one which valorised the International Brigades as part of the attempt to legitimise the existence of the East German state and its communist leadership, many of whom had fought for the Republic. Although superficially, Five Cartridges appears to be an uncritical homage to the International Brigades, the chapter argues that a tension arises from the complex characterisation of the International Brigade members.Less
This chapter explores the East German film Fünf Patronenhülsen/Five Cartridges, looking at the way it corresponded with the then-ruling Socialist Unity Party's desire to construct an anti-fascist national heritage, one which valorised the International Brigades as part of the attempt to legitimise the existence of the East German state and its communist leadership, many of whom had fought for the Republic. Although superficially, Five Cartridges appears to be an uncritical homage to the International Brigades, the chapter argues that a tension arises from the complex characterisation of the International Brigade members.
Jaimey Fisher
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037986
- eISBN:
- 9780252095238
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037986.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
In eleven feature films across two decades, Christian Petzold has established himself as the most critically celebrated director in contemporary Germany. The best-known and most influential member of ...
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In eleven feature films across two decades, Christian Petzold has established himself as the most critically celebrated director in contemporary Germany. The best-known and most influential member of the Berlin School, Petzold's career reflects the trajectory of German film from 1970s New German Cinema to more popular fare in the 1990s and back again to critically engaged and politically committed filmmaking. His combination of critical celebration and popular success underscores Petzold's singular cinematic achievement: the deliberate and shrewd negotiation of art cinema and popular Hollywood genre. This book frames Petzold's cinema at the intersection of international art cinema and sophisticated genre cinema. This approach places his work in the context of global cinema and invites comparisons to the work of directors like Pedro Almodovar and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who repeatedly deploy and reconfigure genre cinema to their own ends. These generic aspects constitute a cosmopolitan gesture in Petzold's work as he interprets and elaborates on cult genre films and popular genres, including horror, film noir, and melodrama. The book explores these popular genres while injecting them with themes like terrorism, globalization, and immigration, central issues for European art cinema. The volume also includes an extended original interview with the director about his work.Less
In eleven feature films across two decades, Christian Petzold has established himself as the most critically celebrated director in contemporary Germany. The best-known and most influential member of the Berlin School, Petzold's career reflects the trajectory of German film from 1970s New German Cinema to more popular fare in the 1990s and back again to critically engaged and politically committed filmmaking. His combination of critical celebration and popular success underscores Petzold's singular cinematic achievement: the deliberate and shrewd negotiation of art cinema and popular Hollywood genre. This book frames Petzold's cinema at the intersection of international art cinema and sophisticated genre cinema. This approach places his work in the context of global cinema and invites comparisons to the work of directors like Pedro Almodovar and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who repeatedly deploy and reconfigure genre cinema to their own ends. These generic aspects constitute a cosmopolitan gesture in Petzold's work as he interprets and elaborates on cult genre films and popular genres, including horror, film noir, and melodrama. The book explores these popular genres while injecting them with themes like terrorism, globalization, and immigration, central issues for European art cinema. The volume also includes an extended original interview with the director about his work.
Alejandro Yarza
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748699247
- eISBN:
- 9781474444729
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748699247.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines the colonial politics of Franco’s Spain through an analysis of Romancero marroquí (Morrocan Romance, Carlos Velo 1938), a documentary about Spanish Morocco produced during the ...
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This chapter examines the colonial politics of Franco’s Spain through an analysis of Romancero marroquí (Morrocan Romance, Carlos Velo 1938), a documentary about Spanish Morocco produced during the Spanish Civil War by Franco’s provisional government. While in traditional colonial representations the colony becomes an alluring, albeit inferior, other to the colonizing Metropolis in need of progress and civilization, in its Francoist representation Spanish-Moroccan society becomes a model to be imitated, a kitsch paradise opposing—like Francoism itself—modern materialism and parliamentary democracy.Less
This chapter examines the colonial politics of Franco’s Spain through an analysis of Romancero marroquí (Morrocan Romance, Carlos Velo 1938), a documentary about Spanish Morocco produced during the Spanish Civil War by Franco’s provisional government. While in traditional colonial representations the colony becomes an alluring, albeit inferior, other to the colonizing Metropolis in need of progress and civilization, in its Francoist representation Spanish-Moroccan society becomes a model to be imitated, a kitsch paradise opposing—like Francoism itself—modern materialism and parliamentary democracy.
Patrick McGilligan
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816676552
- eISBN:
- 9781452948942
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816676552.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter details events in Fritz Lang’s life in Germany from 1918 to 1921. Lang was in Berlin for the Armistice of November 11, 1918; for the collapse of the monarchy; for the dismal conclusion ...
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This chapter details events in Fritz Lang’s life in Germany from 1918 to 1921. Lang was in Berlin for the Armistice of November 11, 1918; for the collapse of the monarchy; for the dismal conclusion of the World War and the commencement of the 1920s, a decade of rampant unemployment, malnutrition, crime, black marketeering, profiteering, inflation, and political turmoil. Germany was a sea of strife, but the film world was a fantasy island. Lang would thrive there, insulated and immune from outside forces. The years 1918–1919 were among the most crammed and hectic of his long, prodigious career. In that time he managed to write seven full-length features, and was credited for the first time as fully fledged director of two films.Less
This chapter details events in Fritz Lang’s life in Germany from 1918 to 1921. Lang was in Berlin for the Armistice of November 11, 1918; for the collapse of the monarchy; for the dismal conclusion of the World War and the commencement of the 1920s, a decade of rampant unemployment, malnutrition, crime, black marketeering, profiteering, inflation, and political turmoil. Germany was a sea of strife, but the film world was a fantasy island. Lang would thrive there, insulated and immune from outside forces. The years 1918–1919 were among the most crammed and hectic of his long, prodigious career. In that time he managed to write seven full-length features, and was credited for the first time as fully fledged director of two films.
