Weimar Cinema and After; Germany's Historical Imaginary
Editorial Reviews
Review
"The book is a fantastic starting place for understanding a period of German cinema as well as our own assumption-making process and the forces that shape it.."
-Film Freak Central
"...[Elsaesser] ingeniously stitches together many of his well-known articles of the last decade or so to present a far more comprehensive portrait of the era, its filmmakers, films, institutions and audiences than ever before... Highly recommended for research libraries."
-Choice
Book Description
German cinema of the 1920s is still regarded as one of the "golden ages" of world cinema. Films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu and The Blue Angel are among the key films defining an age of Germany as a nation uneasy with itself. Directors such as Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and G.W. Pabst, having apparently announced the horrors of fascism while testifying to the traumas of a defeated nation, cast long shadows over German cinema to this day.
Weimar Cinema and After offers a fresh perspective on the arguments which view genres and movements such as "films of the fantastic," "Nazi Cinema," "film noir" and "New German Cinema" as typically German contributions to twentieth century visual culture. Elsaesser questions conventional readings which link these genres to romanticism and expressionism and offers new approaches to analyzing national cinema.
Elsaesser argues that German cinema's significance lies more in its contribution to a creation of a community sharinga 'historical imaginary' rather than a 'national identity.' In this respect, German cinema anticipated some of the problems facing contemporary nations in reconstituting their identities by means of media images, memory, and invented traditions.
Weimar Cinema and After; Germany's Historical Imaginary
Weimar Cinema and After; Germany's Historical Imaginary,T. Elsaesser,Routledge,041501235X,Cinema/Film: Book,Film & Video - History & Criticism,Germany,History,Motion pictures,Performing Arts,Pop Arts / Pop Culture,European history: from c 1900 -,Film theory & criticism,Inter-war period, 1918-1939
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