European and American experts explore German film history, including Weimar cinema, Nazi propaganda, New German Cinema, the cinema of the GDR, and transnational ties to Hollywood, exile and migrant cinemas.

Explores the history of the social experience of cinema-going by examining empirical research methodologies and perspectives, including: oral history methods, questionnaires, diaries, and audience letters, as well as industrial, sociological and other accounts on historical film audiences - providing a "how to" compendium of current methodologies for researchers and students. Contributions reflect upon the very different ways in which cinema has been accepted, rejected or disciplined as an agent of modernity in Europe.

Siegfried Kracauer observed that that the lavish movie palaces of 1920s Germany served to stimulate peripheral vision and thus prevent the audience from being absorbed by the spectacle itself. The first major critic of classic German cinema, Kracauer's views on such Expressionist mainstays as Lang's Metropolis and Murnau's Nosferatu, Ruttman's Berlin, Symphony of a City, Jessner's Backstairs, Berger's Day and Night, and the mountain films of Fanck and Riefenstahl are treated here. Among the "hidden stages" analyzed are amusement parks, carnivals, department stores, train compartments, city streets, the womb, the theater, the chamber, basement apartments -- and ultimately Neubabelsberg, the gargantuan studio-complex near Berlin where so many of these peripheral spaces came to be simulated.
(Click on book title for Table of Contents)

The serial film form goes far beyond the well-known American two-reel serial cliffhanger. Canjels focuses on the biggest producers of serials, America, France, and Germany, while imported serials, such as those in the Netherlands, are also examined. The work of directors such as D.W. Griffith, Abel Gance, Erich von Stroheim, Fritz Lang, Louis Feuillade and Joe May are treated here. By examining the distribution, reception, and cultural contexts of American and European serials in various countries, this cross-cultural research makes both local and global observations. (Click on book title for Table of Contents)

The Golden Age of German cinema was characterized by two influences: literary Expressionism, and the innovations of the theatre directors of this period, in particular Max Reinhardt. This book discusses the influence of the theatre itself: the handling of crowds; the use of different levels, and of selective lighting on a predominately dark stage; the reliance on formalized gesture; the innovation of the intimate theatre. The author explains the key critical concepts of the principal films of the period, and surveys not only the work of the great directors, such as Fritz Lang and F. W. Murnau, but also the contribution of their writers, cameramen, and designers.

A Second Life performs a kind of archaeology on a period largely overlooked: the first two decades of German cinema. Focusing on the historical and cultural significance of popular cinema in Wilhelmine Germany, this title is also available in the OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) Library at http://www.oapen.org.

Over 200 entries on film, actors, directors, producers, cinematographers, critics, film industry, film movements and festivals covering German-speaking cinema from the 1890s to the popular comedies of the 1990s.

This book rectifies the fact that works by women directors in German speaking countries have been largely ignored in spite of the important social, political and historical issues they have raised. This is the first work to consider the broad spectrum of German cinema through the category of gender.

This volume reproduces the diversity of perspectives and the intensity of controversies of early German film within the broad context of German social and political history, from the aesthetic rapture of the first years to the institutionalization of film by the national socialist state. Hake treats all aspects of the medium: production, promotion, education, journalism, aesthetics, and political activism, following throughout the various forms criticism assumed.

In this new edition, Sabine Hake discusses film-making in economic, political, social, and cultural terms, and considers the contribution of Germany's most popular films to changing definitions of genre, authorship, and film form. The book traces the central role of cinema in the nation's turbulent history from the Wilhelmine Empire to the Berlin Republic, with special attention paid to the competing demands of film as art, entertainment, and propaganda. Hake also explores the centrality of genre films and the star system to the development of a filmic imaginary.

A collaborator with Warner Brothers and Paramount in the early days of sound film, the German film director Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) is famous for his sense of ironic detachment and for the eroticism he infused into such comedies as So This Is Paris and Trouble in Paradise. Sabine Hake focuses on the visual strategies Lubitsch used to convey irony and analyzes his contribution to the rise of classical narrative cinema. Exploring Lubitsch's depiction of femininity and the influence of his early German films on his entire career, these readings cover The Oyster Princess, The Doll, The Mountain Cat, Passion, Deception, So This Is Paris, Monte Carlo, and Trouble in Paradise.

These essays reexamine popular film production along with larger cultural, historical, and political meanings suggested by the term "popular." This volume examines 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. What emerges is a "Never-Ending Story" of oft-repeated obsessions, overlapping generic forms, omnipresent or subtle nods to Hollywood, and myriad political concerns.

The sixteen remarkable films discussed here represent the brilliant creativity that flourished in the name of German cinema between the wars. Encompassing early gangster pictures, science fiction, avant-garde, fantasy films, sexual intrigues, love stories, the classics of silent cinema and Germany's first talkies, each chapter illuminates the technological advancements of a given film, its detailed production history, its critical reception over time, and the place it occupies within the larger history of the German studio and of Weimar cinema in general. Readers can revisit the careers of such acclaimed directors as F. W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, and G. W. Pabst and examine the debuts of such international stars as Greta Garbo, Louise Brooks, and Marlene Dietrich.

The classical German cinema of the Weimar Republic was haunted by the horrors of World War I and the the devastating effects of the nation's defeat. Anton Kaes argues that masterworks such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, The Nibelungen, and Metropolis reveal a wounded nation in post-traumatic shock, reeling from a devastating defeat that it never officially acknowledged, let alone accepted. Directors like Robert Wiene, F. W. Murnau, and Fritz Lang portrayed paranoia, panic, and fear of invasion in films peopled with serial killers, mad scientists, and troubled young men.

This anthology offers a new understanding of German-language film, from the earliest days of the Kintopp to contemporary productions like The Lives of Others. More than eighty essays takes a key date as its starting point and explores its significance for German film history, pursuing its relationship with its social, political, and aesthetic moment. This book emphasizes the juxtaposition of famous and unknown stories, granting attention to a wide range of cinematic events.

Drawing on analysis of the films of the Weimar era - documentaries and feature films addressing the war's causes, life at the front, war at sea, and the home front - Bernadette Kester sketches out the historical context, including reviews and censors' reports, in which these films were made and viewed, and offers much insight into how Germans collectively perceived World War I during its aftermath and beyond.

A landmark, now classic, study of the rich cinematic history of the Weimar Republic, From Caligari to Hitler was first published by Princeton University Press in 1947. Siegfried Kracauer--a prominent German film critic and member of Walter Benjamin's and Theodor Adorno's intellectual circle--broke new ground in exploring the connections between film aesthetics, the prevailing psychological state of Germans in the Weimar era, and the evolving social and political reality of the time. Kracauer's pioneering book, which examines German history from 1921 to 1933 in light of such movies as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, M, Metropolis, and The Blue Angel, has never gone out of print. Now, over half a century after its first appearance, this beautifully designed and entirely new edition reintroduces Kracauer for the twenty-first century. Film scholar Leonardo Quaresima places Kracauer in context in a critical introduction, and updates the book further with a new bibliography, index, and list of inaccuracies that crept into the first edition. This volume is a must-have for the film historian, film theorist, or cinema enthusiast.In From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer--the German-born writer and film critic who shared many ideas and interests with his friend Walter Benjamin--made a startling (and still controversial) claim: films as a popular art provide insight into the unconscious motivations and fantasies of a nation. In films of the 1920s such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, M, Metropolis, and The Blue Angel, he traced recurring visual and narrative tropes that expressed, he argued, a fear of chaos and a desire for order, even at the price of authoritarian rule. The book has become an undisputed classic of film historiography, laying the foundations for the serious study of film. In From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer made a startling (and still controversial) claim: films as a popular art provide insight into the unconscious motivations and fantasies of a nation. In films of the 1920s, he traced recurring visual and narrative tropes that expressed, he argued, a fear of chaos and a desire for order, even at the price of authoritarian rule. The book has become an undisputed classic of film historiography, laying the foundations for the serious study of film. Kracauer was an important film critic in Weimar Germany. A Jew, he escaped the rise of Nazism, fleeing to Paris in 1933. Later, in anguish after Benjamin's suicide, he made his way to New York, where he remained until his death in 1966. He wrote From Caligari to Hitler while working as a "special assistant" to the curator of the Museum of Modern Art's film division. He was also on the editorial board of Bollingen Series. Despite many critiques of its attempt to link movies to historical outcomes, From Caligari to Hitler remains Kracauer's best-known and most influential book, and a seminal work in the study of film. Princeton published a revised edition of his Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality in 1997.