Unit name | From Caligari to Hitler: German Film 1919-1945 |
---|---|
Unit code | GERM20033 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | I/5 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Professor. Vilain |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of German |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
The Weimar Republic produced some of the most famous cinematic images and films that remain part of the canon even today. Directors like Fritz Lang and F. W. Murnau were pioneers of the emerging genre. However, after 1933 and the rise to power of the Nazis, film increasingly became a vehicle for propaganda and political or ideological indoctrination. This unit will look at the development of German/Austrian cinema (silent and spoken) by focusing on a number of important films from the period 1918-1945 in their historical and cultural contexts. It will introduce students to this genre, and to techniques of film analysis and criticism. At the same time, it will test the thesis of one of the most famous works of criticism (Krakauer’s From Caligari to Hitler, 1947), that the development of German film in the Expressionist era and the Weimar Republic provides evidence for the fantasies and unconscious motivation of a nation and a culture that would ultimately lead to the rise of Nazism.
It is anticipated that 8 films will be studied in some detail each time the unit is run, selected from five main groups. Examples of such groups are:
Extremes of Expressionist humanity:
• Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari (Wiene, 1919)
• Der Golem (Wegener, 1920)
• Nosferatu: eine Sinfonie des Grauens (Murnau, 1922)
• Der Student von Prag (Ewers, 1913)
Modernity and the city:
• Metropolis (Lang, 1927)
• Berlin: Die Sinfonie einer Großstadt (Ruttmann, 1927)
Gender:
• Die Büchse der Pandora (Pabst, 1928)
• Fräulein Else (Czinner, 1929)
• Liebelei (Ophüls, 1933)
Politics, ideology and propaganda:
• Kuhle Wampe (Brecht/Dudow, 1932)
• Hitlerjunge Quex (Steinhoff, 1933)
• Triumph des Willens (Riefenstahl, 1935)
• Jud Süß (Harlan, 1940)
Popular cinema in the 3rd Reich
• Die große Liebe (Hansen, 1942)
• Die Feuerzangenbowle (Weiss, 1944)
Aims:
Successful students will be able to:
2 x 1 hour weekly lectures
Two essays of 2000 words each, each contributing 50% of the total mark, each testing ILOs 1-4.
The ‘filmography’ is above. Reference works include:
The German Cinema Book, ed. by Tim Bergfelder, Deniz Göktürk and Erica Carter (London: BFI Publishing 2002)
Sabine Hake, German National Cinema (London: Routledge, 2002; 2nd ed, 2008)
Concise CineGraph, ed. by Hans-Michael Bock and Tim Bergfelder (Berghahn 2009)
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An introduction, 6th edition (2001) or 7th ed. (2004).
David Bordwell, On the History of Film Style (Harvard UP, 1997)
Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (originally Princeton UP, 1947; reissued in pbk 2004).
S. S. Prawer, Between Two Worlds: The Jewish Presence in German and Austrian Film, 1910-1933 (Berghahn, 2005)