Weimar Cinema and After: Germany's Historical Imaginary

by Thomas Elsaesser

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, Dr Mabuse the Gambler, Nosferatu, Metropolis, Pandora's Box and The Blue Angel have long been canonised as classics, but they are also among the key films defining an image of Germany as a nation uneasy with itself. The work of directors like Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and G.W. Pabst, which having apparently announced the horrors of fascism, while testifying to the traumas of a defeated nation, still casts a long shadow over cinema in Germany, leaving film history and political history permanently intertwined.
Weimar Cinema and After offers a fresh perspective on this most 'national' of national cinemas, re-evaluating 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. Thomas Elsaesser questions conventional readings which link these genres to romanticism and expressionism, and offers new approaches to analysing the function of national cinema in an advanced 'culture industry' and in a Germany constantly reinventing itself both geographically and politically.
Elsaesser argues that German cinema's significance lies less in its ability to promote democracy or predict fascism than in its contribution to the creation of a community sharing a 'historical imaginary' rather than a 'national identity'. In this respect, he argues, German cinema anticipated some of the problems facing contemporary nations in reconstituting their identities by means of media images, memory, and invented traditions.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, History

482 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2000

About the author

Thomas Elsaesser was a German film historian and professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Reviews

[Printable Tire]

I read other books for my class on Weimar Ceinma (Bela Balasz' Visible Man and the Theory of Film, Weimar Cinema: An Essential Guide to to Classic Films of the Era, and Kracauer's Mass Ornament and other Weimar Essays) but I didn't finish any of them so I don't feel justified in writing a review for them. I didn't really finish Weimar Cinema and After, but I read probably 85% to 90% of it so I feel more justified in writing a review. It's a lingo-laden, somewhat disorganized but extremely intelligent overview of Weimar films, with an emphasis on ambiguity and scatter-shot Freudian readings with no clear explanations. The more interesting parts are when Elsaesser brings up the monetary, practical concerns of Weimar films, such as when he argues that Expressionist films were created as precisely "weird" for a blossoming art house industry, but many other chapters I glossed over, as they are so jargon-heavy they are like reading a corporate contract without a law degree.
This is not a book for the faint of heart, or the sort of book one reads on your own for fun and personal growth: this book is essentially a text book for a select circle of readers who would read it for their profession as film theory grad students. I also think what Elsaesser is trying to accomplish is too much, and his ambiguous readings often frustrated me, but certain chapters stand out and his analysis is often ingenious and interesting (when it is not far-fetched and ridiculous.)

[Chloë · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I'm a huge nerd. So I thought this was a pretty spectacular survey. I read Elsaesser for a film studies thesis (it was one of about 30-something books on my list and the most helpful by far). I had to reread it several times, which was frustrating, but completely worth the effort.

It is dense. There were things I didn't even realize I hadn't understood until I returned to it later. And each time I thought I'd made a "cool" discovery, I ended up finding its seeds nestled in some throwaway sentence. It's nearly impossible to outdo him because he manages to nail it on almost every level (relatively concisely, as well).

If you're willing to slog through the trenches of abstract concepts and figure out explanations on your own, you'll end up with a really thorough understanding of Weimar cinema.

Eta: there's not a lot in the way of aesthetics, in case anyone is interested (don't all jump up at once!)