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Expressionist Film -- New Perspectives
New essays by leading scholars giving a new picture of the variety of German expressionist cinema.
This volume of fresh essays by leading scholars develops a new approach to expressionist film. For nearly half a century Siegfried Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler and Lotte Eisner's The Haunted Screen have shapedthe understanding of the cinema of this period. However, fifty years on, there is a growing awareness that a new account is overdue. This attempt to rewrite the story of expressionist cinema begins with a fundamentally new interpretation of Dr. Caligari, and together with fresh views of other expressionist classics, offers new perspectives on important alternative film styles and genres that emerged in films by such eminent directors as Ernst Lubitsch, Joe May, Fritz Lang, Karl Grune, F. W. Murnau, and E. A. Dupont. In pursuing such variety, the book strives for a picture of the cinema in the early years of Weimar that in thematic as well as stylistic terms reflects the vibrant, multifaceted cultural and political developments of the period. The book is a joint venture of the Centre for European Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh, the Institute for Film Studies at the University of Mainz, and the German Film Museum in Frankfurt.
The late Dietrich Scheunemann was Professor of German at the University of Edinburgh and wrote and edited several books on German literature and on film and media.
This volume of fresh essays by leading scholars develops a new approach to expressionist film. For nearly half a century Siegfried Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler and Lotte Eisner's The Haunted Screen have shapedthe understanding of the cinema of this period. However, fifty years on, there is a growing awareness that a new account is overdue. This attempt to rewrite the story of expressionist cinema begins with a fundamentally new interpretation of Dr. Caligari, and together with fresh views of other expressionist classics, offers new perspectives on important alternative film styles and genres that emerged in films by such eminent directors as Ernst Lubitsch, Joe May, Fritz Lang, Karl Grune, F. W. Murnau, and E. A. Dupont. In pursuing such variety, the book strives for a picture of the cinema in the early years of Weimar that in thematic as well as stylistic terms reflects the vibrant, multifaceted cultural and political developments of the period. The book is a joint venture of the Centre for European Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh, the Institute for Film Studies at the University of Mainz, and the German Film Museum in Frankfurt.
The late Dietrich Scheunemann was Professor of German at the University of Edinburgh and wrote and edited several books on German literature and on film and media.
318 pages, Paperback
First published July 13, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 24, 2021
new perspectives, ineed! Expressionist was short-lived, lasting only four years!
February 4, 2015
This is a very academic book, in the negative sense; it is more concerned with defining positions relative to other books on film than with the films themselves. In particular, it is a continuous polemic against Krackauer's From Caligari to Hitler and Eisner's The Haunted Screen, the two most significant books on early German cinema.
The book begins with two general articles, one by the editor, Dietrich Scheunemann, and the other by noted film writer Thomas Elsaesser (significantly titled "Krackauer and Eisner Revisited".) Scheunemann dismisses Krackauer's book as totally misguided; he accuses it of ignoring form for content (unfairly, since Krackauer discusses technique quite a bit for a book which is explicitly a Psychological History of German Film, not a general history of a history of technique), while he himself ignores content (or rather insists that the content of the films is simply about their own technique, turning them all into early twentieth century post-modernists.) He spends more time dealing with Eisner, arguing that most of the films of the Weimar cinema are in fact not "Expressionist" at all (which makes the choice of the title of the book, Expressionist Film, somewhat odd.)
The second article, by Elsaesser, is perhaps the best in the book. Rather than concentrating on attacking Krackauer, he accepts his general outlook and tries to fill in the areas in which Krackauer is weak. Unfortunately, at one point he becomes rather bogged down in discussing a feminist analysis which he doesn't present at all clearly, retreating into postmodern jargon for a few pages.
The remainder of the book consists in "new perspectives" on about a dozen specidfic films or directors. These are very uneven; some really did give me a new perspective on the films, while others were rather disappointing, and three or four I couldn't really judge because I hadn't seen the films (unfortunately these seemed to be among the most interesting). They also differed in the amount of postmodern and film-crit jargon they contained; not surprisingly those which were the least perceptive about the films had the most jargon. All were distorted by the need to begin with an attack on Krackauer; I wish they had forgotten his book and just presented their own perspectives on the works.
After reading this book, I was tempted to go back and add another star to my review -- of Krackauer's book.
The book begins with two general articles, one by the editor, Dietrich Scheunemann, and the other by noted film writer Thomas Elsaesser (significantly titled "Krackauer and Eisner Revisited".) Scheunemann dismisses Krackauer's book as totally misguided; he accuses it of ignoring form for content (unfairly, since Krackauer discusses technique quite a bit for a book which is explicitly a Psychological History of German Film, not a general history of a history of technique), while he himself ignores content (or rather insists that the content of the films is simply about their own technique, turning them all into early twentieth century post-modernists.) He spends more time dealing with Eisner, arguing that most of the films of the Weimar cinema are in fact not "Expressionist" at all (which makes the choice of the title of the book, Expressionist Film, somewhat odd.)
The second article, by Elsaesser, is perhaps the best in the book. Rather than concentrating on attacking Krackauer, he accepts his general outlook and tries to fill in the areas in which Krackauer is weak. Unfortunately, at one point he becomes rather bogged down in discussing a feminist analysis which he doesn't present at all clearly, retreating into postmodern jargon for a few pages.
The remainder of the book consists in "new perspectives" on about a dozen specidfic films or directors. These are very uneven; some really did give me a new perspective on the films, while others were rather disappointing, and three or four I couldn't really judge because I hadn't seen the films (unfortunately these seemed to be among the most interesting). They also differed in the amount of postmodern and film-crit jargon they contained; not surprisingly those which were the least perceptive about the films had the most jargon. All were distorted by the need to begin with an attack on Krackauer; I wish they had forgotten his book and just presented their own perspectives on the works.
After reading this book, I was tempted to go back and add another star to my review -- of Krackauer's book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews