The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood

Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism #32

by Lutz Koepnick

Lutz Koepnick analyzes the complicated relationship between two cinemas―Hollywood's and Nazi Germany's―in this theoretically and politically incisive study. The Dark Mirror examines the split course of German popular film from the early 1930s until the mid 1950s, showing how Nazi filmmakers appropriated Hollywood conventions and how German film exiles reworked German cultural material in their efforts to find a working base in the Hollywood studio system. Through detailed readings of specific films, Koepnick provides a vivid sense of the give and take between German and American cinema.

332 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 2002

About the author

Lutz Koepnick is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of German, Cinema and Media Arts at Vanderbilt University, where he also chairs the Department of German, Russian, and East European Studies and directs the joint PhD program in Comparative Media Analysis and Practice. His books include On Slowness: Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary and The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood.

Reviews

[Domenico Francesco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interessante analisi del cinema tedesco della prima metà del '900 e dei suoi rapporti artistici col cinema di Weimar e di Hollywoodiano testimoniando come il nazismo nel suo tentativo di rimuovere il cinema hollywoodiano dall'Europa abbia fallito miseramente. Il tentativo di creare un cinema tedesco e nazionalsocialista "puro" portò in realtà ad un'imitazione del cinema "ebraico" tanto temuto non riuscendo mai pienamente ad annullare o a sfruttare i suoi modelli fino in fondo come sperato da Goebbels e in generale dal regime. Interessante ancor di più se si completa con la lettura di altri libri sul rapporto Hollywood-Terzo Reich.