Thomas Elsaesser authored and edited dozens of books in various languages. Here, one can find a selection of these books and their contents.
Thomas Elsaesser reflected extensively on architecture. This volume gathers his essays on the work of the architect Martin Elsaesser – Thomas Elsaesser’s grandfather – the architectural movements Neues Bauen and Neues Frankfurt, and their representation in cinema. Several of these essays are published here for the first time.
This groundbreaking volume for the Thinking Cinema series focuses on the extent to which contemporary cinema contributes to political and philosophical thinking about the future of Europe's core Enlightenment values. In light of the challenges of globalization, multi-cultural communities and post-nation state democracy, the book interrogates the borders of ethics and politics and roots itself in debates about post-secular, post-Enlightenment philosophy.
Since cinema has entered the digital era, its very nature has come under renewed scrutiny. Countering the 'death of cinema' debate, Film History as Media Archaeology presents a robust argument for the cinema's current status as a new epistemological object, of interest to philosophers, while also examining the presence of moving images in the museum and art spaces as a challenge for art history. The current study is the fruit of some twenty years of research and writing at the interface of film history, media theory and media archaeology by one of the acknowledged pioneers of the 'new film history' and 'media archaeology'. It joins the efforts of other media scholars to locate cinema's historical emergence and subsequent transformations within the broader field of media change and interaction, as we experience them today.
What is the relationship between cinema and spectator? That is the central question for film theory, and renowned film scholars Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener use this question to guide students through all of the major film theories – from the classical period to today – in this insightful, engaging book. Every kind of cinema (and film theory) imagines an ideal spectator, and then imagines a certain relationship between the mind and body of that spectator and the screen. Using seven distinctive configurations of spectator and screen that move progressively from ‘exterior’ to ‘interior’ relationships, the authors retrace the most important stages of film theory from 1945 to the present, from neo-realist and modernist theories to psychoanalytic, ‘apparatus’, phenomenological and cognitivist theories.
This new and updated edition of Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses (2015) has been extensively revised and rewritten throughout. It incorporates discussion of contemporary films like Her and Gravity, and includes a greatly expanded final chapter, which brings film theory fully into the digital age.
In German Cinema: Terror and Trauma – Cultural Memory Since 1945 Thomas Elsaesser re-evaluates the meaning of the Holocaust for postwar German films and culture, while offering a reconsideration of trauma theory today. Elsaesser argues that Germany's attempts at "mastering the past" can be seen as both a failure and an achievement, making it appropriate to speak of an ongoing 'guilt management' that includes not only Germany, but Europe as a whole.
In a series of case studies, which consider the work of Konrad Wolf, Alexander Kluge, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Herbert Achternbusch and Harun Farocki, as well as films made in the new century, Elsaesser tracks the different ways the Holocaust is present in German cinema from the 1950s onwards, even when it is absent, or referenced in oblique and hyperbolic ways.
Its most emphatically "absent presence" might turn out to be the compulsive afterlife of the Red Army Faction, whose acts of terror in the 1970s were a response to – as well as a reminder of – Nazism’s hold on the national imaginary.
Since the end of the Cold War and 9/11, the terms of the debate around terror and trauma have shifted also in Germany, where generational memory now distributes the roles of historical agency and accountability differently. Against the background of universalized victimhood, a cinema of commemoration has, if anything, confirmed the violence that the past continues to exert on the present, in the form of missed encounters, retroactive causal chains, unintended slippages and uncanny parallels, which Elsaesser – reviving the full meaning of Freud’s Fehlleistung – calls the parapractic performativity of cultural memory.
Film Theory 영화 이론: 영화는 육체와 어떤 관계인가
토마스 엘새서 - 말테 하게너 지음, 윤종욱 옮김, 커뮤니케이션북스, 2012
21세기를 위한 새로운 영화 이론 입문서
2007년 출간 당시부터 독일 영화학계의 압도적인 지지를 받은 영화 이론 입문서. 이 책은 영화 이론의 역사를 개괄하지만, 기존의 책들과는 달리 연대기순으로 집필하거나 학파를 중심으로 이론을 소개하지 않고, 영화와 관객의 관계, 인간의 감각과 영화 이론의 관계를 중심으로 이론을 재편했다. 영화, 지각, 인간의 육체는 서로 어떤 관계가 있는가? 한 가지 핵심 질문을 통해 영화, 지각, 육체의 상호 관련성을 독창적이고 논리적으로 규정한다.
육체와 감각, 영화를 말하다.
저자들은 영화에 묘사된 육체와 객체 사이의, 그리고 영화와 관객 사이의 시공간적 관계를 이론적으로 새롭게 규정하기 위해 7개의 개념쌍을 설정한다. 창과 틀, 문과 스크린, 거울과 얼굴, 눈과 시선, 피부와 접촉, 귀와 공간, 뇌와 정신을 중심으로 개별 장들이 전개된다. 각 장은 핵심 개념을 잘 드러내는 영화 장면에서 시작하고, 이어서 학파와 개념, 이론가를 소개한다. 여기에서 논의되는 영화는 , 와 같은 고전 영화와 , 과 같은 최신 영화를 모두 포함한다.
Knyga nemoko kurti filmų, nesiūlo jų analizės abėcėlės, nevedžioja po esamų ar buvusių filmų įvairovę. Atspirties tašku ji renkasi klausimą: koks yra kino ir žiūrovo santykis? Kaip, kokiomis juslėmis suvokiame filmus? Į šiuos klausimus Thomas Elsaesseris ir Malte Hageneris siūlo žvelgti per juslių prizmę – per skirtingus būdus, kuriais kinas kreipiasi į žiūrovą (vaizdu, garsu, netgi prisilytėjimu). Pagal šį juslių žemėlapį dėliodami skirtingas kino teorijas, autoriai supažindina ne vien su kino ir žiūrovo santykio variacijomis, bet ir su įvairiais būdais mąstyti apie kiną – iš skirtingų mokyklų, teorijų, disciplinų perspektyvos. Kino teorija čia atsiskleidžia kaip dinamiška, kintanti, bet visuomet ieškanti atsakymų į pamatinius klausimus: ką reiškia žiūrėti filmą, kaip ir kodėl tai darome, kaip į mūsų žiūrėjimą atsiliepia pats filmas?
Kino tyrinėtojo ir teoretiko, vieno iš kino studijų disciplinos įkūrėjų ir jo bendraautorio knygoje brėžiamas kino teorijos žemėlapis: nuo formalistinių iki aparato teorijų, nuo psichoanalitinio požiūrio į kiną – iki fenomenologinio, nuo kino kaip kuriančio alternatyvias tikroves iki kino kaip į istoriją atsiliepiančio reiškinio.
Taigi rankose laikote įvadą į išsyk dvi istorijas: į tai, kaip kinas tampa menu, o kino lankytoja(s) – žiūrovu.
What hides behind the “coolness” of the character played by actor Samuel Jackson in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction? What trauma underlies Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River? Is there a deep, secret motive for actor Jodie Foster’s character in Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs?
Written by Dr. Boaz Hagin, this book is based on a series of lectures on trauma, memory and fantasy, both on the individual and the collective level, given by Professor Thomas Elsaesser at Tel Aviv University and The Open University.
Metropolis is a monumental work. On its release in 1925, after sixteen months' filming, it was Germany's most expensive feature film, a canvas for director Fritz Lang's increasingly extravagant ambitions. Lang, inspired by the skyline of New York, created a whole new vision of cities. One of the greatest works of science fiction, the film also tells human stories about love and family. Thomas Elsaesser explores the cultural phenomenon of Metropolis: its different versions (there is no definitive one), its changing meanings, and its role as a database of twentieth-century imagery and ideologies.
In his foreword to this special edition, published to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the BFI Film Classics series, Elsaesser discusses the impact of the 27 minutes of 'lost' footage discovered in Buenos Aires in 2008, and incorporated in a restored edition, which premiered in 2010.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder gilt als der bedeutendste Regisseur des deutschen Kinos nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Während die bisherige Literatur zu Fassbinder sich vor allem dem "maßlosen" Leben des ungemein produktiven Filmemachers verschrieben hat, steht in diesem Buch sein Werk im Zentrum: Thomas Elsaesser, einer der international renommiertesten Filmhistoriker, analysiert Fassbinders Filme als ebenso klarsichtige wie kritische Chronik der Bundesrepublik und ihrer Vorgeschichte.
While Hollywood’s success – its persistence – has remained constant for almost one hundred years, the study of its success has undergone significant expansion and transformation. Since the 1960s, Thomas Elsaesser’s research has spearheaded the study of Hollywood, beginning with his classic essays on auteurism and cinephilia, focused around a director’s themes and style, up to his analysis of the "corporate authorship" of contemporary director James Cameron. In between, he has helped to transform film studies by incorporating questions of narrative, genre, desire, ideology and, more recently, Hollywood’s economic-technological infrastructure and its place within global capitalism.
The Persistence of Hollywood brings together Elsaesser’s key writings about Hollywood filmmaking. It includes his detailed studies of individual directors (including Minnelli, Fuller, Ray, Hitchcock, Lang, Altman, Kubrick, Coppola, and Cameron), as well as essays charting the shifts from classic to corporate Hollywood by way of the New Hollywood and the resurgence of the blockbuster. The book also presents a history of the different critical-theoretical paradigms central to film studies in its analysis of Hollywood, from auteurism and cinephilia to textual analysis, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and post-industrial analysis.
Quels sont les rapports entre cinéma et spectateur ? Pour Thomas Elsaesser et Malte Hagener, cette question est au cœur même de la théorie filmique et ils analysent l’interaction dynamique entre l’écran, le corps, l’esprit et les sens comme la matrice susceptible de guider l’étudiant à travers les grandes théories du cinéma. S’appuyant sur sept configurations différentes sens-écran, ils passent en revue les étapes essentielles de la théorie du cinéma, qu’elles soient néoréalistes, sémiotiques, psychanalytiques ou encore phénoménologiques ou cognitivistes. Chaque chapitre s’ouvre sur une brève analyse de séquence d’un film célèbre, analyse qui sert de point d’ancrage à la discussion théorique.
What is the relationship between cinema and spectator? That is the central question for film theory, and renowned film scholars Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener use this question to guide students through all of the major film theories – from the classical period to today – in this insightful, engaging book. Every kind of cinema (and film theory) imagines an ideal spectator, and then imagines a certain relationship between the mind and body of that spectator and the screen. Using seven distinctive configurations of spectator and screen that move progressively from ‘exterior’ to ‘interior’ relationships, the authors retrace the most important stages of film theory from 1945 to the present, from neo-realist and modernist theories to psychoanalytic, ‘apparatus’, phenomenological and cognitivist theories.
Questa opera di analisi e di confronto pone sul tavolo anatomico dell'entomologo cinematografico, più che del critico, una serie di film differenti per natura, target e finalità che, magicamente, si dispiegano davanti agli occhi del lettore trovando una loro verità, si presume indipendente dalle volontà originarie dei loro autori, e diventando altro, ovvero il riflesso artistico e industriale, in una parola mediatico, di un'intera società e di un intero mondo, il nostro, così pieno di immagini ma così vuoto di significati.
Das amerikanische Kino als globale Unterhaltungsindustrie hat sich seit den 70er Jahren immer wieder erneuert. Motor und Symbol der wiedererstarkten Macht Hollywoods ist der "Blockbuster", ein umfassend vermarktetes, multifunktionales Spektakel. Doch Filme wie CHINATOWN, PULP FICTION oder MEMENTO und viele andere stehen auch für Erfindungsreichtum und Experimentiergeist und bezeugen die kreative Glaubwürdigkeit ihrer Regisseure. Aber wissen wir eigentlich, was diese Filme bedeuten? Vielleicht kann uns das Hollywood-Kino Dinge über unsere zeitgenössische Welt mitteilen, die die anderen Künste aus dem Blick verloren haben. Dieses Buch bietet einen neuen Zugang zum populären amerikanischen Film der letzen 25 Jahre. Eine genaue Lektüre der Erzählformen, der stilistischen Muster und filmischen Referenzen, der Handlungen und Motive der Protagonisten liefert überraschende Ergebnisse.
Quali effetti produce il film sul corpo dello spettatore? Sulla scorta di questo suggestivo quesito di fondo, Thomas Elsaesser e Malte Hagener introducono il lettore alla teoria del film, presentando e commentando i piú importanti autori classici e quelli piú recenti, ricostruendo le prospettive critiche piú affermate come le prese di posizione piú nuove e provocatorie.
Il libro spazia dal modello del cinema come «finestra» e «cornice», tale da implicare una visione a distanza e disincarnata dello spettatore rispetto al mondo narrato dal film, fino al concetto di «cervello come schermo», nel quale il film opera registicamente sul corpo e sulla mente dello spettatore.
Die Filmtheorien, die seit der Entstehung des Kinos am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts entwickelt wurden, lassen sich als eine Reihe von Metaphern, Konzepten und Begriffsfeldern verstehen, die sich auf den Körper des Zuschauers und dessen taktilen, epistemologischen, sensomotorischen und perzeptuellen Oberflächen und Wahrnehmungsarten beziehen. Für die 'klassische Filmtheorie' (etwa seit 1945) lassen sich sieben Entwicklungsstufen ausmachen, die in dieser Einführung entfaltet werden und denen die jeweils dominante Form des Kinos der betreffenden Epoche entspricht. Neben dem historisch-analytischen Überblick über die entscheidenden theoretischen Positionen schließt dieser Einführungsband also auch eine Re-Klassifikation der Filmgeschichte seit 1945 anhand des Körpers des Zuschauers ein.
Die Bundesrepublikanische Geschichte ist geprägt von der Aufarbeitung der traumatischen Kriegserlebnisse und -verbrechen. Diese Aufarbeitung ist in unterschiedlicher Weise geleistet worden und sie bildet das Thema dieses Buches. Eine Antwort ist bis zu ihrer Selbstauflösung am 20. 4. 1998 die RAF, die Thomas Elsaesser in einem Kapitel vor der Folie des Antigone-Mythos interpretiert. Dabei geht es ihm nicht darum, den Mythos RAF ein weiteres Mal heraufzubeschwören und somit zu entpolitisieren, sondern um ihre Bedeutung bis heute aufzuzeigen. Als weiterer Untersuchungsgegenstand bietet sich das Kino als primäres Medium der Aufzeichnung an, scheint es doch so, als ob im 20. Jahrhundert nichts geschah, ohne dass es von einer Kamera aufgezeichnet wurde.
In most countries of Western Europe, and especially in Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Spain and Italy, the 1990s have seen a lively debate about the future of national cinema traditions. No longer can one assume the existence of distinct national styles, as they were once confidently identified with Italian neo-realism, with France's nouvelle vague, the New German Cinema, or with internationally famous art-cinema directors like Antonioni, Bergman, Losey, Fassbinder and Greenaway.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder est incontestablement l'un des auteurs les plus importants du cinéma européen de L'après-guerre. En quinze ans à peine, il a réalisé plus d'une quarantaine de films, dont beaucoup ont accédé au rang de classiques, tels Le Marchand des quatre-saisons, Les Larmes amères de Petra von Kant, Tous les autres s'appellent Ali, Le Mariage de Maria Braun et le monumental Berlin Alexanderplatz. La plupart des études sur Fassbinder insistent sur sa personnalité provocatrice et y trouvent les ressorts de sa productivité frénétique.
Alors qu’au mois de janvier 2005, le centre d’art Kunst-Werke de Berlin inaugure enfin sa grande exposition autour du groupe terroriste d’extrême gauche ouest-allemand RAF (Fraction Armée Rouge), les films de Fassbinder ressortent en France. Voici (de nouveau) largement accessibles les représentations d’un mouvement politique radical et violent, dont l’impact excède largement le champ de la politique, pour devenir un récit si riche en tensions et événements historiques qu’il sera récupéré, historicisé, réécrit, révisé, interprété, scénarisé, enjolivé, travesti, noirci, manipulé et mythologisé. Il nous semble important de publier conjointement deux visions éclairantes : celle de l’historien du cinéma Thomas Elsaesser et celle des réalisateurs de l’Allemagne en Automne.
Ez a könyv a nemzetközi filmtörténeti szakirodalomban a legfontosabbnak tartott és a legteljesebb feldolgozása a német filmművészet modern korszakának a hatvanas évek közepétől a nyolcvanas évek közepéig. Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, és a többi újhullámos rendező filmjeinek átfogó bemutatását és alapos, tényszerű feldolgozását nyújtja a könyv.
Anyone interested in how the technological, and now the electronic media have transformed civil society, could find no better chronicler of their histories, no more intelligent observer of their unexpected connections, no more incisive critic and yet interested party to the media’s epoch-making significance than the German filmmaker, installation artist and media theorist Harun Farocki. As a filmmaker, Farocki not only adds images to their stock in the world; he comments on the world made by these images, and he does so with and through images.
The Last Great American Picture Show brings together essays by scholars and writers who chart the changing evaluations of the American cinema of the 1970s, sometimes referred to as the decade of the lost generation, but now more and more recognized as the first New Hollywood, without which the cinema of Francis Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Tim Burton or Quentin Tarantino could not have come into existence.
Der Band setzt sich mit den revisionistischen Konzepten der New Film History auseinander und diskutiert die Legitimationszwänge, denen sich die deutsche Filmgeschichtsschreibung ausgesetzt sieht. Die Kapitel beschäftigen sich u. a. mit den Technikentwürfen Edisons und der Brüder Lumière, zeichnen den ökonomischen Wandel des Films von einer Varieté- und Jahrmarktsattraktion zu einer kapitalistisch organisierten Industrie nach und widmen sich eingehend der Entstehung narrativer Kontinuität und filmischer Subjektivität. Abschließend wird die Brücke geschlagen zum Medienwandel unserer Tage.
Das erste Vierteljahrhundert der deutschen Filmgeschichte stand lange im Schatten der berühmten Klassiker der zwanziger Jahre. Erst im Zuge des jüngst wieder erwachten Interesses am frühen Kino hat auch die Frühzeit des deutschen Films an Profil zurückgewonnen. Als eigenständige filmhistorische Epoche betrachtet, erscheint sie heute für ein Verständnis aller späteren Entwicklungen von zentraler Bedeutung.
How should the student set about analysing contemporary American cinema? This book takes an innovative approach to film analysis: each chapter examines the assumptions behind one traditional theory of film, distils a method of analysis from it, and then analyses a contemporary American movie. It then goes beyond the traditional theory by analysing the same movie using a more current theory and method.
Metropolis (1925) is a monumental work. When it was made it was Germany's most expensive feature film, a canvas for director Fritz Lang's increasingly extravagant ambitions (it took sixteen months to film). Lang, inspired by the skyline of New York, created a whole new vision of cities. One of the greatest works of science fiction, the film also tells human stories about love and family. In this book, Thomas Elsaesser explores the cultural phenomenon of Metropolis: its different versions (there is no definitive one), its changing meanings, its role as a storehouse or database of the 20th century.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder gilt als der bedeutendste Regisseur des deutschen Kinos nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Während die bisherige Literatur zu Fassbinder sich vor allem dem "maßlosen" Leben des ungemein produktiven Filmemachers verschrieben hat, steht in diesem Buch sein Werk im Zentrum: Thomas Elsaesser, einer der international renommiertesten Filmhistoriker, analysiert Fassbinders Filme als ebenso klarsichtige wie kritische Chronik der Bundesrepublik und ihrer Vorgeschichte.
An introduction to film and TV studies highlighting different aspects of today's media landscape. (in Dutch)
Metropolis (1925) is a monumental work. When it was made it was Germany's most expensive feature film, a canvas for director Fritz Lang's increasingly extravagant ambitions (it took sixteen months to film). Lang, inspired by the skyline of New York, created a whole new vision of cities. One of the greatest works of science fiction, the film also tells human stories about love and family.
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, Nosferatu and The Blue Angel are among the key films defining an age of Germany as a nation uneasy with itself. Directors such as Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and G.W. Pabst, having apparently announced the horrors of fascism while testifying to the traumas of a defeated nation, cast long shadows over German cinema to this day.
Aus dem Englischen von Michael Wedel. Thomas Elsaesser versucht mit seiner Studie in fünf Kapiteln, einen neuen Blick auf das Weimarer Kino zu werfen. Von Klassikern wie "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari", mit dem die kurze Epoche des expressionistischen Films in Deutschland beginnt, über Murnaus "Nosferatu" bis hin zu "Metropolis" werden Einblicke in die gestalterischen und stilprägnanten Entwicklungen des deutschen Films der 20er und 30er Jahre gegeben. Weiter stellt der Autor Produktionen, Regisseure, Drehbuchautoren und Filmarchitekten der Avantgarde und deren Einfluss auf den Film noir in der Filmgeschichte vor.
The BFI Companion to German Cinema is a concise and authoritative source of reference. Over two hundred entries on film actors, directors, producers, cinematographers, critics, film industry, film movements and festivals covers the entire spectrum of German-speaking cinema from the 1890s to the popular comedies of the 1990s.
In the late 1960s, the cinema was pronounced dead. Television, like a Biblical Cain had slain his brother Abel. Some thirty years later, a remarkable reversal: rarely has the cinema been more popular. And yet, rarely has the cinema's future seemed more uncertain. Cinema Futures: Cain, Abel or Cable? presents a careful and forceful argument about predictions that tend to be made when new technologies appear.
German cinema is best known for its art cinema and its long line of outstanding individual directors. The double spotlight on these two subject has only deepened the obscurity surrounding the popular cinema. German Cinema performs a kind of archaeology on a period largely overlooked: the first two decades of German cinema. This collection of essays by established authors refocuses the terms of a debate that will develop in the years to come concerning the historical and cultural significance of popular cinema in Wilhelmine Germany.
Welche Bilder und welche Geschichten erwarten uns im nächsten Jahrtausend? Das Kino hat schon immer aus dem Vorrat seiner künstlerischen Vorfahren geschöpft: der Kunst, dem Theater und der Literatur. Speziell seine eigenen Mythen hat der Film zunehmend zum Thema gemacht: Formen und Motive der Kino-Eltern wurden mit neuem Leben erfüllt und in aktuellen Zusammenhängen erprobt. Gerade heute scheinen solche »Renaissancen«, dieser »zweite Atem«, ein mehr als brauchbarer Weg ins zweite Jahrhundert des Kinos zu sein.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder is one of the most prominent and important authors of post-war European cinema. Thomas Elsaesser is the first to write a thoroughly analytical study of his work. He stresses the importance of a closer understanding of Fassbinder's career through a re-reading of his films as textual entities.
Hoe wordt in Nederland een grote speelfilm gemaaakt? Deze vraag staat centraal in Hoogste tijd voor een speelfilm, waarin alle fasen van het produktioproces van Fransz Weisz' HOOGSTE TIJD (1995) de revue passeren. Uitgangspunt vormt een serie lezingen die Fransz Weisz hield aan de vakgroep Film- en Televisiewetenschap (Universiteit van Amsterdam).
Double Trouble highlights the career of Dutch scriptwriter and television producer Chiem van Houweninge, well-known for his long-running TV comedy series and as author of episodes for TV detective series. Double Trouble gives Van Houweninge's own views on writing and filming in television prime importance, in the context of the history of popular television and his scriptwriting classes at the University of Amsterdam. This is completed by a round-table discussion with other writers about the double tasks of scriptwriting and producing.
The simultaneous international success in the 1970s of such film-makers as Fassbinder, Herzog and Wenders led critics to talk of a 'New German Cinema'. Thomas Elsaesser's book is the most comprehensive and illuminating study yet produced of this major movement in world cinema.
This collection of essays, by well known writers on the subject of writing for television, is divided into three sections, with the first one devoted to the debates on quality television. The second one focuses on literature and television. The final section examines 'Science on television', with series editors from Britain and Germany giving first-hand accounts of the scope for serious science reporting on television.
In the twenty years preceding the First World War, cinema rapidly developed from a fairground curiosity into a major industry and a social institution, a source of information and entertainment for millions of people. Only recently have film scholars and historians begun to study these early years of cinema in their own right and not simply as first steps towards the classical narrative cinema we now associate with Hollywood.
The simultaneous international success in the 1970s of such film-makers as Fassbinder, Herzog and Wenders led critics to talk of a 'New German Cinema'. Thomas Elsaesser's book is the most comprehensive and illuminating study yet produced of this major movement in world cinema.
Germany looks back on as long and important a film history as Italy, France or Great Britain. And yet, during the past seven decades, its cinema has seemed ambivalent even in its achievements, subservient to political pressures, eclipsed by Hollywood and financially precarious more often than that of any of its European neighbours. The discontinuities and contradictions of German history this century have left their mark on the cinema, but even more so on the way it is perceived.
The early Twenties tend to be seen as a unique and isolated pinnacle of film art, but are judged severely for the political message the films conveyed. When the cinema became an instrument of state propaganda, as it did during the Nazi years, films were produced with expressed the regime's ideals while making no mention of its reality. The results are considered worthless artistically, but their success as technically the most perfect, most highly polished entertainment ever to appear on German screens raise issues about form and content that have yet to be resolved. The paradox about the New German Cinema of the late Sixties and Seventies, for instance, is that it has been celebrated as an extraordinary flourishing of talent but, on closer inspection, the renaissance has its roots in governmental policy. Praised the world over, the films failed to find a mass audience or to become financial successes.