Weimar Cinema, 1919-1933: Daydreams and Nightmares
ALTERNATIVE IMAGES
Weimar Cinema, 1919-1933: Daydreams and Nightmares
By Ulrich Döge, Thomas Elsaesser, and Laurence Kardish
German cinema from the end of World War I to 1933—the years of the Weimar Republic—is widely appreciated for an Expressionist style of film making characterized by anxiety, distorted narrative, and vivid plays of light and shadow. Far less well-known in the United States are the period’s musicals, romances, and comedies, lighter films that were made in equal numbers as the darker fare. Weimar Cinema, 1919–1933: Daydreams and Nightmares puts these contrary approaches side by side, examining the full spectrum of Weimar film making through essays by prominent contemporary scholars and a selection of eighty films. Excerpts from reviews and other writings evoke the reception of these movies at the time, as the use of sound in film gained purchase and the economic and political situation in Germany moved the country toward another, darker historical moment.
Paperback
216 pages
130 illustrations
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010
8 x 0.8 x 10 inches
ISBN 9780870707612
Film, Expressionism, Essays