GW Pabst entered film history as a luminary of Weimar cinema, an astute observer of social struggle and psychic process, the espouser of a progressive and engaged film art. He gained international renown as the director of "The joyless street, Pandora's Box, Westfront 1918 and Kamaradschaft". After 1933, the once-revered auteur would become a voice incessantly modified and modulated by socio-political forces more sovereign than his best intentions, experiencing exile, emirgration, a sojourn in Holywood, a fateful return to Germany and an unsuccessful postwar attempt to regain a once considerable reputation. This collection of essays presents the first truly comprehensive image of a problematic firmmaker whose life and oeuvre compellingly reflect both the turbulent character of recent German history as well as the fate of artistic producers in the transcultural machinery of the modern world.
Biography of G.W. Pabst, an Austrian film director and screenwriter. He started as an actor and theater director, before becoming one of the most influential German-language filmmakers during the Weimar Republic.
G.W. Pabst's 1929 silent classic Pandora's Box (Die Büchse der Pandora), stars Hollywood icon Louise Brooks as the enigmatic heroine whose erotic charms lead to disaster for the men drawn into her web. Despite failing commercially upon release, it has evolved into a cult film long after it should have been forgotten. Pandora's Box captivates audiences with its libidinous, violent story, and its mysterious heroine whose motivations, as well as whose guilt or innocence, are difficult to determine. It is a sophisticated adaptation of Frank Wedekind's Lulu plays, and indisputably Louise Brooks' finest performance on film. In her compelling study, Pamela Hutchinson traces Pandora's production history and the many contexts of its creation and afterlife, revisiting and challenging many assumptions made about the film, its lead character and its star. Analysing the film act by act, she explores the conflicted relationship between Brooks and the director G.W. Pabst, the film's historical contexts in Weimar Berlin, and its changing fortunes since its release.
In this comprehensive companion to Weimar cinema, chapters address the technological advancements of each film, their production and place within the larger history of German cinema, the style of the director, the actors and the rise of the German star, and the critical reception of the film.
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.
This lavishly-illustrated tour through the film career of Greta Garbo (1905-1990) provides a biographical background of the star and an analysis of her very special mystique. Payne describes how Garbo's timeless beauty worked its magic in such films as Flesh and the Devil, Anna Christie, Mata Hari, Grand Hotel, Queen Christina, Camille, and Ninotchka. Remarkable photos show the transformation of working-class girl Greta Gustafsson into a Hollywood bit player, and later into an icon of cinema glamour.
Inventing Film Studies offers original and provocative insights into the institutional and intellectual foundations of cinema studies. Many scholars have linked the origins of the discipline to late-1960s developments in the academy such as structuralist theory and student protest. Yet this collection reveals the broader material and institutional forces—both inside and outside of the university—that have long shaped the field. Beginning with the first investigations of cinema in the early twentieth century, this volume provides detailed examinations of the varied social, political, and intellectual milieus in which knowledge of cinema has been generated. The contributors explain how multiple instantiations of film study have had a tremendous influence on the methodologies, curricula, modes of publication, and professional organizations that now constitute the university-based discipline. Extending the historical insights into the present, contributors also consider the directions film study might take in changing technological and cultural environments. Inventing Film Studies shows how the study of cinema has developed in relation to a constellation of institutions, technologies, practices, individuals, films, books, government agencies, pedagogies, and theories. Contributors illuminate the connections between early cinema and the social sciences, between film programs and nation-building efforts, and between universities and U.S. avant-garde filmmakers. They analyze the evolution of film studies in relation to the Museum of Modern Art, the American Film Council movement of the 1940s and 1950s, the British Film Institute, influential journals, cinephilia, and technological innovations past and present. Taken together, the essays in this collection reveal the rich history and contemporary vitality of film studies. Contributors: Charles R. Acland, Mark Lynn Anderson, Mark Betz, Zoë Druick, Lee Grieveson, Stephen Groening, Haden Guest, Amelie Hastie, Lynne Joyrich, Laura Mulvey, Dana Polan, D. N. Rodowick, Philip Rosen, Alison Trope, Haidee Wasson, Patricia White, Sharon Willis, Peter Wollen, Michael Zryd
How was Germany's experience of World War I depicted in film during the following years? Drawing on analysis of the films of the Weimar era--documentaries and feature films addressing the war's causes, life at the front, war at sea, and the home front--Bernadette Kester sketches out the historical context, including reviews and censors' reports, in which these films were made and viewed, and offers much insight into how Germans collectively perceived World War I during its aftermath and beyond.
Leni Riefenstahl will always be remembered for her brilliant film of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin - still rated as one of the best documentaries ever made. Before that she was acclaimed for her roles in silent feature films, when German cinema was in its artistic heyday in the 1920s. She pioneered the box office success of such classic mountaineering dramas as The White Hell of Piz Palu and then began to direct her own films. The Blue Light was admired by Hitler and led to her filming the Wagnerian Nuremberg Rally of 1934. After the war she was shunned by the film industry, despite a court in 1952 proclaiming her not guilty of supporting the Nazis in a punishable way. Her undoubted charisma led to many affairs and grandiose schemes - deep sea diving in her seventies and still filming wildlife in her nineties. Audrey Salkeld has sifted the fact from the legend and gives us a moving portrait of the great movie `star' who suffered more in the `wilderness' than her enduring fame suggests.
Hollywood v. Beauty and the Synchronicity of the Six presents the biographies of six movie actresses from the 1920s to the 1970s, with a single actress representing her decade of activity: Louise Brooks 1920s, Jean Harlow 1930s, Hedy Lamarr 1940s, Barbara Payton 1950s, Jean Seberg 1960s, and Sondra Locke 1970s. The synchronicity between the lives of these women is phenomenal, and their stories are as dramatic and exciting as any to come from that town, stretching all the way from complete ruination to thrilling triumph. Along the way, the story of movies in the Golden Age unfolds as six movie actresses try to survive in the most artificial place on Earth. The power elite of Hollywood could transform unknowns into movie stars or erase the famous into oblivion. Since beauty has its own innate power, it is inevitable these two entities would face off.
