The dark mirror : German cinema between Hitler and Hollywood / Lutz Koepnick.

ISBN:

9780520936355

9780585466231

9780520233102

9780520233119

Title:

The dark mirror : German cinema between Hitler and Hollywood / Lutz Koepnick.

Author:

Koepnick, Lutz P. (Lutz Peter)

Personal Author:

Koepnick, Lutz P. (Lutz Peter)

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 322 pages) : illustrations.

Series:

Weimar and now ; 32

Contents:

Introduction: The Dark Mirror -- pt. 1. Hollywood in Berlin, 1933-1939. Ch. 1. Sounds of Silence: Nazi Cinema and the Quest for a National Culture Industry. Ch. 2. Incorporating the Underground: Curtis Bernhardt's The Tunnel. Ch. 3. Engendering Mass Culture: Zarah Leander and the Economy of Desire. Ch. 4. Siegfried Rides Again: Nazi Westerns and Modernity -- pt. 2. Berlin in Hollywood, 1939-1955. Ch. 5. Wagner at Warner's: German Sounds and Hollywood Studio Visions. Ch. 6. Berlin Noir: Robert Siodmak's Hollywood. Ch. 7. Pianos, Priests, and Popular Culture: Sirk, Lang, and the Legacy of American Populism. Ch. 8. Isolde Resurrected: Curtis Bernhardt's Interrupted Melody -- Epilogue: "Talking about Germany."

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Motion pictures -- Germany -- History.

Motion picture producers and directors -- Germany -- Biography.

Germans -- California -- Los Angeles.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2002

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
791.430943 21	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

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Summary

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.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Koepnick's dense analysis of the relationship between Nazi German cinema and Hollywood between the 1930s and 1950s is not easy reading, but it is important. It is a study of a two-way street of influence: from Hollywood to Nazi films, and then from the German exile community to Hollywood. In the first half of the book--"Hollywood in Berlin, 1933-1939"--Koepnick (Washington Univ., St. Louis) argues persuasively that Hitler consciously adapted the US view of pageantry to support the Nazi view of ideology. German filmmakers took the lush familiarity of Hollywood and made it a part of what Goebbels saw as entertainment in the Third Reich. In the second part of the book, "Berlin in Hollywood, 1939-1955," the author describes how the German exiles repaid the favor and brought to Hollywood the dark cultural memory of the Third Reich. Siodmak, Sirk, Lang, et al. provide the language of film for the postwar Hollywood. This essential book will serve historians and political scientists as well as those interested in film. All levels. S. Gittleman Tufts University