The Uncanny Gaze: The Drama of Early German Cinema

by Heide Schlupmann, Miriam Hansen (Foreword by), Inga Pollmann (Translator)

Overview

Heide Schlüpmann's classic study of early German cinema was published in German as Unheimlichkeit des Blicks: Das Drama des Frühen deutschen Kinos in 1990. For the first time in English, this translation makes available her feminist examination of German cinema and Germany in the sociopolitical context of Wilhelmine society. By examining then-unknown pre-World War I narrative films, this study paints a picture of the conflicted early years of the German cinema. During this period cinema and film production were able to develop independently from the cultural bourgeoisie and relied on those forces excluded from high "culture": technology, business, performers, showmen, and actors. In cinema, the dime novel and kitsch were exhibited for all, and the internationalism of modernity prevailed over the prevailing nationalism of the period.

Featuring a foreword by film scholar Miriam Hansen and a new afterword by Schlüpmann, this volume performs a critical perusal of film commentary and offers an in-depth look at little-known films in early German cinema.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252076718
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	01/15/2010
Series:	Women's Media History Now!
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Heide Schlüpmann is a professor of film at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat in Frankfurt, Germany, a coeditor of the journal Frauen und Film (Women and Film), and the author of Öffentliche Intimität: Die Theorie im Kino (Public Intimacy: Theory in the Cinema) and other works. Inga Pollmann works as a translator and is a doctoral student in cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago. Miriam Hansen is Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago and the author of Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film.

Table of Contents

Translator's Acknowledgments vii

Foreword Miriam Hansen ix

Author's Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction l

1 The Heart of Reason: The Beginnings of Narrative Cinema 23

2 The Femininity of Men: Comedy 51

3 Reaction in the Melodrama 65

4 Excursus: Henny Porten, or, The Realism of Melodrama 76

5 Contradictions of Social Drama 84

6 Perspective "from Below" or Perspective "from Outside": The Detective Film 129

7 Uncanniness of the Female Gaze: Sensational Drama 176

8 Crime and Love in Prewar Drama, 1913-1914 189

Afterword 215

Notes 221

Bibliography 233

Filmography 241

Index 259

Editorial Reviews

"Finally ... available to an English-speaking audience. . . . Students and scholars now have the chance to learn from the scrupulous research and profound analytical rigour that characterize this first-rate work."—Times Literary Supplement



"In excavating a long-lost cinema, this book offers insights that go well beyond the series' commitment to feminist theory. This is an excellent addition to German, as well as feminist, film history. Highly recommended."—Choice

"Groundbreaking. Widely recognized as a leading scholar on early German cinema, Schlüpmann significantly theorizes film history and lays out a very influential argument."—Ramona Curry, author of Too Much of a Good Thing: Mae West as Cultural Icon

"Schlüpmann's approach to early German cinema is central to current thinking about early cinema, aesthetic formations, and female spectatorship. This translation will prove enormously helpful to scholars both within and outside the U.S."—Patrice Petro, author of Joyless Streets: Women and Melodramatic Representation in Weimar Germany

From the Publisher