Caligari's Heirs: The German Cinema of Fear after 1945: Steffen Hantke: Scarecrow Press

Caligari's Heirs

The German Cinema of Fear after 1945

Caligari's Heirs

The German Cinema of Fear after 1945

Description

Most critical work on the horror film in Germany has been devoted to the period of the Weimar Republic and the classics it has produced, including Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922). Postwar German horror film, however, has received little critical attention. Caligari's Heirs: The German Cinema of Fear after 1945 is a collection of essays that corrects this oversight by providing intelligent critical analyses of a variety of German horror films from the early postwar years to the present day.

Following an introduction that discusses the development of critical discourse on postwar German horror film, these essays focus on four particular aspects of the genre: the immediate postwar years and the long shadow of Weimar cinema that falls over them; the dialogue between the German Autorenfilm and horror cinema; the influence of commercial American cinema on German horror films; and contemporary splatter films that have received more critical attention than any other postwar German horror films. To round out the picture of this genre in the context of a specific national tradition, the book also includes three interviews with contemporary German horror film directors working in both cinema and television.

Though the book takes on a wide field of discussion-German horror film over a period of roughly fifty years-it does so by providing case studies. The essays in this collection discuss either an individual film or director, or they take on larger historical issues: from the discussion of the Nazi past in the postwar years to the heavy toll of German reunification. In its broad approach, Caligari's Heirs has something to offer to three distinct audiences: the horror film fan, the reader interested in German cinema in general, and the reader interested in discovering a national culture through its popular culture.

Part 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Postwar German Cinema and the Horror Film: Thoughts on Historical Continuity and Genre Consolidation
Part 3 Part 1: The Long Shadow of Weiman: Expressionism and Postwar German Horror Film
Chapter 4 Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse Trilogy and the Horror Genre, 1922-1960
Chapter 5 Peter Lorre's Der Verlorene: Trauma and Recent Historical Memory
Chapter 6 Hollywood Horror Comes to Berlin: A Critical Reassessment of Robert Siodmak's Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam
Part 7 Part 2: German Autorenkino and Horror Film: Influences, Dialogues, Exchanges
Chapter 8 The Shadow and the Auteur: Herzog's Kinski, Kinski's Nosferatu, and the Myths of Authorship
Chapter 9 History, Homage, and Horror: Fassbinder, Raab, Lommel and the Tenderness of Wolves (1973)
Chapter 10 Joy-Boys and Docile Bodies: Surveillance and Resistance in Romuald Karmakar's Der Totmacher
Part 11 Part 3: New German Horror Film: Between Global Cinema and the Hollywood Blockbuster
Chapter 12 Introducing "The Little Spielberg": Roland Emmerich's Joey as Reverent Parody
Chapter 13 To Die For: Der Fan and the Reception of Sexuality and Horror in the Early 1980s German Cinema
Chapter 14 "Not to scream before or about, but to scream at death": Haneke's Horrible Funny Games
Part 15 Part 4: Beyond Aesthetics, Against Aesthetics: German Splatter Film
Chapter 16 Better Living Through Splatter: Christoph Schlingensief's Unsightly Bodies and the Politics of Gore
Chapter 17 Buttgereit's Poetics: Schramm as Cinema of Poetry
Chapter 18 Necrosexuality, Perversion, and Jouissance: The Experimental Desires of Jörg Buttgereit's NekRomantik Films
Part 19 Part 5: Interviews: Three German Horror Film Directors
Chapter 20 Good News from the Underground: A Conversation with Jörg Buttgereit
Chapter 21 Hunting the Innocents: A Conversation with Robert Sigl
Chapter 22 Loneliness, Passion, Melancholia: A Conversation with Nico Hoffmann
Part 23 Index
Part 24 About the Editors and Contributors

Product details

Published	Dec 25 2006
Format	Paperback
Edition	1st
Extent	272
ISBN	9780810858787
Imprint	Scarecrow Press
Dimensions	231 x 149 mm
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

This book will be the perfect starting point for the horror film buff interested in German output of the last 60 years. Recommended.

Choice Reviews
A dozen contributions from international scholars critically examine various German horror films from the early postwar years to the present day. Themes addressed include (for example) the connections between the German Autorenfilm and horror cinema, and the influence of commercial American movies on the genre. Interviews with three directors-Jörg Buttgereit, Robert Sigl, and Nico Hoffmann-complete the volume. Hantke teaches English at Sogang U. in Seoul, South Korea.

Reference and Research Book News
The contributors have made a real, thought-provoking intervention in German film scholarship.

2008, Film Quarterly
Intelligent critical analyses of a variety of German horror films from the early postwar years to the present day. ...Caligari's Heirs has something to offer to three distinct audiences: the horror film fan, the reader interested in German cinema in general, and the reader interested in discovering a national culture through its popular culture.

Turner Classic Movies