Vol. 22 · No. 1 · Issue 70 · Spring 2004

Barbara Mennel, German and Slavic Studies, and Film and Video Program University of Florida, Gainesville

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Abstract

Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, and Deniz Göktürk, eds., The German Cinema Book (London: British Film Institute, 2002)

Lutz Koepnick, The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)

German Film Studies has undergone significant paradigm shifts that have resulted in such outstanding books as The German Cinema Book, edited by Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, and Deniz Göktürk, and Lutz Köpnick's The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood. Both books are self-confidently situated in thematically, theoretically, structurally, and institutionally innovative accounts of the history of German film or parts thereof. The paradigm shifts do not represent a rhetoric of fashionable newness employed against old paradigms but in-depth and sophisticated analytical work. The paradigm shifts result from a confluence of five recent important theoretical impulses, laid out in the books' respective introductions: (1) an attention to formerly ignored periods and their "bad objects," such as Nazi cinema, the Heimat film, as well as DEFA film; (2) an emphasis on continuities between different periods and geopolitical contexts, such as between the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, and between Nazi film and Hollywood; (3) influences from transnational film studies that reconfigure the conception of national cinema; (4) both The German Cinema Book and Koepnick reconsider popular cinema as relevant site of investigation, which The German Cinema Book expresses with its emphasis on comedies and stars; (5) the two volumes take up impulses from media studies that expand the singular focus on film as object of study to include such topics as early exhibition practices, in the case of The German Cinema Book and on music, in the case of Koepnick. The approach to German film studies that had dominated the field up to date emphasized Autorenk-ino as distinct from Hollywood cinema, with a limited emphasis on the periods of the Weimar Republic and New German Cinema.