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GETR 3471 / Spring 2021 / MW 3:30-4:45pm Instructor: Prof. Paul Dobryden • he/him/his • [email protected] Format: Synchronous but flexible Office Hours: W 1-2pm & Th 2-3pm (book an appointment here)
Looking at films from Weimar Germany, the period between 1918-1933, can be an “uncanny" experience. Sigmund Freud discussed the uncanny as that which appears strange, but turns out to be familiar, something seemingly alien that is actually uncomfortably close to home. I don’t just mean the plots (though you will encounter uncanny figures, such as doppelgängers and vampires). I mean the experiencing of watching century-old films—with their odd framings, unnatural acting styles, and weird sense of time and causality—from our perspective in the present. These films emerged from a culture that faced many of the same issues that ours does now. As a result, Weimar cinema might look strange at first, but the closer you look, the more unsettlingly familiar it becomes.
Werner Krauss and Conrad Veidt in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)
In cinema, the Weimar period was a time of incredible experimentation. The movies had been a popular entertainment in Germany since 1895, but with the new Republic, the medium’s possibilities expanded greatly.
How does film relate to the other arts? In what ways is filmmaking creative or productive, and it what ways does it document reality? What kinds of aesthetic experiences can it produce? How can it be used to teach, to critique society, to advance the goals of the state? For viewers, what does it mean to be a movie-goer, a fan, or a connoisseur, or a critic?
Louise Brooks in Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)
The Weimar Republic, founded amid economic crisis in the aftermath of WWI, faced uncertainty at almost every level. It was confronted with fundamental questions of modernity that most other societies dealt with much more gradually.
How should society be structured? Who should have political authority? Who should have economic power? What is art’s role in society? What if gender and sexuality are not defined as rigidly binary? What does it mean to live a healthy life? How might new technologies, including media like film and radio, reshape social and political relations?
The agitprop performance group Red Megaphone in Kuhle Wampe (1932)
We will delve into the cinema of the Weimar period and the culture from which it emerged. In so doing, we will explore fundamental questions of how moving images work, what they can do, and how they relate to the sociopolitical conditions that produce them. Our uncanny encounters with these films will sharpen our vision and unsettle our assumptions.
Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel (1932)
By the end of this course you will be able to…