Intimacy and Desire in German Cinema

Undergraduate / Graduate

This seminar explores representations of intimacy, sensuality and private life through the lens of German- language cinema from the Weimar period to New German Cinema of the 1960s. Departing from Richard Wagner's revolutionary darkening of the auditorium in the late 19th century, this course considers the emergence of cinema as a social institution and site of desire, fantasy and fulfilment in the broader German cultural context. Close readings of canonic films including Der blaue Engel, Die Büchse der Pandora, La Habanera and Die Ehe der Maria Braun will be guided by literary and theoretical texts on the formation of the film viewer as a sensuous subject. We will integrate journalistic writings on sexuality, degeneracy and bourgeois morality in the public sphere and the historical phenomenon of modern stardom associated with the careers of Marlene Dietrich, Louise Brooks and Zarah Leander. Films by Joseph von Sternberg, G. W. Pabst, Douglas Sirk, Helmut Käutner and Rainer Werner Fassbinder are accompanied by texts by Irmgard Keun, Lotte H. Eisner, Siegfried Kracauer, Thomas Elsaesser and Erica Carter. Class will be conducted in English.