Hollywood in Berlin: American Cinema and Weimar GermanyThe setting is 1920s Berlin, cultural heart of Europe and the era's only serious cinematic rival to Hollywood. In his engaging study, Thomas Saunders explores an outstanding example of one of the most important cultural developments of this century: global Americanization through the motion picture. The invasion of Germany by American films, which began in 1921 with overlapping waves of sensationalist serials, slapstick shorts, society pictures, and historical epics, initiated a decade of cultural collision and accommodation. On the one hand it fueled an impassioned debate about the properties of cinema and the specter of wholesale Americanization. On the other hand it spawned unprecedented levels of cooperation and exchange. In Berlin, American motion pictures not only entertained all social classes and film tastes but also served as a vehicle for American values and a source of sharp economic competition. Hollywood in Berlin correlates the changing forms of Hollywood's contributions to Weimar culture and the discourses that framed and interpreted them, restoring historical contours to a leading aspect of cultural interchange in this century. At the same time, the book successfully embeds Weimar cinema in its contemporary international setting. |
Contents
| 1 | |
THE SETTING WEIMAR GERMANY AND THE MOTION PICTURE | 20 |
GERMANAMERICAN FILM RELATIONS COMPETITION AND COOPERATION | 51 |
HOLLYWOOD IN BERLIN THE INITIATION 19211923 | 84 |
THE HOLLYWOOD INVASION AMERIKANISMUS AND AMERIKAMUDIGKEIT | 117 |
EXCURSUS POPULAR CULTURE AND AMERICAN HEGEMONY | 145 |
COMIC REDEMPTION THE SLAPSTICK SYNTHESIS | 171 |
Other editions - View all
Hollywood in Berlin: American Cinema and Weimar Germany Thomas J. Saunders No preview available - 1994 |
Common terms and phrases
Ameri American cinema American film American imports American motion pictures American movies American pictures amerikanische appeared April artistic audience August BA-UFA became Béla Balázs Berliner Tageblatt blaue Heft box office Buster Keaton censorship Charlie Chaplin comedy commercial companies contemporary Der Film deutsche Film deutschen Die Weltbühne domestic drama émigrés Emil Jannings entertainment Erich Pommer Ernst Lubitsch experts feature films film criticism film culture Film-Kurier filmic Filmindustrie filmmakers Fritz German cinema German film German production Germany's Greed Herbert Ihering History Holly Hollywood Hollywood and Berlin ibid Ihering industry intellectual January Keaton Kinematograph Kino Kracauer Kritiker Kunstwart Kurt Pinthus Lichtbildbühne Marriage Circle ment Metro-Goldwyn middecade moral motion pictures moviegoers Murnau national cinema Neue November opinion Parufamet Pola Negri political popular postwar premiere Reichsfilmblatt release screenplays Siemsen slapstick social sound Süddeutsche Filmzeitung Tagebuch tion trade tures UFA's viewers Weimar cinema Weltbühne Willy Haas
Popular passages
Page 1 - As a vehicle for exporting the American way of life and stimulating demand for American products it proved unrivaled. Hollywood became the promotional guardian of the American dream and the primary instrument for domesticating American culture in Europe.
Page 3 - Indeed, if there was correspondence between European attitudes toward cinema and the United States it lay in the assumption that neither had a serious contribution to make to culture.