Film Studies 370 - Filming Brecht, Kafka, Hesse

'This course studies cases of filmmakers from Weimar to the present who have filmed literary texts and evoked the wrath of the censors: Sternberg's Blue Angel, H. Mann's Professor Unrat, with Dietrich as the New Woman; Dudow/Brecht's Proletarian film, Kuhle Wampe, censored for including an abortion; Szabos 1981 film of Klaus Mann's 1936 novel Mephisto, banned to protect actor Gustav Grundgens from a questionable Third-Reich past. Also, works by Kleist, Storm, Fontane, Hesse, Kafka, and Thomas Mann inspired filmmakers like Fassbinder, Huntgeburth, and Haneke, not only because they broke existing taboos but also to foreground today's issues like globalization; alienation; terrorism; homophobia.'

Prereq: 8 credits from Film Studies