German 304 - From Berlin to Hollywood

An introduction to German cinema, treating Weimar Expressionism, Nazi film and
anti-Nazi exile cinema, film in post-WWII East and West Germany, and German film
since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Conducted in English. (Gen.Ed. AT)

This course focuses on refugees escaping Europe as Nazi Germany invades one country after the other. Filmmakers and actors, producers and editors, script writers and film score composers, men and women, waited for visas, wrote letters, and boarded ships to find themselves in Hollywood of the 1930s and the 1940s. The film studios in California soon resembled Rick?s Cafe in Michael Curtiz?s unforgettable 1942 classic Casablanca. Separated from a home that had gone crazy, exile filmmakers and artists mingled with other migrants, communists, racialized or minoritized groups. Via such exchanges, the Weimar expressionism was revitalized in Hollywood in a direct expression of the despair, racism, and struggles that refugees have been through ? all of which culminated in the emergence of film noir and the horror genre;but also in the redefinitions of the melodrama and the comedy. This seminar interrogates travel and travails, cultural transfer and the popular, exile and displacement, as well as the diverse experiences within the exile community in terms of gender, sexual orientation, linguistic abilities, age, class, and racialization. We will look at popular directors such as Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder, actors Marlene Dietrich and Peter Lorre, as well as less- known emigrees, such as Salka Viertel who opened her home for refugees of all walks of life and coined the phrase ?the kindness of strangers.? All films will be streamed with in English or with English subtitles. Readings and discussions in English.