Navigation items and banners
FUBiS Term III: German Film: "Old Masters and moderne Meister: The Cinema of Fritz Lang and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau"
(Course # 2.19)
|
Type: |
B Track |
|
Instructor(s): |
|
|
Language: |
English |
|
Contact hours: |
48 (6 Kontaktstunden pro Tag) |
|
Credit Points: |
4 Credit Points |
|
Capacity: |
18 |
Course description
Fritz Lang (1890-1976) and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888-1931) are the classics of German cinema. Apart from the fact that both were working during the most spectacular period in German film history – the Weimar cinema of the 1920s – the two directors have a great deal in common concerning style, subject matter and the discourses that circulate through their movies. Nevertheless film studies has traditionally preferred to look at their films from opposing angles: "While the work of […] Lang is usually examined in the context of larger developments, the films of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau tend to invite close readings that emphasize the formal qualities of mise-en-scène, lighting, framing and editing," film scholar Sabine Hake summarizes. This one-sided tendency not only downplays Lang’s aesthetic qualities, however, but also underestimates the discursive relevance of Murnau’s films. In a number of close readings and in-depth discussions this seminar tries to reverse the traditional approach by initiating an imaginary dialogue between Lang and Murnau. In order to flesh out the similarities – but also the differences – we will match and compare six films.
The first pair will be Lang’s The Nibelungen (1924) and Murnau’s Faust (1926). The first film is dedicated to the German "Volk" (people) and deals with the quintessential German myth; the second draws on the same narrative source that Goethe has turned into the German tragedy par excellence. Both are highly stylized, big-budget studio productions. Both rely on arch-German mythology. And in both cases art historical appropriations and references play an important role. Clearly, the question of film as a legitimate form of art, threatened hierarchies between high and low culture and the problem of what is ‘German’ in times of radical change and Americanization play a crucial role in these filmic extravaganzas.
The second comparison involves Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Murnau’s Sunrise (1927). While Lang’s science-fiction movie certainly belongs to the most influential films ever in terms of style, Murnau’s first Hollywood production – the German director had moved on to the US after the premiere of Faust – habitually appears on lists of the best movies of all times. But apart from being timeless landmarks, what else merits a close comparison? In both cases discourses of urbanity and the ‘new’ woman predominate, discourses that were highly charged during the 1920s. Vacillating between images of the past and the future, these films negotiate threats and promises of the city and the vamp, the pros and cons of rural life and the changing roles of gender – and thus also talk about the most modern society at the time: America.
The third and final pair will be Lang’s M (1931) and Murnau’s Tabu (1931). While these movies are apparently – and in some sense literally – miles apart, Lang’s Berlin crime drama and Murnau’s South Sea tragedy nevertheless revolve around similar questions. One of them is the introduction of sound to the movies, a debate that also occupied important Weimar film theorists like Béla Balázs and Rudolf Arnheim. While Lang embraces sound wholeheartedly and uses it to enormously creative ends, Murnau renounces sound and instead intones the beautiful swan song of a dying art form: the silent movie. Unfortunately, after M and Tabu the imaginary dialogue between the two directors had to come to an abrupt end: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau died in a car crash near Santa Barbara in March 1931.
Lang and Murnau might be “classics” who worked in the bygone era of 1920s Weimar culture. As this seminar shall underscore, however, the movies of these high-profile directors still have a tremendous aesthetic impact. In some sense Lang and Murnau might be considered old masters – in other respects they are truly moderne Meister.
The four-week course contains six screenings (five silent movies and one talking picture). All are shown with English sub- or intertitles. The class will be held in English.
Field Trips
The four-week summer course will also give us the opportunity to visit the historic site where such famous Lang and Murnau films as Metropolis and Faust were shot: the former UFA studios at Potsdam-Babelsberg, just outside of Berlin. Ironically, in the 1920s one of the strongest and most formidable rivals of Hollywood, the enormous studio complex has now become a place of production for Hollywood blockbusters like V – for Vendetta, Valkyrie or Speed Racer. A half-day field trip including a guided tour through the theme park will be part of the seminar just as an excursion to the prestigious Berlin film museum which devotes several rooms to the cinema of the Weimar Republic and hosts a number of original models and scripts.
Course Assignments and Grading
Course assignments include a 15-minute oral presentation, two short essays in English or German and a final exam (identification, short answer, essay). Grading: attendance and participation 15 %, oral presentation 15 %, papers 40 % and final exam 30 %.
Preparatory Reading
At the beginning of the course a reader will be provided with the necessary text material. As optional preparatory reading I would recommend:
- Gunning, Tom: The Films of Fritz Lang. Allegories of Vision and Modernity. London: BFI, 2000.
- Eisner, Lotte: Murnau. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
- Elsaesser, Thomas: Weimar Cinema and After. Germany’s Historical Imaginary. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Curriculum Vitae
Julian Hanich has written his dissertation on the pleasure of fear at the movies, entitled “The Paradox of Fear. On the Pleasures of a Strong Cinematic Emotion.” He has studied North American Studies and Film Studies in Berlin, Berkeley, Los Angeles and Amsterdam. Among his publications are essays on crying at the movies, the social experience of traffic in Los Angeles and discourses of modernity in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Tabu. For the last eleven years Julian Hanich has also been a regular film critic for the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel.
Student profile
