This has the advantage of getting around the dutiful and all too often predictable structure of the conventional film history; it helps to shine light on diverse aspects of German cinema, finding patterns and national creative obsessions across widely differing periods. The Fantastic Films section, for instance, places entries on early classics, such as
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and
The Golem: How he Came into the World, with 2008's
Krabat.
The book covers an impressively wide number of bases but, as is perhaps inevitable, there is the occasional omission. Tom Tykwer's
Run, Lola, Run, a startlingly original film that had an enormous effect in relaunching German filmmaking internationally, is not included. (Tykwer is represented instead by
Winter Sleepers, under the Heimatfilm heading). Also contentiously left out are two of Fritz Lang's most celebrated films,
M and
Metropolis.
Langford told this blog via email the task of selection and omission had been the most difficult part of the editorial process. "To some extent omissions were guided by my choice of 'genres' and the need to fit the format of the series. None of the three films you mention could easily fit into the genres I had selected."
However, she added, these omissions were only temporary, since "
M and
Run, Lola, Run will be in Volume Two, in the 'Crime/Krimi' section, and I have slated
Metropolis to star in a section on Science Fiction for volume three. To some extent, I also really tried to give some space to films that had not been widely written about alongside some more well known films.
"I suppose your question also relates to the question of why some 'genres' and not others, which is partly explained in my introduction. When I accepted the offer of this editorship, I decided that I firstly wanted to try to capture a sense of 'genres' that were in some way uniquely 'German'. Historically, the Weimar era was instrumental in developing a type of fantastic film that has influenced the subsequent history of Hollywood and other cinemas.
"So too, the Germans of the Weimar era were great adventurers, with the wonderful mountain films headlining a broader generic tendency. I wanted to implicitly ask what happened to these 'genres' after the Weimar period? How did they mutate and re-emerge in different ways?
"The Heimat film is of course the most obviously uniquely German 'genre'. I picked Queer cinema because this has a very long and vibrant history, which I thought important to document along with the many films dealing with ethnic and cultural diversity. Then, I departed from the strict use of 'genre' as a categorising device because I wanted to capture a sense of how post-war German filmmakers had dealt with the wartime period and its legacy: hence the 'Coming to terms with the past' section, which was only divided into broad 'genre' categories later in the editorial process.
"I realised there were far too many films and they needed some kind of subdivision. Hence, for example, the 'War' section is not at all comprehensive, but rather very selective. Comedy was one section I had quite a lot of trouble with, mainly because it was difficult to find authors to write about films that would have provided a more representative overview.
I told Langford I'd been continually struck by the strength of the female roles in so many contemporary German films and wondered if she had any thoughts on how this came about.
"Yes, Germany has produced so many talented female actors and filmmakers and there are also lots of them working in various roles behind the scenes too," she replied "Historically, many of the greatest German actors have been women (many of them not even German in the Weimar era in particular). In the 20s, women were at the forefront of social change, with their roles in society changing more dramatically than any other social group (think of the proverbial 'New Woman'…(Frankfurt School theorist Siegfried) Kracauer wrote quite a bit about this). In volume 2, I hope to include an essay on the cultural crossover of female talent in the Weimar era.
"I'm not sure why the Germans seems so good at it now, perhaps this is linked to a range of factors including the emergence of a really vibrant German feminist movement in the 1960s that was at least as strong as the movement that emerged in France.
"Women were also very well represented in the terrorist movements of the 1970s (for better or worse it does show their gutsy commitment to social activism; and remember one thing the terrorists were so peeved about was the dominance of patriarchal attitudes amongst the old guard ex-Nazis in the public service and industry), so this is not unique to film.
"The film funding and subsidy system established in Germany in the 1970s, following lobbying by (director Alexander) Kluge and others aided female fimmakers, as did the remit of national broadcasters to provide content that was representative of the diversity of German society. This also helped in the establishment of queer cinema in the 1970s and 1980s.
"Women have been very well represented at film schools over the last 20 or 30 years. We might also speculate that the entry of women into the workforce during the war, and their active involvement in Germany's reconstruction (not just re-population) may have had an impact on opening up opportunities for women in a range of professions, even at the same time that socially they might have felt pressured back into the home to repopulate the country."
Finally, I asked what Langford made of the increasing number of international German co-productions and whether they threatened the cultural identity of German cinema - or was this the wrong way to look at the phenomenon?
"Your question is a very interesting one that I thought of often while editing the book," she replied. "This is the mode of production that is becoming the norm across Europe since the establishment of 'free trade' across the EU and the introduction of the common currency.
"But I don't necessarily see it as a direct threat to the 'identity' of German cinema. Most of the funding bodies still have a German content, cast and crew clause and German filmmakers still seem to want to make films with German themes.
"My prediction, for the time at least this will continue in parallel with the production of 'culturally odourless' Hollywood runaways and 'Europudding' films. These bring in good money and employment opportunities for German crews and ensure that facilities like studios are maintained and developed, which can be good for 'indigenous' productions and help to sustain the more 'local' aspects of the industry."
