Cosponsored by Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes San Francisco
German cinema of the years following World War II presents a fascinating window on a nation struggling to reconstruct its ruined identity and to understand-or efface-its history. From the “rubble films” of the immediate postwar period to the flamboyant fantasies of the Adenauer era, these films document West Germany's transition from devastation to affluence, revealing varied and often ambivalent attitudes toward the country's past, present, and future.
Many later critics and filmmakers dismissed the cinema of the postwar years as morally suspect and aesthetically barren. (“Papa's Cinema is dead,” the young signatories of the Oberhausen Manifesto famously declared in 1962, ushering in the New German Cinema.) But this is all the more reason why this little-studied period in film history deserves to be reassessed. This series is a chance to see post-Hollywood works by famous émigrés like Robert Siodmak and Peter Lorre, and to discover artists well known in Germany, less familiar here, like Helmut Käutner and Wolfgang Staudte. It offers historical and aesthetic surprises, as well as lessons about nationalism that are still universally, chillingly relevant.-Juliet Clark
In addition to the works screening at PFA, three other German films of the fifties will be shown at the Castro Theatre as part of the Goethe-Institut San Francisco's Berlin and Beyond Film Festival: I Often Think of Piroschka (January 12), Sissi (January 13), and The Hooligans (January 15). For information, visit www.thecastrotheatre.com or call (415) 621-6120.
Except as signed, program notes are adapted from the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
The series is organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center Touring Program together with Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes New York. It has been made possible through the extraordinary generosity of KirchMedia. The series was selected and curated by Klaus Eder and Hans Kohl, with the assistance of Richard Peña. Special thanks to Dr. Stephan Nobbe and Juliane Wanckel (Goethe-Institut, New York); Andreas Ströhl (Goethe-Institut, Munich); Claudia Dillmann and André Mieles of the Deutsches Filminstitut-DIF, Frankfurt; Ellen Theg (ITTC); Barton Byg; Eric Rentschler; and Enno Patalas. Additional funding has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
