Continental Strangers: German Exile Cinema, 1933–1951

Description

Hundreds of German-speaking film professionals took refuge in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s, making a lasting contribution to American cinema. Hailing from Austria, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine, as well as Germany, and including Ernst Lubitsch, Fred Zinnemann, Billy Wilder, and Fritz Lang, these multicultural, multilingual writers and directors betrayed distinct cultural sensibilities in their art. Gerd Gemünden focuses on Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat (1934), William Dieterle’s The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942), Bertold Brecht and Fritz Lang’s Hangmen Also Die (1943), Fred Zinneman’s Act of Violence (1948), and Peter Lorre’s Der Verlorene (1951), engaging with issues of realism, auteurism, and genre while tracing the relationship between film and history, Hollywood politics and censorship, and exile and (re)migration. Introduction 1 Parallel Modernities 19 1 A History of Horror 21 2 Tales of Urgency and Authenticity 48 Hitler in Hollywood 75 3 Performing Resistance Resisting Performance 77 4 History as Propaganda and Parable 102 You Cant Go Home Again 129 5 Out of the Past 131 6 The Failure of Atonement 160 Epilogue 189 Notes 193 Selected Bibliography 229 Index 263 Copyright