Shell Shock Cinema Mourning the Dead
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Shell Shock Cinema Mourning the dead. Ellen sits among crosses at the sea (from Nosferatu). Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War Anton Kaes PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton and Oxford Copyright © 2009 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kaes, Anton. Shell shock cinema : Weimar culture and the wounds of war / Anton Kaes. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-691-03136-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures—Germany—History—20th century. 2. World War, 1914-1918—Motion pictures and the war. 3. World War, 1914-1918—Influence. 4. Silent films— Germany—History and criticism. 5. War and motion pictures. 6. Psychic trauma in motion pictures. 7. Culture in motion pictures. I. Title. PN1993.5.G3K295 2009 833’.909358—dc22 2008053044 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Minion and Myriad Designed by Tracy Baldwin Printed on acid-free paper. press.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 The War at Home 7 The Wounded Soldier 8 The Spirit of 1914 16 Film and Nation 20 The Battle of Images 25 A Medium for Deception 29 The New Empire 34 Mental Breakdowns 37 2 Tales from the Asylum 45 War Neurotics 46 Recovering the Past 49 Phantoms and Freaks 55 From Dr. Charcot to Dr. Caligari 63 Madness as Resistance 71 The Hitler Connection 75 Shattered Space 81 3 The Return of the Undead 87 The Lost Generation 88 Mass Death 93 Dracula Revisited 98 A Community under Siege 108 Hysteria on the Home Front 113 The Allure of the Occult 120 The Work of Mourning 127 4 Myth, Murder, and Revenge 131 The National Project 132 Posing for Germany 135 The Will to Form 141 The Fallen Hero 145 Excursus: Lang in World War I 151 The Sacred Battle 153 The End of Violence 157 5 The Industrial Battlefield 167 Rise of the Machines 168 Moloch War 175 Lang’s America 181 The Hunger for Religion 186 The Workers’ Revolt 193 Destruction and Regeneration 200 Aftershocks 205 Conclusion 211 Notes 217 Weimar Cinema on DVD 251 Bibliography 267 Shell Shock and Trauma Theory 267 World War I and the Weimar Republic 272 Weimar Film History 278 Films Discussed 283 Index 299 vi Contents Illustrations All frame enlargements courtesy of Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation Wiesbaden. Frontispiece. Mourning the dead. A shell-shocked soldier 11 “I will guide you.” 15 The anonymity of death 38 A mother and her dying son 40 “I will tell you.” 50 Traumatic entertainment 60 Doctors and patients 65 The transference of madness 69 The spaces of trauma 83 “Why did you kill the flowers?” 90 The presence of death 95 Trauma as phantasmagoria 104 Distant dangers 107 vii The phantom of the text 128 Life and death of a German hero 137 The religiosity of form 143 From mythic duel to trench warfare 150 The price of loyalty 159 A fiery retelling of cold-blooded revenge 164 The machine as fuming god 170 The industrial battlefield 176 Moments of shock 180 Imagined architecture and material catastrophe 189 Apocalypse as spectacle 203 viii Illustrations Acknowledgments This book owes most to my students at Berkeley. For almost three decades they have shared my belief that Weimar cinema still speaks to us. Their enthu- siasm has inspired my research and their probing questions have sharpened my sense of Weimar’s uncanny presence in our time. I also owe thanks to my students in a seminar at Tel Aviv University, whose observations substantially nuanced and expanded my understanding of post-traumatic cinema. I am indebted to the many interlocutors, often anonymous, at conferenc- es, symposia, workshops, and lectures in various parts of the United States and in Seoul, Beijing, Canberra, Jerusalem, Vienna, London, Cambridge, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Unknowingly they have contributed to the book in its present form. I am grateful to the generous hosts of the various events for inviting me to present my work in progress. My greatest thanks go to my friend and colleague Eric Rentschler, loyal collaborator for more than thirty years, who has accompanied this book from the beginning. The shape and substance of this project became clearer to me in the course of our many discussions. I also thank Edward Dimend- berg, trusted friend and co-editor of our “Weimar and Now” book series, who read the manuscript at a crucial stage and claimed it was finished. Both Rick and Ed are the hidden coauthors of this book, along with Paul Do- bryden, my brilliant research assistant, who was instrumental in readying the manuscript for print. Many of my students over the years (most of them ix colleagues now and some of them Weimar film scholars in their own right) have been involved with the subject of this book in one way or another: Eric Ames, Maya Barzilai, Christian Buss, Steve Choe, Michael Cowan, Melissa Etzler, Sara Hall, Dayton Henderson, June Hwang, Noah Isenberg, Jennifer M. Kapczynski, Kristin Kopp, Barbara Kosta, David Levin, Rick McCor- mick, Robert Schechtman, Gabriel Trop, Justin Vaccaro, Chad Wellmon, Jennifer Zahrt, and especially David Gramling. There were others, includ- ing undergraduate students in my film noir classes, who have challenged my thinking. The book is a product of the many ideas generated in Berkeley’s collaborative intellectual environment; nonetheless it goes without saying that all errors and weaknesses are mine alone. I was privileged to discuss lesser-known Weimar films with colleagues at the bi-annual German Film Institute during the summers of 2004 and 2006 in Ann Arbor. Our spirited exchanges brought the cinema under discussion to life in surprising and compelling ways. I want to thank Johannes von Moltke of the University of Michigan for organizing this exciting forum and the participants of the GFI for their lively contributions. I am grateful to my friends Nurith Gertz, Roger Hillman, Walter H. Sokel, and David Bathrick, who read the manuscript or parts of it and made excel- lent suggestions. Other colleagues discussed aspects of the book with me or shared materials: Stefan Andriopoulos, Moritz Bassler, Elisabeth Bronfen, Yun-Young Choi, Jason Crouthamel, Thomas Elsaesser, Michal Friedman, Gerd Gemünden, Michael Geyer, Sander Gilman, Deniz Göktürk, Tom Gunning, Miriam Hansen, Hans-Georg Hofer, Bernd Hüppauf, Martin Jay, Christian Kiening, Gertrud Koch, Niklaus Largier, Paul Lerner, Helmut Le- then, Sandra Meiri, Raya Morag, Yael Munck, Lutz Musner, Judd Ne’eman, Kaja Silverman, Philipp Stiasny, Cornelia Vismann, Joseph Vogl, Wilhelm Vosskamp, Andrew Webber, Jay Winter, and Anat Zanger. Special thanks go to Elaine Tennant for help with the Nibelungenlied. I also want to thank my friends at the Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin, who have, as always, been inordinately helpful, especially Gero Gandert, Peter Latta, Hans Helmut Prinzler, Rainer Rother, Christine Seuring, and Werner Sudendorf. The book could not have been completed without the generous support of several organizations and institutions. First of all, I thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for awarding me the Humboldt Prize, as well as Klaus W. Scherpe and Joseph Vogl for hosting me at the Humboldt Uni- versity of Berlin. I also extend my thanks to the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies (especially Abraham Nitzan and x Acknowledgments Ronit Nevo) for inviting me to be a Fellow in Residence at the University of Tel Aviv. I am further grateful to the University of California for granting me the President’s Research Fellowship and to Berkeley’s Division of Arts and Humanities (especially Dean Janet Broughton and former Dean Ralph Hexter) for their longstanding support. All illustrations come from original 35mm film copies, and I want to thank Gerhard Ullmann of the Munich Film Museum for making the frame enlargements with his inimitable skill and care. I thank the Friedrich- Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation for granting me permission to reproduce these images. My editors at Princeton University Press, Hanne Winarsky and Mary Murrell before her, deserve the highest praise for their boundless patience and unflagging support. I also thank Mark Bellis for shepherding the book through production with great efficiency and Eva Jaunzems for her passionate copyediting. Although none of the chapters have been published in their present form, the book draws on my previous research on Weimar cinema and culture. Parts of Chapter 2 appeared as “The Cabinet of Dr. Cali- gari: Expressionism and Cinema” in Masterpieces of Modernist Cinema, Ted Perry, ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); portions of Chap- ter 4 appeared as “Siegfried—A German Film Star Performing the Nation in Lang’s Nibelungen Film” in The German Cinema Book, Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, and Deniz Göktürk, eds. (London: British Film Institute, 2002); and parts of Chapter 5 (pursuing a different argument) appeared as “Metropolis: City, Cinema, Modernity” in Weimar Cinema: An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era, Noah Isenberg, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). I thank the respective copyright holders for permission to reprint. Translations from German are mine unless quoted from a translated source. I checked all published English translations against the original and modified them when necessary. In addition, I compared the English inter- titles with the original German for accuracy and connotative range. I dedicate this book to Christine for bearing with me longer than the Weimar Republic lasted. Berkeley, California January 2009 xi This page intentionally left blank Shell Shock Cinema This page intentionally left blank Introduction Very bad form to mention the war.