DOCSLIB.ORG

German 2451 Hollywood and Germany: Exiles and Émigrés

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
German 2451 Hollywood and Germany: Exiles and Émigrés COURSE REQUEST Last Updated: Heysel,Garett Robert 2451 - Status: PENDING 02/13/2012 General Information Course Bulletin Listing/Subject Area German Fiscal Unit/Academic Org Germanic Languages & Lit - D0547 College/Academic Group Humanities Level/Career Undergraduate Course Number/Catalog 2451 Course Title Germans in Hollywood: Exiles & Émigrés Transcript Abbreviation Ger in Hollywood Course Description Exploration of the cinema directors, screenwriters, and technicians from German-speaking lands who entered and significantly shaped US film culture at formative points in its history. Taught in English. Semester Credit Hours/Units Fixed: 3 Offering Information Length Of Course 14 Week, 7 Week, 12 Week (May + Summer) Flexibly Scheduled Course Never Does any section of this course have a distance No education component? Grading Basis Letter Grade Repeatable No Course Components Lecture Grade Roster Component Lecture Credit Available by Exam No Admission Condition Course No Off Campus Never Campus of Offering Columbus Prerequisites and Exclusions Prerequisites/Corequisites none Exclusions German 671 Cross-Listings Cross-Listings Subject/CIP Code Subject/CIP Code 16.0501 Subsidy Level General Studies Course Intended Rank Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior Quarters to Semesters Quarters to Semesters Modified or re-envisioned course that includes substantial parts of the content and learning goals of one or more quarter courses List the current courses by number and title German 671-German Cinema to 1945 to GEC course that are to be subsumed into proposed course 2451 - Page 1 COURSE REQUEST Last Updated: Heysel,Garett Robert 2451 - Status: PENDING 02/13/2012 Requirement/Elective Designation General Education course: Visual and Performing Arts The course is an elective (for this or other units) or is a service course for other units Course Details Course goals or learning objectives/outcomes Content Topic List • Explore US film culture as shaped by people from German-speaking lands • Evaluate writing and works of culture • Understand connections between aesthetics and social history • Reflect on the roots of contemporary world • Reflect on social, historical, political, and cultural tradition of US Attachments • GER2451-GE_Rationale.doc: GE Rationale (Other Supporting Documentation. Owner: Grotans,Anna Anita) • Sample-Syll-GER2451.docx: Sample Syllabus (Syllabus. Owner: Grotans,Anna Anita) • Ger 2451Assessment.docx: GE Assessment (GEC Course Assessment Plan. Owner: Grotans,Anna Anita) Comments • Hi, I don't see German 671 as a GEC/GE so can you provide the rationale? (by Heysel,Garett Robert on 11/09/2011 10:45 PM) • -Please check off which GE category is requested. -Also see 4/5/11 note: please provide proposal (complete syllabus, GE rationale, GE assessment plan). (by Vankeerbergen,Bernadette Chantal on 11/08/2011 09:39 AM) • Please provide GE proposal for this new GE course (by Meyers,Catherine Anne on 04/05/2011 05:07 PM) 2451 - Page 2 COURSE REQUEST Last Updated: Heysel,Garett Robert 2451 - Status: PENDING 02/13/2012 Workflow Information Status User(s) Date/Time Step Taleghani- Submitted Nikazm,Carmen 02/17/2011 04:23 PM Submitted for Approval Approved Grotans,Anna Anita 02/17/2011 04:25 PM Unit Approval Approved Williams,Valarie Lucille 04/05/2011 09:14 AM College Approval Revision Requested Meyers,Catherine Anne 04/05/2011 05:07 PM ASCCAO Approval Submitted Heysel,Garett Robert 11/06/2011 09:01 PM Submitted for Approval Approved Grotans,Anna Anita 11/06/2011 09:41 PM Unit Approval Approved Heysel,Garett Robert 11/07/2011 08:06 PM College Approval Vankeerbergen,Bernadet Revision Requested te Chantal 11/08/2011 09:42 AM ASCCAO Approval Submitted Heysel,Garett Robert 11/09/2011 10:46 PM Submitted for Approval Approved Grotans,Anna Anita 02/13/2012 03:52 PM Unit Approval Approved Heysel,Garett Robert 02/13/2012 06:06 PM College Approval Nolen,Dawn Jenkins,Mary Ellen Bigler Meyers,Catherine Anne Pending Approval Vankeerbergen,Bernadet 02/13/2012 06:06 PM ASCCAO Approval te Chantal Hogle,Danielle Nicole Hanlin,Deborah Kay 2451 - Page 3 1 German 2451 Hollywood and Germany: Exiles and Émigrés Course Description German cinema has played an influential role in the development of international film genres since the silent period. The so-called Golden Age of German Expressionist film greatly influenced Hollywood filmmaking in many genres: the Western, the gangster film, the horror film, film noir, the animated cartoon, and others. In this class we shall be looking at examples of films made in Hollywood which bear the stamp of German influence, partly through the emigration of leading figures from the German cinema. We shall also be looking at films made in Germany which either thematize aspects of German culture or provide evidence for the fact that influence is not something which flows in only direction. This course assumes no prior knowledge of German, German films, or film theory in general. It is taught in English and all films shown in class will have subtitles. In line with the goals of GE courses (see below), students in German 2451 will be expected to develop the skills needed to analyze cinematic texts; i.e., to ask pertinent and interesting questions of a text and to weigh evidence for and against various interpretations. An important component of any humanities course is the strengthening of basic writing skills, both in take-home and in-class essay examinations. German 2451 is a GE class which satisfies the Arts & Humanities category: Breadth, Visual and Performing Arts. Expected learning outcomes: Students evaluate significant writing and works of art. Such studies develop capacities for aesthetic and historical response and judgment; interpretation and evaluation; critical listening, reading, seeing, thinking, and writing; and experiencing the arts and reflecting on that experience. 1. Students both engage in active viewing and read critical analyses of popular film of different genres and thus develop abilities to be informed observers or active participants in the visual, spatial, performing, spoken, or literary arts. 2. Students are encouraged to become critical viewers of the world of popular film to which they are exposed, which helps students interpret creative works and/or movements in the arts and literature and explain how cultural works explore the human condition. Film Studies: This course is approved for the interdisciplinary minor in film studies. For more information about film studies as a minor at OSU, go to http://film-studies.osu.edu. Required Texts *The German Cinema Book (BFI Modern Classics). Ed. Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, Deniz Gokturk. University of California Press. 2003. ISBN: 085170946X (SBX) *Weekly Readings posted to Carmen *Films streamed through <drm.osu.edu> (Assigned films must be viewed in their entirety before class) *NB: If you have not taken a film class previously, it will be very useful to get an introduction to film and film analysis: I recommend Bordwell & Thompson’s Film Art: An Introduction. 2 Grades will be determined as follows: Grading Scale 1. Attendance / Participation 20% 93-100 = A 80-82 = B- 68-69 = D+ 2. Response Papers (6) 30% 90-92 = A- 78-79 = C+ 63-67 = D 3. Paper 30% 88-89 = B+ 73-77 = C below 63 = E 4. Final 20% 83-87 = B 70-72 = C- 100% 1. The class will be conducted as a discussion and thus participation is a highly valued component of your overall grade. If, for whatever reason, you are unable to attend a session, you must inform me of this fact before the class. More than two absences will adversely affect your grade. 2. The response papers are due every two weeks (i.e. Thursdays of weeks 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12) and should be 1.5-2 pages in length (typed). More information on what is expected from these papers will be given to you in class. 3. The paper is due on the last day of class. The topic is of your choosing and can relate to any aspect of the course. You should, however, clear your topic with me first. During the eleventh/twelfth weeks of the semester I will ask everyone to give a brief, oral description of their paper topic to the class and other students will be asked for comments and suggestions. 4. The date for the final exam is set by the university and cannot be changed. Disability Services: Students with disabilities that have been certified by the Office for Disability Services will be appropriately accommodated and should inform the instructor as soon as possible of their needs. The Office for Disability Services is located in 150 Pomerene Hall, 1760 Neil Avenue, telephone 292-3307, TDD 292-0901; http://ww.ods.ohio-state.edu/ Academic Misconduct: It is the responsibility of the Committee on Academic Misconduct to investigate or establish procedures for the investigation of all reported cases of student academic misconduct. The term “academic misconduct” includes all forms of student academic misconduct wherever committed; illustrated by, but not limited to, cases of plagiarism and dishonest practices in connection with examinations. Instructors shall report all instances of alleged academic misconduct to the committee (Faculty Rule 3335-5-487). For additional information, see the Code of Student Conduct (http://studentaffairs.osu.edu/info_for_students/csc.asp). 3 SCHEDULE Week One Transatlantic Careers in Early Cinema: The Example of Ernst Lubitsch (1892, Berlin - 1947, Hollywood) Films: Excerpts from: Madam Dubarry/Passion (Germany, 1919), The Merry Widow (USA, 1934) and Ninotchka (USA, 1939) 1. Background reading in The German Cinema Book: 1-12, 107-138, 148-181. 2. Sabine Hake: Transatlantic Careers: Ernst Lubitsch and Fritz Lang, The German Cinema Book, 217-26. Week Two Paul Leni (1885, Stuttgart – 1929, Los Angeles): Expressionist Horror Films: Excerprts from: Waxworks (Germany, 1924), The Cat and the Canary (USA, 1927) and The Man Who Laughed (USA, 1928) 1. Jan-Christopher Horak: Sauerkraut & Sausages with a Little Goulash: Germans in Hollywood, 1927.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Pdf El Trascendentalismo En El Cine De Douglas Sirk / Emeterio Díez
    EL TRASCENDENTALISMO EN EL CINE DE DOUGLAS SIRK Emeterio DÍEZ PUERTAS Universidad Camilo José Cela [email protected] Resumen: El artículo estudia la presencia del trascendentalismo en las pelí- culas que Douglas Sirk rueda para los estudios Universal Internacional Pic- tures entre 1950 y 1959. Dicha presencia se detecta en una serie de motivos temáticos y en una carga simbólica acorde con una corriente literaria y filo- sófica basada en la intuición, el sentimiento y el espíritu. Abstract: The article studies the presence of the transcendentalist in the movies that Douglas Sirk films between 1950 and 1959 for Universal Inter- national Pictures. This presence is detected in topics and symbols. Sirk uni- tes this way to a literary and philosophical movement based on the intuition, the feeling and the spirit. Palabras clave: Douglas Sirk. Trascendentalismo. Leitmotiv. Cine. Key words: Douglas Sirk. Trascendentalist. Leitmotiv. Cinema. © UNED. Revista Signa 16 (2007), págs. 345-363 345 EMETERIO DÍEZ PUERTAS Hacia 1830 surge en la costa Este de Estados Unidos un movimiento li- terario y filosófico conocido como trascendentalismo. Se trata de una co- rriente intelectual que rechaza tanto el racionalismo de la Ilustración como el puritanismo conservador y el unitarismo cristiano. Sus ideas nacen bajo el in- flujo del romanticismo inglés y alemán, en especial, de las lecturas de Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge y Thomas Carlyle. Los principales teóricos del movimiento se agrupan en torno a la ciudad de Concord, en Massachusetts, uno de los seis estados que forman Nueva Inglaterra. Con apenas cinco mil habitantes, esta pequeña localidad se convierte en el centro de toda una escuela de pensamiento.
    [Show full text]
  • ATINER's Conference Paper Series HUM2014-0814
    ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: HUM2014-0814 Athens Institute for Education and Research ATINER ATINER's Conference Paper Series HUM2014-0814 Iconic Bodies/Exotic Pinups: The Mystique of Rita Hayworth and Zarah Leander Galina Bakhtiarova Associate Professor Western Connecticut State University USA 1 ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: HUM2014-0814 Athens Institute for Education and Research 8 Valaoritou Street, Kolonaki, 10671 Athens, Greece Tel: + 30 210 3634210 Fax: + 30 210 3634209 Email: [email protected] URL: www.atiner.gr URL Conference Papers Series: www.atiner.gr/papers.htm Printed in Athens, Greece by the Athens Institute for Education and Research. All rights reserved. Reproduction is allowed for non-commercial purposes if the source is fully acknowledged. ISSN 2241-2891 22/1/2014 2 ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: HUM2014-0814 An Introduction to ATINER's Conference Paper Series ATINER started to publish this conference papers series in 2012. It includes only the papers submitted for publication after they were presented at one of the conferences organized by our Institute every year. The papers published in the series have not been refereed and are published as they were submitted by the author. The series serves two purposes. First, we want to disseminate the information as fast as possible. Second, by doing so, the authors can receive comments useful to revise their papers before they are considered for publication in one of ATINER's books, following our standard procedures of a blind review. Dr. Gregory T. Papanikos President Athens Institute for Education and Research 3 ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: HUM2014-0814 This paper should be cited as follows: Bakhtiarova, G.
    [Show full text]
  • Douglas Sirk in Nazi Germany
    '.seum of (VSodern Art 50'^ Anrnvprsarv NO. 40 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART FILM PROGRAM TO SHOW FOUR RARE FILMS DIRECTED BY DOUGLAS SIRK IN NAZI GERMANY Four rare films directed by Douglas Sirk during his career in Germany in the mid-1930s will be shown by The Museum of Modern Art Department of Film, August 15-18, 1980. All films will have English subtitles. Introduced by film historian Richard Traubner, the films are: TO NEW SHORES (1937, Zu neuen Ufern) and LA HABANERA (1937), both starring Zarah Leander; FINAL CHORD (1936, Schlussakkord), with Willy Birgel and Lil Dagover; and PILLARS OF SOCIETY (1935, Stutzen der Gesellschaft), with Heinrich George. Schedule as follows: TO NEW SHORES, Friday, August 15 at 6:00 (Introduced by Mr. Traubner) Sunday, August 17 at 8:30 LA HABANERA, Friday, August 15 at 8:30 Sunday, August 17 at 6:00 FINAL CHORD, Saturday, August 16 at 6:00 Monday, August 18 at 8:30 PILLARS OF SOCIETY, Saturday, August 16 at 8:30 Monday, August 18 at 6:00 Numerous Douglas Sirk films produced in Hollywood have been shown at MoMA but his career in Germany in the 30's is largely unknown. Sirk (then Detlef Sierck) had been a successful and versatile theater director before his move to the cinema (Ufa) in 1934. He carried over into film his strong sense of drama and skill with actors. Zarah Leander, the most famous of the Sirk stars, was the Nazi cinema's answer to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, a beautiful Swede with a deep 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019.
    [Show full text]
  • Glorious Technicolor: from George Eastman House and Beyond Screening Schedule June 5–August 5, 2015 Friday, June 5 4:30 the G
    Glorious Technicolor: From George Eastman House and Beyond Screening Schedule June 5–August 5, 2015 Friday, June 5 4:30 The Garden of Allah. 1936. USA. Directed by Richard Boleslawski. Screenplay by W.P. Lipscomb, Lynn Riggs, based on the novel by Robert Hichens. With Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer, Basil Rathbone, Joseph Schildkraut. 35mm restoration by The Museum of Modern Art, with support from the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation; courtesy The Walt Disney Studios. 75 min. La Cucaracha. 1934. Directed by Lloyd Corrigan. With Steffi Duna, Don Alvarado, Paul Porcasi, Eduardo Durant’s Rhumba Band. Courtesy George Eastman House (35mm dye-transfer print on June 5); and UCLA Film & Television Archive (restored 35mm print on July 21). 20 min. [John Barrymore Technicolor Test for Hamlet]. 1933. USA. Pioneer Pictures. 35mm print from The Museum of Modern Art. 5 min. 7:00 The Wizard of Oz. 1939. USA. Directed by Victor Fleming. Screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf, based on the book by L. Frank Baum. Music by Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg. With Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Ray Bolger, Margaret Hamilton, Billie Burke. 35mm print from George Eastman House; courtesy Warner Bros. 102 min. Saturday, June 6 2:30 THE DAWN OF TECHNICOLOR: THE SILENT ERA *Special Guest Appearances: James Layton and David Pierce, authors of The Dawn of Technicolor, 1915-1935 (George Eastman House, 2015). James Layton and David Pierce illustrate Technicolor’s origins during the silent film era. Before Technicolor achieved success in the 1930s, the company had to overcome countless technical challenges and persuade cost-conscious producers that color was worth the extra effort and expense.
    [Show full text]
  • Tarnished Angels
    The Dark Vision of Douglas Sirk 38 NOIR CITY I SPRING 2016 I filmnoirfoundation.org Imogen Sara Smith n a hot night in New Orleans, in a half-lit, elegantly shabby apartment, two troubled souls share a bottle of cheap wine and an intimate, confessional conversation. Next door, a raucous costume party is in full swing, revelers dancing like hopped-up zombies to relentless Dixieland jazz. The man and woman speak tenderly about betrayals and disillusion- O ment, building to a kiss that is jarringly interrupted by Death— a guy in a leering skull mask who bursts in from the party. This scene, from Douglas Sirk’s underappreciated drama The Tarnished Angels (1958), dramatizes one of the director’s key themes: people struggling for authentic connection, surrounded by an oppressive, sinister masquerade of happi- ness. Sirk is best known for baroquely stylized Technicolor melodramas, once dismissed as sudsy kitsch but now embraced by many cinephiles for their formalist rigor and their subversive notes of unease. The work of a European intellectual often saddled with projects he disdained, Sirk’s films are complex, oblique, and visually incisive. One of the few German refugee filmmakers who didnot specialize in film noir, Sirk shared his fellow exiles’ gimlet eye for his adopted country. His lush melodramas strike a dissonant note, resonating from the hollowness behind the false front of the American “good life.” Like his sophisticated noir films of the 1940s, they reveal an insatiable hunger bred by idealized visions of plenty, and the paradoxical seduc- tion of death in a willfully complacent society.
    [Show full text]
  • September 2016
    ZEUGHAUSKINO PROGRAMM Zeughauskino Deutsches Historisches Museum Unter den Linden 2 Juli – September 10117 Berlin T +49 30 20304-421 (Büro) 2016 T +49 30 20304-770 (Kinokasse) F +49 30 20304-424 → Douglas Sirk [email protected] → Tausend Takte Übermut www.zeughauskino.de → Slowakische Neue Welle INHALT VORWORT 1 Höhepunkte 2 Von Detlef Sierck zu Douglas Sirk Filmreihen Written on the Wind All I Desire Die Filme von Douglas Sirk 4 Aus dem Fernseharchiv 40 Berlin.Dokument 44 DEFA-Sportfilm 48 FilmDokument 52 Lachende Erben: Tausend Takte Übermut 54 Slowakische Neue Welle 60 Seit seiner Eröffnung im Jahr 1992 interessiert sich das Zeughauskino für das deutsche Exilkino. Neben kleinere Reihen, die ausgewählte S wie Sonderprogramm 68 Filme deutscher Emigranten vorstellten, sind im Laufe der Jahre um- fangreiche Retrospektiven getreten: mehrmonatige Programme, Wiederentdeckt 72 die es gestatteten, Gesamtwerke in ihren vielfältigen Schichtungen und Wendungen wahrzunehmen. Die Œuvres von Max und Marcel Aktuelle Ausstellungen Ophüls, von Fritz Lang und Robert Siodmak wurden auf diese Weise vorgestellt. Am 8. Juli startet mit einer Douglas-Sirk-Retrospektive Sonderausstellungen im Deutschen Historischen Museum 77 eine weitere Filmreihe in dieser Programmtradition. Douglas Sirk gehört zu den zentralen Filmregisseuren der Nachkriegs- Kalender zeit. Unter den deutschen Filmschaffenden, die in den Jahren vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in die USA auswanderten, nimmt er eine Son- Alle Termine im Überblick 78 derstellung ein, denn die Filmkarriere des gebürtigen Hamburgers begann erst im „Dritten Reich“, nachdem er 1934 – unter seinem Geburtsnamen Detlef Sierck – einen Vertrag bei der Ufa unterschrie- Filmwerkstatt ben hatte. Ein Großteil seines Werks entstand jedoch in den 1940er Angebote für Schulklassen 84 und 1950er Jahren im amerikanischen Exil.
    [Show full text]
  • Medienwissenschaft / Hamburg: Berichte Und Papiere
    Medienwissenschaft / Hamburg: Berichte und Papiere 69 / 2007: Melodrama. Redaktion und Copyright dieser Ausgabe: Hans J. Wulff. Letzte Änderung: 21. Januar 2007. Das filmische Melodram. Eine Arbeitsbibliographie. Zusammengestellt v. Hans J. Wulff. Themenhefte Wide Angle 4,2, 1980, pp. 451: Melodrama. Five articles studying examples of the melodrama genre in the light of recent work in theory and feminism. Movie, 29/30, 1982: Melodrama. Journal of the University Film and Video Association 35,1, 1983: Melodrama. Film Criticism 9,2, Winter19841985: Melodrama. Screen 29,3, Summer 1988, pp. 2115: Melodrama and transgression. Dedicated to the portrayal of heroines in melodramas. EastWest Film Journal. 5,1, Jan.1991: Melodrama and Cinema. Filmgeschichte,14, 2000, S.1950: Melodramen. Bücher und Artikel Allen, Michael: Telling stories: melodrama, narration and recognition. In: Family Secrets: the Feature Films of D.W. Griffith. London: British Film Institute 1999. Andrew, Dudley: Broken Blossons: the art and the eros of a perverse text. In: Quarterly Review of Film Studies 6,1, 1981, pp. 8190. Andrin, Muriel: Maléfiques. Le Mélodrame filmique américain et ses héroïnes (19401953). Frankfurt [...]: Peter Lang 2005. Ang, Ien: Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Methuen 1985. Anon. (a cura di): Schermi d'Amore Festival del Cinema Sentimentale e Mélo. 4a edizione, Verona, 31 marzo 9 aprile 2000. Torino: Ed. Lindau 2000, 155 S. Aspinall, Sue / Murphy, Robert (eds.): Gainsborough Melodrama. London: British Film Institute 1983. Barefoot, Guy: Gaslight melodrama: from Victorian London to 1940s. New York: Continuum 2001, 212 pp. Baron, Cynthia: Tales of sound and fury reconsidered: melodrama as a system of punctuation.
    [Show full text]
  • Sirk-Umstance: Intertextuality, Adaptation, and All That Heaven Allows Walter C
    Southern Illinois University Carbondale OpenSIUC Articles Department of Cinema and Photography Winter 1993 Pomp(ous) Sirk-umstance: Intertextuality, Adaptation, and All That Heaven Allows Walter C. Metz Southern Illinois University Carbondale, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cp_articles Published in the UIP Journal of Film and Video. Recommended Citation Metz, Walter C. "Pomp(ous) Sirk-umstance: Intertextuality, Adaptation, and All That Heaven Allows." The Journal of Film and Video 45, No. 4 (Winter 1993): 3-21. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Cinema and Photography at OpenSIUC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of OpenSIUC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Pomp(ous) Sirk-umstance: Intertextuality, Adaptation, and All That Heaven Allows By Walter Metz Published in: The Journal of Film and Video. 45.4 [Winter 1993]. 3-21. In “The Melodramatic Field: An Investigation,” Christine Gledhill exposes the problems caused by film scholars attending to melodrama after privileging Douglas Sirk, creator of many 1950s melodramas, as a modernist, Brechtian auteur capable of transforming the lachrymose material presented to him into subversive art. The concentration on Sirk as an auteur did, however, ironically enable the 1970s critical discovery of the melodrama as a genre worthy of scholarly attention. However, the subsequent development of melodrama studies has never completely exorcized these auteurist roots. Film melodrama has primarily been judged politically progressive if it can be explained as using visual distanciation interventions by auteurs like Sirk.
    [Show full text]
  • Douglas Sirk 7/6/10 3:25 PM
    Douglas Sirk 7/6/10 3:25 PM contents great directors cteq annotations top tens about us links archive search Douglas Sirk Detlef Sierck b. April 26, 1900, Hamburg, Germany d. January 14, 1987, Lugano, Switzerland by Tom Ryan Tom Ryan is film critic for The Sunday Age and a Melbourne-based commentator on film. filmography bibliography web resources Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is after. – Douglas Sirk (1) Douglas Sirk was one of the 20th century cinema's great ironists. And perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of the films he made in Europe and America is the way they are able to create a gulf between how his characters see themselves and our view of them. Sirk's characters grapple with the same problems that have always afflicted men and women and parents and children, to do with love, death and social circumstance. In some cases, they do so in a world of melodrama – as in films as various as Schlussakkord (1936), La Habanera (1937), There's Always Tomorrow (1955) and Imitation of Life (1958). In others, it's a world of colour and music – as in the trio of comedy-musicals he made during the 1950s, Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1951), Meet Me at the Fair (1952) and Take Me to Town (1952), part of a series he had planned about small town America. In others, it's the excitement of mystery, romance or adventure – in films such as Lured (1946), Taza, Son of Cochise (1953, shot in 3-D) and Captain Lightfoot (1954).
    [Show full text]
  • VOID and MEDIUM in POSTWAR US CULTURE by Matthew Allen
    THE PROJECTOR RESTS ON A PILE OF BOOKS: VOID AND MEDIUM IN POSTWAR U.S. CULTURE By Matthew Allen Tierney A.B., Cornell University, 2000 M.A., University of California—Santa Cruz, 2006 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Providence, Rhode Island 2012 © Copyright 2012 by Matthew Allen Tierney ii This dissertation by Matthew Allen Tierney is accepted in its present form by the Department of Modern Culture and Media as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date Ellen Rooney, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date Rey Chow, Reader Date Daniel Kim, Reader Date Michael Silverman, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii MATTHEW ALLEN TIERNEY EDUCATION Ph.D., Modern Culture & Media, Brown University (Providence, RI)—2012 M.A., Literature, University of California (Santa Cruz, CA)—2006 A.B. Cum Laude, American Studies, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)—1999 PUBLICATIONS “Oh no, not again!: Representability and a Repetitive Remark.” Image & Narrative 11:2 (2010) Review of Jonathan Auerbach, Dark Borders: Film Noir & American Citizenship. Film Criticism 36:2 (2012) SELECTED PRESENTATIONS: “A Breath of Dissent: Novel Histories and Political Denarration” Society for Novel Studies, 2012 “Breathing, Talking Politics: Disastrous Liberalism and the Prose of Mere Dissent” American Comparative Literature Association,
    [Show full text]
  • Ming Wong's Art of Imitation
    Ming Wong’s Imitations Barbara Mennel Ming Wong’s Art of Imitation Life of Imitation—the installation prepared by Singaporean performance and multi- media artist Ming Wong for his solo exhibition in the Singapore Pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale—restages a pivotal scene from Imitation of Life, Douglas Sirk’s famous 1959 Hollywood maternal melodrama, closely replicating its stage blocking of characters, dialogue, and shot composition. Figure 1: Ming Wong’s Life of Imitation at the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale Source: Ming Wong, Life of Imitation, 2009; two channel video installation Courtesy: carlier | gebauer, Berlin and Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou Full Clip: http://transit.berkeley.edu/2014/mennel-2/ In Wong’s double projection, the three Singaporean actors Sebastian Tan, Moe Kasim, and Alle Majeed—each a member of one of the country’s dominant ethnic groups (Chinese, Malayan, and Indian)—systematically rotate through the female roles of the source material.1 In the key scene from Imitation of Life, the African American maid Annie Johnson, one of the two lead female characters, is visiting her light-skinned daughter Sarah Jane at her workplace in a Los Angeles nightclub. To pass as white, Sarah Jane had previously run away and renounced her mother, who was only able to track her down with the help of a private detective. After a confrontation between the two in a motel room, which ends in a tearful embrace, Sarah Jane’s friend (billed as “Showgirl”) happens to enter and becomes a witness to Sarah Jane’s racial passing, which her mother reinforces by pretending to be her former mammy.
    [Show full text]
  • Bright Lights Film Journal :: Interview with Douglas Sirk 7/30/13 9:02 AM
    Bright Lights Film Journal :: Interview with Douglas Sirk 7/30/13 9:02 AM Two Weeks in Another Town Interview with Douglas Sirk 37 This article originally appeared in issue 6 (1977) of the discontinued print edition. This issue, devoted entirely to Douglas Sirk, was published in conjunction with the first major American Sirk retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Long out of print, the entire issue is now available online. An index follows. » Introduction (BLFJ 48) » Sarris on Sirk (BLFJ 48) » Sirk and the Critics (BLFJ 48) » Love Affairs That Always Fade (BLFJ 48) » The Lure of the Gilded Cage (BLFJ 48) » Intimations of Lifelessness: Sirk's Ironic Tearjerker (BLFJ 18) » God Is Dead, or Through a Glass Darkly (BLFJ 48) » Zuckerman and Zugsmith on Sirk (BLFJ 48) » Interview with Douglas Sirk (BLFJ 48) Introduction (Jane) There are more drugstores in Lugano, Switzerland than in any other town in Europe. They are small cliniques, filled with Jacuzzi pumps, sitz bath salts, pine oil perfumes, elderberry pastilles, and rainbows of pills. Lugano JANE STERN is a town obsessed with health. Even its tourist brochure acknowledges it to be "beneficial to the mucous membranes." There is another Lugano — a town dotted with Italian-Swiss restaurants perched on the undulating slopes surrounding the lake. This is a Lugano of wealth, of gold watches draped MICHAEL STERN on jewelers' velvets, of 15th-century villas hung with Titians. Douglas Sirk lives in Ruvigliana, a district perched celestially above the two Luganos. Swooshing up the elevator shaft of Condominio Vall'Orba in a mirrored elevator to meet Sirk: He is still Sirk, never Douglas.
    [Show full text]