Framing the Fifties

John Davidson is Director of the Program of Film Studies and Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the Ohio State University. His Deterritorializing the New German Cinema appeared in 1999, and he has published numerous articles on German film as well as political discourses and literary figures in cinema more generally. He serves on the editorial board of Studies in European Cinema (UK) and is currently working on a book project investigating cinema, labor, and mobility in twentieth-century Germany.

“This collection of essays on the cultural history of post-World War II Berlin is a fine and coherent example of the conference-inspired anthology…The sheer number of subjects…in this slim volume is impressive and enlightening, and each essay has an excellent bibliography to point the reader in the direction of further literature. As an ensemble, the essays in the volume work well together, to the point that many refer to each other.”  ·  German Studies Review“These essays are for the most part interesting and persuasive and are an important step in reclaiming what Hake in her introduction calls the ‘last terra incognito of German film studies’.”  ·  German Studies Review“This very attractive collection invites the reader to study the larger project of German cinematic postwar reconstruction and identity formation with a number of excellent essays. The volume appears remarkably coherent, insofar as all 14 contributions are well-researched and well-written investigations… Undoubtedly, Framing the Fifties will trigger further and much-needed research to reintroduce complexity into a field of study that has long suffered from discursive impoverishment. Davidson and Hake have put together a fine volume that will find its grateful readers.”  ·  Journal of Contemporary History

• List of IllustrationsIntroductionChapter 1. The Question of German Guilt and the “German Student”: Politicizing the Postwar University in Kortner’s Der Ruf and von Wangenheim’s Und wiederJaimey FisherChapter 2. Returning Home: The Orientalist Spectacle of Fritz Lang’s Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das indische GrabmalBarbara MennelChapter 3. The Passenger: Ambivalences of National Identity and Masculinity in the Star Persona of Peter van EyckTim BergfelderChapter 4. Helmut Käutner’s Epilog: Das Geheimnis der Orplid and the West German Detective Film of the 1950sYogini JoglekarChapter 5. Location Heimat: Tracking Refugee Images, from DEFA to the HeimatfilmJohannes von MoltkeChapter 6. "Great Truths and Minor Truths": Kurt Maetzig’s Ernst Thälmann Films, the Antifascism Myth, and the Politics of Biography in the German Democratic RepublicRussel LemmonsChapter 7. The First DEFA Fairy Tales: Cold War Fantasies of the 1950sMarc SilbermanChapter 8. Visualizing the Enemy: Representations of the “Other Germany” in Documentaries Produced by the FRG and GDR in the 1950sMatthias SteinleChapter 9. The Treatment of the Past: Geza Radvanyi’s Der Arzt von Stalingrad and the West German War FilmJennifer M. KapczynskiChapter 10. Film und Frau and the Female Spectator of 1950s West German CinemaHester BaerChapter 11. Reterritorializing Enjoyment in the Adenauer Era: Robert A. Stemmle’s ToxiAngelica FennerChapter 12. Allegories of Management: Norbert Schultze’s Sound Track for Das MädchenRosemarie Larson PowellChapter 13. The Restructuring of the West German Film Industry in the 1950sKnut HickethierChapter 14. The Other "German" CinemaMary WauchopeWorks CitedFilmographyNotes on ContributorsIndex