International Adventures

by Bergfelder, Tim

• ISBN13: 9781571815385
• ISBN10: 1571815384
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-15
• Publisher: Berghahn Books

Summary

West German cinema of the 1960s is frequently associated with the emergence of a new generation of filmmakers, collectively known by the 1970s as the "New German Cinema." Yet for domestic and international audiences at the time, German cinema primarily meant popular genres such as exotic adventure films, Gothic crime thrillers, westerns, and sex films, which were dismissed by German filmmakers and critics of the 1970s as "Daddy's Cinema." International Adventuresprovides the first comprehensive account of these genres, and charts the history of the West German film industry and its main protagonists from the immediate post-war years to its boom period in the 1950s and 1960s. By analyzing film genres in the context of industrial practices, literary traditions, biographical trajectories, and wider cultural and social developments, this book uncovers a forgotten period of German filmmaking that merits reassessment. International Adventuresfirmly locates its case studies within the wider dynamic of European cinema. In its study of West German cinema's links and co-operations with other countries including Britain, France, and Italy, the book addresses what is perhaps the most striking phenomenon of 1960s popular film genres: the dispersal and disappearance of markers of national identity in increasingly international narratives and modes of production. Tim Bergfelderis Head of Film Studies at the University of Southampton. He has published widely on German and European cinema, and is co-editor of The German Cinema Book(2002) and The Titanic in Myth and Memory.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	1	(18)
Part I: Historical and Cultural Contexts
From Rubble to Prosperity: Reconstruction of a National Film Industry	19	(34)
From National to European Cinema	53	(18)
The Distribution Sector	71	(17)
Film, Television, and Internationalisation	88	(15)
Part II: Case-Studies
Artur Brauner's CCC: Remigration, Popular Genres, and International Aspirations	103	(35)
Imagining England: the West German Edgar Wallace Series	138	(34)
From Soho to Silverlake: the Karl May Westerns	172	(35)
Beyond Respectability: B-Film Production in the 1960s	207	(30)
Conclusion: the End of an Era?	237	(14)
Appendix: Filmography of 1960s Genre Cycles	251	(12)
Bibliography	263	(8)
Index	271