Volker Schlondorff's Cinema: Adaptation, Politics, and the Movie-Appropriate

by Moeller, Hans-Bernhard; Lellis, George

• ISBN13: 9780809324514
• ISBN10: 0809324512
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-08-30
• Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr

Summary

Volker Schlondorff's Cinema: Adaptation, Politics and the "Movie-Appropriate"examines the work of major postwar Germandirector Volker Schlondorff in historical, economic, and artistic contexts. Incorporating a film-by-film, twenty-eight chapter study, Hans-Bernhard Moeller & George Lellis reveal a complexity and formalambitiousness of Schlondorff that is comparable to that found in Wenders, Herzog, andFassbinder. In spite of Schlondorff's successes with films likeThe Lost Honor ofKatharina BlumandThe Tin Drum,as well as his acclaimed work in the U.S. withDeath of a Salesman, Gathering of Old MenandThe Handmaid's Tale, this is the first in-depthcritical study of the filmmaker's career. In the context of film and television history, this book relates Schlondorff's oeuvre to the New German Cinema, to his formative years as a student and production assistant in France, and to his roots in the Weimar cinema's tradition. It reveals how Schlondorff entered into the German film production system in the 1960s, how he came to rely on German public television in the 1970s, and then moved to the international and American financing in the 1980s, attempting to redevelop the Babelsberg studios in a 1990s post-Wall Germany while continuing to make his own films into the 21st century. The book captures how Schlondorff's nearly half century of ongoing creativity and productivity ties together. The authors analyze the artistry of each Schlondorff movie arguing that his output as a whole embodies a provocative and sometimes contradictory set of balances. Schlondorff combines commercial interest with significant artistic ambition, blends the kinesthetic pleasures of moving images with the seriousness of fine literature, links the intensity of individualized personal experience to an awareness of broader political issues, and represents a specifically German sensibility even as he reaches out to the international audiences. The authors demonstrate the cyclical recurrence in his cinema of certain themes (individual and collective rebellion, fascist suppression, masochistic love), narrative patterns (the Western, the thriller, the subjective mood piece), and stylistic approaches (Brechtian Verfremdung, the creation of careful leitmotif structures, the use of the grotesque). In over thirty years of filmmaking, Schlondorff has produced a remarkable unified body of work that deserves the attention of a book-length study. Authors Hans-Bernhard Moeller and George Lellis offer the first such study of its kind. Volker Schlondorff's Cinema: Adaptation, Politics, and the "Movie-Appropriate"features forty-one illustrations.

Author Biography

Hans-Bernhard Moeller is a professor in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, teaching a range of courses on the German cinema as well as both courses in German literature and in comparative literature.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: The Historical Importance of Schlondorff	p. 1
Schlondorff and His Sources	p. 11
The Early Schlondorff: Suppression, Pop, and Protest
Young Torless	p. 25
A Degree of Murder and "An Uneasy Moment"	p. 40
Michael Kohlhaas	p. 48
Brechtian and Profeminist Schlondorff
"Amphibious" Movies and Formal Experiments	p. 63
Baal	p. 78
The Sudden Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach	p. 88
The Morals of Ruth Halbfass and Overnight Stay in Tyrol	p. 100
A Free Woman	p. 112
Georgina's Reasons	p. 121
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum	p. 128
Coup de Grace	p. 144
The International Schlondorff
A German Consciousness for an International Audience	p. 157
The Tin Drum	p. 164
Just for Fun, Just for Play--Kaleidoscope Valeska Gert, The Candidate, and War and Peace	p. 183
Circle of Deceit	p. 194
Swann in Love	p. 206
The American Schlondorff
A German Filmmaker in the United States	p. 219
Death of a Salesman	p. 223
A Gathering of Old Men	p. 234
The Handmaid's Tale	p. 247
The Post-Wall Schlondorff
A Filmmaker for the European Community	p. 265
Voyager	p. 275
The Ogre	p. 289
Billy, How Did You Do It? and Palmetto	p. 303
The Legend of Rita and "The Perfect Soldier"	p. 309
Conclusion	p. 319
Filmography	p. 329
U.S. Film, DVD, and Video Sources	p. 334
Notes	p. 337
Works Cited and Consulted	p. 340
Index	p. 357
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