Reel America: The US in German Film

Instructor: Professor Martin M. Kley
               Department of German

What would you think of a Nazi film that superimposes New York skyscrapers over Alpine peaks? Or of an Austrian filmmaker who remakes his own film in the US, just to teach American moviegoers a lesson in how films manipulate them? In this course, we will look for answers to such questions. We will study how German films, and the German film industry as a whole, have negotiated a complex love-hate relationship with America and Hollywood over the past 80 years.

This course has three main goals. It introduces you to a) the study of film in general; b) the history of German cinema from the 1920s to the present (its main styles, institutions, directors, etc.); and c) the ways in which the US has been perceived by German filmmakers, film characters, and moviegoers. We will see German protagonists explore the US (with usually catastrophic and occasionally liberating consequences), but also discuss German cinema's complicated relationship with Hollywood. This focus will allow us to understand how Germans have simultaneously resisted and embraced what many perceive - rightly or wrongly - as the United States' "cultural imperialism."

You will watch one film and read two scholarly articles on average per week that will provide relevant background information as well as conceptual tools to analyze the films in their cultural context. Writing is a major component of this course. Instead of a final exam, we will use the last three weeks of the semester to create a short film that will put what we have learned into action.