1.

Record Nr.

UNISA996248128603316

Autore

Coates Paul <1953->

Titolo

The Gorgon's gaze : German cinema, expressionism, and the image of horror / / Paul Coates [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 1991

ISBN

0-511-52712-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xiv, 287 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Collana

Cambridge studies in film

Disciplina

791.43/0943

Soggetti

Motion pictures - Germany - History

Expressionism

Monsters in motion pictures

Film noir - History and criticism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Filmography: p. 274-279.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 258-273) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: the uncanny and the gorgon's gaze -- 1. Silent cinema and expressionism -- 2. The sleep of reason: monstrosity and disavowal -- 3. Memory and repression in recent German cinema -- 4. Expressionism in America -- 5. Elective affinities and family resemblances: for Margarethe von Trotta.

Sommario/riassunto

The Gorgon's Gaze is an interdisciplinary study of recurrent themes in German cinema as it has developed since the early twentieth century. Focusing on pertinent films of the pre- and post-World War II eras, Paul Coates explores the nature of expressionism, which is generally agreed to have ended with the advent of sound cinema, and its persistence in the styles of such modern masters of Film noir as Orson Welles and Ingmar Bergman. In considering the possibility of homologies between the necessary silence of pre-sound cinema and the widespread modernist aspiration to an aesthetic of silence, Coates relates theories of the sublime, the uncanny, and the monstrous to his subject. He also reflects upon problems of representability and the morality of representation of events that took place during the Nazi era.