The Gorgon's gaze : German cinema, expressionism, and the image of horror / Paul Coates.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Coates, Paul, 1953- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in film.

Cambridge studies in film

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Germany--History.

Motion pictures.

Expressionism.

Monsters in motion pictures.

Film noir--History and criticism.

Film noir.

Physical Description:

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

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

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.

Notes:

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

Filmography: p. 274-279.

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

ISBN:

9780511877049

0511877048

9781139085908

1139085905

9780511527128

0511527128

Publisher Number:

2027/heb07631 hdl