German Comedy after the Third Reich: Political Aesthetics and Entertainment in Transitional Films
Final Report Abstract
The research project examines German feature films that were produced in 1944/45 but premiered only after World War II. These so-called transitional films are – our thesis holds – significant for (film)theoretical and (film)historical contexts. On the example of a corpus of sixty-one films, both cultural and socio-historical continuities and ruptures between the Nazi era and post-war Germany could be concisely worked out. The project focused particularly on comedies that, with more than thirty films, represent the most common genre of transitional films and thus significantly impacted entertainment cinema after the Third Reich. Analysing the transitional comedies, the project shows how the intertwining of entertainment, politics, and aesthetics evolved during 1940s and 1950s, the time of political and social upheaval. The innovative core lies in the integrative revision of transitional films that were previously mostly conceptualized as a homogeneous phenomenon. In the project, these films were analyzed in relation to New Film History, genre studies, and political aesthetics. On the one hand, it was possible to determine how the aesthetic strategies of Nazi entertainment films and thus also the corresponding ideological potentials were inscribed in the audiovisual figurations of these films. On the other hand, indirect traces of war-related scarcity, upheaval and subsequent editing could be found in the political aesthetics of the films. As a missing link, transitional comedies, in the broad spectrum from NS-affirmative up to subversive aesthetic potentials, connect the late phase of National Socialism and the audience perception in the post-war period. To analyze possible discrepancies between intended viewers during the Nazi era and the subsequent perception of transitional films in the post-war period, the project applied phenomenological approach of film experience. On this basis, the political aesthetics of transitional comedies was analyzed as a manifestation of its cinematic form of experience. Our thesis maintains that the political aesthetics of transitional comedies results above all in (unconscious) experiences of difference within the tension between the ‘Third Reich’, defeat, and a new beginning. In transitional comedies, figurations that were ideologically effective in ‘Third Reich’ confront transformative forces that aimed to democratize perception. This complex combination of continuities and ruptures, reminiscences and differences makes transitional comedies a particularly suitable example that allows for studying the functionality and contradictions of the implicit forms of political aesthetics. The freely accessible twenty-minute video essay “Tanz der Gespenster” offers an introduction to the central questions of the project and the phenomenon of transitional comedy.
Publications
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Tanz der Gespenster. Zur Politik der Überläuferkomödie (Videoessay, Open Access). In: Nach dem Film
Tatiana Astafeva & Rasmus Greiner
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Aesthetics of the In-Between: Traces of Transitional Times in Woman Overboard (W. Staudte, 1945–1952). Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 45(2), 237-251.
Astafeva, Tatiana
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Decontextualisations in German Überläufer Comedies: The Reception and Political Aesthetic of Die Fledermaus ( The Bat , 1946). Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 45(2), 252-272.
Greiner, Rasmus
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MISSING LINKS: THE AFTERMATH of THE NAZI ERA IN GERMAN AND EUROPEAN FILM HISTORY. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 45(2), 231-236.
Greiner, Rasmus & Astafeva, Tatiana
