The Cinema of Germany. 24 Frames ed. by Joseph Garncarz and Annemone Ligensa (review)

This volume of essays on twenty-four German-language films appears as part of Wallflower Press's 24 Frames series on regional cinemas. As noted in the volume, the books in this series are not "best of" compilations of specific national cinemas but rather collections of essays that offer "diverse entry-points" into the cinemas they are examining. The volume under discussion here lives up to these aspirations to some extent, though certain time-worn conventions of German film studies simply prove too powerful to resist.

The collection is introduced by Garncarz, who proposes a "new model of German cinema history which is not based on political developments but on the popularity of films" (2). Using this context he rejects the usual schema of German film history (e.g. Weimar cinema, Third Reich cinema, or DDR cinema) and instead proposes a three-part structure: 1910-1963, when most successful films in Germany were German productions; 1964-1979, the European phase when German audiences turned to western European films while still watching German productions; and 1980 to today, when American films began enjoying great success, while at the same time a home-grown film industry was proving to be more popular than the New German Cinema. Garncarz argues that "German films were popular because they best reflected the values of German audiences" (3); leaning on the sociologist Helmut Klages, Garncarz claims that the successful films of the first period emphasized the values of duty and acceptance. As German youth culture shifted its value system in the 1960s towards individualist self-realization, American films entering the marketplace became more popular because they reflected those values.

On closer examination Garncarz's argument stumbles. This is partially due to the lack of information given about film popularity in general and about German film in particular. What data are being used to determine a film's popularity? What risks are inherent in following this canonization strategy? Such questions are rarely raised by Garncarz or the authors of the individual essays. Garncarz seems particularly annoyed with the film-makers of the New German Cinema, who were able to change the conditions of production to reduce their reliance on ticket sales, thereby allowing them to indulge their own whims and produce polemical films of little entertainment or commercial value. Nevertheless, three of these films (Abschied von Gestern, Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle, and Deutschland im Herbst) are included in the twenty-four essays, indicating that they must have achieved notable popularity. Moreover, some other German films with record sales are not treated in the volume, indicating that aesthetic and interpretive questions also played a role in the selection of films. In his essay on the film Männer Holger Römers indicates that this film is included, and the more popular Otto - Der Film from the same year is not, because the former is less coarse and can connect to German film comedy traditions and other critical discourses. In his essay on Good Bye, Lenin! Seán Allan argues that the film is one in a series of Wende comedies but that the others can hardly be "regarded as serious contributions" (228) to that discourse. Thus it would seem that the films included in the collection have to be popular and have achieved scholarly (or elitist?) recognition; in other words, these films have gained some sort of place in recognition in the models of German cinema history that this book is attempting to replace.

As with any anthology, the individual essays reflect a wide range of interests and scholarly styles. Since they are all roughly eight to ten pages in length, they can offer only a limited number of insights, and at times one wishes for more extensive bibliographies on the films in question. Some essays are more categorical in their conclusions than others; for example, Sidney Gottlieb's treatment of Der...