The Long Century's Long Shadow: Weimar Cinema and the Romantic Modern(German and European Studies)

The Long Century's Long Shadow approaches German Romanticism and Weimar cinema as continuous developments, enlisting both in a narrative of reciprocal illumination. The author investigates different moments and media as connected phenomena, situated at alternate ends of the "long nineteenth century" but joined by their mutual rejection of the neo-classical aesthetic standard of placid and weightless poise in numerous media, including film, painting, sculpture, prose, poetry, and dance. Connecting Weimar filmmaking to Romantic thought and practice, Kenneth S. Calhoon offers a non-technological, aesthetic genealogy of cinema. He focuses on well-known literary and artistic works, including films such as Nosferatu, Metropolis, Frankenstein, and Fantasia; the writings of Conrad, Kafka, Goethe, and Novalis; and the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, one of the leading artists of German Romanticism. With an eye to the modernism of which Weimar filmmaking was a part, The Long Century's Long Shadow employs the Romantic landscape in poetry and painting as a mirror in which to regard cinema.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Empathy Begets Abstraction 2. Under the Sign of Insomnia 3. Nightwatching 4. A Pause in the Action 5. Facing the Image 6. Necessary Advances Epilogue: Music of the Third Kind

About the Author :
Kenneth S. Calhoon is a professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Oregon.

Review :
"The study would be of interest to advanced scholars of Weimar cinema well-read in the German and European aesthetic traditions of the nineteenth century. Its richness demands a patient reader, but one who will no doubt be left inspired by what comparative media studies affords to cinema studies." - Ervin Malakaj, University of British Columbia (EuropeNow) "Drawing on various Romantic texts including paintings, poetry, and prose, as well as expressionist Weimar cinema, Calhoun grounds his interpretations of the marriage between German Romanticism and works of expressionist cinema … This volume is recommended for both advanced students and scholars working in the field of Weimar cinema and Germanic studies." - Barbara Hales, University of Houston-Clear Lake (German Quarterly) "This volume is recommended for both advanced students and scholars working in the field of Weimar cinema and Germanic studies." - Barbara Hales, University of Houston-Clear Lake (German Quarterly)