470:387 Topics: Femme Fatale to Powerfrau-Women in German Film (3 credits)

Professor Christopher Clark

Crosslisted with Comparative Literature (01:195:397:02)

This course explores the history of German cinema and culture by tracing the representation of women on the screen. German film of the 1920s and early 30s featured images of female sexuality that remain iconic today (Marlene Dietrich, Louise Brooks). Subsequently, the femmes fatales and vamps of Weimar-era film were replaced by the morally (and racially) pure woman of Nazi-era melodrama. While the decades following the war offered little in the way of cinematic innovation, the 1970s saw both the cultural impact of the women's movement and the emergence of a number of women film directors, resulting a wide range of new representations of female characters then and in the years that followed. While our primary focus will be the films themselves, we will also consider the impact of feminist film criticism and theory, as well as explore how gender and sexuality studies might inform our readings of the films. Films by Fritz Lang, G.W. Pabst, Josef von Sternberg, Leontine Sagan, Detlev Sierck (aka Douglas Sirk), Veit Harlan, Leni Riefenstahl, Heiner Carow, R.W. Fassbinder, Helke Sander, Margarethe von Trotta, Katja von Garnier, Tom Tykwer, Marc Rothemund, and Christian Petzold; texts in criticism & theory TBD.