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ISCONSIN
F
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Patrick McGilligan, Series Editor
July 2012
LC: 2011043917 PN
368 pp. 6 x 9 73 b/w illus.
Paper $34.95 s
ISBN 978-0-299-28714-6
e-book $24.95 s
ISBN 978-0-299-28713-9
Film / Cultural Studies / Politics
THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS
• SPRING 2012 •
32
Cinema, History, and Democracy
“Sabine Hake explores why filmmakers in various settings
were, and continue to be, able to appeal to powerful
emotions when screening the fascist past.”
—Lutz Koepnick, author of
The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between
Hitler and Hollywood
From the late 1930s to the early twenty-first century, European and
American filmmakers have displayed an enduring fascination with
Nazi leaders, rituals, and symbols, making scores of films from
Confessions of a Nazi Spy
(1939) and
Watch on the Rhine
(1943)
through
Des Teufels General
(
The Devil’s General
, 1955) and
Pasqualino
settebellezze
(Seven Beauties, 1975), up to
Der Untergang
(
Downfall,
2004),
Inglourious Basterds
(2009), and beyond.
Probing the emotional sources and effects of this fascination,
Sabine Hake looks at the historical relationship between film and
fascism and its far-reaching implications for mass culture, media
society, and political life. In confronting the specter and spectacle of
fascist power, these films not only depict historical figures and events
but also demand emotional responses from their audiences, infusing
the abstract ideals of democracy, liberalism, and pluralism with new
meaning and relevance.
Hake underscores her argument with a comprehensive discussion
of films, including perspectives on production history, film authorship,
reception history, and questions of performance, spectatorship, and
intertextuality. Chapters focus on the Hollywood anti-Nazi films of
the 1940s, the West German anti-Nazi films of the 1950s, the East
German anti-fascist films of the 1960s, the Italian “Naziploitation”
films of the 1970s, and issues related to fascist aesthetics, the ethics of
resistance, and questions of historicization in films of the 1980s–2000s
from the United States and numerous European countries.
is the Texas Chair of German
Literature and Culture at the University of
Texas at Austin. She is the author of
numerous books and anthologies on German
cinema and culture, including
Topographies
of Class: Modern Architecture and Mass
Society in Weimar Berlin.
“Hake’s innovative transnational approach
and theoretical sophistication are accompa-
nied by fine detailed analysis of specific films.
She engages in dialogue with some of the
newest and most interesting work in the
theory of cinema.”
—Siobhan S. Craig, author of
Cinema after
Fascism: The Shattered Screen
Of related interest
The Red Years, 1929–1939
W
ISCONSIN
F
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TUDIES
“An indispensable book for the Buñuel scholar and important to those interested in the
history of Spanish film, the in-workings of the Surrealist movement, and the European left-
wing political scene from the late twenties through the Spanish Civil War.”
—Julie Jones, University of New Orleans
Published January 2012
LC: 2011011630 PN 456 pp. 6 x 9 44 b/w illus.
ISBN 978-0-299-28474-9 Paper $34.95 s ISBN 978-0-299-28473-2 e-book $19.95 s
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