Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Anthropological Materialism and the Aesthetics of Film
- 2 Soviet Film: The Giant Laboratory of Technological Innervation
- 3 Film and the Aesthetics of German Fascism
- 4 Charlie Chaplin: The Return of the Allegorical Mode in Modernity
- 5 Mickey Mouse: Utopian and Barbarian
- Conclusion : Benjamin’s Belated Aktualität
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Film and the Aesthetics of German Fascism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Anthropological Materialism and the Aesthetics of Film
- 2 Soviet Film: The Giant Laboratory of Technological Innervation
- 3 Film and the Aesthetics of German Fascism
- 4 Charlie Chaplin: The Return of the Allegorical Mode in Modernity
- 5 Mickey Mouse: Utopian and Barbarian
- Conclusion : Benjamin’s Belated Aktualität
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter analyses Benjamin's writings on German film. Through an analysis of ‘Theories of German Fascism’ (1930), it assesses to what extent the failed reception of technology in Germany had an impact on cinema. Drawing from Benjamin's remarks on the masses, the chapter analyses the film Metropolis (dir. Fritz Lang, 1927) as an example of the ‘architectonic quality’ that Benjamin detected in UFA productions during the Weimar Republic. The films by Leni Riefenstahl are analysed as an illustration of the corrupted representation of the masses performed by National Socialism. Finally, the chapter interprets the aestheticization of politics promoted by fascism from the point of view of Benjamin's reconfiguration of aesthetics and the relationship between the historically constructed human nature and technology.
Keywords: Walter Benjamin; Weimar Cinema; Ernst Jünger; Metropolis; mass ornament; UFA; Leni Riefenstahl.
Walter Benjamin never wrote extensively on German cinema. Among the different versions of the ‘Work of Art’ essay, he only mentions one German film, Frederick the Great (dir. Arzén von Cserépy, 1921–1923), in the earliest, handwritten text, as an example of a historical film, without providing any further details or analysis. In ‘Reply to Oscar A. H. Schmitz’, the article in which he defends Battleship Potemkin, Benjamin makes a more valuable— although vague—remark about the films produced by the Universum Film AG, the major German film company better known as UFA. In that text, he criticizes the monumental quality of the representation of mass movements in these films in comparison to the architectonic quality of Battleship Potemkin. Despite these scarce and vague references to German cinema, the theses of the ‘Work of Art’ are largely intended to counteract the use of the film apparatus by fascism, and to analyse and reflect on the way that National Socialism was mobilizing film technology. Benjamin's critique of the aestheticization of politics, which he develops in depth in this essay, must be traced back to his preoccupation with ‘the bungled [verungluckte] reception of technology’ in Germany. To extend this critique, it is necessary to analyse ‘Theories of German Fascism’ (1930) closely.
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- Information
- Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Film , pp. 117 - 152Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020