Feminism, film, fascism
Subtitle: women's auto/biographical film in postwar Germany
By: Susan E. Linville.
Edition: 1st University of Texas Press ed.
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Austin
Language: eng
Number of pages: 196
Subjects: Motion pictures -- Germany -- History.; Women in motion pictures.; Women motion picture producers and directors -- Germany.; Motion pictures -- Germany -- Psychological aspects.; Guilt -- Psychological aspects.
Description: German society's inability and/or refusal to come to terms with its Nazi past has been analyzed in many cultural works, including the well-known books Society without the Father and The Inability to Mourn.

In this study, Susan Linville challenges the accepted wisdom of these books by focusing on a cultural realm in which mourning for the Nazi past and opposing the patriarchal and authoritarian nature of postwar German culture are central concerns - namely, women's feminist auto/biographical films of the 1970s and 1980s.

After a broad survey of feminist theory, Linville analyzes five important films that reflect back on the Third Reich through the experiences of women of different ages - Marianne Rosenbaum's Peppermint Peace, Helma Sanders-Brahms's Germany, Pale Mother, Jutta Bruckner's Hunger Years, Margarethe von Trotta's Marianne and Juliane, and Jeanine Meerapfel's Malou.

By juxtaposing these films with the accepted theories on German culture, Linville offers a fresh appraisal not only of the films' importance but especially of their challenge to misogynist interpretations of the German failure to grieve for the horrors of its Nazi past.
Notes: Filmography: p. [171].
Includes bibliographical references (p. [173]-188) and index.