18: Unmasking Brigitte Helm and Marlene Dietrich: The Vamp in German Romantic Comedies (1930–33)

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. List of Illustrations vii
4. Preface xi
5. Introduction: Images and Imaginaries 1
6. 1: Richard Oswald and the Social Hygiene Film: Promoting Public Health or Promiscuity? 13
7. 2: Unsettling Nerves: Investigating War Trauma in Robert Reinert’s Nerven (1919) 31
8. 3: Humanity Unleashed: Anti-Bolshevism as Popular Culture in Early Weimar Cinema 48
9. 4: Desire versus Despotism: The Politics of Sumurun (1920), Ernst Lubitsch’s “Oriental” Fantasy 67
10. 5: Romeo with Sidelocks: Jewish-Gentile Romance in E. A. Dupont’s Das alte Gesetz (1923) and Other Early Weimar Assimilation Films 84
11. 6: “These Hands Are Not My Hands”: War Trauma and Masculinity in Crisis in Robert Wiene’s Orlacs Hände (1924) 102
12. 7: The Star System in Weimar Cinema 116
13. 8: Schaulust: Sexuality and Trauma in Conrad Veidt’s Masculine Masquerades 134
14. 9: The Musical Promise of Abstract Film 153
15. 10: The International Project of National(ist) Film: Franz Osten in India 167
16. 11: The Body in Time: Wilhelm Prager’s Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit (1925) 182
17. 12: Henrik Galeen’s Alraune (1927): The Vamp and The Root of Horror 198
18. 13: The Dialectic of (Sexual) Enlightenment: Wilhelm Dieterle’s Geschlecht in Fesseln (1928) 211
19. 14: Babel’s Business — On Ufa’s Multiple Language Film Versions, 1929–1933 235
20. 15: “A New Era of Peace and Understanding”: The Integration of Sound Film into German Popular Cinema, 1929–1932 249
21. 16: Landscapes of Death: Space and the Mobilization Genre in G. W. Pabst’s Westfront 1918 (1930) 268
22. 17: Undermining Babel: Victor Trivas’s Niemandsland (1931) 286
23. 18: Unmasking Brigitte Helm and Marlene Dietrich: The Vamp in German Romantic Comedies (1930–33) 299
24. Filmography 317
25. Notes on the Contributors 329
26. Index 333