In conjunction with Inventur - Art in Germany, 1943–55
The Harvard Film Archive is screening five complementary German films from the period examined by
Inventur - Art in Germany, 1943–55, the groundbreaking exhibition at the Harvard Art Museum which focuses on “the highly charged artistic landscape” in Germany from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s. As the curators of Inventur describe, “the exhibition focuses on modern art created at a time when Germans were forced to acknowledge and reckon with the atrocities of World War II and the Holocaust, the country’s defeat and occupation by the Allies, and the ideological ramifications of the fledgling Cold War. Chosen for the way it helps characterize the art of this period, the word Inventur (inventory) implies not just an artistic stocktaking, but a physical and moral one as well—the reassurance of one’s own existence as reflected in the stuff of everyday life. The exhibition, too, ‘takes stock,’ introducing the richness and variety of the modern art of this period to new audiences, while prompting broader questions on the role of the creative individual living under totalitarianism and in its wake.”
Relatively underscreened and unknown, German postwar cinema occupies a liminal sector of film history, sandwiched between Nazi era productions and the New German Cinema of the 1970s. The signatories of the 1962 Oberhausen Manifesto would indict the light entertainments of the Adenauer era (1949-1963), dismissing its escapist comedies, Heimatfilme and melodramas as examples of a moribund “Papa’s cinema.” The judgment was dismissive and unfair. Postwar German cinema in fact gave rise to numerous innovative, critical, and formally striking productions. Harvard professor Eric Rentschler’s series revisits a period in film history that until recently has been unfairly written off and overlooked, putting on display some buried treasures such as
Under the Bridges, which was shot on location in Berlin during the last months of the war; the abstract, avant-garde
Jonas; and Peter Lorre’s single directorial exercise
The Lost One.
Curated by Eric Rentschler, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures & Director of Graduate Studies, Harvard.
Friday April 20 at 7pm
Under the Bridges (Unter den Brücken)
Directed by Helmut Käutner. Germany 1945, 35mm, b/w, 99 min.
Friday April 20 at 9pm
Film Without a Title (Film ohne Titel)
Directed by Rudolf Jugert. West Germany 1948, 35mm, b/w, 90 min.
Saturday April 21 at 7pm
Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (Zwischen gestern und morgen)
Directed by Harald Braun, Germany 1947, DCP, b/w, 107 min.
Saturday April 21 at 9:15pm
The Lost One (Der Verlorene)
Directed by Peter Lorre. West Germany 1951, 35mm, b/w, 99 min.
Monday April 23 at 7pm
Jonas
Directed by Ottomar Domnick, Germany 1957, 35mm, b/w, 81 min.
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