Shell shock cinema: A discussion with Anton Kaes

Abstract

Anton Kaes is the Class of 1939 Professor of German and Film & Media at the University of California, Berkeley. He has authored a number of fascinating books, placing films and related discourses within a broader frame: the confrontation of German literati with cinema in the early 20 century, the contradictory relationship of German cinema with national history, and the impact of migration on German identity are only some of the many subjects that Kaes has written on. Recently, Kaes published a book on the legacy of the First World War in Weimar cinema: Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War (Princeton University Press, 2009). This book accounts for a complex network of discourses that the war elicited – psychiatric, memorial, racial, mythic, allegorical – and makes the argument that war trauma lies at the center of four masterpieces of Weimar cinema: Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920), Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922), Die Nibelungen (Fritz Lang, 1924), and Metropolis (Lang, 1927). The following conversation with Kaes comes as NECSUS contemplates the relationship between war and media.