Shell Shock Cinema:
Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War
Anton Kaes

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Introduction [in PDF format]

ADDITIONAL ENDORSEMENTS:

"Forlornly a woman at the beach looks at the crosses marking the graves surrounding her. Those who return from the front haunt their homes as specters of a lost self, those who remain at home are caught in melancholia, unable to relinquish the loss they know only secondhand. An apt visual motto for these original readings of Weimar cinema, which we will never watch in quite the same way ever again."--Elisabeth Bronfen, author of Crossmappings: Essays on Visual Culture

"While Weimar psychology took film screening as a metaphor for the replay of World War I trauma under hypnosis, actual movies found relentless metaphors of their own--less as group therapy than in the thrill of referred pain--for a residual war on the nerves. Where Picasso saw cubism in the jigsaw collage of World War I camouflage, Kaes sees in screen montage the jagged forms of combat aftershock. His gripping account is a work of massive historical authority and steady revelation."--Garrett Stewart, author of Framed Time: Toward a Postfilmic Cinema

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File created: 11/5/2009

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