Feminism, Film, Fascism

Women's Auto/Biographical Film in Postwar Germany

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by Susan E. Linville

Type

Studies

Subject

Countries > Germany

Keywords

Germany, women, feminism, Nazi ideology

Publishing date

1998

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 208 pages
6 x 8 ½ inches (15.5 x 21.5 cm)

ISBN-10
ISBN-13

0-274-70528-1
978-0-274-70528-3

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Book Presentation:
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 pathfinding 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 Brückner'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.

See the publisher website: University of Texas Press