Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notes on Contributors
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Projecting a More Habitable Globe: Hollywood's Yellow Peril and Its Refraction onto 1930s Shanghai National Cinema
- Chapter 2 Berlin – The City of Sound and Sensation in Fritz Lang's M and E. A. Dupont's Varieté
- Chapter 3 Bond's Body: Diamonds Are Forever, Casino Royale and the Future Anterior
- Chapter 4 Whatever You Say, Say Nothing
- Chapter 5 Imperial Gazes, Hollywood Predators: A Cinema of Molestation in Postcolonial Indian Literature
- Chapter 6 Linguistic Identity in Fruit Chan's 1997 Trilogy
- Chapter 7 The Postnational and the Aesthetics of the Spectral: Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon
- Chapter 8 The Art Object as Text in the Practice of Comparative Visuality
- Chapter 9 Exploring In-humanity: Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons and Still-Life Painting
- Chapter 10 Re-defining Art: Manuel Rivas' Mujer en el baño
- Chapter 11 Re-envisioning the Haunting Past: Kara Walker's Art and the Re-appropriation of the Visual Codes of the Antebellum South
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 2 - Berlin – The City of Sound and Sensation in Fritz Lang's M and E. A. Dupont's Varieté
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notes on Contributors
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Projecting a More Habitable Globe: Hollywood's Yellow Peril and Its Refraction onto 1930s Shanghai National Cinema
- Chapter 2 Berlin – The City of Sound and Sensation in Fritz Lang's M and E. A. Dupont's Varieté
- Chapter 3 Bond's Body: Diamonds Are Forever, Casino Royale and the Future Anterior
- Chapter 4 Whatever You Say, Say Nothing
- Chapter 5 Imperial Gazes, Hollywood Predators: A Cinema of Molestation in Postcolonial Indian Literature
- Chapter 6 Linguistic Identity in Fruit Chan's 1997 Trilogy
- Chapter 7 The Postnational and the Aesthetics of the Spectral: Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon
- Chapter 8 The Art Object as Text in the Practice of Comparative Visuality
- Chapter 9 Exploring In-humanity: Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons and Still-Life Painting
- Chapter 10 Re-defining Art: Manuel Rivas' Mujer en el baño
- Chapter 11 Re-envisioning the Haunting Past: Kara Walker's Art and the Re-appropriation of the Visual Codes of the Antebellum South
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
London is an old lady in black lace and diamonds who guards her secrets with dignity and to whom one would not tell those secrets of which one was ashamed. Paris is a woman in the prime of life to whom one would only tell those secrets one desires to be repeated. But Berlin is a girl in a pullover, not much powder on her face, Hölderlin in her pocket, thighs like those of Atlanta, an undigested education, a heart that is almost to ready to sympathize, and a breadth of view that charms one's repressions from their poison, and shames one's correctitude. One walks with her among the lights and in the shadows. And after an hour or so one is hand-in-hand.
—Harold Nicolson, ‘The Charm of Berlin’ (1932)I am not satisfied with the expression ‘street image’; I would prefer to say ‘street landscape’ or ‘cityscape’, for what it refers to is the actual landscape total image, which is produced by the arrangement and forming of masses in the same manner as the natural landscape emerges out of the grouping of mountain masses and vegetation.
—Walter Rathenau, ‘Die Schönste Stadt der Welt’ (1902)Joe May's Asphalt (1929) opens with a scene of several men solidifying the asphalt on newly built streets with large handheld objects. Asphalt as a foundation of the city seems to promise not only swifter movement and a level ground for the passage of horse carriages, cars and pedestrians, but also appears to hint at the way in which the progressive urbanisation shapes German culture and becomes an increasingly prominent aspect of Weimar cinema. The next few scenes focus on the bustling life of the city. May intersperses rapidly moving cars and low angle shots capturing feet of the crowds as they cross streets and push through the traffic with images of people pausing fascinated in front of store windows, watching live models pulling on stockings.
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- World Cinema and the Visual Arts , pp. 19 - 40Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2012