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A Critical History of German Film. By Stephen Brockmann. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2010. Pp. x + 522. Paper $60.00. ISBN 978-1571134684.
There are numerous books in English about German film history, but Stephen Brockmann's approach is new and original: he presents twenty-seven feature films made in Germany during the last century in order to narrate a history of German cinema. He chronologically presents the most representative movies of nearly every decade, from Robert Wiene's Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) to Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire (1987). Although he concentrates on landmarks (like Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Sternberg's Blue Angel, and Schlöndorff's Young Törless), the author also situates every historical period within a more general chapter in each of the book's seven sections, in order to locate the social context and to mention other movies. The last section aptly presents a few movies produced after German reunification. Among the most...