German cinema from the end of World War I to 1933—the years of the Weimar Republic—is widely appreciated for an Expressionist style of filmmaking characterized by anxiety, distorted narrative, and vivid plays of light and shadow. Far less well-known in the United States are the period's musicals, romances, and comedies, lighter films that were made in equal numbers as the darker fare.

 

Weimar Cinema, 1919–1933: Daydreams and Nightmares puts these contrary approaches side by side, examining the full spectrum of Weimar filmmaking through essays by prominent contemporary scholars and a selection of eighty films. Excerpts from reviews and other writings evoke the reception of these movies at the time, as the use of sound in film gained purchase and the economic and political situation in Germany moved the country toward another, darker historical moment. 216 pp.; 150 illus.