LECTURE FOUR: New Realism in late 1920s Weimar Germany

Concentrating on ‘New Realism’ or ‘New Objectivity’

What is ‘New Objectivity’?

How is ‘New Objectivity’ characterised?

Who were the main proponents of this aesthetic in the arts?

What influence did it have on the Weimar Cinema?

But rarely purely objective

Degree of social criticism

Hyper-reality

Ugliness

Distortions

Movement in the arts (though characterised more as a ‘spirit of the age’)

Ran alongside Expressionism but came to its height during the Weimar period’s only period of economic stability in the latter half of the 1920s

The movement traditionally associated with the Weimar period (arguably more than Expressionism)

First coined in relation to the fine arts

Used as a title of a fine arts exhibition in Mannheim in 1925

Term not invented by the artists themselves, but by curator of this exhibition

Used to refer to a spirit in the arts which had emerged alongside Expressionism

Emanated from a spirit of disillusionment and critical irony

Influence in the arts that was REALIST

(figurative as opposed to abstract visual art for e.g.)

Thematised modern contemporary life:

MODERNITY

Advances in technology:

TECHNOLOGY WELCOMED

e.g. Metropolis – not technology itself which is at fault as much as the need for a benevolent (but still autocratic) leader

Changing sexual mores

Urban sophistication

The commercial entertainment industry (bars, cabaret, bright lights etc)

Americanism and commercialism

Masquerade of identities, such as sexual or working identity

Some branches: committed, political art

New thinking about art forms and above all artistic ‘apparatus’ and spectatorship (self-reflexive)

Detachment and coolness

Full of critical irony: ‘the cold surgical gaze’ (Richard W. McCormick on The Blue Angel)

Portraying contemporary life, but simultaneously criticising it. Sometimes to the extent of parody

Think of the differences between Expressionism and New Objectivity

Relate these to the first two screenings on the module

Both movements were visual art movements which transferred to film

Women entering mass employment, Americanism, birth control etc led to the emancipation of women.

Some, but not all, women experienced:

Financial independence

Sexual independence

Liberated class known as the ‘New Woman’

The Weimar of the cabaret:

Fashion, music, dance, pleasure