SHELL-SHOCKED CRIMINALS AND NEUROTIC VILLAINS: REPRESENTATIONS OF (THE WORLD WAR I) TRAUMATISED SUBJECTS IN THE EARLY EUROPEAN CINEMA (original) (raw)

2015, SHELL-SHOCKED CRIMINALS AND NEUROTIC VILLAINS: REPRESENTATIONS OF (THE WORLD WAR I) TRAUMATISED SUBJECTS IN THE EARLY EUROPEAN CINEMA

“The aim of this thesis is to analyse the representations of (World War I) traumatised subjects in the early German cinema. For years, the perception of Weimar cinema as a prophecy of the Nazi regime, a notion proposed by Sigfriend Kracauer in his influential book From Caligari to Hitler, slightly biased the reception of the Weimar films. But thanks to researchers like Anton Kaes, Weimar cinema is perceived more and more as the ‘shell-shock’ cinema - an industry unconsciously influenced by World War I and its traumatising effects. By studying Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (1922) and M (1931), with the focus on villains, one might conclude that such characters were not only evil criminals and tyrants, but traumatised victims of the war as well. By approaching the villains of the early cinema through the after-effects of World War I trauma, numerous new interpretations could surface. Applying the theories of Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche, it will be possible to determine whether the villains were anxious trauma victims, creative individuals or madmen. Considering that the shock of World War I, especially on Weimar society, was similar to that of the West during the Vietnam War, one could conclude that war releases the most hidden and terrifying parts of human consciousness and that such madness moved the imaginations of the Weimar filmmakers. In the end, it might appear that certain characters, especially villains, of the Weimar Cinema might be victims of the Great War. Studying such films from the perspectives suggested by Anton Kaes, Bert Cardullo or Tomasz Kłys may contribute to the reinvention of the understanding of the films by Robert Wiene and Fritz Lang. Perceiving them from a modern perspective, almost a hundred years after their creation, it is possible to distance oneself from the premonitions of the Nazi regime, popular after the Second World War, and study the works of Wiene and Lang from the perspective of the Great War and all the trauma connected with it.”