Self-Referentiality in Early German Cinema

Abstract

The Wilhelmine cinema, simply because so little is known about it, is frequently described as technically inferior and formally undeveloped compared to national cinemas in the early teens. Siegfried Kracauer's dictum that the German before the First World War must be seen as prehistory, an archaic period insignificant in itself, has done much to contribute to this impression.' It is the purpose of this article to challenge such perceptions and draw attention to one particular characteristic of the other early German cinema: its penchant for a kind of promotional self-referentiality that draws attention to the and foregrounds its means. A fair number of films from the period will be quoted to show the wide range of formal and narrative strategies, and various levels of duplication will be examined to discuss the implications of the cinema's intense involvement with its accomplishments, especially as regards narrative and spectacle. As will be argued, these self-presentations of a decidedly popular imitate the aesthetics of the store-window, as it were, and their primary purpose is to advertise the many goods the new mass entertainment has to offer. While they create critical distance through scenarios of duplication and display, they firmly adhere to the laws of advertisement, namely to make the product look appealing and to seduce prospective buyers into its realm of pleasures.2 The virtuoso presentation of cinematic trickery in the form of optical tricks and narrative devices belongs to a that, to evoke Tom Gunning's distinction between the classical voyeurist and an earlier cinema of attractions, is spectacular, sensationalist, and unabashedly self-involved.3 This prefers the aesthetics of presentation and flaunts its skills with little regard for narrative or spatial continuity.4 Tableau-like frame compositions, long takes, and frontal play with direct glances at the camera are its main characteristics. With the early thus likened to a kind of institutional exhibitionism, the preference for theatrical mise-en-scene appears in a new light. It becomes associated with a discourse on the apparatus that foregrounds the cinema's technological and institutional aspects, thereby setting a stage on which its goods can be displayed. This self-referential quality does not necessarily imply a critique of dominant practices in the ways that the modernist novel rejects the underlying assumptions of realism or that the epic theater of Brecht introduces the alienation effect to provoke critical thinking. In the context of culture and consumerism, the instances of self-referentiality serve largely affirmative functions; they belong