Trapped in America: The Americanization of the Trapp-Familie, or "Papas Kino" Revisited

Abstract

When in 1962 a vociferous group of angry young men proclaimed the birth of a new German cinema, they not only slammed the door on what they called Papas Kino, they also meant to nail it shut.1 The generational rhetoric invoked by the Oberhausen Manifesto and subsequent declarations by the Young German Filmmakers was desigend to disown, if not disavow, the fathers with a view towards (re)constructing a lineage more to their own liking. In their search for role models, the self-proclaimed new generation singled out two alternatives: to resurrect the critically respected grandfathers of the Weimar period, or to beget alternative father figures abroad, as one young critic put it at the time.2 If the cinematic narratives of 1950s had often been organized around the figure of the missing father, then the generational metaphor of Papas Kino now declared that cinema obsolete, suggesting that these films were somehow always already outdated: not only were they infected with the superficiality of the fifties, but they were also tainted by the obvious continuities-both personal and institutional-between the Nazi and postwar eras. Of course, the Oberhausen Manifesto at first represented nothing but a sheer act of will that wouldn't yield any practical results in terms of film production until some years later; nor did Papas Kino and the continuum in which it functioned magically disappear once the Oberhauseners began generating their own output and reputation (indeed, the staying power of 1950s German cinema has increased, if