360:  Euthanasia in Film

Archival Spaces 360 Ich klage an / I accuse (1941) Uploaded 15 November 2024 My German-born mother once confessed to me that she was in favor of mercy killing if someone was terminally ill because as a teenager in Cologne, she had seen Ich klage an (1941), Wolfgang Liebeneiner’s propagandistic endorsement of euthanasia, lavishly producedContinue reading “360:  Euthanasia in Film”

355:  Charles Puffy

Archival Spaces 355 Puffy’s Tragic End Uploaded 6 September 2024 Whenever they needed a fat man, Károly Huszár at 290 lbs. was there. Starting his film career with Michael Curtiz in Hungary in 1913, the comedian moved to Germany in 1920, before becoming a star of short comedies for Universal in 1924, as well asContinue reading “355:  Charles Puffy”

346: G.W. Pabst redux

Arrchival Spaces 346 G.W. Pabst rewritten: Daniel Kehlmann’s novel, Lichtspiel Uploaded 3 May 2024 Film historians consider G.W. Pabst one of the three most accomplished German film directors of the first half of the 20th century. One of my first grad student papers concerned G.W. Pabst’s Three Penny Opera (1931), written for George Bluestone’s seminarContinue reading “346: G.W. Pabst redux”

314: Holocaust Remembrance Day

Archival Spaces 314 Schächten (2022) Uploaded 3 February 2023 Marking Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 January), the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival under Hilary Helstein, in cooperation with the German and Austrian Consulates, mounted the L.A. premiere of a new Holocaust-themed film, Schächten (2022), which deals not so much with the Holocaust, but with its utterlyContinue reading “314: Holocaust Remembrance Day”