Martin Lampprecht (Berlin) p.101-124
2014 Issue 3
Sondernummer zum Thema: “Späte Trümmerfilme und ‚Neotrümmerfilm‘: Wiederkehrende Traditionen des Weimarer Kinos und der Romantik als Metaphern der Nachkriegskrise”
Gastherausgeberin: Martina Moeller (Rabat)
Abstract
This study interprets Lars von Trier’s first four released films, i.e. his graduation film Befrielsesbilleder (Images of a Relief) and the better-known Europa Trilogy, as a narrative and aesthetic unity, bound together by an overarching concern with the German defeat and the immediate aftermath of World War II. Through an in-depth analysis of the trilogy’s two final instalments, Epidemic and Europa, it explores recurring motifs and references associated with Germanic history and culture and, more to the point, with the War and post-war eras, as well as a number of aesthetic strategies that link the films to German rubble cinema. Finally, it is shown how the notion of palimpsest can be used as an adequate tool to describe Trier’s poetic strategies and in what sense his early works can be described as ‘neo-rubble films’.