De Caligari à Hitler

Résumé anglais The Weimar Republic (from 1918 to 1933), was the freest state on German soil; a wild era characterized by disruption, crisis and cultural brilliance. It was also the most important period in German cinema, a time full of wonders and invention. The aesthetic foundations were laid for the "seventh art"; Weimar’s directors such as Murnau, Lang, Lubitsch, Pabst, Wilder, Sternberg and Ruttmann are still legendary today, their stars and films are unforgotten. Cinema showed German society after World War One in a permanent dance on a volcano, between hedonist lust and a latent fear of destruction. Siegfried Kracauer described this epoch in "From Caligari to Hitler", the bestknown book on German film to date. It tells of shell-shocktrauma, fear, crisis and the desire for a leader in German film - in other words: the way in which cinema presaged the era of fascism, anticipated its terror and the moral and political collapse of a liberal society. What does cinema know that we don’t? Investigating this question, and tracing the diversity and beauty of early filmmaking, the film shows: Weimar Cinema is more than ever an unknown continent still to be discovered. "From Caligari to Hitler" is an entertaining rollercoaster-ride through the most exciting and most prolific period of German Film, straight into the abyss of our collective subconsciousness