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- ISBN: 9781571811967 | 1571811966
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 8/1/1999
While The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari became an international film classic, its director, Robert Wiene, was disparaged and even forgotten. Wiene's oeuvre, however, exhibits a a surprising versatility and quality, featuring Raskolnikov, an expressionist adaptation of Dostoevsky's novel, INRI, a monumental Bible epic, Orlac's Hands, a psychological thriller, and Der Rosenkavalier, an ambitious opera film. His last film, Ultimatum (1938), is a vehement warning of the approaching war, which remains relevant today. With painstaking research of the major European film archives, the author's detailed portrait reveals a career far more differentiated than hitherto acknowledged. Caligari though rated the second most important film in German film history in a recent critic's and scholar's poll -- was a landmark rather than a culmination in a career that successfully oscillated between artistic and commercial interests.
As the field of film studies rediscovers film history and the value of historical context for the analysis of individual films, monographs on filmmakers are