Late 1920s film theory and criticism as a test-case for Benjamin’s generalizations on the experiential effects of editing

This article investigates Walter Benjamin’s influential generalization that the effects of cinema are akin to the hyper-stimulating experience of modernity. More specifically, I focus on his oft-cited 1935/36 claim that all editing elicits shock-like disruption. First, I propose a more detailed articulation of the experience of modernity understood as hyper-stimulation and call for distinguishing between at least two of its subsets: the experience of speed and dynamism, on the one hand, and the experience of shock/disruption, on the other. Then I turn to classical film theory of the late 1920s to demonstrate the existence of contemporary views on editing alternative to Benjamin’s. For instance, whereas classical Soviet and Weimar theorists relate the experience of speed and dynamism to both Soviet and classical Hollywood style editing, they reserve the experience of shock/disruption for Soviet montage. In order to resolve the conceptual disagreement between these theorists, on the one hand, and Benjamin, on the other, I turn to late 1920s Weimar film criticism. I demonstrate that, contrary to Benjamin’s generalizations about the disruptive and shock-like nature of all editing, and in line with other theorists’ accounts, different editing practices were regularly distinguished by comparison to at least two distinct hyper-stimulation subsets: speed and dynamism, and shock-like disruption. In other words, contemporaries regularly distinguished between Soviet montage and classical Hollywood editing patterns on the basis of experiential effects alone. On the basis of contemporary reviews of city symphonies, I conclude with a proposal for distinguishing a third subset – confusion. This is an original manuscript / preprint of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Early Popular Visual Culture on 02 Aug 2016 available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2016.1199322

Albert Bassermann

ALBERT BASSERMANN Albert Bassermann / Ihering, Herbert (Rights reserved - Rights managed by VG Wort (§ 51 VGG)) ( - ) Cover front ( - ) Title page ( - ) Dedication ( - ) 1. ( - ) Abbildung: Albert Bassermann. Phot. N. u. C. Heß ( - ) Abbildung: Kinderbild ( - ) 2. ([11]) Abbildung: Mephisto. Phot. Böhm ( - ) Abbildung: Othello. Phot. Böhm ( - ) 3. ([43]) Abbildung: Shylock. Phot. Becker u. Maaß ( - ) Abbildung: Striese ( - ) Advertising ( - ) Imprint ( - ) Cover back ( - ) ColorChart ( -

Aktuelle Dramaturgie / von Herbert Ihering. (Einbandentwurf: George G. Kobbe)

AKTUELLE DRAMATURGIE / VON HERBERT IHERING. (EINBANDENTWURF: GEORGE G. KOBBE) Aktuelle Dramaturgie / von Herbert Ihering. (Einbandentwurf: George G. Kobbe) (1) Einband (1) Titelseite (3) Widmung (4) Vorwort (5) Kritik und Regie (6) Der Theaterdirektor (7) Innere und äußere Theatersituation (8) Volksbühne / Ensembletheater und Theaterensemble (9) Ensemble / Opern- und Schauspielregie (11) Das Russengastspiel im Deutschen Theater (12) Aktuelle Dramaturgie, I.-X. (15) Dramaturgie und Bearbeitung (24) Shakespeare (26) Shakespeare und Calderon (29) Moliere-Darstellung / Torquato Tasso (30) Zu Maria Stuart - Zu Scribes "Glas Wasser" (31) Ibsen und Shaw (35) Andrejew - Wedekind (36) Hoffmannsthal als Dramatiker (39) Epigonendramatik (41) Carl Hauptmann - Georg Kaiser (42) Pirandello - Hermann Essigs "Überteufel" (45) Die Produktivität des Stoffes (48) Toller und Brecht (49) Ernst Barlach - Motiv und Problem (53) Zu Tagore (58) Zu Eichendorff (59) Zu Keyserling (60) Inhaltsverzeichnis (62

The Some of the Parts: Prosthesis and Function in Bertolt Brecht, Oskar Schlemmer, and Kurt Jooss

The period during and following World War I in Germany reconceptualized the physical function of bodies to emphasize activity over structure, as visible in the prosthetic appendages worn by amputees returning from war to be reintegrated into society. Such manipulation of the human form is critical to the dramaturgy of the drama and dance works explored here, which deconstructed bodies in order to reconstitute the identity of the performers. This article moves from the engineering of social function in Bertolt Brecht's A Man's a Man, in which a narrative of altered personality is primarily reflected in the dialogue's metaphors of physical damage and reconstitution, to a progressive reliance on the body as a medium of dramaturgy in the manipulation of physical identity in Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet and Kurt Jooss' The Green Table. By considering the shift in medical approaches to prosthesis and the treatment of onstage bodies to reflect the same changing values from multiple vantage points, the culturally and historically specific medium of the body thus offers an opportunity to think of not only medicine and performance together, but also drama and dance in their engagement with the contemporary body