the place of rubble in the trümmerfilm
TRANSCRIPT
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18/6/2014 The Place of Rubble in the Trmmerfilm
http://ngc.dukejournals.org/content/37/2_110/9.short 1/1
New German Critique
ngc.dukejournals.org
doi: 10.1215/0094033X-2010-002New German Critique 2010 Volume 37, Number 2 110: 9-30
The Place of Rubble in the Trmmerfilm
Eric Rentschler
Abstract
The first feature film from a vanquished nation, Wolfgang Staudte's Murderers Are
among Us (Mrder sind unter uns, 1946), repeatedly equates the physical destruction
of German cities with psychic devastation, suggesting how heavily the past weighed
on some, though not all, of the nation's survivors. As the rubble on the streets and the
destruction in a returned soldier's mind, material damage and mental wreckage,
become intertwined, the compensatory narrative suggests that both have been caused
by outside forces. By scrutinizing the prominent role of rubble in the so-called rubble
film, this essay historicizes the myths at work in Staudte's famous exercise in this
vein and suggests their afterlife in present-day revisitations of the German war
experience.