SCREEN-L Archives

November 1995, Week 1

SCREEN-L@LISTSERV.UA.EDU

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
edwin jahiel <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 2 Nov 1995 08:42:30 -0600
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (46 lines)
At 11:12 AM 11/1/95, Justine Sawyier wrote:
>You might want to look at: "The Haunted Screen," by Lotte Eisner.  I am
>currently taking a class in German Expressionism that uses that as a text,
>which was in fact, attributed by my film history text as being the
>penultimate book on Expressionism.
>
>- Justine Sawyier
>
>----
 
Very good reference. It is the best book you can find on the subject. And,
BTW, all of Lotte Eisner's books are gems. She was a fine, kind,
unassumingly brilliant lady who knew (personally) an incredible number of
filmmakers, including the pre-Nazi era German contingent (Murnau. Lang,
etc.)
 
When Werner Herzog heard, some years ago,that Lotte was seriously ill, he
walked all the way from Germany to Paris (where Lotte Eisner lived for
ages) as a kind of pilgrimage. Some people thought it was a Herzog stunt,
in keeping with his heroic-efforts characters, but there it is anyway...
 
Herzog's wife was very often at Lotte's bedside in the last (or even
before?) long period of LH's malady, and helped her very much.
 
FYI (just in case you didn't know) Lotte, a Jew who went to Paris when the
Nazis took over in Deutschland, was also the archivist (or some such title)
of the Cinematheque Francaise, and was as well-known as Henri Langlois who
ran the place.
 
LE was imprisoned in a camp in France during WWII, came out OK. Later, and
I think that it was again a Herzog initiative, the German Government
invited Lotte & gave her a major medal plus a pension - sometime in the
1980s I think.  I don't remember all the details, but I believe that when
she went to Berlin (rather than Bonn) to get her honor, it was her first
time back in Germany since the 1930s. She described Berlin as a city "ohne
seele" "sans ame" "without a soul".
 
Film people come and go, and some are missed, but Lotte belongs to the
select few that are missed like mad, and every day.
 
le mauvais gout mene au crime (Stendhal)
 
----
To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L
in the message.  Problems?  Contact [log in to unmask]

ATOM RSS1 RSS2