In the history of German cinema, film directors have developed visual and narrative responses to the anxieties and excesses of their own times and those of Germany's past. This book provides a detailed historical overview of German film from the silent era to the present, as well as close readings of individual films. Chosen for their representative significance, the 14 films featured on "German Cinema" cover five major historical periods of the German cinema: Weimar, the Third Reich, the early postwar years, East Germany, and the New German cinema. Each chapter analyses a single film as the point of departure for discussing authorial aspects such as film-makers' personal styles and intentions, and textual aspects such as genre, modes of narration, and address. Furthermore, the film analyses also take into account the wider context of film production and reception: on the one hand, the interactions between political issues and social change and, on the other, the continuities and ruptures at all levels in the German cinema. Along with interantionally celebrated films such as Ernst Lubitsch's "Passion" and Margarethe von Trotta's "Marianne and Juliane", "German Cinema" boradens the base of critical discussion by including less known works from the 1940s and 1950s from east Germany that were popular hits at the time of their release - for example, the Nazi propaganda musical "Reuest Concert" and the "Heimat" film comedy "Black Forest Girl" - but which have since become obscure. This book sets out to revise the reader's understanding of German film history, providing both an introduction to German film for the more general reader and, at the same time, a detailed study for experts in the field.