Expressionism and Film

"For English readers interested in silent German cinema, there are many discoveries to be made here."

~UCLA Film & Television Archive

"Expressionismus und Film is, without question, a seminal and an influential study, a monograph that has strongly impacted the essential works on classical German cinema, but, to this day, has remained inaccessible to English-language readers. I know that scholars, students, and cineastes will be very pleased to have this book available in a translation."

~Eric Rentschler, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University

"Expressionismus und Film is a key text, the only book written on German Expressionist cinema during the era. Because Kurtz had access to filmmakers and to artists and critics in other fields, the volumeis something of a primary document itself rather than simply a monograph by a scholar or journalist. Of the German books on cinema written during the silent period, this is the one most obviously crying out for translation."

~Kristin Thompson, Honorary Fellow, Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin

"Rudolf Kurtz's Expressionismus und Film (1926) [...] is to my mind one of the key texts, illustrating the reception of German Expressionism as an art movement in the cinema in Germany. Not only does Lotte Eisner quote extensively in her The Haunted Screen from this work, virtually all other writers in German about this period, too, have found it necessary to reference Kurtz. This translation of Kurtz's book will certainly help to clarify the many misconceptions that have crept into Anglo-American definitions of German Expressionist cinema, where the term has often been used synonymously with all German 1920s cinema, rather than Kurtz's narrow definition of an exclusively high art cinema with spiritual aspirations."

~Jan-Christopher Horak, Director, UCLA Film and Television Archive