Film (German),The Image of the United States in “American” landscapes and people have ap­peared repeatedly in German film from its emergence until today.

The German cine­matic depiction of the United States was grounded, from the very first stage, in the discourse of German cultural identity. Dis­tinctive American scenery (skyscrapers, “Indian” raids) and characters (the gang­ster, the capitalist entrepreneur) were pre­sented as a means to identify and create Germanys image of itself.

Several conventions are commonly found in German film portrayals of the United States throughout this time. They can be best described as a set of dualities within which the United States and Amer­icans are described. First, the United States was envisaged both as the absolute “Other”—against which “Germanness” could be measured—and as a reflection of Germany’s essential characteristics. Second, in most cases, the United States and Amer­icans were portrayed as an idea or a fantasy rather than as an actual reality. Usually this idea was illustrated as a utopian or a dystopian concept; in many cases, as we see below, the United States was envisaged as both utopian and dystopian at the same time. Third, the depiction of the United States was based on the duality of a hyper­modern society (e.g., rush hours in the modern city, cars, airplanes) and a premod­ern society (the “tribal” way of life, the moral system of life on the frontier). Once again, many times the United States was represented as an ongoing tension between these two poles: primitivity was often de­tected within the ultramodern civilization.

German filmmakers recognized the ap­peal of American images and made use of them since their earliest film productions (starting in late 1895). Frequently, they did so while imitating American conventions of representation and genre formulas.

The cinematic depiction of the United States became more momentous during and especially after World War I. When the United States became an influential world power and an international economy leader, the manner in which the United States was representated in the films of the defeated and economically dependent Ger­many became critical. Hereafter the duali­ties mentioned above are more visible.

Fritz Lang’s Die Spinnen (The Spiders, I9I9/I92O) is a good example that uses all three conventions. The tensions between hypermodernity and premodernity, utopia and dystopia, and otherness and self-reflec­tion can be seen in its depiction of his American protagonist, Kay Hoog, and his rivals, the criminal organization the “Spi­ders.” The tension between the modern and the primitive aspects of the United States is represented symbolically in the bandits’ headquarters, which is placed in tunnels underneath San Francisco: they are a dark force, invisible inside the modern city, threatening to undermine its stability. Furthermore, the “Spiders” employ Asian warriors who use premodern weapons and martial arts. Yet, being in the United States, the “Spiders” also use hypermodern technology, such as small, hidden cameras, within the primitive setting of the under­ground city.

The utopian-dystopian axis is mani­fested, in one instance, in an American nightclub scene in the first part of the film. The Americans here—in sharp contrast with post—World War I Germans—seem almost pampered and concerned mainly with the results of a forthcoming sailing race.

German spectators, most likely, found it hard to identify with the oblivious Amer­icans on the screen. Lang illustrates this lighthearted society, which was seen as the outcome of modern technology and a modern economic system, as devoid of morals, self-centered, and unable and un­willing to comprehend its surroundings. Despite their advanced technology and prosperity, the Americans seem to lack cer­tain cultural qualities, which match the old German concept of Kultur, traditionally used to identify “German” characteristics. Kay Hoog, the male protagonist, seems to be an ideal mixture, however: he seeks a more “authentic” way of life while using the latest technological advances and his abundant wealth. This character might be read as an indication of the potential of the German individual in the modern, post-World War I era.

The three concepts through which “America” was represented can be found in many films in the years following World War I. The sixth part of Joe May’s Herrin der Welt (Mistress of the World, 1920), for instance, is filled with images emphasizing the modernity of New York City: unprece­dented architecture and especially rapid movement of cars, people, and informa­tion. In this film, while it is visually fasci­nating, the modernity of the United States is chaotic and irrational and therefore con­tains some characteristics that are typically “primitive.” A similar conception can be seen in Metropolis (1927). This film con­tains no indication of the place or the time of the events onscreen. Nevertheless, direc­tor Fritz Lang and producer Erich Pommer describe their initial encounter with New York City’s skyline as they first approached by boat as the inspiration for this cele­brated film.

American characters often appear on the German screen in the 1930s as tremen­dously rich people who have come to Ger­many seeking adventures and business op­portunities. The wealth and beauty of the Americans are often combined with naivete and incapability—as is the case with the young American girl in Harry Piel’s Jonny Stiehlt Europa (Jonny Steals Europa, 1932). When the Americans try to retrieve Eu­ropa, their stolen horse, they realize they cannot do it without the wit and strength of Jonny, the German protagonist. In the end, Jonny falls in love with the American girl, thus indicating how successful Ger­man and American cooperation is not only functional but also based on similarities in their nature. This film clearly demonstrates the symbolic value of the characters—the rich American capitalist and his daughter, the horse Europa, and the German male, Jonny: in the race to gain control over “Eu­ropa,” Germans and Americans should unite their cultural potential and acknowl­edge their similarities.

The search for similarities and the rep­resentation of the tension between similar­ities with and differences from the United States, goes beyond the Weimar Republic era (1918—1933). In early Nazi films, such as Der Tunnel (The Tunnel, 1933) and Der Verlorene Sohn (The Prodigal Son, 1934), the encounters between Germans and Americans take place on American soil. In the former, German dynamite experts share an American engineer’s vision of ad­vancing humanity (by digging a tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean).

The portrayal of the United States in Luis Trenker’s Der Verlorene Sohn moves between utopia and dystopia. In the be­ginning of the film, the United States of­fers a promise of wealth and adventure: the German protagonist learns from his geography teacher and from visiting Americans about their enchanting home­land. When he is in New York, he is in­troduced to the images of skyscrapers and rapid movements, which the German moviegoer by now identifies with Ameri­can hypermodernity. Soon, however, the German protagonist finds that this mod­ern heaven hides misery and despair, hunger, and the loss of morality (he him­self has to steal in order to eat). The hy­permodernity is revealed to be a thin veil above the actual backward morals of everyday life and the primitive behavior needed to survive. Even when the protag­onist’s luck changes and he becomes rich and famous, he still recognizes his inabil­ity to cope with the American way of life and returns to his loved ones. It is impor­tant to note that he does not return to Germany as a whole, but to the village and to its premodern festival. In this film “America” seems to symbolize the alleged industrial modernity of any big city, even a German one, as opposed to the “gen­uine” German spirit, which manifests it­self in the rural, lofty Heimat (a concept that relates both to the German national identity—the nation’s “homeland”—and to a manifestation of a nostalgic longing to and identification with the local com­munity and its traditional way of life, which allegedly flourished in the “Ger­man” landscapes in the past).

Der Verlorene Sohn and Der Tunnel, like other films of the Nazi era, continued one tradition of the Weimar era (of films such as Paul Martin’s Ein Blonder Traum [A Blond Dream], 1932): portraying the United States as a German object of desire.

The United States and Americans con­tinue to be symbols of a deceptive redemp­tion in German film after World War II. In Wolfgang Staudte’s Die Morder Sind Unter Uns (The Murderers Are among Us, 1946), the first German post-World War II fea­ture film, a message of hope is delivered by an American. This message, however, ar­rives too late—after his recipient dies. Americans in the immediate postwar era are depicted both as a promise for an un­known, better world and as incompetent to fulfill this promise.

Compared to the substantial presence of American soldiers on West German soil in the postwar years, their almost com­plete absence from German films is re­markable. Billy Wilder, a German film­maker who emigrated to Hollywood before the war, put this GI presence at the core of his movie A Foreign Affair (1948). Though it was an American production dealing with conflicts in American society and designed for an American audience, this film also manifests some of the tradi­tional characteristics of German cinema’s portrayal of “America.” The Americans here seem to be the main (maybe the only) hope for a better future; nonethe­less, they are hypocrites and opportunists, easily manipulated and bureaucratic. Strangely enough, these are the same char­acteristics that Americans attribute to Germans. In order to improve the image of the United States in West Germany, several “educational” films were made in the late 1940s and early 1950s in which the fear from and the resentment toward Americans are discussed, and the essential similarities between the Germans and the Americans are emphasized.

Comments on the destructive and the constructive qualities of the United States, together with fundamental differences and similarities, continue to preoccupy the filmmakers of the West German New Cin­ema. In Im Lauf' der Zeit (Kings of the Road, 1976), Wim Wenders famously coined the line “the Yanks have colonized our subcon­scious.” “America” here represents pop cul­ture, as the protagonist cannot get the lyric of a pop song out of his head. We can read this line as a continuation of the traditional criticism in Germany of American society and its shallow cultural values and achieve­ments. Nevertheless, this scene should be read also as an example of a more compli­cated image of the United States in the films of the generation of filmmakers who matured during the Adenauer era: after all, it was Wenders himself who called the same American popular music his “life­saver” as an adolescent. According to Wen­ders, for his generation, American culture was both a refuge and liberator from the Nazi past and from the historical “amnesia” of older Germans.

When the challenge of the recent past became more and more crucial to the re­construction of German identity, the New German Cinema began to increasingly use the United States as an image that relates to memory and forgetfulness, guilt and for­giveness. In Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Die Ehe der Maria Braun (The Marriage of Maria Braun, 1979), for instance, the killing of an American soldier serves as a means to win the protagonist’s husband’s forgiveness for her allegedly disloyal behav­ior during his captivity in Russia. The pres­ence of Americans (on the screen and in the cultural consciousness) make it impossible to overlook the recent past. Other films stress the connection between Americans and the ability to forget. When Bruno Ganz awakes in a hospital with no recollection of how he got there in Reinhardt Hauff’s Messer im Kopf (Knife in the Head, 1978), he says, “An American in my situation would probably take a gun and shoot blindly out of the window.” For him the “American” is an action hero of the movies—the lack of memory would not prevent him from functioning in his con­ventional manner.

These two films envision the United States as a threat to the reconstruction of German identity. In Messer im Kopf the col­lective amnesia of the Germans regarding the circumstances that led to their present situation would render them eventually identical to the United States, which ar­guably acts without the burden of the past. Fassbinder’s film, on the contrary, criticizes the U.S. role in mastering Germany’s past. According to Fassbinder and others, such as Edgar Reitz, the educational and cul­tural efforts that were invested by the United States in postwar Germany have prevented the Germans from producing their own collective memories and narra­tives of their past and hence have limited their ability to construct their own identity. Like Wenders in his film Im Lauf der Zeit, Fassbinder argues in Die Ehe der Maria Braun that the American presence is truly redemptive because it is the sole replace­ment for the Germans forgetfulness; at the same time, this substitute is, eventually, il­lusive and foreign to the genuine German identity and needs. In presenting this dual message, Fassbinder’s film may resemble the films of the early 1930s.

In early German films the United States was often a location for one episode in an adventure travel tour, a remote place—like India, South America, and other stops along the protagonist’s way— that emphasizes the protagonist’s unique­ness through encounters with foreign cul­tures. German characters continued to travel to the United States in the films of the New German Cinema. The encounter here is based on a closer acquaintance with Americans and, obviously, loaded with ten­sion between antagonism toward and ad­miration of the American way of life. The travelers who come to the United States in Werner Herzog’s Stroszek (1977) look for salvation in what is supposed to be the ul­timate “other” reality, compared to the one in Berlin. In the end they find in Wiscon­sin the same patterns as in Germany. Like other films of that period, Stroszek’s protag­onists are not redeemed but enlightened: by noting the similarities between the United States and Germany, they gain a clearer view of themselves; the German identity, once again, can construct itself while gazing on its “American” reflection.

The tendency to displace the dis­course of German identity in the Ameri­can arena was not unique to filmmakers of the “New German Cinema.” The highly popular Indianer Filme (German West- erns)—in West and East Germany alike— provided German film audiences with new imagery of the American Wild West and its inhabitants. This imagined Ameri­can frontier gave way to reflections about the ideal qualities of individuals and their community, to which the Germans should aspire. Thus, for instance, East German Westerns emphasized the precap­italist’s qualities of the Native American community, which found itself in a fierce struggle against greedy, white capitalists. This emphasis also highlighted the indif­ference of filmmakers to the actual reality in the Wild West, the actual way of life in the tribes and the differences between them.

We should not overlook, however, the reflective quality of the images of the United States and Americans for the Ger­man filmmakers themselves, who were part of a national film industry that sought to differentiate itself from and associate it­self with Hollywood’s success. We can un­derstand those images as a displacement of their antagonism and competition with the American film industry on the one hand, and their need to rely on Holly­wood’s cinematic conventions and distri­bution methods in a search for legitimiza­tion on the other. Films such as Wenders’s Der Amerikanische Freund (The American Friend, 1977) can be read easily in this vein: an American swindler convinces a German framemaker to betray his moral values (that is, to commit murder) by con­vincing him he is mortally ill and by promising him a great sum of money that would support his family in a way he would never be able to do otherwise. In order to stress the link between himself and the American “dreams industry,” the American friend dresses and talks like the hero of a Hollywood Western, and in his diary he cites a well-known American slo- gan—by now a cliche—“there is nothing to fear but fear itself.” Wenders uses it as if it was a superficial cliche, but, of course, it holds several layers of historical and cul­tural meaning, which cannot be discussed here. Only at the end of the film, after he murders for the American, does the Ger­man protagonist try for the first time to re­volt and prove his own free will. His rebel­lion, nonetheless, is meaningless and lasts for only a few minutes, until his own death. Evidently, Wenders has contempt for not only the intervention of Holly­wood in the local film market but also for the superficial image of the United States that was established in German and inter­national popular culture.

Even if the motivation for the depic­tion of the United States and Americans was the struggle of the New German Cin­ema filmmakers for legitimization of their films, their products finally coincided with the discourse of German identity and its reconstruction in the second half of the twentieth century. The United States con­tinued to be a unique “other,” one that could be a mirror for German identity. During the years before World War II, the United States was used often as a place that—fascinating as it was—gave a better assessment of the homeland’s superiority. In the second half of the twentieth century the United States continued to attract the confused protagonists, but the insights they gained through an encounter with “America” became more complex, in con­cert with the new complexities of German identity after the Nazi regime.

Ofer Ashkenazi

See also Indian Films of the Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft; Lang, Fritz; Wenders, Wim; Wilder, Billy

References and Further Reading

Elsaesser, Thomas. New German Cinema: A History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989.

Gokturk, Deniz. “How Modern Is It? Moving Images of America in Early German Cinema.” In Hollywood in Europe: Experience of a Cultural Hegemony. Eds. David W. Ellwood, Rob Kroes, and Gian Piero Brunetta. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1994.

Rentschler, Eric. “How American Is It: The US as Image and Imaginary in German Film.” Persistence of Vision, no. 2 (Fall 1985): 5-18.