New German Cinema

A generation of West German directors rejects the commercial cinema of their parents and films the guilt, the silence and the road.

When: 1962–1982
Where: West Germany
Films: 5 · 3 guided
Named by: 3 guides

Where it sits

French New WaveNew German CinemaAmerican independent cinema

Context

What was happening

West Germany in the sixties: the economic miracle has rebuilt the cities, and the Nazi years are rarely spoken of at home or at school. The cinemas offer comfortable entertainment, much of it set in a tidy countryside, while television draws the audience away. The young see an industry with nothing to say about the country they live in.

In 1962, at Oberhausen, young filmmakers sign a manifesto claiming the right to make new films, free of the industry's habits. In the following years, subsidies and television money give them the means. They admire the Nouvelle Vague and the Hollywood they grew up on, and they begin to shoot.

The signature

What you see on screen

1Postwar silenceFamilies who do not speak of the past, while the past sits in the room.
2Stylised melodramaCharacters boxed in by doorways and windows, in stiff, deliberate compositions.
3The roadDrifting travellers, empty highways and motels, American songs on the soundtrack.
4Obsessed outsidersDriven or excluded figures, small against landscapes that do not care.

The people

Who made it

RWRainer Werner FassbinderThe most prolific, a director of bitter melodramas. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Marriage of Maria Braun.
WHWerner HerzogObsession and nature, filmed on location. Aguirre, the Wrath of God.
WWWim WendersThe poet of the road and of American influence. Paris, Texas.
VSVolker SchlöndorffTurned literature into international success. The Tin Drum.
MvMargarethe von TrottaDirector and screenwriter who worked with Schlöndorff, and brought women's stories and politics to the movement.

The films

Defining films, in order

1STARTAguirre, the Wrath of God1972
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
2STARTAli: Fear Eats the Soul1974 · not on Cinespective yet
The Marriage of Maria Braun
3The Marriage of Maria Braun1979 · not on Cinespective yet
4STARTThe Tin Drum1979
5Paris, Texas

Its constellation

Where it came from, what it led to

Came from

French New Wave

Led to

American independent cinema

Parallel

New Hollywood

Open the galaxy of movements

Legacy

Where you still see it

Wherever a director is treated as an author and a film is made outside the big industry, this cinema is present. It is in American independent film, which took its ideal of authorship from Herzog and Fassbinder, and a helping hand from Wenders. It is in road movies where a European eye crosses American landscapes, and in films that face a national past through fable and satire rather than solemn reconstruction.

Ask the Cine Guide about New German Cinema