Word: german
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Russia would welcome talks about "normalizing" the status of Berlin. The British, French and the Americans made the offer primarily to put the ball back in the Soviets' court, while not endangering the 24-year-old Allied occupation rights in West Berlin, which lies 110 miles inside East German territory. Unfortunately, the new initiative seemed unlikely to meet with success, since the East Germans adamantly refuse to talk with their counterparts in Bonn about West Berlin, which the East Germans claim is their territory...
Loesser was something of a family black sheep. He showed a distinct preference for baseball, slang and jazz-all alien to the cultural traditions of his European-emigrant parents. His German father was an eminent New York piano teacher, his Czech mother a lecturer and translator of books. Brother Arthur was a well-known concert pianist, critic and teacher until his death last January. As for Frank, he lasted out the early days of the Depression on hustle and odd jobs, then began singing his own songs for his supper at an East Side night spot. That...
...Thus the German myth's appearance in Blue Angel makes it seem an Expressionist film. But the weight of this material, the subject of the film, should not obscure our view of Sternberg's treatment of that material, for it's his treatment that is crucial to the film's meaning, especially for Jannings and Dietrich...
...metaphysical (the fire in the stove). Janning's pursuit of light, though it leads him into humiliation and death greatens his soul. Sternberg's emphasis on light-attraction over darkness' terror, on personal triumph in the middle of degradation, are Romantic themes whose Christian roots are fundamentally opposed to German Expressionism. The world Jannings inhabits in not a set of dark alleys whose monstrous shadows, projections of his own fears, try to destroy him and allow only an existential fight to the finish. The objects and people of The Blue Angel offer Jannings the possibility of continual redemption through...
...next scene at school shows the regimentation of German education. The classroom's chaos before Jannings' arrival yields to rigidity when he sits at his desk; but a prank subverts his authority and takes him to the entertainment district that night. Here huge shadows and trap-like streets, in the finest tradition of German Expressionism, stress his fears of this setting, fears augmented inside Dietrich's dressing room by a clown and a "professor" of magic who implicitly mock Jannings' position. The impingement of settings and objects on Jannings' security climaxes in a song sequence where Jannings seated...