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Blogging has been light, thanks to the ambitious Thanksgiving dinner I hosted in my small apartment, and the jury duty I served in the illustrious borough of Queens. According to the bailiff on our trial, Queens juries are the most unpredictable, and the stingiest--"If you need to sue somebody, don't do it in Queens."

I love being asked for movie recommendations, and I got one this morning from my friend Michelle, who says,

I have seen some German cinema and I'm a big fan of Wim Wenders. I've never seen any fritz lang, and I want to like Herzog--I've seen several of his documentaries, but I've had trouble getting into Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: The Wrath of God. Do you recommend those?

German cinema is an especial favorite of mine, thanks in part to a terrific class I took at NYU called Weimar Culture, Weimar Film, taught by Annette Michelson, and to the Fassbinder retrospective I glutted myself on back in spring 2003 (I saw all of them except Despair).

The concept most closely associated with German cinema is Freud's notion of the unheimlich, or uncanny, that state of being or feeling that is opposite from the familiar, safe, and comfortable. Here's a cogent definition I found online:

The uncanny is a specific - mild - form of anxiety, related to certain phenomena in real life and to certain motives in art, especially in fantastic literature. Examples of such phenomena or literary motives are the double, strange repetitions, the omnipotence of thought (i.e., the idea that your wishes or thoughts come true), the confusion between animate and inanimate, and other experiences related to madness, superstition or death.

I'll start by directing you to GreenCine's excellent primer on German Expressionism, for some historical context and a comprehensive selection of titles.

My recommendation for a thorough dousing in German Cinema would take the following path--roughly chronological, and taking a viewer from most to least accessible.

Fritz Lang's M (1931) to kick things off. The proto-serial killer film featuring a memorably chilling performance by Peter Lorre. Since this type of story is a familiar one, it's a good introduction to the aesthetic and psyche of German film.

Next, change directions with FW Murnau's The Last Laugh from 1924. Since my friend is a painter, I think she'll appreciate the Expressionist visuals (particularly the revolving doors), and it'll be interesting to see the aesthetic applied to a melodrama as opposed to a thriller.

Fortunately for my friend, the third in a triumvirate of German classics has just been released on DVD: GW Pabst's Pandora's Box, and not a moment too soon (thanks, Criterion). It's more challenging narratively than M and The Last Laugh, and known best for the iconic performance by Louise Brooks. I recommend it, however, for it's uber-Germanness. The film and its successor Diary of a Lost Girl were based on the tremendously successful plays by Franz Wedekind. When Brooks was cast in the title role, their was a tremendous public outcry--"How could an American girl play our Lulu?"

Thanks to WWII, German Cinema went into a decline, and reemerged in the 70s thanks mainly to two filmmakers: Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. But to get a full picture of the country's film history, it's necessary to take a pit stop with the Nazis and watch Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia (I can't stomach Triumph of the Will), her documentary film of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin which feature Jesse Owens. Riefenstahl famously claimed that she wasn't a Nazi, just an objective documentarian, and her films present a curious problem for the viewer because the aesthetic beauty clashes with the hideous ideology on display.

Herzog's collaborations with actor Klaus Kinski took viewers into a heart of darkness that is all the more harrowing because the torment experienced by Kinski's characters bled out into his real life. My favorite fiction film from Herzog is Aguirre: The Wrath of God from 1972, but for the purposes of this survey I'd recommend 1979's Nosferatu, which takes unheimlich to a whole new level. Watch Herzog's film first, then pop in Murnau's original (1922).

For Fassbinder, I think that Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) is his most accessible, but since it's a commentary on the Hollywood films made by Douglas Sirk (a German ex-pat), I'd prefer my friend watch his BRD trilogy: The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), Lola (1981), and Veronika Voss (1982). Not only do the films interpret postwar German history, but they filter that history through tropes culled from German cinema and Hollywood cinema.

Finally, cap things off with a viewing of Walter Ruttman's expressionist documentary Berlin: Symphony of a Great City from 1927. It's a paeon to the Berlin that was before its destruction by hatred, and a perfect encapsulation of all that is wondrous about the German aesthetic.

What German films would you recommend?