Historical Turns: On CALIGARI, Kracauer and New Film History

Abstract

The advent of New Film History a quarter-century ago was preceded by a far earlier “historical turn.” Challenging natural law theory, with its appeal to the atemporal and universal aspects of human nature, nineteenth-century German historicism had asserted the historicity and uniqueness of all sociocultural phenomena and values.

Keywords

• new film history
• historicity
• expressionism
• hermeneutics
• siegfried kracauer
• leopold von ranke
• robert wiene
• das cabinet des doktor caligari