1. LECTURE FOUR: New Realism in late
1920s Weimar Germany

2. Concentrating on ‘New Realism’ or ‘New Objectivity’
What is ‘New Objectivity’?
How is ‘New Objectivity’ characterised?
Who were the main proponents of this aesthetic in the arts?
What influence did it have on the Weimar Cinema?

3.  But rarely purely objective
 Degree of social criticism
 Hyper-reality
 Ugliness
 Distortions

5.  Movement in the arts (though characterised more as a
‘spirit of the age’)
 Ran alongside Expressionism but came to its height
during the Weimar period’s only period of economic
stability in the latter half of the 1920s
 The movement traditionally associated with the
Weimar period (arguably more than Expressionism)

6.  First coined in relation to the fine arts
 Used as a title of a fine arts exhibition in Mannheim in
1925
 Term not invented by the artists themselves, but by
curator of this exhibition
 Used to refer to a spirit in the arts which had emerged
alongside Expressionism

7.  Emanated from a spirit of disillusionment and critical
irony

8. Influence in the arts that was REALIST
(figurative as opposed to abstract visual art for e.g.)

9.  Thematised modern contemporary life:
 MODERNITY

12.  Advances in technology:
 TECHNOLOGY WELCOMED
 e.g. Metropolis – not technology itself which is at fault
as much as the need for a benevolent (but still
autocratic) leader

13.  Changing sexual mores

15.  Urban sophistication

17.  The commercial entertainment industry (bars,
cabaret, bright lights etc)

20.  Americanism and commercialism
 Masquerade of identities, such as sexual or working
identity
 Some branches: committed, political art
 New thinking about art forms and above all artistic
‘apparatus’ and spectatorship (self-reflexive)

21.  Detachment and coolness
 Full of critical irony: ‘the cold surgical gaze’ (Richard
W. McCormick on The Blue Angel)
 Portraying contemporary life, but simultaneously
criticising it. Sometimes to the extent of parody

22.  Think of the differences between Expressionism and
New Objectivity
 Relate these to the first two screenings on the module
 Both movements were visual art movements which
transferred to film

23.  Women entering mass
employment, Americanism, birth control etc led to the
emancipation of women.
 Some, but not all, women experienced:
 Financial independence
 Sexual independence
 Liberated class known as the ‘New Woman’
 The Weimar of the cabaret:
 Fashion, music, dance, pleasure