Abstract
Around 1930, the shift toward sound film led German filmmakers back to the medium itself even as they moved in new aesthetic directions. Adopting a new self-reflexive attitude, they shifted the filmic apparatus onto the image, engaging narrative form to consider cinema’s value in popular culture. This article investigates how sound films reflected their new audiovisual mode through aesthetic self-referentiality, particularly in operetta films. Often considered escapist and ideologically suspect by contemporary critics, these films reflected the kitsch and Americanized aesthetic for which they were criticized with playful, ironic self-awareness.
Hangartner, Selina