Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing National Identity after Hitler.

I consider this book--a history of German cinema from its inception to 1962--to be a model of how history and film studies can blend together, each informing the other in unexpected ways.In this impressive work, Fehrenbach shows how German cinema, from its beginnings, has been embedded in the politics of culture and identity.Prior to World War II, the author shows how various social and political groups viewed film from two contrasting perspectives.On the one hand