UFA Orientalism. The “Orient” in Early German Film: Lubitsch and May

• Main Author: Frank F. Scherer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Pittsburgh 2011-10-01
• Series: CINEJ Cinema Journal
• Online Access: http://cinej.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cinej/article/view/24

Fantastic images of the exotic pervade many early German films which resort to constructions of “Oriental” scenes. Stereotypical representations of China, India, Babylon, and Egypt  dominate the Kino-screens of Weimar Germany. These films were produced in the UFA studios outside Berlin by directors such as Ernst Lubitsch (Sumurum/ One Arabian Night, 1920; Das Weib des Pharaos/The Love of Pharaoas 1922) and John May (Das Indische Grabmal/ The Indian Tomb, 1921). Yet, where recent observers resist the use of a postcolonial perspective it becomes difficult to assess the cinematographic exoticism of post-WWI Germany.This essay, therefore, offers both a discussion of Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’and a psychoanalytical thesis on the concealment and supposed healing of post-1918 Germany’s national narcissistic wounds by  emphasizing Eurocentric difference in its filmic representations of the Orient.