Krajobrazy z murem berlińskim w filmach fabularnych podzielonego kina do roku 1989
Landscapes with the Berlin Wall in feature films of the divided cinema before 1989

Author(s): Andrzej Gwóźdź
Subject(s): Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Photography, Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Summary/Abstract: The author offers insight into fi lm images of the city with the wall, considering broad anthropological and socio-political contexts of the divided Berlin. The discussed filmsprovide a fascinating glimpse into the cultural geography of Berlin, showing how, in thecinema of the two Germanies, the figure of the wall was shaping the landscape of the dividedmetropolis. With the exception of two films in which the wall represents a propagandaemblem of the government, (Frank Vogel’s …und Deine Liebeauch, And Your Love Too,1962), and the female protagonist’s inner landscape (Heinz Thiel’s The Punch to the Jaw,1962), the cinema of the GDR was erasing the city’s internal border and creating an imageof Berlin depicted in line with political propaganda. The role of the border BranderburghGate in the films Hostess (1976) of Rolf Römer and The Architects (1990) of Peter Kahanedeserves special attention. In the first, the Gate (and the wall behind it) constitutes a picturesque figure of nostalgia in the capital’s architectonic discourse; in the latter, the image of the Gate becomes only a telling sign of the opressiveness of the city and the system whoseproduct it was. Among films produced in West Germany, the author points, among others, to Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987), permeated with signs of the city’s liminality andpolitical temporariness, Willy Tremper’s Playgirl (1965), in which the image of the wall inscribes itself in the discourse of the modern city’s memory, and Helke Sander’s The Allround Reduced Personality – Redupers (1977), presenting a woman’s project of domesticating the wall through the aesthetization of the public sphere by means of the wall.

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