Weimar Cinema, Embodiment, and Historicity: Cultural Memory and the Historical Films of Ernst Lubitsch

In its retrieval and (re)construction, the past has become interwoven with the images and structure of cinema. Not only have mass media―especially film and television―shaped the content of memories and histories, but they have also shaped their very form. Combining historicization with close readings of German director Ernst Lubitsch's historical films, this book focuses on an early turning point in this development, exploring how the medium of film shaped modern historical experience and understanding―how it moved embodied audiences through moving images.

Mason Kamana Allred is a historian and volume editor at the Joseph Smith Papers. His interdisciplinary work on film and media history has appeared in The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Jewish Studies Quarterly, and The Journal of Popular Culture as well as the edited collections Dorian: A Peculiar Edition and Film and History.