Rethinking gender and sexuality in Weimar cinema (1918-1933)

This thesis considers the representation of gender and sexuality in Weimar cinema, moving beyond virgin/vamp dichotomies to examine how film reflects the multifaceted nature of gender and sexuality in Weimar society. I highlight how some characters’ experiences depicted may be regarded as emancipatory, for example driving cars and earning money, but I also show how this liberation was limited and subject to patriarchal control and influence. My work also explores how film responds to crucial sociopolitical debates such as abortion reform, including films that represent conservative viewpoints, as well as those that speak to more modern impulses. This thesis also includes an exploration of Weimar cinema’s portrayal of women who experience samesex desire and adopt a non-binary approach to gender expression, and my use of an intersectional methodology emphasises the need to embrace the contradictions inherent in Weimar understandings of gender and sexuality by exploring overlaps of gender and sexuality with other categories of marginalisation such as race and disability. Drawing upon films by well-known directors, such as Fritz Lang and Georg Wilhelm Pabst, this study shows that contradictions can be found even within films by directors nominally understood as representative of a particular viewpoint. Furthermore, the inclusion of lesser-known films by these directors not only obfuscates our understanding of their politics but also underscores the need to expand the Weimar film canon. Using various methodologies, this work develops a much more nuanced understanding of depictions of gender and sexuality in this period by providing new readings of well-known films, and these new interpretations allow me to bring lesser-known films into the Weimar film canon. In so doing, my work addresses some of the limitations of the academic literature on Weimar cinema but also furthers our understanding of this complex and fascinating period of German cinematic history.