Christian Petzold's Phoenix (2014), a masterpiece from one of Germany's leading contemporary filmmakers, portrays a death-camp survivor's return to occupied Berlin just after the war has come to an end. Nelly, played by German film star Nina Hoss, returns badly wounded, her face covered in bandages, hoping that her German husband will still love her. Johnny fails to recognize her and instead offers her a role in an intricate criminal scheme. Petzold's film, which he scripted together with his frequent collaborator Harun Farocki, was an international success that has been widely compared with works by Alfred Hitchcock and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. This study explores the film's unique array of influences including the vast range of films, novels, and memoirs on which its screenwriters drew. Its central argument concerns the film's integration of a long history of German-Jewish works and ideas-its attempt to confront its audience with a neglected tradition that included figures as diverse as Peter Lorre, Fred Zinnemann, and Hannah Arendt. Offering a close reading of the film's themes, compositions, and music alongside a film-historical contextualization, this book constitutes the most significant and thorough study of Phoenix to date.
Brad Prager is Professor of German and Film Studies at the University of Missouri.
Industry Reviews
[This book] made a big impression on me. The author sets off on a search for... filmic influences on the director Christian Petzold and his co-author Harun Farocki... . [R]eads suspensefully and enhances one's perception of Christian Petzold's film. * HHPRINZLER.DE *
[Prager's book] serves as a well-informed introduction to the complex system of cultural references in the film and as an inspiration for further analyses (beyond the context of the Berlin School). -- Eileen Rositzka * FILMBLATT *
There is no question: in Brad Prager Phoenix has found an ideal interpreter. . . . With crystal-clear argumentation, Prager's splendidly written book shows that this is . . . a very good film, and possibly one of Petzold's best. . . . Prager's book, first-rate in every respect, delivers an outstanding argument for the film having a firm place in the cinematic canon of the Federal Republic. -- Joern Glasenapp * MEDIENwissenschaft *
Prager's analysis of Phoenix leaves no stone unturned. . . . . [He] simultaneously unpacks key scenes throughout the ?lm and highlights compelling parallels between Phoenix and other ?lms that inspired [it]. -- Jeanne Schueller * MONATSHEFTE *
Brad Prager's deep engagement with Christian Petzold's Phoenix situates the film within a broader emigre and exile tradition surrounding the examination of postwar German and German-Jewish identity and engaging with Germany's Nazi past. . . . Prager takes pains to connect Petzold and [his collaborator Harun] Farocki's work with the specifically German-Jewish work that informs it. He shows readers how they intersect thematically and aesthetically and emphasizes the meaning and nuance these other works bring to the film. -- Noah Soltau * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *
