New German Cinema, Alexander Kluge, and Yesterday Girl

Often over-shadowed by two neighboring schools of cinema - Italian Neorealism and French New Wave - Neuer Deutscher Film (New German Cinema) made significant contributions to the artistic and intellectual development of world cinema. Cinephiles are familiar with the names such as Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder for their famous German films, but not many have heard of the director of the 1966 film Yesterday Girl (Abschied von Gestern).

While browsing through our film collection, I made a series of discoveries about a film I had heard of but never felt curious enough to either watch or read up on. Yesterday Girl was directed by Alexander Kluge. Intrigued finally, I learned that Kluge, though not as well-known as Herzog, Wenders or Fassbinder or even Margaretha von Trotta, was central to the emergence of New German Cinema. Apart from being a pioneering filmmaker to the New German Cinema, Kluge is a respected philosopher and writer of fiction.

 To cut a long story short, after the World War II, a group of people felt that current German cinema had failed to reflect the reality of its people’s postwar struggles and aspirations. Kluge, with other like-minded filmmakers and intellectuals, put forth the Oberhausen Manifesto in 1962 which declared the death of the old German cinema with a belief in its rebirth. Adapted from his own short story, Anita G, Yesterday Girl depicts the economic and psychological struggles of a young woman of Jewish origin who moves to West Germany from East Germany. 

Yesterday Girl was the first German film to win a major international award bagging the Silver Lion at Venice in 1966. Mr. Kluge would repeat this feat with his next film Artists in the Big Top: Perplexed two years later. 

We have the DVD of the wonderful Yesterday Girl as well as Kluge's later film Part-Time Work of a Domestic Slave.  

Films on DVD:

Abschied von Gestern (Anita G.) = Yesterday Girl; written and directed by Alexander Kluge (Facets Video, [2008]) (88 min.) black and white.

Gelegenheitsarbeit einer Sklavin = Part-Time Work of a Domestic Slave; written and directed by Alexander Kluge (Facets Video, 2008) (91 min.) black and white.

Reading List:

European Cinema, edited by Elizabeth Ezra (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Gender and German Cinema: Feminist Interventions, volume II: German Film History / Germany History on Film, edited by Sandra Frieden, et al. (Berg, 1993).

The German Cinema Book, edited by Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, Deniz Göktürk, Claudia Sandberg, Second edition (British Film Institute, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2020).

The New German Cinema by John Sandford (Barnes & Noble, 1980).

New German Cinema: A History by Thomas Elsaesser (Rutgers University Press, 1989).