"Ein altes Thema, neu gesehen": Remediating Weimar Modernity in Wolfgang Liebeneiner's Großstadtmelodie (1943)

abstract: This article examines Wolfgang Liebeneiner's popular film Großstadtmelodie (Metropolitan melody). Released in 1943 but set in 1937–1938, the film repurposes Weimar's New Woman and prewar newsreel footage of Berlin to transport audiences, especially women on the home front, to interwar Berlin, not only to distract from the war but also to envision a future Berlin that would be achieved only after the war was won. I suggest that remediation in the film works ultimately to counter the aesthetic, social, and historical fragmentation of war, captured by the feminine "melody" of the film's title and central metaphor.