Spiel/Film: On play in Weimar cinema and culture

This dissertation argues that the cinema can be understood as a form of play, and that it was received as such in Germany’s Weimar Republic (1918-1933). Cinema developed out of toys and playful diversions, and there were several attempts in its first decades in Germany—among them, Joe May’s Preisrätselfilme (1913) and Guido Seeber’s Rebusfilme (1925-27)—to reintroduce interactivity and the engagement of the hands. One can also look, as Spiel/Film: On Play in Weimar Cinema and Culture does, at the games played in film magazines, as a way that cinema was incorporated into modern subjects’ lives through play. However, the dissertation also draws on media theory, a tradition of German philosophical thinking on play, and discussions within Weimar culture itself, to argue that there are also senses in which cinema can be considered play with or without direct “interaction.” Through readings of canonical films from the Weimar period alongside art movements, media games, and literature, Spiel/Film proposes that with a look back at the media games of Weimar we might see today’s game-centric society not as a radical break with the past, but as having deep historical roots.