Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. A Contemporary Classic - and a Conservative One?
2. The Authenticity of a Very Hollywood Film Mode
3. Depicting the Stasi's Surveillance Regime
4. The Good Spy of East Berlin: Captain Gerd Weisler
5. Brecht, Performance, and the Politics of an Aesthetic Education
6. 'Sister Art Is/Coming on Stage': Christa- Maria Sieland
7. Success? Georg Dreyman and German Unification
Conclusion
Notes
Credits
Bibliography

Promotional Information

A study of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's film The Lives of Others (2006) in the BFI Film Classics series

About the Author

Annie Ring is Associate Professor of German and comparative film, literature and cultural theory at UCL, UK. Her research focuses on film, surveillance, technology and the politics of subjectivity. She is author of After the Stasi (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). She is co-editor of Architecture and Control (2018), Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for Big Data (2021) and has contributed to The German Cinema Book (British Film Institute, 2020).

Reviews

A considered study of the 2006 Oscar-winner.
*Total Film*

What makes a classic film? Annie Ring offers intriguing answers to this question in an accessible and engaging volume with breath-taking range and intriguing depth. From surveillance to melodrama and from Brecht to Hitchcock, she covers the myriad facets of a modern-day classic, The Lives of Others.
*Barbara Mennel, University of Florida, USA*

This original and fascinating analysis makes a compelling case for including The Lives of Others in the canon of contemporary classic cinema. Anyone who has watched von Donnersmarck’s Stasi melodrama will profit from reading Annie Ring’s well-researched and accessible book.
*Daniela Berghahn, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK*

Ring’s writing style is consistently clear, elegant and concise, making her arguments easy to follow and understand. Her passion for the topic is evident throughout the book, and she succeeds in arousing the reader’s interest in the film, its themes and its historical context … The Lives of Others is a well-researched and engaging analysis of a complex and thought-provoking film. Ring’s insights and analysis will be of interest not only to film scholars and students but also to anyone curious about the political and social dynamics of East Germany during the Cold War.
*Media Education Journal*

Well-written and deeply thought-provoking. Alongside analysis of the film’s aesthetic and philosophical themes, Ring brings historical fact to the fore in a way which makes a reductive black-and-white reading of the film and its political message entirely impossible... thought-provoking new interpretations... a stand-out section of the book makes the Enlightenment easily understandable, which is no mean feat... Ring’s exploration of Brechtian aesthetics and how they are utilised and potentially misused in the film is incisive, and her ability to simplify complex ideas without smoothing over the nuance is at its most visible in these moments of intertextual analysis.
*Open Screens*