Feminism Film Fascism

German society''s inability and/or refusal to come to terms with its Nazi past has been analyzed in many cultural works including the well-known books Society without the Father and The Inability to Mourn. In this pathfinding study Susan Linville challenges the accepted wisdom of these books by focusing on a cultural realm in which mourning for the Nazi past and opposing the patriarchal and authoritarian nature of postwar German culture are central concernsnamely women''s feminist auto/biographical films of the 1970s and 1980s.After a broad survey of feminist theory Linville analyzes five important films that reflect back on the Third Reich through the experiences of women of different agesMarianne Rosenbaum''s Peppermint Peace Helma Sanders-Brahms''s Germany Pale Mother Jutta Brckner''s Hunger Years Margarethe von Trotta''s Marianne and Juliane and Jeanine Meerapfel''s Malou. By juxtaposing these films with the accepted theories on German culture Linville offers a fresh appraisal not only of the films'' importance but especially of their challenge to misogynist interpretations of the German failure to grieve for the horrors of its Nazi past.