1POPULAR CINEMA

in the registers of resignation and retreat, but without the positive connotations
associated with the conditions of exile. Seeking relief from the politicization
of the theater, Sierck in the 1930s turned to cinema as the quintessential
mixed medium and took advantage of its surprising openness to
contradictions and compromises. Perhaps melodrama as a whole depends,
more than other genres, on the historical conditions of spectatorship and
the frameworks of reference established by different aesthetic and cultural
traditions. Only an awareness of the forces that enter into the melodramatic
imagination at certain times and places can shed light on this elusive dynamic.
Greater attention to stylization as a function of historical reception
is a first step in this direction. In the case of the Third Reich, such a critical
project depends fundamentally on the reassessment of film authorship.
Detlef Sierck and Schlußakkord 127