1POPULAR CINEMA

machine below translates the morally charged opposition into the terms of
national and racial stereotyping, with the Englishman suddenly revealed as
the Jew.
These three films were the last to articulate the possibilities of modern
technology in the form of utopian narratives and futuristic designs. The
spectacle of engines, turbines, and hydraulic pumps gave way to the destructive
power of dynamite, electricity, and gas. After Gold, the grand narratives
of scientific discovery and technical invention were limited to the
simultaneously idyllic and heroic past populated by “great Germans” like
Peter Henlein, Gustav Diesel, Robert Koch, and others. Contemporary settings
remained free of the drama of innovation and provided an occasion
for technological feats only in the form of recreational activities and domestic
eccentricities (e.g., Heinz Rühmann’s racing cars and kitchen machines).
Beyond such humorous solutions, the machine aesthetic found a valid outlet
only in the obsession with luxury cars and other high-priced consumer
goods, a phenomenon often associated with Weimar culture. Thus in Hitlerjunge
Quex (Hitler Youth Quex, 1933), the image of Heinrich George sitting
in a hospital waiting room designed in the functionalist style, reading the
lifestyle magazine Elegante Welt, only serves to demonstrate the deep alienation
of this quintessential German from the modernist imagination and its
false promises of social change through good design. Similarly, the appearance
in Der verlorene Sohn (The Prodigal Son, 1934) of Luis Trenker in the
sleek art-deco interiors of a New York City town house only underscores his
spiritual homelessness in the modern world and confirms a collective need
for the kind of antimodernism associated with Heimat.
Under these conditions, the modern spirit found a highly compromised
expression only in the three central categories of otherness: Weimar, America,
and modern femininity. Often in combination with exclusive fashion
styles and leisure pursuits such as traveling on cruise ships and private
yachts, modern design became a marker of refinement, extravagance, and
conspicuous consumption. Appearing in genres ranging from romantic
comedies to crime thrillers, the ocean liner emerged as the most important
showcase for international design trends, except of course for the shunned
streamline moderne style prevalent in many Hollywood comedies and musicals
from the 1930s. On the German ocean liners, a modest version of turnof-the-century
modernism prevailed, from the geometrical designs of Josef
Hoffmann to the organic arts-and-crafts style of Henry van de Velde. Examples
include the elegant white-lacquer Jugendstil interiors on the ocean
Cinema, Set Design, and Modernism 57