Charmed Visions: E. T. A. Hoffman’s “Sandman” on Screen

A talk by Professor Elisabeth Bronfen.

Hardly another German gothic story has had as sustained an impact as E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman. One year after the end of the first World War, Sigmund Freud places it at the center of his essay on the uncanny, while Ernst Lubitsch recasts it in his romantic comedy Die Puppe. At the heart of both re-visitations lies the omnipotence of an enchanted vision that endows in-animated objects with a life of their own. Hitchcock’s Vertigo, in turn, explores the dark inversion of such visual screen magic, not without its own touch of black humor.

From Deutsches Haus NYU.