A Time to Come

What, then, is the Berlin School? I suppose it is possible that even at this stage in our discussion we have not arrived at a clear-cut answer to this question. Throughout the previous analyses, I have repeatedly suggested that one of the most interesting aspects of these films is their ability to force the viewers to confront something that is real but that usually remains outside of our day-to-day purview because our perceptual apparatus habitually tends, or is made, to block out such registers of social reality. I would be content if readers were to take this as my answer to the question of what the Berlin School is—an answer, nevertheless, that for me is marked by the same reservation with which Bazin viewed any definition of Neorealismi that “is based, to the exclusion of all else, on what is only one of its present aspects,” for doing so “is to submit [Neorealism's] future potential to a priori restrictions” (“In Defense of Rossellini,” 95). This is why I not only resisted the impetus to provide a list of stylistic criteria that would define the Berlin School, but also believe that any attempt to delineate the essence of the Berlin School with such a list—including the long take and its emphasis on temporal duration, precise framing, deliberate pacing of elliptical and fragmentary narration, sparse usage of extradiegetic music, and so on—presents us with the problem that any number of these characteristics can also be found in many earlier German films, not to mention contemporary films from around the globe.