ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes films about cities in ruins or divided cities, even though they constitute an anomaly among urban environments. However, because the trope of the ruin functions in two fundamentally dissimilar ways, this chapter explores its different ideological aims. Ruins either function in a realistic reference to a particular historical moment or they serve as a postmodern signifier that allegorizes the passage of time. For example, the genre of the rubble film emerged in the immediate post-World War II moment in Germany with the setting of the destroyed city framing moral questions. Divided cities organize narratives that map romantic relationships or coming of age onto the split urban space. During the Cold War, East German films engaged in a dogmatic ideological critique of the West. Postmodern films, however, evoke a trace of the moral weight associated with the image of the ruin but resignify it as backdrop for narratives that ignore the original historical context.
