If from the 1920s to the 1940s, it was individual films, taken more or less out of context, which typified the German cinema, at least for an international public, the inverse was the case some thirty years later: at first the Young German Film, then the New German Cinema made headlines as national film movements, where a generational or film-political identity imposed themselves more strikingly than individual film titles. As has also been the case with other European film movements (neo-realism, or the nouvelle vague), such identity quickly dissolves, to leave in its wake a number of star personalities.
