Nazi Cinema as Enchantment: The Politics of Entertainment in the Third Reich (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)
Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 1571133348
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Hitler's regime not only terrorized its citizens; it also seduced them, offering stability, a traditional value system, a sense of belonging, and hope of a better standard of living. Nazi cinema was part of this seduction, expressing positive social fantasies and promoting the enchantment of reality, so that one would want to share in the dream at any price. This interdisciplinary study, based on exhaustive research in German archives, examines how thirteen films from five genres - the historical musical, the foreign adventure film, the home-front film, the melodrama, and the problem film - enchanted audiences and enacted shared stories that can tell us much about how family, community, history, the nation, and the war were imagined in Nazi Germany. Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien is Professor of German at Skidmore College.
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Nazi Germany. The notion of politics as pathos so well illustrated in this motion picture was doubtlessly in line with mainstream National Socialist discursive practices. In the political and cultural realm, German audiences were constantly reminded that communal well-being stems from the symbiosis between leader and folk, and the particulars of government are irrelevant as long as the leader fulfills the masses’ emotional needs. Whether 30 ♦ THE HISTORICAL MUSICAL at the Nuremberg rallies.
Positiven Beispielen THE HISTORICAL MUSICAL ♦ 63 jeweils das historische Analogon zur Gegenwart gefunden werden.” Klaus Kanzog, “Staatspolitisch besonders wertvoll”: Ein Handbuch zu 30 deutschen Spielfilmen der Jahre 1934 bis 1945 (Munich: diskurs film, 1994), 31. 105 “Das hat der Operetten- mit dem Historienfilm gemein: Beide benutzen die Geschichte als Anlaß für ein Spektakel, um das Publikum mit dem Prunk und der Exotik der Szenen zu beeindrücken; sie bemühen sich, die Atmosphäre einer.
They espouse values that speak to basic human needs. The melodramas with their appeal for stability in the family and security in the community, the home-front films calling for unity, the adventure films providing an encounter with the exotic without physical danger, or the INTRODUCTION ♦ 11 musicals with their happy-go-lucky song and dance routines all satisfy widespread psychological needs. My book is organized around five popular film genres in Nazi cinema. I have selected a variety of.
York: Oxford UP, 1983), 35. 10 Hans Dieter Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein: Deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933–1945 (Munich: Hanser, 1981), 114–62. 11 Goebbels, “Das Kulturleben im Kriege,” 219. According to Fritz Hippler, “This film was Goebbels’s pet project; he even collaborated on the screenplay, wrote dialogues, and determined the particular singers 12 152 ♦ THE HOME-FRONT FILM and musicians who were to perform in the big productions,” Die Verstrickung (Düsseldorf: Mehr.
Events were staged for troops in the West in the winter 1939–1940. 61 “Manchmal ist’s mir selber, daß ich tot sein möchte.” Die große Liebe film dialogue. Jane Feuer, “The Self-Reflexive Musical and the Myth of Entertainment,” in Film Genre Reader, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: U of Texas P), 329–43. 62 63 Lowry discusses the centrality of the cellar scene for establishing Hanna and Paul as potential parents (Pathos und Politik, 164–70). 64 “Ist sie eine rechte Mutter, so verliert sie sich.