Tag: cinema in the Third Reich

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Kolberg, like Jud Suss (reviewed here) is directed by Veit Harlan, is a period film that stars Harlan’s wife Kristina Soederbaum, and is accused of being clouded with “Nazi” themes. It was one of the last films distributed by the Third Reich, and always shown as an example of Nazi fanaticism and resistance to the end. When one sees Kolberg, it has usually been in documentaries about the Hitler era, always in snippets that remind the viewer how it was shot at the end of the war, wasted whole divisions of German soldiers as extras when they could have better been at the front. It is Nazi and therefore a pointless waste of cinematic resources.

My viewing of the film offers a different impression. (more…)

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Karel Veliky is the doyen of the Czech New Right, the creator of the vast majority of publications from Delian Diver, and one of the masterminds behind the entire project. Although Karel Veliky specializes primarily in writing books and comprehensive essays on topics such as Knut Hamsun, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Yukio Mishima, neo-fascism, the New Right, etc., the author has also found time to address more popular topics such as films from the Third Reich, Fascist Italy, Spain, and the occupied territories in the series “We & Film.” (more…)

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

There are only a few films directly about the National Socialist party – that is, about “the Nazis”. The first of these, SA Mann Brand (1933, dir. Franz Seitz), appeared in the spring after the seizure of power and, coming from a Munich director of light comedies, was a purely opportunistic endeavor that did not even appeal to members of the SA. (more…)

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Just two months after the victory of the National Socialist German Workers Party in the March 1933 elections and the subsequent “takeover” of power, the Film Credit Bank was established in Germany (the NSDAP had had a film division since 1930). In order to free the local film industry from the direct or indirect influence of Jewish capital [1] and revive film production affected by the global financial crisis, it will cover up to 70% of production costs and contribute to 22 feature films and short films by the end of the year. (more…)

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Part 1, Part 2

From Siegfried to Triumph of the Will: Impulses of the Avant-Garde

The most distinctive artistic language of pre-revolutionary German cinema is expressionism. Silent films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, dir. Robert Wiene), The Tired Death (1921, dir. Fritz Lang) and Nosferatu (1922, dir. Friedrich W. Murnau), and even earlier, The Student of Prague (1913, dir. Paul Wegener) and Homunculus (1916, dir. Otto Rippert), are striking not only for the fantastical nature of their themes and the macabre nature of their plots, which refer to “black romanticism”, but above all for their overall atmosphere. (more…)

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

A trial is held and several witness are called. Hanna inherited a substantial sum when her father died, and Hanna’s brother Edward — who never liked Thomas and thought he himself should have received the money — accuses Thomas of killing his wife in order to get her inheritance. (more…)

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

While researching my essay on Die große Liebe, I learned of the infamous pro-euthanasia Nazi film Ich Klage an. I’m glad I did. Oftentimes I watch these old cinematic artifacts for solely academic purposes, but with Ich Klage an, I found myself actually being engrossed in the story.

Ich Klage an, or I Accuse, is a propaganda film about a doctor whose wife becomes ill with multiple sclerosis, a rapidly progressive disease which destroys the nerves and reduces people to paralyzed vegetables. (more…)

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Harlan’s film, unlike Mendes’, was an enormous box office success,[1] and it is said that concentration camp guards and the SS were shown this film to remind them of their duties. It is fast-paced, and Harlan shows things: the oppression of Süß’s decrees, Theodora’s corpse, the angry mob, and the people fighting for their rights. Sturm’s calm, civil demeanor is contrasted with Süß’s slick manipulation and George’s overbearing yet sensual Karl. (more…)

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

I’ve reviewed Munchhausen and Grosse Freiheit Nummer 7, films produced in the Third Reich that avoided discussing National Socialist philosophy regarding Jews. Which films from that era did? There was Der ewige Jude, Hitler’s favorite film on this subject given its depictions of Jews in caftans and beards, visually compared with rats scurrying down a drain. “That’s what I want to see,” Hitler said to Goebbels. “That’s what we need.” (more…)

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I have been wanting to write a review of Die große Liebe (The Great Love) for years. I read that it had the distinction of being the most popular movie in the Third Reich, and that got me curious. The only Nazi films that anyone has ever heard of are two that are discussed far out of proportion to their actual popularity at the time: the Hitler infomercial Triumph of the Will and Der ewige Jude, a helpful and informative public service announcement about the Jewish menace lurking in the shadows of Europe. As much as you hear about those two films, very few Germans actually saw either of them at the time. I wanted to see a Nazi movie that the average German actually watched and enjoyed. (more…)

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1943 was not a happy year for the Third Reich. After the disaster of Stalingrad came the catastrophe of Kursk, then the loss of North Africa. The Wehrmacht was on the defensive. America was beginning to enter the European theater in earnest.  But it was a great one for German cinema due to the release of Munchhausen . Based on the exploits of Baron von Munchhausen, one of the literary world’s most famous yarn-spinners, it was a very high-prestige production made in full color, directed by Josef von Baky and starring Hans Albers as the Baron. (more…)

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When we think about Third Reich films, we always go to the usual: Triumph of the Will, Der Ewige Jude, Jud Süß, and Kolberg, Goebbels’ final, fist-shaking epic call to resistance as the Reich crumbled. Yet, German film a the time was quite varied, innovative, entertaining, and more than just propaganda films for the master race. Jewish writer Walter Laqueur observed that German film had a worldwide reputation in the 1920’s and ’30s, and even in the Nazi era films were made with a high level of competence and had considerable entertainment value. Unlike the other arts, movies under Hitler were given a great deal of latitude. (more…)