1 / 67

Film in the III. Reich

Film in the III. Reich. Is there a way beyond the opposition uniformity v. resistance?. Don’t forget:. Screening of In jenen Tagen (dir. Helmut K äutner, 1947) Thursday 3rd week, 7.45pm Lecture Rm B. 1. Recapitulation and Introduction. The uses of Die Frau im Mond (1929).

len
Download Presentation

Film in the III. Reich

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Film in the III. Reich Is there a way beyond the opposition uniformity v. resistance?

  2. Don’t forget: • Screening of In jenen Tagen (dir. Helmut Käutner, 1947) Thursday 3rd week, 7.45pm Lecture Rm B

  3. 1. Recapitulation and Introduction

  4. The uses of Die Frau im Mond (1929) • Reviews of film suggest tension between technological realism and plot • Exploring reasons for doing things in world where shared reasons develop more slowly than technology/social institutions • Moon as metaphor for this insecure situation • Harbou/Lang drawing on existing reasons of love, authentic action underpinned by the collective, but also by shared sense of everyday real world and the filmic conventions for conveying this shared world

  5. Shared sense of reality Continuing this argument for 1930s: • Not being distracted by apparent ruptures (transition to sound; the ‘Machtergreifung’ in 1933) • Not accepting unquestioningly idea of film as propaganda in Third Reich

  6. 2. Film and the constitution of identity in Germany of 1920s and 1930s

  7. Destroying identification in People on Sunday (1929/30): Willy Fritsch

  8. More destroying identification in People on Sunday (1929/30): Greta Garbo

  9. ‘Sex appeal’ in Girls in Uniform (1931): Hans Albers

  10. Franz felt quite wonderful, when the giggling around him started up. A bunch of people, free people, were having fun, and no-one can boss them around, how wonderfully nice, and I’m here smack in the middle ‘Ganz wunderbar ergriff es Franz, als das Kichern um in losging. Lauter Menschen, freie Leute, amüsierten sich, hat ihnen keiner was zu sagen, wunderbar schön, und ich stehe mitten mang!’ [dtv edition, p.24. Film in Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929)

  11. Title song from Women are my weak spot (1928) quoted in Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) • Ja, die Frauen sind meine schwache Seite, sie sind die Stelle, wo ich sterblich bin, küß ich die erste, denk ich an die zweite und schau verstohlen schon zur dritten hin. • Dtv edition, p. 209

  12. Continuities 1 • Continuities in the uses of sound and music • Adorno, Theodor W., and Hanns Eisler. Composing for the Films. Edited by Graham McCann. London: Athlone, 1994 • Gorbman, Claudia. Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music. London and Bloomington, Ind: BFI ; Indiana University Press, 1987 • Heidegger, Martin. Sein Und Zeit. 17th ed. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993, esp. § 31 on ‘Befindlichkeit’ • Kalinak, Kathryn. Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film, Wisconsin Studies in Film. Madison ; London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992

  13. Continuities 2 • Continuities before and after 1933 • Morgan, Ben. "Music in Nazi Film: How Different Is 'Triumph of the Will'." Studies in European Cinema 3, no. 1 (2006): 37-53

  14. Uniform cap and identity in Hitler Youth Quex (1933)

  15. Uniform cap and identity in Liebelei (1932)

  16. Uniform cap and identity in Lachende Erben (1933)

  17. 3. Film in the Third Reich [For overview of Nazi film policy see Julian Petley’s article in Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter and Deniz Göktürk, eds., The German Cinema Book (London: bfi, 2002)]

  18. Political Framework • After June 1933, non-Aryans were forbidden to work in the film industry. Only films made by members of the Reichsfilmkammer and its subsidiary organisations could be publicly screened. The film legislation of 1934 created a form of pre-censor (the “Reichs-filmdramaturg”) to whom all film scripts needed to be submitted even during the planning stage. Films would not acquire a certificate from the censor or “Filmprüfstelle” if they were considered to offend National Socialist sensibilities.

  19. Gleichschaltung • So wird es nun mehr in noch gesteigerter Form unsere Aufgabe sein, für die volksmäßig bedingte deutsche Filmschöpfung einzutreten • Der Film, 15. April 1933 announcing its Gleichschaltung • Bisher habe allerdings der deutsche Film seine tiefste Aufgabe nicht erfüllt, nämlich die Aufgabe einer jeden Kunst: Vorkämpfer nationaler Kultur zu sein, sondern er habe in unwürdiger Weise Schuputzerdienste geleistet und sei allen Erscheinungen hintennachgehinkt • Film-Kurier, 27. April 1933, reporting Goebbels’ visit to Ufa

  20. How Nazi is Nazi Film? • The infamous Triumph des Willens (Riefenstahl, 1934/35) • Low angle glorifications?

  21. Triumph des Willens (1934/35)

  22. Der Schimmelreiter (1934)

  23. More Schimmelreiter

  24. Menschen am Sonntag (1929/30)

  25. Goebbels on propaganda March 1937 • Ich wünsche nicht etwa eine Kunst, die ihren national-sozialistischen Charakter lediglich durch Zurschaustellung national-sozialistischer Embleme und Symbole beweist, sondern eine Kunst, die ihre Haltung durch national-sozialistischen Charakter und durch Aufraffen national-sozialistischer Probleme zum Ausdruck bringt. Diese Probleme werden das Gefühlsleben der Deutschen und anderer Völker um so wirksamer durchdringen, je unauffälliger sie behandelt werden. (Albrecht, p. 456)

  26. Entertainment • Mach dir keine Sorgen/Geht’s auch mitunter drüber und drunter/Sag’ wenn’s dir zu bunt wird/Ich geh’ • Hans Albers in Ein Mann auf Abwegen (1939/40)

  27. Some approaches to Nazi Cinema • A-Filme: Filme aktionsbetonender Grundhaltung mit nur latenter politischer Funktion • E-Filme: Filme ernster Grundhaltung mit nur latenter politischer Funktion • H-Filme: Filme heiterer Grundhaltung mit nur latenter politischer Funktion • P-Filme: Filme mit manifester politischer Funktion ohne Rücksicht auf ihren sonstigen Inhalt • Gerd Albrecht, Nationalsozialistische Filmpolitik

  28. Politics of the Unpolitical • Dissolve a false revelation of essence, a false naturalisation? • Karsten Witte, “How Fascist is The Punch Bowl?” New German Critique, No. 74 (1998), pp. 31-36. • Still: Die Feuerzangenbowle (1944, with Heinz Rühmann)

  29. Looking for ambiguities • I seek a more precise awareness of the form, address, and appeal of Nazi films. Rather than reducing them to ideological containers in which the Ministry of Propaganda packaged affirmation and falsehood, I aim to read them as ambiguous and complex entities, as still resonant portrayals of an age’s different inclinations and disparate wishes, works that give rise to divergent official and popular responses since the Third Reich. • Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion, p. 15

  30. Textual ambiguities • Linda Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich: Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema (Durham: Duke UP, 1996), p. 5: • “We have to be willing to modify the image we have of Nazi culture, to let its internal contradictions as well as its continuities to earlier and later cultures speak.”

  31. 4. Zu neuen Ufern (1937) as test case

  32. 4. Ambiguity show case • Detlev Sierck/Douglas Sirk • “Melodrama […] provides a supple texture in which traditional norms and their disruption coexist.” • Marc Silberman, German Cinema: Texts in Context (1995), p. 62

  33. Clip 1: Zu neuen Ufern (1937)

  34. Contrasting music

  35. Cracked voice

  36. Framing with obstacles

  37. Leander’s face in shadow

  38. Confessing with eyes in light

  39. Imprisonment

  40. Grotesque figure v. grand orchestra

  41. The passion of Gloria Vane

  42. Rising through suffering

  43. Face in the light

  44. Imprisonment (2)

  45. Aural contrast

  46. Smooth transition

  47. Beyond the text? • ‘The problem is, however, that Schulte-Sasse fails to adduce much evidence, other than her own textual analyses, for such a suggestion…’ • Julian Petley, ‘Film Policy in the Third Reich,’ Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter and Deniz Göktürk, eds., The German Cinema Book, 180.

  48. Contemporary reactions? • The contradictions Sierck constructed so carefully in this film eschew a surface reading. Indeed, its very reliance on formulae, conventions, excess, exaggeration, and clichés invites a discursive reading of its representational system. Whether this functioned for the historical spectator of 1937 is impossible to determine • Silberman, 1995: p. 65

  49. The use of cinema in the III. Reich • “Ich bin so sehr gern im Kino; es entrückt mich.” • Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten: Tagebücher 1933-1941 (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1995), p. 13, entry for 20.3.1933. • [Still: Viktor und Viktoria, dir. Schünzel, 1933]

More Related