Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- 1 Historical Overview
- 2 The Ideological Context
- 3 Literature and Cultural Policies in the Third Reich
- 4 The National Socialist Novel
- 5 The National Socialist Drama
- 6 National Socialist Poetry
- 7 Film in the Third Reich
- 8 Non-National Socialist and Anti-National Socialist Literature
- 9 Closing Comments
- Biographical and Bibliographical List of Authors
- Selected Bibliography
- Translator’s Note
- Index
7 - Film in the Third Reich
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- 1 Historical Overview
- 2 The Ideological Context
- 3 Literature and Cultural Policies in the Third Reich
- 4 The National Socialist Novel
- 5 The National Socialist Drama
- 6 National Socialist Poetry
- 7 Film in the Third Reich
- 8 Non-National Socialist and Anti-National Socialist Literature
- 9 Closing Comments
- Biographical and Bibliographical List of Authors
- Selected Bibliography
- Translator’s Note
- Index
Summary
IN RECENT YEARS no other area of the cultural life within the Third Reich has received more attention than film, especially in the United States where a number of books on film in the Third Reich have been published since the mid-nineties. These studies complement earlier works by Francis Courtade and Pierre Cadars (1972), David Stewart Hull (1969), Siegfried Kracauer (1947), Stephen Lowry (1991), David Welch (1983), and Karsten Witte (1976 and later), to name only a few. These also include books by Eric Rentschler (The Ministry of Illusion, 1996), Linda Schulte-Sasse (Entertaining the Third Reich, 1996), Sabine Hake (Popular Cinema of the Third Reich, 2001), Mary-Elizabeth O’Brien (Nazi Cinema as Enchantment: The Politics of Entertainment in the Third Reich, 2003), and a special edition of New German Critique (no. 74, Spring-Summer 1998) with articles by Anton Kaes, Klaus Kreimeier, Stephen Lowry, Patrice Petro, Karsten Witte, and others. As Patrice Petro suggests, the reason for this increase in scholarly inquiry into films of the Third Reich may be connected with the recent turn of historians to everyday life under Fascism for which, in her opinion, films from that period provide excellent examples: “Indeed, what better place than cinema to find traces of the choices, emotions, and coping mechanisms of ordinary Germans?” These recent books on film in the Third Reich dispel the notion that movies made in the Third Reich were nothing but propaganda and provide a better understanding of films made between 1933 and 1945 with detailed analyses of a variety of films, including a large number of films made mostly for entertainment. To what extent these films also contain elements of propaganda remains a matter of contention and depends largely on the viewers: if they want to find propaganda in them, they will find it; if they don’t, they will not. There is no question, however, that it was a deliberate policy of “film minister” Goebbels to provide entertainment for the masses, especially during hard times. The lack of obvious Nazi propaganda in the majority of films from the Nazi period also explains that some of the movies from that time remain popular to this day.
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- Literature and Film in the Third Reich , pp. 205 - 226Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010