Nazi Entertainment Films
Kracauer correctly conceives of Nazi entertainment films as a
component of a larger program of Nazi propaganda; however, a
successful propaganda program need not achieve its mission
unequivocally as Kracauer claims. Instead, Nazi films may achieve
their ideological goals by channeling the desires and shaping the
identities of moviegoers. Nazi feature films created an illusion of a
romanticized private life that allowed German citizens to briefly
indulge their desires in escapist fantasies while keeping them firmly
committed to Nazi ideology. The idea that film inhabited a private
sphere beyond the reach of the Nazi political machine is another Ufa
illusion; the ProMi used film to further its political program.
Kracauer’s hypothesis that “all Nazi films were more or less
propaganda” is aligned with the central theses of Witte, Rentschler,
and Schulte-Sasse. Witte viewed Nazi Propaganda as a functional whole
claiming, “One either accepts it as a whole or misunderstands it
altogether” (NGC 30). Rentschler agrees that “the [Nazi] era’s many
genre films maintained the appearance of escapist vehicles and
innocent recreations while functioning within a larger program” (16).
Similarly, Schulte-Sasse finds that “film may have been more useful to
the state in its management of desire than its management of idea”
(11). Like Kracauer, these three leading German scholars are convinced
of the propagandist nature of German entertainment films of the Third
Reich.
However, these scholars do not require Nazi films to “unequivocally”
achieve their propagandistic mission and do not assume that seemingly
subversive ele...
... middle of paper ...
... in Nazi Germany, critics
could position them within a Nazi ideological framework. In American
Beauty, Kevin Spacey’s desire for a better job and for the bodies of
his daughter’s high school friends puts him on a path that leads to
his death. Meanwhile, in Bridges of Madison County, Meryl Streep who
is married to a dutiful husband but desires Clint Eastwood decided to
suppress her desires for Eastwood and to stay with her husband until
they both die. The fact that it is easy to invent a speculative
explanation for how an entertainment film reflects Nazi ideology
suggests that research should concentrate less on analyzing movies and
more on uncovering material from the time period that might actually
prove that Goebbels made movies like La Habanera and Romance in a
Minor Key to warn against and feed unrestrained desire.
In the piece “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,” Jean Luc-Comolli and Jean Narboni define the critic's job as the discernment of “which films, books and magazines allow the ideology a free, unhampered passage, transmit it with crystal clarity, serve as its chosen language” and which films “attempt to make it turn back and reflect itself, intercept it, make it visible by revealing its mechanisms, by blocking them” (753). Through their examination, seven film categories are outlined. Clue falls into the “E” category, which is defined as “films which seem at first sight to belong firmly within the ideology and to be completely under its sway, but which turn out to be so only in an ambiguous manner” (75...
The overall appeal of the cinema to the masses was particularly evident during the interwar era. Audiences worldwide wanted to watch the variety of films, particularly American produced films, and they always went back. The visibly attractive and glamorous Hollywood movies often depicted the success of the underdog over unjust authority. Values of cash over culture were often a theme in the early American films and societies with restricted social mobility, such as those in Europe, could dream of such a triumph. The working class and unemployed could fantasise about wealth, fame and freedom which America as a country was portrayed as offering.
Sterritt, David. “HOLLYWOOD'S HOLOCAUST”. Tikkun 24.3 (2009): 60-62. Literary Reference Center. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.
Classic film noir originated after World War II. This is the time where post World War II pessimism, anxiety, and suspicion was taking the world by storm. Many films that were released in the U.S. Between 1939s and 1940s were considered propaganda films that were designed for entertainment during the Depression and World War II. During the 1930s many German and Europeans immigrated to the U.S. and helped the American film industry with powerf...
...e American Dream. Larry Ceplair and Englund stated in the book The Inquistion in Hollywood, “The destruction of the motion picture Left not only transformed the political atmosphere in Hollywood, but also adversely affected the kind of product which the studios turned out. “ In the early 20th century Hollywood reframed from producing politically controversial films in fear of becoming a target of McCarthy or the HUAC. Anti-communism influences the films produced, films portrayed communism as evil and immoral. The films during the cold war certainly portrayed the political storm between the progressive left and the conservative right. Films such as Ninotchka in 1939, showed anti-communism, guilty of Treason 1949, showed an attack against communism, exploiting the evils of communism was shown in Docudrama. The Red Menace in 1949 showed the immense threat f communism.
During World War 2 there was a movement from Adolf Hitler to make use of the generation to come. He wanted the youth to grow into strong individuals that would promote his ideals and passionately die for them, if necessary. I have chosen to research more into this youth movement. I want to find out more about the Hitler Youth. How it began, how it developed, how they were managed, as well as its ultimate demise nearing the end of World War 2 are all facets I would like to know. Let’s begin with the first showing of a youth movement in Germany.
A variety of films were created during the Great Depression era. For the most part, the films created between 1929 and 1940 featured a better life. Although the Great Depression took a huge toll on many other industries, the film industry still managed to make large profits compared to other businesses. All these films were produced during the same time period however, they all provide different details about life during this time period; specifically, they provide a different look on how women were treated in the 1930s. Such movies include Room Service, Modern Times, and The Public Enemy. Every film is different from the next, though many have several similarities. Modern Times and Public Enemy are similar to each other because of how they feature women, while Room Service is completely different. In Room Service, women were portrayed as equal to man; while in Modern Times, no women were featured as workers in the factory.
In the early years of narrative cinema there was little pressure on filmmakers for the ‘evolution of film forms before nickelodeons’ (Salt, 1990, pp31) as cinema neither became a mass nor high cultural product and was still a novelty but ‘Production companies’ profits were based principally on the sales of longer fiction films’ in the later years (Musser, 1990, pp256) so focus was made for the production of popular narratives so I will show how the early development of narrative evolved from trick films to complex narrative. I will analyse the short film Mary Jane’s Mishap (1903, Smith) and an extract from the seminal The Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W.Griffith).
The Holocaust was a state sponsored, systematic, mass genocide of around six million Jews that started in 1933. The Holocaust was initially fueled by the thought by the German Nazi’s that Germans with blonde hair and blue eyes were superior over any other group that did not match up to the Germans appearance wise.. With the Jewish people generally not fitting the so called perfect racial and physical criteria, Jews were persecuted by the Nazis. The Nazi leader , Adolf Hitler was the poster man of the campaign against the Jews. Hitler is well known for his “ toothbrush ” moustache and his responsibility of the Holocaust. Hitler and his fellow German leaders used the term “The Final Solution” to disguise their ultimate plan for total Jewish annihilation. To accomplish Hitler’s mission for Jewish extinction, Hitler had Jews taken to concentration camps that ranged from Germany and Poland to Ukraine and all the way back to France. Concentration camps served two main purposes. To dehumanize and to demoralize. Concentration camps were meant to make the Jewish people so desensitized and so fearful that they would never think to rise up in rebellion. Jews were taken to concentration camps for mainly three reasons alone. To be killed, to be laborers, or to be held before being killed. One particular camp in itself had over one million casualties, the same camp is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable and commonly talked about concentration camps even in the modern world today. That particular camp is known by the name of Auschwitz.
Films are necessary in our time period because the human eye can articulate the message intended through sight allowing visual imagination to occur. In the book, world 2 by Max Brooks, he creates a character by the name Roy Elliot who was a former movie director. Roy Elliot manages to make a movie titled “Victory at Avalon: The Battle of the Five Colleges” and some how it goes viral. Similarly, Frank Capra’s film, “Why we Fight” expresses a sense of understanding the meaning of wars. Films do not inevitably portray truth because they display what the film director views as important and beneficial for people to know.
Fyne, Robert. The Hollywood propaganda of World War II. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1994. Print.
FREE I-PAD!!! Now that I have your attention: Changes throughout history have always marked literary revolutions. The greater the change to the world, the more literature is affected, and there are fewer bigger changes in the course of history than World War II, the catastrophic result of a mentally sick group pursuing an equally sick dream. Hitler’s rise to and career in power resulted in major lifestyle changes that influenced literature published after World War II.
It was not until the mid 1930s that the brutish dictator truly recognized the potential power of media, where in 1935 a special funding was given to the production of Italian films which was used to open up film institutions like the ‘Centro Sperimenale di Cinematografia’ (CSC) film school, and ‘Cinecitta’ (Cinema City) studios in 1937 (Ruberto and Wilson, 2007). The development of these institutions sparked the appearance of early sound cinema, specializing in genres such as comedies, melodramas, musicals and historical films, but were all categorized as ‘propaganda’ and ‘white telephone’ films by many critics due...
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
Morality and the Media- A paper by Zeba Warsi, PGDJ183, Asian College of Journalism. Page 6