Nazi Film Melodrama

Author : Laura Heins
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252095022
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nazi Film Melodrama written by Laura Heins and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2013-09-16 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural productions in the Third Reich often served explicit propaganda functions of legitimating racism and glorifying war and militarism. Likewise, the proliferation of domestic and romance films in Nazi Germany also represented an ideological stance. Rather than reinforcing traditional gender role divisions and the status quo of the nuclear family, these films were much more permissive about desire and sexuality than previously assumed. Focusing on German romance films, domestic melodramas, and home front films from 1933 to 1945, Nazi Film Melodrama shows how melodramatic elements in Nazi cinema functioned as part of a project to move affect, body, and desire beyond the confines of bourgeois culture and participate in a curious modernization of sexuality engineered to advance the imperialist goals of the Third Reich. Offering a comparative analysis of Nazi productions with classical Hollywood films of the same era, Laura Heins argues that German fascist melodramas differed from their American counterparts in their negative views of domesticity and in their use of a more explicit antibourgeois rhetoric. Nazi melodramas, film writing, and popular media appealed to viewers by promoting liberation from conventional sexual morality and familial structures, presenting the Nazi state and the individual as dynamic and revolutionary. Some spectators objected to the eroticization and modernization of the public sphere under Nazism, however, pitting Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda against more conservative film audiences in a war over the very status of domesticity and the shape of the family. Drawing on extensive archival research, this perceptive study highlights the seemingly contradictory aspects of gender representation and sexual morality in Nazi-era cinema.

Author : Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 9781571133342
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nazi Cinema as Enchantment written by Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2006 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nazi regime did not merely terrorize its citizens into submission; it also seduced them by offering stability, a traditional value system, a sense of belonging, and hope of a better standard of living. Nazi cinema's popularity rested on its ability to express positive social fantasies and promote the enchantment of reality, so that one would want to share in the dream at any price. This is an interdisciplinary study, written for scholars and students in the fields of film studies, German studies, history, critical studies, and political science, that explores how cinema participated in the larger framework of everyday fascism. The book examines how five film 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. The book analyzes thirteen motion pictures, many of which are not well known to English-speaking audiences: Wunschkonzert, Die große Liebe, Tanz auf dem Vulkan, Damals, Die Degenhardts, Opfergang, Kautschuk, Robert und Bertram, Verklungene Melodie, Frauen für Golden Hill, Das Leben kann so schön sein, Der verzauberte Tag, and Via Mala. Based on exhaustive research in German archives, the book examines, in addition to the films themselves, articles from the propaganda ministry's official organ, Der deutsche Film, daily trade sheets, fan magazines, and even studio press packages for individual stars and films. Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien is Professor of German at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York.

Author : Antje Ascheid
Publisher : Temple University Press
ISBN 13 : 156639984X
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hitler's Heroines written by Antje Ascheid and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-22 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German film-goers flocked to see musicals and melodramas during the Nazi era. Although the Nazis seemed to require that every aspect of ordinary life advance the fascist project, even the most popular films depicted characters and desires that deviated from the politically correct ideal. Probing into the contradictory images of womanhood that surfaced in these films, Antje Ascheid shows how Nazi heroines negotiated the gender conflicts that confronted contemporary women.The careers of Kristina Soderbaum, Lilian Harvey, and Zarah Leander speak to the Nazis' need to address and contain the "woman question," to redirect female subjectivity and desires to self sacrifice for the common good (i.e., national socialism). Hollywood's new women and glamorous dames were out; the German wife and mother were in. The roles and star personas assigned to these actresses, though intended to entertain the public in a politically conformist way, point to the difficulty of yoking popular culture to ideology.

Author : Valerie Weinstein
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253040728
Total Pages : 307 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany written by Valerie Weinstein and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today many Germans remain nostalgic about "classic" film comedies created during the 1930s, viewing them as a part of the Nazi era that was not tainted with antisemitism. In Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany, Valerie Weinstein scrutinizes these comic productions and demonstrates that film comedy, despite its innocent appearance, was a critical component in the effort to separate "Jews" from "Germans" physically, economically, and artistically. Weinstein highlights how the German propaganda ministry used directives, pre- and post-production censorship, financial incentives, and influence over film critics and their judgments to replace Jewish "wit" with a slower, simpler, and more direct German "humor" that affirmed values that the Nazis associated with the Aryan race. Through contextualized analyses of historical documents and individual films, Weinstein reveals how humor, coded hints and traces, absences, and substitutes in Third Reich film comedy helped spectators imagine an abstract "Jewishness" and a "German" identity and community free from the former. As resurgent populist nationalism and overt racism continue to grow around the world today, Weinstein's study helps us rethink racism and prejudice in popular culture and reconceptualize the relationships between film humor, national identity, and race.

Author : Rolf Giesen
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476612692
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nazi Propaganda Films written by Rolf Giesen and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-09-11 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hitler and the Nazis saturated their country with many types of propaganda to convince the German citizenry that the Nazi ideology was the only ideology. One type of propaganda that the Nazis relied on heavily was cinematic. This work focuses on Nazi propaganda feature films and feature-length documentaries made in Germany between 1933 and 1945 and released to the public. Some of them were Staatsauftragsfilme, films produced by order of and financed by the Third Reich. The films are arranged by subject and then alphabetically, and complete cast and production credits are provided for each. Short biographies of actors, directors, producers, and other who were involved in the making of Nazi propaganda films are also provided.

Author : David Stewart Hull
Publisher : Touchstone
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Film in the Third Reich written by David Stewart Hull and published by Touchstone. This book was released on 1973 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Antje Ascheid
Publisher : Temple University Press
ISBN 13 : 9781566399838
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hitler's Heroines written by Antje Ascheid and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German film-goers flocked to see musicals and melodramas during the Nazi era. Although the Nazis seemed to require that every aspect of ordinary life advance the fascist project, even the most popular films depicted characters and desires that deviated from the politically correct ideal. Probing into the contradictory images of womanhood that surfaced in these films, Antje Ascheid shows how Nazi heroines negotiated the gender conflicts that confronted contemporary women.The careers of Kristina Soderbaum, Lilian Harvey, and Zarah Leander speak to the Nazis' need to address and contain the "woman question," to redirect female subjectivity and desires to self sacrifice for the common good (i.e., national socialism). Hollywood's new women and glamorous dames were out; the German wife and mother were in. The roles and star personas assigned to these actresses, though intended to entertain the public in a politically conformist way, point to the difficulty of yoking popular culture to ideology.

Author : Jaimey Fisher
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 1978829175
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book German Ways of War written by Jaimey Fisher and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-12 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German Ways of War explores the production of novel spaces and evocation of new affects in the war-film genre between the 1910s and 2000s. Beyond the conventional pairing of visuality and violence, war films combine mobility, landscape, territory, scales, and topological networks into "affective geographies" that interweave narratively-generated affect, space, and political processes.

Author : Christiane Schönfeld
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 162892375X
Total Pages : 721 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The History of German Literature on Film written by Christiane Schönfeld and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-06-15 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of German-language literature on film, beginning with pioneering motion picture adaptations of Faust in 1897 and early debates focused on high art as mass culture. It explores, analyzes and contextualizes the so-called 'golden age' of silent cinema in the 1920s, the impact of sound on adaptation practices, the abuse of literary heritage by Nazi filmmakers, and traces the role of German-language literature in exile and postwar films, across ideological boundaries in divided Germany, in New German Cinema, and in remakes and movies for cinema as well as television and streaming services in the 21st century. Having provided the narrative core to thousands of films since the late 19th century, many of German cinema's most influential masterpieces were inspired by canonical texts, popular plays, and even children's literature. Not being restricted to German adaptations, however, this book also traces the role of literature originally written in German in international film productions, which sheds light on the interrelation between cinema and key historical events. It outlines how processes of adaptation are shaped by global catastrophes and the emergence of nations, by materialist conditions, liberal economies and capitalist imperatives, political agendas, the mobility of individuals, and sometimes by the desire to create reflective surfaces and, perhaps, even art. Commercial cinema's adaptation practices have foregrounded economic interest, but numerous filmmakers throughout cinema history have turned to German-language literature not simply to entertain, but as a creative contribution to the public sphere, marking adaptation practice, at least potentially, as a form of active citizenship.

Author : Scott W. Klein
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190912138
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Modernist Cinema written by Scott W. Klein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Modernist Cinema, sixteen distinguished scholars in the field of the New Modernist Studies explore the interrelationships among modernism, cinema, and modernity. Focusing on several culturally influential films from Europe, America, and Asia produced between 1914 and 1941, this collection of essays contends that cinema was always a modernist enterprise. Examining the dialectical relationship between a modernist cinema and modernity itself, these essays reveal how the movies represented and altered our notions and practices of modern life, as well as how the so-called crises of modernity shaped the evolution of filmmaking. Attending to the technical achievements and formal qualities of the works of several prominent directors - Giovanni Pastrone, D. W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, F. W. Murnau, Carl Theodore Dreyer, Dziga Vertov, Luis Buñuel, Yasujiro Ozu, John Ford, Jean Renoir, Charlie Chaplin, Leni Riefenstahl, and Orson Welles - these essays investigate several interrelated topics: how a modernist cinema represented and intervened in the political and social struggles of the era; the ambivalent relationship between cinema and the other modernist arts; the controversial interconnection between modern technology and the new art of filmmaking; the significance of representing the mobile human body in a new medium; the gendered history of modernity; and the transformative effects of cinema on modern conceptions of temporality, spatial relations, and political geography.