Hitler's Hollywood

In 105 minutes Ruediger Suchsland's 'Hitler's Hollywood' provides a startling retrospective of German cinema under the skillfull hand of Hitler's propaganda mage who was Josef Goebbels. As Reichminister for Propaganda and National Enlightenemnt, he had total control of cinema, radio, press and theatre. Evil genius that he was, he had a deep intuitive understanding of mass psychology, and in 'Hitler's Hollywood' we see a large swathe of Nazi controlled films from 1933-to 1945, when the first Oscar winner Emil Jannings was in the midst of staring in a film. With great intelligence, we also see how the Nazis through talented film makers out did Hollywood in romantic comedies, musicales and extolling the 'virtues' of the 'master race' in physical beauty. And yet, the dark eyed Swedish singer Zarah Leander appeared in musicales with military themes, or the German penchant for exotic Slavs or Gypsies. And yet, her career in post war Europe, there she was with a number one hit 'Wunderbar', sung in English. Her sultry, deep throat voice still even today has not lost its mystery and allure. [See, YouTune]. Hans Detlef Sierck's 'La Habanera' made her a star and a household name. Sierck remade himself after the war, and much lionised in Hollywood as Douglas Sirk. There he was the masterly eye behind luscious romantic films like 'Magnificent Obsession' and 'All Heaven Allows'. He honed his technique at the Ufa Studios and theatre, and the influence of Goebbels ideas found its way in Hollywood, perhaps. Popular singers like Hans Albers who sang of and longed for the South Seas, transitioned to a postwar career without a hiccup. Suchsland does make a seamless cloth of Nazi cinema from the 1930s to the change of fortunes of defeat in Russia and the collapse of the Third Reich. Films became more realistic, less romantic and cotton candy. One thing remained a red thread: anti-Semitism. 'Jud Suess' by Van Harlan, with his wife, Krista Soederbaum, is an infamous anti-Semitic film that pulls no punches as an odious film, yet one extolling Nazi pathological hatred of Jews. And, he, too, survived the war, and continued to make film until his death in West Germany. Goebbels understood 'soft power', and German films flooded European markets as they did in America's ethnic picture houses that spoke to 'benign' anti-Semitism that flourished in Europe and the US. Even Ingrid Bergman as an ingenue appeared in a German film before she left for Hollywood. Suchsland script alludes to her guilt, which maght have been, and he repurchasing her guilt by playing Isle in 'Casablanca'? A reviewer cannot do justice to 'Hitler's Hollywood' but strongly suggest you go see it, and visually and emotionally and intellectually absorb the dazzling cross section of 'Hitler's Hollywood'. And this documentary is a cautionary tale of techniques that used today. 'Caveat emptor!'

Between the years of 1933-1945 approximately 1000 feature films were produced in Nazi Germany. And, considering who was in full control of that country at the time, it's actually surprising to find out how few of these films came even close to being overt Nazi propaganda in their subject matter.

From comedy, to romance, to fantasy, to musicals, and to so much more - This intriguing historical documentary takes a close-up look (through hundreds of film clips) at German cinema as it existed during the reign of terror of the Third Reich in Germany.

(*Note*) - As one closely watches this endless stream of film clips it is difficult to view any of them as being just "harmless entertainment" without wondering whether there existed some sort of insidious hidden message in the stories that were being told.

When the narrator started out by quoting Kracauer to the effect that cinema tells us what a nation is thinking, and then proposed to go through a dozen years of German films, from 1933 through 1945, to find proof of this, I winced. Doesn't a film tell you what the film makers were thinking?

While I have seen fewer than a hundred German films from this period, they have been a diverse bunch; certainly, you can prove any thesis you wish by cherry-picking which films you wish to highlight; and by the end, the film makers had done a lousy job of it. In any case, investigation is not to find confirmation of your theory. It's to find facts that support or disprove your hypothesis. This movie ignores the latter duty.

Even more, there are basic flaws in this view of German cinema in this period. After we discount the fact that people like Kracauer were working on old memories at the time they were writing, the view they offer of German film implies that all that German people looked at was German film. In reality, Hollywood -- America's Hollywood -- had siphoned off much of the talent and money of the industry in the 1920s and a good part of the movies that Germans saw when they went to the cinema were Hollywood movies. When they weren't, they were French and Scandinavian and even Soviet films. Movies were big International business. German film makers weren't showing their own works to a captive audience; Goebbels didn't have everything his own way. These producers were competing against Paramount and MGM and British International Pictures, and UFA couldn't distribute their movies to Chicago and Boise and Adelaide as easily as the competition.

As a result, German film makers often worked in fields that the big Hollywood studios didn't feel worth their effort. In the US, the smaller studios turned out B westerns. Those movies which the narrator claimed reflected the German zeitgeist? Could those be programmers that Louis B. Mayer thought wouldn't play in Peoria, and not worth Culver City's resources?

The movie makes a fuss of the peculiarities of German cinema, starting with their stars, all of whom seemed to me of types familiar from Hollywood or British film studios of the period; looking at clips of TRIUMPH OF THE WILL on the big screen, for the first time in a quarter century, while the narrator talked of the totalitarian use of bodies as geometric assemblies, I noticed their similarities to Busby Berkley shots from Warner Brothers musicals. Surely other people have made the connection before me! This was followed by clips from OLYMPIA. Those reminded me of Berkley's later work with Esther Williams.

In the end, this movie has interesting clips from dozens of movies, few of which I have seen. I want to see them. They look like good movies. Even with potential propaganda. We have spent far too many decades listening to what people who haven't seen them tell us what they mean, and convincing others of the same, as if every film is a unique event, every national cinema is completely walled off from every other throughout history, and this is what they mean to each and every one of us, ever and forever, amen.

No! Give us the opportunity, and we will look at them ourselves, and we will decide what they mean to us. This movie starts off talking about propaganda and mind control. The best way to control some one's mind is to slip him the 'right' answer before you ask him the question. Show me the films, not the clips. Then ask me what I think of them. If you want to tell me what you think of them later and why -- and 'why' does not mean "Kracauer says" -- we can have a bang-up argument about it. Hooray.

I found this enjoyable as a documentary movie study of the question of the Nazi use of cinema as propaganda. There is not much in the way of in-depth analysis of the topic, but for that to be well done you really need a book rather than a movie. People don't go to the movies to be lectured to for 90 minutes. The advantage of a film documentary over a book is that you get to see - and hear - what the German movies of that era were like. Enjoy this movie for that, and don't expect it to be a scholarly study as well.

My criticisms are minor.

1. I wish the movie had examined these movies in two parts: those from 1933-1940, before Germany was really at war and life started to get very hard in Germany, and then 1940-1945, when life got steadily harder for the Germans. I would have been interested to know if UFA's movies changed as life got harder.

2. This is not the fault of the movie as such. I watched the American version, which was well dubbed with a decent English-speaking narrator. However

a. the subtitles for the movie clips were in yellow, with no cartouche around them, so they were often hard to read, and

b. the narration was captioned (for the hard of hearing?), and that captioning was full of typos. I don't envy anyone hard of hearing who had to rely on them.

Both a and b could be corrected.

I had no idea about the propaganda movies. Many moviestars i recognized from movies when I was young, but didn't know anything about their past.