Original subtitles

Watching old films means taking stock of your past.

Doctor? - Yes.

Anything missing?

No, I have everything.

Good, then have a think.

I'm thoroughly happy It couldh'! be better.

Then all's well.

Yes, indeed, gentlemen, We're nappy indeed

Because from now on 'five world belongs to us

Yes, indeed, genflemen

Worries are far away

We do what we enjoy

Whoever disturbs us Before he twigs it

We 5-�! have soft-seeped

Yes, indeed, genflemen

You can bet on 'rt

indeed, indeed, indeed!

Germany in the niddle of the 1930s.

At first sight, a peaceful country.

This is when my mother was born.

They were my fathefis childhood years.

Hitlefis domination had stabilised.

The effects of the economic crisis were invisible.

The unemployed had gone from the streets.

The regime's enemies had been silenoed or exiled

or arrested, or already murdered.

Jews were the scapegoats.

Outlawed and to be extenninated.

Most Germans who remained had adjusted themselves with the regime,

if they weren't already Hitler's supporters.

Gnema offered an additional distraction.

Nazi cinema was fantasy and a dream factory.

It wanted to be a second Hollywood. Hitler's Hollywood.

Attention!

Nazi dnema was theatrical,

illusionary.

It was bigger than life. It wanted at all costs to be monumental.

Emotion and spectacle; something for the heart and the eyes.

It was neafly always ambivalent.

She, too, first worked in Germany.

We barely know these films.

But there is no reason to look away.

They are better than their reputation.

Many are worth a second look.

A look that focuses on the details and disregards the surface message

without losing sight of it.

Many know more and disclose much more than they would admit.

The best of them are self-reflective

and reveal to us something beyond themselves.

What are these films about? What do they reveal? And conceal?

Nazi dnema was show business. Exaggerated. A spectacle.

It sometimes feels as if everything was just one big film.

All this is part of our collective memory.

All this lives on in our subconscious.

What does cinema know that we don't?

Let's take a look.

Just three clays after seizing power

the new Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, attended a film premiere

at the Ufa Palastin Befiin.

A submarine film shot during the Wei mar Republic

which stylised the Genhan fight in WWI as heroic self-sacrifice

and foreshadowed some of the central themes of Nazi propaganda:

camaraderie and duty as the cardinal rule,

the soldiers' collective as a meaningful unit.

Go down to 30 metres.

Sikenfly. No movement in the submarine.

And being prepared to sacrifice yourself for the fight to go on.

A film steeped in a mythical yearning for death.

Our lives no longer belong to us.

They're no bnger ours, Boehm'. Are they?

We have to go on for as long as there is still breath in us.

On the submarine, again and again,

unfit the dear Lord sets us free.

Sleep well, fellows.

The regime did not celebrate life,

but for the cult of death Hitler and his people always found

new and spectacular images.

The propaganda events of the annual memorial for the dead

at the Feldherrenhalle and the K�nigsplatz in Munich.

At the party celebrations, witch's sabbaths ofdehumanised masses.

Above all, in the magically illuminated dark of night,

where they felt most at home.

And also in their films.

Him was the Hitter regime's primary media of communicating with the masses.

I know...

Farewell.

What did these Germans dream about?

Nazi cinema seemed to be fascinated by death.

A number of films are drowning in scenes ofyeaming for death.

I can 'I see you.

Aeis!

Constant death sequences.

A Fasdst philosopher wrote of "being towards death".

It was in this glamorous mise-en-sc�ne of death,

that cinema came closest to the regime.

Every death was a happy death in Nazi cinema

and often absurdly kitsch.

"I do not want to die in vain.

I would love to perish on a hill of sacrifice

for the Fameriand.

To Need the Mood of my heart

for the Fameriand.

And heralds of victory descend.

We have won the battle.

Live on high, O Fafhefland.

And do not count the dead!

For you, sweet one! Not one too many has fallen.�

What kind of a nation was that

to need poets to be able to kill and to die?

Still five world does not collapse

It still carries on Still five world does not collapse

It will be gay again

It will be sky blue again.

What did these Germans dream about? They cleafly dreamt of idylls:

Of a safe Emily life. Of unspoilt nature.

Of a sound home.

Nazi cinema created an artificially perfect worid.

Traditionalism and entertainment.

What is striking about Nazi cinema is a total lack of irony.

Instead there's a rather forced cheerfulness.

That Gemwan laughter that the wofid was soon to feat

An era that, in retrospect, was not very amusing,

appears in films

as a time of constant, if rather strained joviality.

The key figure of Nazi film politics was Joseph Goebbels.

The Propaganda Minister, "patron of German film".

The highest ranking PR man of the totalitarian state.

He controlled radio, press, and every area of art.

Cinema was most important to him. He made it his personal aff-ain

The Third Reich was unthinkable without propaganda,

and propaganda without film.

There were no more auteur-filmmakers.

There was one real auteur in the Nazi state:

it was Joseph Goebels himself I

He controlled scripts, cast lists, finished films, auditions.

Goebbels vigorously stamped his own style on the regime.

To some extent, the whole Third Reich is Goebbels' film, Goebbels' oeuvre.

Goebbels said,

�Propaganda is an an form.

Propaganda has just one objective,

and that objective is to conquer the masses.

Alluring people into an idea so in the end fivey are capfivated by it,

and can no longer free fivemselves from it."

Political synchronisation. This meant that over 2,000 film professionals

were banned fi'om working and driven out of the film industry.

Many lefl Germany.

Maflene Dietrich, who was already working in Hollywood, left for good.

Fritz Lang also left Gemwany despite the new regime's flattery.

Georg VWIhelm Pabst also left. But he was unlucky.

In 1939, his crossing to America was already booked,

he visited his mother with his French passport.

War broke out and Pabst couldn't return.

So he had to film in Genhany and arrange himself with those in power

The result of this balandng act was "Paraoelsus".

We're in a madhouse! Come on.

What is propaganda? Propaganda is enchantment, not force.

Its objective is to bring society in line and to mobilise it

through mass mania.

Pabst shows a Mediaeval wofld removed from the Gemwan present

yet not, in fact, so dissimilar

Pabst shows total mobilisafion,

a mass all moving in trance-like rhythm.

For a moment, they seem to be completely unified with their leader

A representative of reason stands in juxtaposition,

feeling he has landed in a madhouse.

He fights against the mania as well as ideologues

and against death.

�Propaganda is totalitarian, regressive and nihitisfic.

You remove any remaining substance from meaningful terms,

and use their shell to advertise with an emicing appearance.

From beneath the tumult of propaganda a skull appears."

Since 1933,

the film theorist Siegfried Kracauer had been living in exile,

as were his fiiends, Adomo and Benjanin.

"Critical theory".

In exile, Kracauer wrote his great historical work,

"From Caligari to Hitlel", on cinema in the Wei mar Republic.

He also wrote an important but little-known study

about totalitarian propaganda.

According to Kracauei; cinema is a seismograph ofits time,

an indicator of the cultural subconscious of an era.

Gnema knows something that we don't know.

It has an undeflying meaning that can be exposed.

If that is true, and we believe it is,

what does Nazi cinema reveal about the Third Reich and its people?

What is the effect of their myths and narratives,

their blatant lies and hidden truths on today's Genhan cinema?

What does German cinema tell, that we have forgotten?

The first effective, if very obvious, propaganda film

was "Hiflerjunge Quex".

Hans Steinhoff's film tells of Quex, a working class boy.

It is set at the end of the Wei mar Republic.

The chaos of the images and the musical references

represent the chaos of a democracy on the brink of dvil wan

Music plays a central role.

Sing!

People, listen to the call...

Cam you sing?

H! teach you.

People, hear... - People, hear the...

The cal! for the last battle.

People, listen to the call...

The film works as a psychographics of fascism:

the lower class's poverty, the weakness of the father-figures,

the father-son conflict

in which the film completely takes the son's side.

You see, there are things going on

that you don'! understand.

But us proletarians, we have to watch ourselves.

That's 'n.

And now, you youngsters have to hem us.

You have to stand by us old ones.

Or we won? manage it.

Quex quesfions the wild and nonchalant life of the Young Communists

and is attracted by the security of the other side.

You don't even have a giflfflend. - What's the point?

Come on. Don't be like that!

The forest becomes the place of initiation and music its means.

The idea of youth is sensuously, erotically enhanced:

adventure and secrecy.

Where shouki I go? - What a question'.!

To your father, of course, where you belong.

That is the very question. Where does the boy belong?

I had very good parents.

But at 15! Ran away.

Thousands have run away

Then they were rascals. - Youngsters are wonderfuf!

Youngsters have always been a big mystery.

They ran away to trappers, to gypsies.

The great pull of adventure has always called.

Where does a boy belong?

Pure temptation.

Open it then!

Quex finds recognition through the Hitler Youth uniform.

You've all gone mad!

There, Hem?!

Here's a mirror.

But it proved fatal.

Superb.

A good sacrificial death.

Our flag is fluttering at us.

Kracauer wrote about the film,

�A ctear criticism oi eartier, crass and exaggerated attempts

to please the new rulers.

The communists are portrayed not as opponents but as comrades led astray.

At the end, the ghostly columns of SA soldiers marching

seem to emerge from the dead Hem,'

as if he were resurrected in their ranks.�

The politidsafion of the aesthetic

was followed by the aestheticisafion of politics.

Leni Riefenstahl.

Her documentary of the Nuremberg Rally,

commissioned by Hitter himself,

became the prime example of film propaganda.

Skilful choreography of attention, initially as a pop concert.

Hitler is the star of a politics that's become a mise-en-sc�ne.

Shown only from behind, his effect is seen in the faces of his fans.

And the director cleaiiy gives this effect an erotic touch.

Faces in ecstasy.

Models of Fasdsm as if sculpted by Arno Breken

Then, as a second step

the film makes clear, half-unconsciously,

that the Nazi political show is also a sort of religious service

in which the Fiihrer preaches

in imploring tones to his congregation.

�Which represents an Germany.

And we'd now like you German boys

and German girls

to take in what we hope

Germany to be one day.

We want to be one nation

and you, my young people, will now become this nation.

finally, the third step.

Dissolving the individual into geometric confonnity.

Musical images. Counterpoints, rhythms.

Only one remains.

No regime has ever celebrated itself with such pomp.

People still feared chaos and anarchy.

This was his reply.

Theatrical spectade. Ceremony. Ritual.

Grandeur The mechanics of the masses.

And what Kracauer had described years before: the ornament of the masses.

A chorus line.

Like the revue films that followed, Riefenstahl showed order,

visually conveying synchronisation. The nation was brought into line.

Spades down'.!

Germany.

�History became theatre.

Everything was designed for the convenience of the camera.

In "Triumph of the Will" the image is ho lohger simply the record of reality.

Reality has been constructed to serve the image.�

A revolt against the modem which used the most modern media.

A movement-regime.

The order of a mobilised human block,

a constant synchronized movement.

Future cannon fodder

�RiefensmhVs films are still effective because,

among other reasons, their longings are still felt.

And their content is a romantic ideal to which many continue to be attached.

A belief in gurus and in the occult.

'five exaltation of community

does not preclude the search for absolute leadership.�

Riefenstahl's Olympiad-film promoted an ideal of the body

which had an impact on daily life.

An entire state in search of the ideal body.

I almost forgot - What?

Shah we go? - A new film?

Over 1,000 films were produced in the Third Reich.

Over 500 were comedies and musicals.

Around 300 melodramas, the rest were adventure and detective films.

Some surprises too.

There were well-made films, great aesthetics and beautiful moments,

but there was no innocence.

Hundreds of millions went to the cinema, a place for escapism,

but as well for indoctrination.

Control reigned here too.

A film show was to be seen in full.

Preceding the feature film was the culture film

and the weekly newsreel which Him Minister Goebbels himself released.

�n Rome the 14th mtemaflonal Sports Week.

tn the polo tournament Prince Louis Atexander and his team had a strong win.

The Prince received the Geld Cup from his fiancee, Princess hm.

Ufa was the major Gemwan film studio.

Its owners had helped Hitler to power.

Founded in 1917, the company quickly adapted

and strove to hit the right tone for the new state of things.

In 1937 Ufa was taken over by the state.

One by one, other film companies were shut down

and in 1942 everything became one state-run monopoly: Ufafilm.

A typical stylistic device: outrageously daring dissolves.

Along with multiple dreamy cross-fades,

they created an unrealistic atmosphere

in which everything became relative.

Kaleidoscopic images of ambivalence.

Picture puzzles.

The borders are blurred with ambiguity,

they become invisible, not only the borders between dream and reality...

If the gentleman would like to come closer.

Not a word of truth in n'. Iris ab' nonsense.

Nazi cinema itself exhibited its illusionism.

Here the cinema really became a dream factory.

The most typical genre was the revue film. Like this one.

"Talkie-operettas" was the name of these hybrid musical adaptafions.

Enjoyable capers of fanciful people.

Opium for a distracted public.

Everything is unifonnity and in lockstep.

The revue films exhibit order

and visualize synchronisafion.

People don't like to be alone at night

Because love in the moonlight...

The Hungarian Marika R�kk, a foreigner like so many of the stars.

On the one hand and the other And more

Because people need A little bit of love

She and her films were a world of their own.

Roboflike and unbreakable. A woman of rubber

In the Third Reich everyone was pirouetfing,

but none on the scale of the spinning top Marika R�kk.

How many pirouettes did Rtikk do in the Third Reich?

It made the audience dizzy.

You have to be able to play the piano

Whoever plays the piano Has luck with women...

The other revue star, Johannes Heesters, a Dutchman and heart-throb.

Period dramas were popular

Great Germans in unifomw.

Then the melodramas: love conflicts about minor gender trouble

and huge sacrifice.

The main protagonists were usually women.

DO NOT WALK ON THE SAND HERE

Other genres shimmered with exotic fantasies

like this lavish film of a Kafl May novel, "Across the Desert".

A giaouf!

A giaouf!

A German brings order to the Orient.

A Gemwan "Lawrence of Arabia", 30 years before David Lean.

There were few other genres.

No horror films, no fantasy.

They were not lost on audiences but too close to reality.

The Third Reich itself was pure horror, pure fantasy.

And in Germany, cinema and reality were never a good march.

In a totalitarian state, propaganda is total as well.

The only sci-fi film in the Third Reich: "Gold ".

A pale imitation of "Metropolis",

which exuded a remarkably morbid atmosphere.

"Metropolis" star Brigitte Helm played the lead.

Here, she even speaks.

Don 'I do anything to hurt my father

I'm not saying it for him.

And starring Hans Albers. He could do no wrong.

Fair hair, blue eyes. Born in 1891, Hans Albers was a hero of the dnema,

but a breezy, non-tragic hero.

One of the few German stars with a twinkle in his eye

and even some irony.

�t was great between us two

Butsadly sadly...

A rogue, an anti-Nazi type even though Germanic.

He was like the sun god of Gemwan dnema.

He was also an action hero in Nazi dnema.

Physical and convincing

and with a fresh cheekiness that he used to attack the authorifies,

he brought an almost American swing plus a street-feel to the screen.

An adventurer

And a legend, already in his lifetime.

Hitler's Hollywood was not an auteufis dnema, but a dnema of stars.

This is where the German dream factory did work.

NofioeaHy, many of them came from abroad.

Foreignness brought with it desirable glamour

An international and an exotic touch.

In that, it also resembled Hollywood.

Actors in the Third Reich had some of the best-paying jobs.

Their fees ran to high five-figure sums for each film.

In addition, from 1938, on Hitler's personal command,

40 percent of income could be off-set as advertising expenses.

What was expected in return was clear

Gnema was part of the total-art-work of the state.

But itwas hard to deal with the loss of the exiles.

Goebbels looked for a new Garbo.

Swedes were in.

Kristina Stiderbaum.

Zarah Leander

And Ingrid Bergman!

At 23, this was her only role in the Third Reich.

"The Four Companions" is one of the most interesting films of this era.

Images of Beflin, in the New-Sobriety-style.

Capriccios of the city.

Business interests some first.

We four.

It's about four modem women,

graphic designers who want to set up a business after their studies.

At first, they fail in a man's wofid, then gain success,

then fail again, as they realise they prefer marriage after all.

Conservatism wins

but nevertheless changing role models and other options appear

for a long shining film moment.

If only you knew how good you look in an apron.

Would you give me a couple of bread rolls for me to remember you by?

Would you like some sausages too?

K! May.

My Pleasure!

Bergman later wanted to sweep this under the carpet.

She said she dedined a tea invitation from Goebbels.

That was all she would say.

Six years later Bergman played an anti-fascist in "Casablanca".

It was also a sort of atonement.

As I stand here Is how I am, yes sir!

Zarah Leander, the first great star of the Nazi films.

She was meant to be the new Garbo.

Deep voice, dark hail;

foroed cheerfulness

in melancholic, melodramatic scenarios.

Her songs were of a lost homeland, unfulfilled longing

and miracles that might still oocur

A femme htale, albeit a more conventional one.

There was you, only you.

Imitations of life that work like drugs.

They slowly seep into the audience's subconscious

and dispense their sweet magic.

Their power, the power of melancholy.

This star was created by Detlev Sierck, later to be the emigre Douglas Sirk,

having had a smooth ride for years in Nazi dnema.

He wenton to shoot his melodramas in Hollywood.

Puerto Rico, a seductive and dangerously ambivalent place

between joie de vivre and feverishness.

I'm alone in five night

My soul wakes and listens

A dream made of wishes and mania, desire and loss.

An agonizing story full of neurotic characters.

Leander plays an unhappy housewife

trapped in the golden cage that is her own house.

The wind has told me a song

Plague and capitalism.

...of forfune indescribably beautiful.

It's lovely. I'll never leave.

Never? - Not ever.

The steamer waves tomorrow. - 1 sham be on it.

Are you mad?

You and the rest of our odd high society,

what do you know about nature?

You're behaving like a wild one!

Like a wild one indeed!

Come!

The desire forvvild passion.

Come!

Ah...

The wind has told me a song

Of a heart

That I am missing

The wind...

A rather crazy film about a woman who always wants what she doesn't have.

You see,

ten years ago, I turned back, just as the steamer was leaving.

Back then, I thought the island was paradise.

Then, later, I thought it was hell.

And now? - Now...

I don'! regret it.

Regrets are always foolish.

"La Habanera" is about yearning for the tyrant, and hating him.

She wants to get rid of him

but as soon as he has gone, she wants him back.

Sierck's film language never shies away from the obvious.

It was filmed on Tenerife in the midst of the Spanish Civil Wan

The most elegant wild character of Gemwan dnema was Ferdinand Marian.

In all his roles there is a longing for death.

Charismafic, suffering,

torn, demonic,

seductive, sensitive.

The lead in the anfi-Senific film, "Jew Suess"

would later be the downfall of this most modern, naturalistic Gennan actor

He never got over it.

What sort of a person are you? - 1 have a good heart.

h past needs to be uncovered.

Panic hovers over us, gentlemen.

Do you know what That means?

Panic amongst two million people?

Panic and reason of state, press censorship and secret police.

A lady vanishes, in the niddle of Paris.

The paper has been banned. The police have closed the printers.

The daughter has a rude awakening that becomes a nightmare.

Her search for her mother is in vain. She hits a wall of silence.

Madeleine Lawrence? - No.

No.

No, Madame, she's not here.

A film of uncertainty

in the otherwise ovefly certain German producfions.

A great film noir, made in Nazi Gennany.

Iris your mothers fatheriand that renders you this service.

In the end she gives in, she has no choice.

That is the message of this film of devotion.

It was 'veit Harlan's breakthrough piece.

Hafian was an auteur,

a filmmaker whose films had its specific handwriting.

But he was also a National Socialist, whether from opportunism or conviction

is irrelevant.

His commitment to the Nazis is integral to his work.

It cannot be narrowed down to just a part of it.

No other filmmaker has made such perfidious films at such a high level.

The daughter whose wofld is turned upside down in "Verwehte Spuren"

was played by the Swede, Kristina Stiderbaum.

Already in this film Veit Harian gave his radiant new star a big scene,

a timeless film moment where dnema celebrates itself

and its tempting power as a factory of dreams.

Seraphine.

Femand.

A year later, Hafian divorced and manied S�derbaum.

In all further films he made during The Third Reich

she played the lead.

S�derbaum had the perfect mix of innocence, purity and tearful devofion

to fit the German ideal of the time.

She was the perfect embodiment of the Nazi perversion:

a Nordic blond who in her husband's films

was always pre-destined to self-sacrifice.

Sbderba um became known as the "Reich's floating corpse"

because she exposed the necrophilic core of the Nazis.

Male fantasies.

At the end of the 1930s, Hitter's dominance had stabilised.

It seemed safe. To both friend and foe. He was the wofid's amazement.

Heinz Riihmann, the "common man" of NS cinema.

Seemingly invincible, accommodating to the point of opportunism,

but always visible.

Riihmann conveyed Nazi values with humour

A cheering-up-machinery

which created the illusion that things weren't so bad.

His characters were unique.

Infantile characters, adults like children and youngsters.

This infaniilism, the longing for being a child again,

successful regression, was a feature of many Nazi films.

Did you fly here? - �was no distance.

Where is your aeropiane? - I parked it on the market square.

�The effectiveness of propaganda

demonstrates one of the chief characteristics of modern masses.

They don'! believe in anything visible,

not in the reahty of their own experiences.

They do hot trust their eyes aha' ears, but only their imaginations.

What convinces masses are not facts, not even invented facts,

but only the consistency of the illusion."

In private, Hitler watched Mickey Mouse, Frank Kapra, musicals.

This led to a series of attempts to americanise Gennan dnema

and to copy Hollywood.

The closest that German comedy ever came lo Hollywood was with "Gl�ckskindefii

Goebbels' remake of "It Happened One Night" is pure escapism.

A screwball comedy with slapstick, punchline ping pong

and sparkling dialogue.

And if I found a fortune I'd just gobble it up

I woukinfi need to go to work

The final major success with Lilian Harvey and Wily Fritsch,

the dream team of the eafly talkies in the Weimar Republic.

I wish I wasn't so

But ifs no good wishing 1 am as 1 am

Harvey soon went into exile

and fled from the Gestapo to Hollywood.

Swing was forbidden, Maiiene Dietrich in exile.

Nevertheless, there were films like this with jolly American music

and with references to Marlene Dietrich.

A revue as in the distant 1920s.

"Wir machen Musik" delightfully combines comedy and revue.

This is an attempt at screwball comedies, at something different.

K�utner-melancholy with a hintof Lubiisch.

To stick with our popumr comparisons, the penny is slow to drop.

Today I see the world in a rosy light

Everyone wears a smile on their face

Everything Jocks like under a charm...

Acivilian film. No militaristic, upright, uptight men.

� have you and you have me What more do we want?

There are henpecked men and self-assured women

who are equal in the gender trouble.

I am young and you are young And the world is our oyster

Everything is easier to achieve if we stick together

From today my fife has been restored

Akmg with the apartment You have refreshed my heart

I have you and you have me What more do we need?

You can admit it. Ne need to be embarrassed.

A charming Mme woman who is afraid and is ashamed to be afraid

who admits that she's ashamed she '5 afraid

is the most perfect woman a man could wish for.

!'m sorry to disappoint you.

I'm generally very daring, brave and strong.

Why do you want to be like that?

You see, that suits you tar better.

Ne, leave 'n here.

Perhaps fivis heroic woman will scream again and then...

Then V� show you how brave lam. - AMul.

Show me. - What?

What you look like when you're brave.

Oh, God, that's awful. It's all wrong. No.

Dom I wok brave? - Yes, but it doesn't suit you.

Far too many wrinkles. A� your charm has gone.

No, a woman's face must be soft. Tender and feminine.

Ilike you much better weak. - But I don'! like myself like that.

Because you cam see how attractive you are then.

Can we change the subject? - Of course. To the weather or so?

Guam? Grfimgens,

a genius, a wonderful actor of stage and screen.

Film director and scintillating theatre boss in Beriin.

In the Third Reich, he was G�ring's favourite,

not Goebbels, who hated him

but used his charisma.

A Janus-headed artist between collaboration and resistance.

Klaus Mann's roman a clef

seized on Gustaf Griindgens starring role, "Mephisto".

You're in danger. - Always.

Don'! you love danger too?

Griindgens definitely did.

Contemporaries described him as having the guts

to overstep boundaries in both directions.

When people go to bed In a pointed nightcap

And entreat their king to protect them

We slip festively dressed Behind the taverns

Dawdling along under the street lamps

The nightisn'! only for sleeping

The night is when it a� happens

A one-man show, totally reliant on Grllindgens' charismatic performance.

The lyrics are of note.

When morning finafly dawns

Behind dark panes

And the men without a bride Stay side by side

They hatch bombs out of conversations Held in whispers

Rebellion, rebellion in the catacombs

"Rebellion" was clean

"Bombs out of conversations" was ambiguous.

Goebbels pemwitt/ed the film

but the record and the score of the song were banned.

Good heavens'. - Look at Debereau.

Are you crazy?

Watch out!

Don'! use your sword, but your verses. They're more effective.

In the film, he throws down a rain of flyers

as Hans and Sophie Scholl would do later in Munich, and be beheaded for it.

Resistance and danger

How do you assess such a film?

It shows an arfist challenging the authorifies

and propagandises the artist's self-assertiveness.

Scenes of a successful revolution in Nazi dnema.

Was that resistance?

Or did they do it to keep people in a good mood?

The artists, like court jesters, could more easily speak the truth,

but at court.

The night ism only for sleeping The night is when it a� happens

World War II begins

Viith the outbreak of war the cinema grew in propaganda

as well as in entertainment. There were many films oflegitimsation.

Hlms which legiiinised some over-stepping of limits:

war, genocide, the killing of the disabled.

"Big men", that meant major Gemwan men,

were now in demand.

Veit Haflan set the tone in "Der Herrscher"

a reworking of the Gemart Hauptmann play

in accordance with the Ministry of Propaganda

obviously aimed at the Krupp family.

The capitalist as leader

Our purpose is to work for five nation.

Thatis the ruling principle of my work.

Everything else is secondary.

Costume and sets immersed the viewers in the joy

of going back in time emotionally releasing them from the present.

A strategy of forgetting that no one could fully escape.

It was all far-removed from historical reality anyway.

All these films, these "big German men", were bigger than life.

Whoever was born to be leader; needs no other teacher

than his own genius.

My sons, what is the answer?

Are great minds born or formed?

Formed, Your Highness.

Born, Your Highness,

not formed.

Let's discuss that.

Genius, is not born of its mother but of the entire nation.

Excellent.

But the state, through its schooling, first points the way

to perfection.

No. Genius, abandoning imperfect scnoom,

can, with its own resources, find its way to perfection.

Aestheficized genius, animal, superhuman, barbarian.

Genius can do no wrong and it legifimises the amoral.

Another form of legifimisation was offered by the film "Ich klage an"

directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner.

He perfidiously combines the theme of killing

as wished for by a terminally ill person with the murder of a mentally ill person

and other severely disabled people, including many children.

Fm so calm now.

So hHDDY-

The happy death is euthanasia.

I loved my wife very much.

Ulfirrmately, it is all a courtroom drama.

Goodbye, Franziska.

At school they said we don'! have a proper father. What do you think?

It's rubbish.

Cinema in the war was increasingly aimed at a female audience.

It dealt with women's fantasies and nightmares.

Helmut K�utnefis "Auf Wiedersehen, Franziska!"

was the first of many 'holiday films' in which a man moves out

to learn fear and to teach fear to the wofld.

And a loyal and steadfast woman waits for him at home.

Franziska, I can'! leave you again.

You did for years looking for adventure.

Now when it means something, you can't?

THE GERMAN NEWSREEL

NEWS FROM THE FRONT FROM THE PROPAGANDA UNIT

June 1940, Gennan Occupation of France

France was crushed in 39 days.

Germany knows that this victory was won

thanks to the leadership of brave sokliers and exceflent organisation.

A view of the Eiffel Tower.

Left of the fuhrer is Professor Speer.

A few days ago, Chamber/in declared to an American

that Engtand and her atties feet they are custodians of civitisation

fighting mediaevzfl barbarianism.

So these are the custodians of culture.

And these are the barbarians.

Where rats appear, they bring destruction.

Barbarianism was legifimised in film.

The y are shrewd, cowardly and cruel and usually appear in large swarms.

In tne animal world, they represent insidious and subterranean desmiction.

No different to the Jews amongst people.

There is a direct line fi'om racism to anti-Semitism and murder.

Before the Wannsee conference,

Goebbels produced an anti-Semitic propaganda film.

"Der ewige Jude" was a commissioned work,

directed by Fritz Hipplel; Goebbels' adjutant.

"Der ewige Jude" can be seen as a sort of official announcement

of Hitler's decision for the Holocaust.

Jewish spirit and biood wiii no ionger contaminate the German people.

Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler,

Germany has raised the banner against the eternal Jew.

Europe cannot be at peace until the Jewish quesikan is settled.

If the intemationzfl financizfl Jewry were to succeed

in driving nations into another world war,

it will result not in a Jewish victory

but in the annihiiation of the Jewish race in Europe.

But this anti-Senitic incitement to murder took other forms as well,

such as buflesque comedies.

Are you all bridled up?

What do you mean? is this a circus? - We 5! See when the soiree begins.

Well?

From the front you took tike Catherine the Great.

And from behind as fit as Napoleon.

Don'! mention Napoleon. He was anti-Semitic.

That's why he am went broke in Moscow.

Here in Frankfurt we have our head office.

In Gibraltar, there's England.

And what is there?

Jerusalem.

Want to set up a branch there too?

The reverse, my dear man.

We are the branches of Jerusalem.

And historical dramas.

Such films prove that an ugly secret understanding existed

between Nazi anti-Semitism and the rest of the Gemwans

who both knew and wanted to supress it.

The most disgraceful Gennan film was by Veit Harlan.

He denied responsibility for it.

"Jew Suess" in 1940 prepared the way for the "Fmal Solution"

allegedly kept secret from the Gemwan people by those responsible.

The film shows two types of Jews.

The sort in the ghetto, the stereotype, dirty and ridiculous.

Eight different roles were played by the same actor, Werner KrauB.

And the assimilated Jew.

Attractive, powerful, superficially fitting in,

urbane, ambivalent, dangerous.

People appear none know how to deal wim a great man.

But you do know? - Well, yes.

I mean, I don'! know

but I should be glad if I could say

I am a loyal servant to my master.

Again and again boundaries are crossed.

Jews, dressed in rags, like refugees, make their way through city gates.

Suess himself, blurs boundaries.

He takes no notice of any limits of territory, status, cities or gender

He penetrates everything.

He wants something that is not his

and if he doesn't get it he takes it with force.

Stop mat'.!

Would the lady like to dance now?

No, not anymore.

It's outside. Start!

Then remove it.

No.

Lei me have it back.

The rape as sado-masochisfic fantasy.

To make his victim submit, Suess has her man tortured.

The death of the victim provokes an uprising.

Jew!

Jew!

The evil one's mask is torn away.

There he sits, the unholy Jew.

In months of trial all he has done is lie.

Lei me live. I want to live.

I want to live!

The film was shown in more than 15 European countries.

It was shown to all SS-teams, on Himnler's orders

as eafly as the winter of 1940, so before the attack on the USSR.

It was a call for murder with the means of dnema.

Hundreds of love letters were sent to Marian by female fans.

They complained about the "poor Jew Suess".

"Wunschkonzert" was one of the most successful films.

An afternoon's entertainment which starts at the 1936 Olympics,

the honeymoon for the regime and the people.

Nice memories.

Excuse me, miss. I have a spare ticket. Perhaps I can be of service to you.

Here come the Germans.

Pure propaganda.

A love story and a war, feature film and newsreel images

merge seaniessly into one another

What's happened? - 1 have to leave.

You don 'I need to worry about hurting me, but...

Inge, you have to trust me.

You are to be my wife.

Is that really still so? - Inge.

Classical German music and soldiers' songs,

an uncut scene.

This film was so successful

because it related to people's experience.

Plus the Nazi's biggest propaganda programme,

the weekly Wartime Radio Request Programme

with its singing movie stars Heinz Rllihmann and Marika Rtikk,

was included in the storyline.

That can'! shock a seaman Fear not, Rosemarie

We won'! let our life sour

Fear not, Rosemarie

And when the whole world shakes

And the world becomes unbalanced

That can'! shock a seaman Fear not, Rosemarie

One night in May

So much can happen

You can Jose your heart

And it goes one, two, three

One night in May

You can dream so sweetly

Sifting under trees

AH sons of things can happen.

The most infamous and most successful coup offilmic Nazi war propaganda.

NI branches of the armed forces appear at the end of this film.

Give me your hand

Your white hand

Farewell, my darling

Farewell, farewell

For we sail

For we sail

For we sail to take on England

England

Ilse Werner, the most modern woman in Nazi dnema.

The daughter of a Dutchman.

The only Nazi actress who could really have made it to Hollywood.

In 1938 her father turned down a Hollywood contract for her with MGM.

She had charisma.

Sporty, slim, not a typical German girl,

she could have also been in French films.

Werner hid her toughness well, like some suppressed contradictions.

Vtfith her Dutch passport she had to report to the police every week.

That's pretty. Wherds it from?

It's from... the south sea.

Radiant and vibrant, she was more than a beautiful woman.

She was a foretaste of a time that had to come, and did.

�t might upset him.

"Das groBe Spiel" is a quantum leap in the history of football films.

It nixes feature film scenes

with historical footage from the GEFITIEIH Championship Final

that Rapid Wanna won against Schalke 04.

It is a conventional narratives about a successful brotherhood

and the community-building power of sport.

We see film actors with the general public and famous spectators.

It's incredible this match took place because it was on a very special clay.

It was Sunday, 22 June, 1941.

That morning the anhy had gone to war with the Soviet Union.

�Leaders have a concern that supersedes all utilitarian considerations.

They want their predictions to be true.�

After months of silence, the fuhrer

takes the only remaining possibie course of action, saying,

"I have decided to place the fate and future of the German Reich

back in our soldiers' hands.

Germany is in a terrible crisis.

We live in a period which WM determine everything

and change the face of Europe.

The army attacks.

Veit Hafian was a very capable director He could even stage huge masses.

Which Germany do you mean?

The out-dated one, resting on the splendour of the Holy Roman Empire?

This utopia should collapse.

A German Empire must come and Prussia lead it.

Only Prussia has the material and moral right to hold this position,

not Habsburg.

Habsburg has proved itself incapable of such leadership

because it is prepared to share its power with foreign nations

who cannot have the interest of the Germans at heart.

"The similarity between Otto Gebtiiirb screen Friedrich

and the popular image of Hitler cannot be ignored.

A genius.

Of course his plans and deeds are based on intuition."

You must be wondering why I have called on you unannounced.

I don 'I wonder about anything with you.

The film "Ohm Kritgefi' attacked the arch enemy, Britain.

The film depicts a nation

brought down by conspiracy, propaganda and concentration camps.

Ferdinand Marian plays Cedl Rhodes.

And the film shows the reality...

at the Eastern Front.

What's to become of us?

Dont worry about that, ladies. Youtt go to a concentration camp.

And now? - Now we should get some sleep.

And where? - Somewhere nice.

A heart fike mine Deesrfi like to be alone

Love and war and songs again.

A morale-boosting film

which transfonns an air-raid into a romantic event.

Al! clear!

Where to put one's hands?

Love strikes like a bomb attack.

War with the Soviets.

That's why the captain had to leave straightaway.

Women were supposed to stay behind while the men fought.

I know another miracle will happen

And a thousand fairytales will come flue

! know no have can pass so quickly

When it is so immense and wonderful

in the beautiful time of roses

I found a darling

That wasn't all.

In the midst ofwar, realism returned.

It was not necessarily neo-realism.

It was a new, romanficallycharged realism.

Everyday POEtFY-

Berlin has 4,220,000 inhabitants�...

I want to show you Berlin.

In these everyday stories of busy people during wartime,

another Gemwany emerges,

an observant look at the margins and at day-to-day life

that was less striclly controlled.

Another theme returned.

It had been buried by the glorification of the homeland, blood and soil.

The city.

The dty meant contradiction. And working women.

The Wannsee.

One year before, the Wannsee Conference was held on the opposite shore.

You're from Berlin too! - Why?

Charlottenburg Sports Club. - No, the trunks are from the old lady.

Old lady? - Yes.

Oh, your old lady? You leave your mother alone on the first day of your holiday!

First day, I wish! - Why?

It's my only day of holiday.

I like you much better than earlier.

And what about your mother?

I have no mother. 1 have no one at all.

Not even rekafives. - Nor do i.

Oh.

Bodies were also more visible,

but they look so inhibited, so strangely wooden and unsure.

You can feel shyness,

and see that they don't know what to do with their bodies.

I just had to get away from it a�. - Really?

Don'! you believe me? - Of course!

That's exactly what Mum said today - Your mum?

No, our matron. That's what we call her. - Then she had a great idea.

What are you doing this afternoon?

I have to ask Inge. - The loudspeaker?

You weren 'I Listening.

If there was such a thing as a feminist film in Nazi Germany, then it was this.

It was shot in 1942,

as the 6th amwy was bleeding to death in Stalingrad,

and shorfly before Hans and Sophie Scholl were beheaded.

A country woman in Beriin wanting to be a professional photographer.

She's still unsure, but is soon successful.

The film shows that women gaze at things differenfly.

Beautiful.

That was a delightful picture, Madam. So natural.

ll will be a lovely series alongside the lashloh show.

An event of the day, something unique, like you.

It's current.

Bu! it's usually done by men. - Photography?

Yes.

Photography - And usually the event too.

We see a woman who doesn't go after men, who doesn't want a fanily, children.

Who is friends with a man without being in a love relationship.

As far as was at all possible in Nazi dnema,

this film defends privacy, self-deterni nation,

indeed the hedonism of happiness in the here and now.

The body keeps working while we sleep.

The heartbeats, the lungs breathe.

But we're not aware of it. At most we dream.

The city steeps that way too and dreams.

Within it, its blood circulates and We goes on.

This is also an homage to the city.

And a film that shows workers' life.

She asks about happiness

but that can mean much more than obeying tradition.

And are you...

Are you happy, Ron?

Happy, Renate?

Who is happy?

In 80 ninutes there's barely a unifomw to be seen in "GroBstadtmelodie".

Then everything changes.

In terms of the principle of the people '5 right to self-determination,

I have to say we wild ones are the better democrats.

We see representative images, propaganda.

How is such a film to be assessed?

The terror of war and the first bombings leave no trace.

The lies of a regime and its accomplices, the population,

who don't want to give up the hope of a happy ending.

An alternative reading:

"GroBstadtmelodie" shows civilian life, celebrates personal happiness

and holds up a mirror to reality.

It shows what everyone has lost.

The city, which appeared on the screen at the premere, and the life within it

had long gone since then.

"Der verzauberte Tag" directed by Peter Pewas is more private.

But here too the conventional dreams of a shop assistant

are realistically clashed.

The film also tries to counter the image of propaganda with its own magic.

No film can be a deserter

but Helmut K�utners "Untter den Br�cken" keeps a distance.

On the bridge, too le doo

The girls walk up and down

Even though Goebbels prized its craft,

the film was banned.

It was too intimate, too civilian and human,

this story of a love-triangle.

Untouched by war, two friends in love with the same woman.

Your friend says to come up, we're nearly there.

Yes.

Coming.

What's the smell?

You cam just puff at me. - I'm sorry, but...

! had to puff.

Your hair.

I won'! do it again.

Helmut K�iutner, born in 1908,

is one of the best German directors of all time.

He almost became a German nee-realist.

His career began, rather like Rossilini's and Anronionds, in Italy,

under Fasdsm.

K�utner was no dissident

but an Anti-Fascist in his soul and his attitude.

He deveiiy found thematic niches in The Third Reich

to make almost independent films under the radar of the regime.

"Romanze in Moll", an homage to Renoir,

was about a love triangle.

This time it ends in tragedy.

Stalingrad, 80,000 men were captured.

Hundreds of thousands were killed.

The German war of annihilation

had long since become a war of self-annihilation.

Do you want the iota! war?

Do you want it, if necessary, to be more total and more radmal

than anything that we can even yet imagine?

The dreamboat of Nazi-Cinema,

the first talkie-"fitanic" sunk in German cinema.

No iceberg, but evil capitalists.

Jews and the British were to blame.

...a surprise, which will shoot up our shares beyohd expectation.

Genfiemen, maria ab'! wish to say for now:

But phase trust in me.

As we ab' trust in our Titanic.

The film celebrates the glamour of the Empire,

which it purports to despise, with palpable envy.

The sole German is stuffy and humoufiess.

A Cassandra who suspects what will happen

but can't assert his authority.

Who is in charge, President Ismir or five captain?

The captain natural-'y does what the president demands.

And why does he demand such nonsense?

The desire for downfall doninates. For disaster

It doesn't celebrate technocracy or progress, which are part of Fascism.

There are no negative female characters but many negative male characters.

This film was made for women.

But it could also be seen as follows:

women insiinciively sense that men with their desire for profit and power

cause a ship's, or a state's, downfall.

"Titanic" was an allegorical portrayal of what was happening in Germany.

After Stalingrad, this was too much for Goebbels.

"Titanic" was banned in Germany.

Germans could only see it in occupied countries

and talked about it.

DIE TERRA PRESENTS

PORT OF FREEDOM

The blazing red sky of Hamburg was courtesy of Afgacolon

But during the filning, Hamburg went up in flames

and this film was completed in Prague.

"GroBe Freiheit N: 7" was perhaps the best film of The Third Reich,

but it wasn't a Nazi film.

La Paloma oh�!

It will be over some day

The sea will take us one day

And not return any of us

"It will be over some day."

If anyone understood this sentence, it was Goebbels.

In splendid Afgacolor, the film counters all the Nazis held dean

In the wodd of the underdog, of drinkers, of a shady life

K�utner once again deals with a love triangle.

He shows what lies behind the Nazis' exaggerated cheerfulness:

unhappiness.

Hans Albers plays a man demoralised by a dishonest business.

A drunkard who sees a chance for a different life.

The high pointis a dream sequence that turns into a nightmare.

On five Heeperbahn, at half past midnight

Whoever has never, in the snug night...

Come back to the sea.

Come back to the sea.

Stay with me.

Harm es f

His beloved, only diniy seen, soon slips away from him.

How manliness is shaken is blatant in this melodrama of men.

They are vulnerable, tearful

sentimental, full of yearning, broken.

In an industrial plant in Berlin.

"GroBe Freiheit NI'. 7" points the way for an apocalyptic mood.

Gennan cinema increasingly escaped into the unreal and became pure fantasy.

Nbers played Miinchhausen, the "baron of lies".

Propaganda was becoming ineffective.

"The Woman of My Dreams" was even more fantasfical than Miinchhausen.

A film on add. The film itself was like a drug.

The longing for an altemafive wond must have been tremendous in 1944.

The strained excess is not only a wonderful spectacle

and a final high point of Nazi cinema's mesmerising character:

there is also something hysterical about it.

A film for the apocalyptic final clays.

This is also a part of the history of the Gemwan mentality.

A masked ball. A place of excess, but treacherous too.

Everyone wears a mask in this film, even if they are not seen.

The film's Germany, like much here, is once again a place of illusions.

An ostensibly non-political story.

Albrecht is an adventurer an anti-intellectual worid conqueror

who returns after many years, for a final conquest.

Torn between two women,

he mantes the demure and cool Octavia, from a good family.

In deep and muted colours

Hafian paints the decadence of the bourgeois wofid,

the old and faded upper dass.

He shows the foreshadowing of the downfall.

�The sun sinks.

Not much longer will you thirst, Burned heart!

A promise is in the air,

bio wing to me from unknown mourns.

The great coolness comes..."

Beautiful.

Yes. Beautiful.

The opposite to all this seems to be embodied in the enigmatic Aels.

Sport, nature, an awakening, courage and wildness.

Like a siren, she emerges, the first time we meet her

She represents the freshness of nature,

but she also represents the foreign.

That was wonderful, Aeis.

Oh, there's no skill in hitting it at this distance.

But from a galloping horse is something else.

She fascinates the man, but she's terninally ill.

Her termhal illness is covered through a show of strength

through sport and naturalness.

Bravo!

Do you see the rainbow?

The bridge to the other side.

Who knows how soon we will have to walk it.

Morbidness and intense yearning

had always run through the films of The Third Reich.

The regime had long since promised their fulfilment.

Now there was nothing to hope for All that was left was longing.

VWthout an aim.

Do you mink so?

What should I think about then?

About you?

If I were to die now...

that would be the sweetest death.

In this Gemwan "Vertigo"

which revolves around a man's fantasies,

and in which the women are undead or vampires,

Harian tells of temptation, and of the victory of tradition

of the bourgeois,

of apparent decadence.

It is his melodrama:

In order to love a healthy woman, a sick one must first die.

Hafian provided both the presentiment and the rear up against the end.

His two final films are rehearsals for the downfall.

"Gentlemen, in 100 years a wonderful colour film will be shown

about the terrible times we are going through.

Don'! you want to play a role in this film?

Stand firm so that in a hundred years the viewers do not boo and hiss

when you appear on screen.�

!n the summertime many a one

Has lost their heart

The circle closes. From "Morgenrot" to "Kolberg".

The most expensive film ever made in Germany.

VWth 6,000 horses, 10,000 costumes

and over 100,000 drafted Wehnnacht soldiers.

Awar melodrama.

Germans...

No love is more sacred than the love of your father/and.

No joy is sweeter than five joy of freedom.

But you know what is in store if we don'! win his battle with honour.

So whatever sacrifice is required

make your priority the sacred values for which we are fighting and must win

if we are to remain Prussians and Germans.

With foreboding, but undaunted

Dawn is breaking

And the sun, cold and bloody

Lights up our bloody path

in the next few hours

The world's fate will be decided

Others are shaking now

And the certain die is cast

No longera morale-boosfing film but a twilight of the gods,

making sense of the senseless.

The downfall is no longer denied, but made heroic.

The atmosphere is one of resignation and defiant heroism.

A ghost of a film. An exorcism.

A German "Gone With The Wind" almost out of puff.

A film as a means to promote the idea of a bumt land and the Volkssturm.

From the ashes and rubble a new nation will rise, like a phoenix.

Anew Reich.

One last time, Haflan celebrates the ornament of the masses

and fantasies of absolute power

And then cinema returned to reality.

They're shooting at our town'.!

Come on!

And then the screen is void of people.

But where are those people?

Which of these films have they seen?

Maybe we understand more about the Third Reich

if we imagine that in some way it was all a single film

and a big dream.

Maybe the Germans didn't want to leave the cinema until the very end,

didn't want to return to reality.

How much of this cinema lives on in today's films and films post-1945?

Does German cinema still dream the old dreams, in a different fonn?

There was never a zero hour for German cinema.

What does cinema know that we don't?

Hake Prussia and Kolberg to my heart.

Tnere only remain a few jewels in our crown.

Kcflberg is one of them.

Hans Albers made 19 more films after 1945.

He considered "GroBe Freiheit N: 7" his best film.

He died in 1960.

Ilse Wemer was temporarily banned

from wofidng due to her role in "Wunschkonzert".

Never able to repeat her fonner success,

she made just ten films in the Federal Republic

but worked as a clubbing artist and TV presenter.

She died in poverty in 2005.

Ferdinand Marian was issued a life-long work ban

due to his role in "Jew Suess".

Shortly before he was likely to be pardoned, he died in a car crash.

Suicide was suspected.

Veit Hafian was exonerated post-1945.

He went on to make 11 films in the German Republic.

In his many trials, he claimed the Nazis had taken his non-political work

and used it for their aims.

He claimed he was forced to make "Jew Suess".

He never asked for forgiveness. He died in 1964.

Kristina Sbderbaum was allowed to work directly after the war

and appeared in her husband's films.

One other film role followed, in Hans-Jllirgen Syberbergs "Karl May".

She died in 2001.

Helmut Kautner was a major filmmaker post-1945.

He went on to make 27 feature films and 24 TV films. He died in 1980.

The screenwriter of "Mllinchhausen" was the popular author, Erich K�istnen

As a banned author he had to use a pseudonym, Berthold Burger,

absent from the opening credits.

K�istner was given special pennission to write the screenplay.

The screenplay induded some anti-totalitarian barbs,

but Kastner couldn't go too far for fear of endangering himself I