Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany

Author: Valerie Weinstein
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253040736
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
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 Through contextualized analyses of historical documents and individual films, Weinstein reveals how humor, coded hints and traces, absences, and substitutes in Third Reich film comedy helped spectators imagine an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.

Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema

Author: Barbara Hales
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789208734
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Book Description
The burgeoning film industry in the Weimar Republic was, among other things, a major site of German-Jewish experience, one that provided a sphere for Jewish “outsiders” to shape mainstream culture. The chapters collected in this volume deploy new historical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to understanding the significant involvement of German Jews in Weimar cinema. Reflecting upon different conceptions of Jewishness – as religion, ethnicity, social role, cultural code, or text – these studies offer a wide-ranging exploration of an often overlooked aspect of German film history.

Continuity and Crisis in German Cinema, 1928-1936

Author: Barbara Hales
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1571139354
Category : Motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Book Description
New essays examining the differences and commonalities between late Weimar-era and early Nazi-era German cinema against a backdrop of the crises of that time.

Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany

Author: Valerie Weinstein
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253040744
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
How party propagandists worked behind the scenes to create unspoken racist messages in the German culture—even in the most lighthearted of movies. Today many Germans look back fondly on 1930s film comedies, viewing them as a part of the Nazi era that was not tainted with antisemitism. Here, 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.

East German Film and the Holocaust

Author: Elizabeth Ward
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789207487
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
East Germany’s ruling party never officially acknowledged responsibility for the crimes committed in Germany’s name during the Third Reich. Instead, it cast communists as both victims of and victors over National Socialist oppression while marginalizing discussions of Jewish suffering. Yet for the 1977 Academy Awards, the Ministry of Culture submitted Jakob der Lügner – a film focused exclusively on Jewish victimhood that would become the only East German film to ever be officially nominated. By combining close analyses of key films with extensive archival research, this book explores how GDR filmmakers depicted Jews and the Holocaust in a country where memories of Nazi persecution were highly prescribed, tightly controlled and invariably political.

Walt Disney

Author: Marc Eliot
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Book Description
This biography of the man behind the magic reconciles the private 'monster' with the artistic genius of popular culture by showing that the disturbing problems of his own life provided the rich, dark side of the animated movies.

Nazi Films in America, 1933-1942

Author: Harry Waldman
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786492066
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 712

Book Description
From 1933 until America's entry into World War II in 1941, nearly 500 Nazi films were shown in American theaters, accounting for nearly half of all foreign language film imports during the period. These poorly disguised propaganda films were produced by Germany's top studios and featured prominent pro-German and Nazi actors, directors and technicians. The films were replete with overt and covert anti-Jewish imagery and themes, but in spite of this obvious intent to use the medium to justify Nazi ascendancy, viewers and film critics from such prominent publications as the New York Times, Variety, the Washington Post and the Chicago Times consistently overlooked the films' anti-Semitic message, dubbing them harmless entertainment. This is the complete history of German films shown in America from the founding of the Nazi government to America's involvement in the war. Summaries, descriptions and discussions of these almost 500 films serve to examine the major filmmakers and distributors who kept the German film industry alive during the rule of Hitler and the Third Reich. Special emphasis is placed on films directly commissioned by Joseph Goebbels, head of the German Ministry for the Enlightenment of the People and Propaganda and the man directly responsible for ensuring that the anti-Semitic ideology of the new regime was reflected in all films produced after January 30, 1933. Rarely seen photographs and illustrations complete an in-depth study of the Nazi use of this global medium.

The "Jew" in Cinema

Author: Omer Bartov
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253217455
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Book Description
Explores cinematic representations of the "Jew" from film's early days to the present.

Dead Funny

Author: Rudolph Herzog
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1935554301
Category : German wit and humor
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Book Description
The first ever history of humour directed at the Nazis: from the anti-Nazi theatre scene of the 20s and 30s, to jokes told during WWII, to the cracks told about Hitler in Germany today. In the light of the horrors he committed, many people in Germany still find difficulty and distaste in laughing at Hitler - indeed, those who do are often accused of trivialising the Holocaust. But there is a long history of telling jokes about the Nazis. Collected by acclaimed director Rudolph Herzog, Dead Funny chronicles this fascinating and often frightening history.

Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939

Author: Thomas Doherty
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231535147
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Book Description
Between 1933 and 1939, representations of the Nazis and the full meaning of Nazism came slowly to Hollywood, growing more ominous and distinct only as the decade wore on. Recapturing what ordinary Americans saw on the screen during the emerging Nazi threat, Thomas Doherty reclaims forgotten films, such as Hitler's Reign of Terror (1934), a pioneering anti-Nazi docudrama by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.; I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany (1936), a sensational true tale of "a Hollywood girl in Naziland!"; and Professor Mamlock (1938), an anti-Nazi film made by German refugees living in the Soviet Union. Doherty also recounts how the disproportionately Jewish backgrounds of the executives of the studios and the workers on the payroll shaded reactions to what was never simply a business decision. As Europe hurtled toward war, a proxy battle waged in Hollywood over how to conduct business with the Nazis, how to cover Hitler and his victims in the newsreels, and whether to address or ignore Nazism in Hollywood feature films. Should Hollywood lie low, or stand tall and sound the alarm? Doherty's history features a cast of charismatic personalities: Carl Laemmle, the German Jewish founder of Universal Pictures, whose production of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) enraged the nascent Nazi movement; Georg Gyssling, the Nazi consul in Los Angeles, who read the Hollywood trade press as avidly as any studio mogul; Vittorio Mussolini, son of the fascist dictator and aspiring motion picture impresario; Leni Riefenstahl, the Valkyrie goddess of the Third Reich who came to America to peddle distribution rights for Olympia (1938); screenwriters Donald Ogden Stewart and Dorothy Parker, founders of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League; and Harry and Jack Warner of Warner Bros., who yoked anti-Nazism to patriotic Americanism and finally broke the embargo against anti-Nazi cinema with Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939).