Posted on 08/28/2008 12:22:24 PM PDT by arkady_renko
Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife
From Amazon
This massively documented study of Nazi cinema...notably succeeds in analysing how Nazi films created a dreamworld that seemed neither realistic nor fantastic, but agreeable and persuasive--indeed closer to Hollywood than to Stalinist cinema. Above all, [Rentschler] stresses how films belong to a German cultural continuum, reaching into the present. Fifty years after Siegfried Kracauer's landmark book From Caligari to Hitler, this is the study that's long been needed of the movies' most disturbing triumph. (Sight and Sound )From the Publisher's Comments
Fifty years after Kracauer's monumental 'From Caligari to Hitler' comes the next installment of the story. Rentschler shows how German films were central to an administered popular culture. Goebbels' chilling, still-seductive cinema exemplifies the complex social role played by the mass media at the end of our century. Rentschler-one of America's finest scholars of German cinema-has given us a lucid, passionate book.
--David Bordwell, University of Wisconsin, author of The Cinema of Eisenstein
Minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels, Rentschler shows, endeavored to maximize film's seductive potential, to cloak party priorities in alluring cinematic shapes. Hitler and Goebbels were master showmen enamored of their media images, the Third Reich was a grand production, the Second World War a continuing movie of the week. The Nazis were movie mad, and the Third Reich was movie made. Rentschler's analysis of the sophisticated media culture of this period demonstrates in an unprecedented way the potent and destructive powers of fascination and fantasy. Nazi feature films--both as entities that unreeled in moviehouses during the regime and as productions that continue to enjoy wide attention today--show that entertainment is often much more than innocent pleasure.
What is a movie? You buy a ticket and give the film's producer permission to lie to you, to manipulate you, to lead you forward in illusion. You end up crying, jumping, laughing at illusions. We are now a century into people being led away in illusion, and the best illusions and lies are given Academy Awards and earn 100's of millions of dollars.
This is the Obama audience. They do not want reality, they want to be led away in illusion to a 'hopeful' place. If reality intrudes (Kurtz on WGN last night) they will have no part of it. The illusion is what is all to them. The One who brings the illusion, the magician.
So, Rush, this is the world we have found ourselves in. Lies are very much accepted, everyday. We sit in a theater seat and say, "Carry me away..." People will sit in a stadium tonight and willingly let Barack lead them on a fantasy journey which is ultimately detrimental to their own well being. I'd suggest reading the book reviewed above - it's all been done before.
This thread reminds me of the excellent piece someone posted on FR a few days ago about the strange similarity between Obama and Nazi symbolism. For some reason, it was pulled — but in hindsight, it sure looks like it was right on target.
The democrats will lose all the Jewish vote with the Nazi style grandstanding of the Obama folks.
He is the the devil.
Yes, if only Leni Riefenstahl were alive today! Hollywood and the Democrat Party would embrace her—and she could do for them what she did for the Nazis.
There needs to be a clear distinction made between German cinema and art and Nazi cinema and art. Germany during the roaring ‘20’s and early ‘30’s produced a lot of the best of both in the world, and the Nazis were only able to force a small portion of it to their ends, with the few artists and filmmakers they were able to bring to their cause.
Most were expelled from Germany and its possessions, entirely.
Nazi cinema was overshadowed by Leni Riefenstahl and her movie Triumph of the Will, and though she later became a political leftist, she was never apologetic about her beliefs in Nazism.
Perhaps the other noteworthy production of the Nazi regime, other than crude propaganda, was the enormous production “The Great King”, about King Frederick II “The Great”, not to be confused with the 1914 German movie entitled Frederick the Great.
A book on the subject of Nazi film is very useful, however, and may shed light on a neglected period in film, perhaps highlighting a few movies that have some lasting value, if just historically.
It's no secret that the best Hollywood fare is the one that draws you in the deepest. I'm not sure that we haven't been collectively 'brain' damaged by the whole industry. Put the right music with a good illusion and it is even more spellbinding. CSI and the other popular shows always close with some soulful ballad. Seal the deal. Tonight will be the same - almost a Hollywood pentecostal experience.
Why would one think she would? The Nazis were leftists.
Command economy. Restrictions on individual freedoms, including the right to keep and bear arms. State enterprises control the means of production. Seems like there was a good reason they called it national socialism.
They pass two posters stuck on a wall.
SEBASTIAN: (Reading) "Vote Fascist for a third glorious decade of total law enforcement."
JAKE: (Reading) "Be a government informer. Betray your family & friends. Fabulous prizes to be won."
zerObama is a socialist.
Question of the day:
and what is Nazi short for?
National Socialist German Workers' party
Stick to your guns.
You write as if there is some difference in ideology between the two great totalist organizations. There was none, only some tiny quibbles of emphasis. NAZIsm glorified The Leader. Communism denigrated Leaderism while glorifying its leader. NAZIs demonized Jews and "wreckers". Communism demonized Kulaks and "wreckers". etc. They were bosom allies until they clashed on national aims.
Different organizations of the same totalist ideology must always clash and the elites ithin those organizations kill each other off until one has total power because, ultimately, the question is Lenin's "Who, Whom" and nothing more.
Yikes. And all this time I thought Nazi was short for Republican.
Come now arkady_renko, you should know better:
Nazi is socialist and socialist is Nazi - you can’t escape or seperate the two.
The left's #1 triumph of the 20th century was convincing people that because the Nazis fought communists (in the form of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) Naziism is the opposite of communism.
Never mind that they were allies...
Correct on all points, but there is some delicious finesse as well.
For example Reifenstahl was not just a leftist, but an outspoken “Green Party” ‘activist’ in her later years. The Nazis were also very pro-environment. I’m sure that even today they would be steadfast against man made global warming, and would demand that “somebody” do something about it.
The ‘Stalinist Gothic’ architecture was very similar to the ‘Socialist Realism’ of the Nazis. And the Nazi architect Albert Speer modeled the infamous Deutsche Stadion at Nuremberg after the Greek stadium of Herodes Atticus.
Something about classic Greek architecture appealing to such people? Picture Obama in a toga?
I think one of the biggest real differences between Nazis and communist-socialists is that Nazis rarely denied that they were Nazis, but communist-socialists will say they are anything but communist-socialists, yet continue to yammer at you with communist-socialist dialectic. At times they even deny that there is a political left, and that everything they argue is from a centrist and moderate viewpoint, be it nationalizing health care or the killing fields of Cambodia.
Good point.
It was like Hillary fighting Obama.
PING! For art’s sake...
btt
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