Nazis and the Cinema
Published on 15. April 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-1-84725-211-1 (ISBN)
Description
Before the rise of television, the cinema was a key medium of entertainment and information. The Nazi regime, who inherited the largest film industry outside Hollywood, realised this clearly, with some of the most memorable images of Hitler and his party coming from Leni Riefenstahl's film "The Triumph of the Will".Susan Tegel has written a comprehensive account of the films made in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, including the notorious feature film "Jud Suss" and the compilation documentary "Der Ewige Jude". She explores in detail how the film makers were controlled and used by the regime. She also examines other less well- known films featuring Jewish characters, including how their image differs from film to film. In such films she relates to the historical context, and in particular to government policies concerning the Jews. Newsreels and documentaries and their place within a cinema programme are discussed as are the two documentaries made in Theresienstadt under the SS rather than the Propaganda Ministry.
She also looks at the industry itself, its reorganization, funding, the interventions of the Propaganda Ministry headed by Goebbels, the compromises which people had to make, the careerism and the dangers which some faced either of unemployment or worse.
She also looks at the industry itself, its reorganization, funding, the interventions of the Propaganda Ministry headed by Goebbels, the compromises which people had to make, the careerism and the dangers which some faced either of unemployment or worse.
Reviews / Votes
Tegel's work offers a comprehensive, accessible introduction to the cinema of the Third Reich through the lens of antisemitism. * American Historical Review * Susan Tegel, the historian who advised the legal team that was preparing to sue Leni Riefenstahl for Holocaust denial, is the latest scholar to analyze fully the role played by movies in the Third Reich. It's a testament to the field's richness that her Nazis and the Cinema covers territory left largely unexplored in the two major books on the subject, Linda Schulte-Sasse's Entertaining the Third Reich, and Eric Rentschler's Ministry of Illusion (both published in 1996) ... [Tegel] emphasize[s], in a way that they do not, the manner in which Jews were represented on the German screen. -- J. Hoberman * Film Comment * Susan Tegel's book is a brilliant pulling-together of a lot of research and thinking about film in the Nazi era. -- Taylor Downing * History Today * It is an important volume for historians, sociologists, and film scholars alike. -- Cynthia J. Miller * History: Reviews of New Books * Susan Tegel deserves applause for achieving exactly what she sets out to accomplish: exploring the intersection of art and politics as well as the efficacy of Joseph Goebbels' propaganda machine ... Tegel's jargon-free prose makes this book a palatable choice for an upper-division course ... Posing questions rather than asserting overambitious claims, Nazis and the Cinema provides its readers with substantial cerebral nourishment. -- Alan Rosenfeld * German Studies Review * Tegel's judicious overview is the only English-language account to build on recent German micro-histories. * The London Review of Books * Susan Tegel's Nazis and the Cinema is built on an immensely rich bibliography, uniting research from across Europe, as well as Israel and North America. Tegel wears her impressive learning lightly, but there is no mistaking her extensive familiarity with her sources. * War in History * Informed by a substantial amount of primary source research [this book] offers new perspectives on the subject. It is also lucidly written and persuasively argued ... Tegel's approach is very much that of the historian with the emphasis throughout on understanding films in context ... Overall, this is a highly illuminating and well-researched book that will almost certainly become the standard text for a generation. -- James Chapman * Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
18
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
540 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84725-211-1 (9781847252111)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Susan Tegel was formerly head of History at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, and an historical advisor to the legal team which planned to press charges against Leni Riefenstahl for Holocaust Denial (2002). She has been a member of the editorial board of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television since 2003.
Content
Illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Hitler: Image-Building; 2. Nazi Propaganda; 3. The German Film Industry to 1918; 4. Weimar Cinema; 5. The German Film Industry 1933-1945; 6. The Kampfzeit Films, 1933; 7. Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will; 8. A Judenfrei Cinema: 1934-1938; 9. Two German Comedies (1939); 10. The Rothschilds and Jud Suss; 11. Der ewige Jude (1940); 12. The Second World War; 13. Film and the 'Final Solution'; 14. Theresienstadt; 15. Liberation; Notes; Filmography; Bibliography; Index.