Third Reich Cinema

Mannesmann was a German industrial conglomerate. It was originally established as a manufacturer of steel pipes in 1890 under the name “Deutsch-Österreichische Mannesmannröhren-Werke AG”. (Loosely translated: “German-Austrian Mannesmann pipe mills AG”). In the twentieth century, Mannesmann’s product range grew and the company expanded into numerous sectors – starting from various steel products and trading to mechanical and electrical engineering, automotive and telecommunications. From 1955, the conglomerate’s management holding with headquarters in Düsseldorf was named Mannesmann AG. – more (on wikipedia)Read More »

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Henrik Ibsen’s 1877 play Samfundets Stotter (Pillars of Society) was the source for this German drama. The plot centers upon a flagrant case of municipal corruption, carried out by the town’s “finest” people. The selfishness of the elite results in widespread tragedy, yet still the perpetrators hypocritically blame everyone but themselves. The director of Stutzen der Gesellschaft was Detlef Sierck, who as “Douglas Sirk” would later expose the peccadilloes of the rich and powerful in such American films as Written on the Wind. The Ibsen original was earlier adapted to the screen in 1915, with H. B. Walthall in the lead.Read More »

The film tells the story of the blond “singing sailor” Hannes Kröger who works in a St. Pauli club on the Große Freiheit 7, and falls in love with a girl. But she prefers his rival Willem and Hannes returns to the sea.Read More »

Aspiring singer Susanne takes over for ham actor Viktor at a small cabaret in Berlin where he works a woman impersonator and per chance she’s discovered by an agent, who thinks, that she really is a man. She becomes famous, but her situation becomes troublesome, when she falls in love with Robert. imdb.Read More »

Though it was accepted as standard entertainment upon its first release, the German Jugend (Youth) has in recent years been perceived as an implicitly pro-Nazi tract. Adapted by Thea Von Harbou from a controversial 19th century play by Max Hulls, the story concerns a young girl named Annchen (Kristina Soderbaum), who from childhood onward has had her judgment warped by the self-righteous proclamations of a fanatical priest (Eugene Klopfer). After her first sexual experience, Annchen is so overwhelmed by guilt that she commits suicide, profoundly affecting the lives of those closest to her. Some critics have suggested that the film advises its audience to beware false prophets-except those wearing brown shirts and armbands, who will lead the populace from the opiate of religion to the glories of National Socialism. The fact that Jugend was directed by Kristina Soderbaum’s husband Viet Harlan, one of the German film industry’s leading torch-bearers for the Third Reich, has not been a point in its favor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »

Synopsis:
As the title “The Queen’s Heart” suggests, this early German black and white version of Mary Queen of Scott’s eventful reign and death focuses on her emotional perception rather lyrically, with some songs, mainly by her. Starting in the Tower, awaiting and receiving her sentence to the ax from the English court, where Elisabeth I chose to remain absent in person, we flash back to Mary’s arrival after a long exile at the sophisticated, splendidly hedonistic French royal court, where she was raised as a Catholic, in her people’s eyes effeminate or even depraved, elegant pleasure-accustomed lady, at utter odds with the stern Scottish protestantism of John Knox as well as England’s Anglicanism.Read More »

Synopsis:
A biographical film of Otto von Bismarck, the Prime Minister of Prussia, and how he and his policies – including aggressive war – helped to unite Germany.Read More »

The most incendiary of Nazi Germany’s anti-British films, and one of the most audaciously cynical movies ever made. Conceived by Joseph Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry as a propagandistic blockbuster, this lavish production leaves no stone unturned in its bitter indictment of Great Britain, which at the time (early 1941) stood alone as Germany’s wartime foe. In its historical re-enactment of the Second Boer War, Ohm Krüger depicts Britain as a relentlessly aggressive power, hell-bent on world domination; the film’s remarkable set pieces feature a scotch-swilling Queen Victoria, a cruelly conniving Cecil Rhodes and a Winston Churchill look-alike who presides over a murderous concentration camp. On the Boer side stands saintly “Uncle” Krüger, portrayed as a model of simple dignity and unerring moral right by one of the world cinema’s greatest actors, Emil Jannings. Read More »

Synopsis:
Anti-semitic Nazi propaganda “biography” of the Rothschilds, a German Jewish family whose members rose to the top of the European banking community during the Napoleonic era.Read More »