by Eric Rentschler>>>Eric Rentschler, Professor of Film Studies at the University of California, Irvine, (now Harvard) argues that the cinema in the Third Reich emanated from a Ministry of Illusion and not from a Ministry of Fear.Party vehicles such as Hitler Youth Quex and anti-Semitic hate films such as Jew Süss may warrant the epithet "Nazi propaganda," but they amount to a mere fraction of the productions from this era. The vast majority of the epoch's films seemed to be "unpolitical"--melodramas, biopix, and frothy entertainments set in cozy urbane surroundings, places where one rarely sees a swastika or hears a "Sieg Heil."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. (Excerpt from Publisher's Note, 1996, third print 2002)>>>Rentschler .. feels that to concentrate exclusively on themes, trends, and manifest content is to miss the significance of the films' semiotic complexity. He suggests, not entirely fairly, that little has been previously said about the aesthetics of the Nazi films, those features that he feels make them so resonant and well regarded. He sees, and here his point should receive emphasis, a reciprocal link, at least aesthetically, between Hollywood and Berlin, and realizes that not every film produced in this era was crude propaganda. He lays out his thesis based on five premises. He suggests that1 "the cinema of the Third Reich is to be seen in the context of the totalitarian state's concertedattempt to create a culture industry in the service of mass deception."2 "entertainment played a crucial role in Nazi culture. The era's many genre films maintaine theappearance of escapist vehicles and innocent recreations while functioning within a largerprogramme."3 "Nazi film culture--and Nazi propaganda in general--must be understood in terms of whatGoebbels called an 'orchestra principle'" where not everyone was expected to play the sameinstrument.4 "it is by now a truism that we cannot speak of National Socialism without speaking aboutaesthetics." Rentschler adds that we must also speak about mass culture.5 "when critics decry Nazi cinema as an abomination, they protest too much.... It is common toreduce all Nazi films to hate pamphlets, party hagiography, or mindless escapism, films withtoo much substance or none at all, either execrable or frivolous." (Source: Mark Welch, TheGrim Fascination of an Uncomfortable Legacy, Book review © 1998 Mark Welch)I have just reviewed two books on related topics, viz Re-viewing Fascism: Italian Cinema, 1922-1943 (as fbuk 40, 30/6/2012), and Reclams Deutsches Filmlexikon (German Edition, 1984, 11/6/2012, as fbus27). The first, compared to Rentschler's book, is a relatively specialized study, so it is less burdened with 100%, ie all films; Rentschler needs to give all production and directorship data, so he has a potential volume problem. This, he handles with panache and finesse: He presents the analytical section in three parts, viz Fatal Attraction, Foreign Affairs, Spectres and Shadows, and has Films and Events, Directorial Filmographies, and American Film and Videotape Sources in three annexes. Similarly transparent to the clear thinking is the graphic layout of the book - you never get rushed or crushed; despite the volume of analysis and material, the book can do with 450 pages.Reclams Deutsches Filmlexikon, finally, with his 450 full entries, would be the ideal complement to Rentschler's book: First, it gives some more detailed material on who is who questions; second, it is a perfect illustration for the fact that only a handful of members of the film industry, at all levels, were eliminated from the rostrum. The rest went happily on, as no Italian Partisan style revenge on the top stars set a marker: In my youth, I still saw Kaethe Gold, the strikingly attractive female on the book's cover, in Vienna Burgtheater and Zurich Schauspielhaus productions, a beautiful and distinguished actress of classical German roles (Goethe, Schiller) to her old age.PS I do not hope that my readers think I advocate Italian Partisan style violence; but the ease of transition was still an argument in Berlin during the 1968 student revolt. Well, the Schiller Theater, ein Hort der Reaktion, was finally dissolved and closed - in 1993, "because of the financial difficulties of Berlin"... Honni soit qui mal y pense!fbus 41 - Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife, by Eric Rentschler - 3/7/2012