During the years of the Third Reich (1933-1945) approximately 1,200 feature films were made in Nazi Germany. 'Hitler's Hollywood' is a survey course documentary on that output. Only around a hundred or so of these films were overt propaganda in nature, German studios, principly UFA, made comedies, musicals, historical epics, melodramas, detective pictures, even science fiction. The production quality of these, for the most part, was quite high, Hollywood levels.
Unlike Hollywood German cinema of this period lacked much in the way of autore filmmakers, men of distinctive vision and style, whose work had subtext, most of these figures like Fritz Lang and Douglas Sirk fled the Nazi's. What German cinema did have was a star system, and like Hollywood many of these players were foreign born. Kristina Soderbaum was one of the most popular actresses in Germany, a Swede she fit the blond, blue eyed, Aryan ideal and stared in all of the films made by her director husband Viet Harlan during the war, these were mostly melodrama's. In one film, I don't believe Harlan directed this one, Soderbaum's character is raped by a Jew, thus promoting anti semitism to German audiences.
This is a fascinating documentary, a look at a weird, parallel Hollywood. Many of these films look to be pretty good. I had only seen two of the movies featured, 'Triump of the Will' and a version of the Titanic story, but I'd be honestly intrigued to see more. German actor Udo Kier's English language narration is solid, though the white subtitle text was sometimes hard to read against black and white film. An impressive and informative documentary. ***1/2
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