{"id":68655,"date":"2015-05-13T13:25:01","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T21:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=68655"},"modified":"2015-05-13T13:26:44","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T21:26:44","slug":"tabletmag-after-the-nazi-films-unreel-many-moviegoers-are-struck-by-how-technically-proficient-and-aesthetically-compelling-the-films-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=68655","title":{"rendered":"Tabletmag: After the Nazi films unreel, many moviegoers are struck by how technically proficient and aesthetically compelling the films are."},"content":{"rendered":"

Tabletmag.com<\/a>: After the Nazi films unreel, many moviegoers are struck by how technically proficient and aesthetically compelling the films are. \u201cIt makes me ill because it was so good,\u201d says one queasy spectator after taking in The Jew S\u00fcss. No wonder; even after the Jewish talent was purged from the German film industry in 1933-1934, enough Weimar-era expertise remained in harness to show why German cinema was the only competition on the planet the Hollywood moguls really worried about. The regime also backed up its vision with the kind of resources and budget that today\u2019s German filmmakers \u201ccan only dream about,\u201d marvels director Margarethe von Trotta, who happens to be Moeller\u2019s mother, after a screening of Uncle Kruger (Ohm Kr\u00fcger, 1941), a lavish biopic of the Boer leader Paul Kruger, starring the great Emil Jannings, who abandoned Hollywood to become Goebbels\u2019 prize poodle.<\/p>\n

For not a few spectators, the seductive quality of the cinema breeds a fear that, if let loose, the Nazi films can be a gateway drug into the harder stuff. Filmed in shadows, a pair of former neo-Nazis confirms that the vintage Nazi fare is useful as bonding bait for new recruits, though even they scoff at The Eternal Jew as over the top. After watching The Jew S\u00fcss, a theater-full of French high school kids is nearly unanimous in voting to ban it from television broadcasts: The susceptible masses need to be protected from material that should be reserved \u201cfor the educated bourgeoisie.\u201d A man at a cinematheque in Jerusalem demurs, arguing that The Jew S\u00fcss should be shown to every schoolchild in Israel, so they can be familiar with it, understand it, and \u201cdispute and reject it.\u201d<\/p>\n

…Spearheaded by the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights, which closely monitored and vigorously protested the exhibition of Nazi films in the 1930s, American Jewish groups rallied to close down any screening emanating from the Third Reich. Only a handful of specialty houses survived to serve German audiences\u2014some pro-Nazi, some just wanting to hear the language of the home country. S.A.-Mann Brand (1933) and Hitlerjunge Quex (1933), two of the German youth exploitation films featured by Moeller, got brief releases in the Yorkville Theatre in New York, but the remaining German-language houses stuck to melodramatic and musical fare with little overt Nazi proselytizing. Many of the imported Nazi films didn\u2019t even bother with English language subtitling, and none of them (in contrast to the glories of Weimar-era cinema) broke through to the American mainstream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tabletmag.com: After the Nazi films unreel, many moviegoers are struck by how technically proficient and aesthetically compelling the films are. \u201cIt makes me ill because it was so good,\u201d says one queasy spectator after taking in The Jew S\u00fcss. No … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4272],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nazi"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68655"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68658,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68655\/revisions\/68658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}