Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Hollywood and Hitler 1933-1939

Thomas Doherty's book, Hollywood and Hitler 1933-1939(Columbia University Press,2013) is an examination of how little Hollywood was interested in what was going on in Germany at that time. It is not surprising that Hollywood did not want to lose income from abroad not did they want to disturb or upset domestic audiences. There were some exceptions from independent producers, including Alfred Mannon's low-budget and little-distributed I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany (1936).

Doherty does a good job detailing what the newsreels did and (more often) didn't do.  The March of Time was the only one to give a "wide-awake look at Hitler," though it wasn't technically a newsreel since it only came out once a month instead of twice a week.  It's interesting how newsreels are so forgotten now:  the brilliant parody of them at the beginning of Citizen Kane is lost on most younger viewers today.

There is also a fascinating chapter on Leni Riefenstahl's visit to Hollywood to promote Olympia, her brilliant film of the 1936 Olympics in Germany. Doherty writes, accurately, "The Nazi ethos proved disturbingly congenial to the Olympic ideal," which just is more evidence to me that the Olympics should be abolished, since at this point they are more about winning and nationalism than they are about the beauty of sports.

Warner Brothers was one of the first to criticize the Nazis, in Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) and Frank Borzage and MGM came in with the sad, beautiful and romantic The Mortal Storm in 1940.

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