Nazi Film Melodrama

Notes

Notes Introduction. Melodrama in the Nazi Cinema 1. Mulvey, Fetishism and Curiosity, 29. 2. Marcuse, Technology, War, and Fascism, 161. 3. Brooks, Melodramatic Imagination, 5. 4. Cook, “Melodrama and the Woman’s Picture,” 249. 5. Cawelti, “Evolution of the Social Melodrama,” 33. 6. Ibid., 34. 7. Boberach, Meldungen aus dem Reich, 6:1812. 8. The Security Service reported in January 1941 that Die ewige Jude was being badly received by audiences, and that both male and female spectators had fainted during the butcher scene. Ibid., 6:1918–1919. 9. Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich, 4. 10. Ibid. 11. See, for example, Lang, American Film Melodrama, 3–13; and Elsaesser, “Tales of Sound and Fury,” 182–88. 12. Landy, Imitations of Life, 20. See also Landy, Fascism in Film, 276–329. 13. Cook, “Melodrama and the Woman’s Picture,” 251. 14. On the issue of excess and subversion, see Christine Gledhill, “The Melodramatic Field,” in Gledhill, Home Is Where the Heart Is, 6–12; and Thompson, “The Concept of Cinematic Excess.” For research suggesting that female spectators identify with the transgressive moments of woman’s films more than their patriarchal narrative resolutions, see Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing. 15. See, for example, Landy, Imitations of Life, 16. 16. Brooks, Melodramatic Imagination. 17. On the melodrama and the woman’s film, see Gledhill, “Melodramatic Field,” 10–11. 18. See Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures, 41–47. 19. My definition of melodrama is partially adapted from Astrid Pohl’s usefully concise definition in TränenReiche BürgerTräume, 39–40. Heins_NaziFilm_text.indd 205 5/3/13 11:44 AM 206 Notes to Introduction and Chapter 1 20. Griffin, Modernism and Fascism; and Griffin, A Fascist Century. For related accounts of fascism and modernity, see Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities; Herf, Reactionary Modernism; and Payne, “Fascism as ‘Generic’ Concept.” 21. On the hegemonic aims of Nazi cinema and the response to Nazi films abroad, see Welch, Cinema and the Swastika. 22. Herzog, Sexuality and German Fascism; and Herzog, Sex after Fascism. 23. See Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945; and Leiser, Nazi Cinema. 24. In addition to Schulte-Sasse’s Entertaining the Third Reich, see Rentschler, Ministry of Illusion; Koepnick, Dark Mirror; Hake, Popular Cinema of the Third Reich; and Petro, “Nazi Cinema at the Intersection of the Classical and the Popular.” 25. See Ascheid, Hitler’s Heroines; Carter, Dietrich’s Ghosts; and Bruns, Nazi Cinema’s New Women. 26. For shorter studies that do offer comparative analyses, see Eder, “Das Populäre Kino im Krieg,” 379–416; Rentschler, “Hollywood Made in Germany: Lucky Kids,” in Ministry of Illusion, 99–122; and Witte, “Visual Pleasure Inhibited.” 27. Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” 91. 28. Sabine Hake describes the style of Third Reich genre films similarly: “they might be described as an impoverished, derivative version of the Hollywood original.” Hake, Popular Cinema of the Third Reich, 12. 29. In contrast to my argument, Astrid Pohl asserts in her study on Nazi melodramas that they fall into the two categories of “affirmation and subversion,” but that the vast majority were affirmative of bourgeois culture. Pohl, TränenReiche BürgerTräume, 283. 30. Rentschler, Ministry of Illusion, 218; and Witte, “Ästhetische Opposition?” 31. See, particularly, Rentschler, Ministry of Illusion, 125–45; Lowry, Pathos und Politik; and Jameson, Political Unconscious, 286–87. 32. Barthes, Mythologies, 84. 33. O’Brien, Nazi Cinema as Enchantment. 34. Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich, 9. 35. See, particularly, Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich; Rentschler, Ministry of Illusion; and O’Brien, Nazi Cinema as Enchantment, for their focus on pleasure and the utopian appeals of Nazi cinema. 36. Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” 93. 37. See, for example, Davidson, “Cleavage: Sex in the Total Cinema of the Third Reich”; and Gordon, “Fascism and the Female Form.” 38. Herzog, “Hubris and Hypocrisy, Incitement and Disavowal: Sexuality and German Fascism,” in Sexuality and German Fascism, 3. 39. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 1:150. My argument also departs from George Mosse’s understanding of Nazi aesthetics as “beauty without sensuality” and Nazi culture as upholding bourgeois notions of “respectability.” Mosse, Fascist Revolution, 183–97; and Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, 153–80. 40. On the relationship between contemporary American right-wing politics and sexualized images of the Third Reich, see Slane, Not So Foreign Affair. Chapter 1. Fascist Melodrama 1. Williams, “Melodrama Revised,” 42. Heins_NaziFilm_text.indd 206 5/3/13 11:44 AM Notes to Chapter 1...