The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife - Hardcover

The book is well researched and documented. If one wants...to learn more about the sociopolitical realities in Nazi cinema...then this is the work with which to settle down. The regime of Adolf Hitler was the world's 'first full-blown media dictatorship, ' writes Eric Rentschler... An accomplished and engaging writer...Mr. Rentschler pays great...attention to the historical context of each film 'text.' -- J. Hoberman "Forward" This is an invaluable book of film history...Rentschler has actually watched the several hundred films made in Germany under the Third Reich, and he's the first to be able to talk authoritatively about their content and ideology. -- Gerald Peary "Boston Phoenix" The scope of Rentschler's argument and the thoroughness of his research--not to mention the elegance of his prose--will significantly change how we look at the cinema of the Third Reich... This is a passionate, nuanced, and highly readable book that contributes significantly to existing studies on Nazi cinema while remaining accessible to a general public interested in German history, cinema, and the study of mass media in general. -- Gerd Gemu nden "German Quarterly" This massively documented study of Nazi cinema...notably succeeds in analysing how Nazi films created a dreamworld that seemed neither realistic nor fantastic, but agreeable and persuasive--indeed closer to Hollywood than to Stalinist cinema. Above all, Rentschler stresses how films belong to a German cultural continuum, reaching into the present. Fifty years after Siegfried Kracauer's landmark book "From Caligari to Hitler," this is the study that's long been needed of the movies' most disturbing triumph. A quite exceptional new book... Nazi cinema is an issue which is, in fact, far more urgent, and more topical, than it may at first appear. The cinema of Hitler, far from perishing with the passing of the Third Reich, continues to thrive...One is grateful to Rentschler both for producing such a well-researched, thorough and thoughtful book, and for doing to with such constructive energy, fine style and subtle wit. Any serious student either of film or of the Third Reich will learn a great deal from this splendid new account. -- Graham McCann "Times Higher Education Supplement" Eric Rentschler, America's leading scholar of National Socialist cinema, has produced a compact compendium of everything you wanted to know about Nazi filmdom but were afraid to ask...well written and extensively researched; nearly half the manuscript is footnotes that yield fascinating anecdotal information...For those with an itchy curiosity about Third Reich culture, "The Ministry of Illusion" warrants reading. It provides delightful browsing in bits and pieces--the perfect gift for a cinephile-compulsive literate who has a magazine rack in the loo. -- Stewart Brinton "Pacific Cinematheque" "The Ministry of Illusion" provides a long-awaited and meticulously researched examination of films in the Third Reich that will be of tremendous value to both scholars and educators. Eric Rentschler, whose encyclopedic knowledge of German film has earned him a reputation as one of the foremost film historians in the United States, provides both a historical account of Nazi ideology and a number of readings of exemplary Nazi propaganda films, such as "Hitler Youth Quex" and the notorious "Jew Su ss..". It is essential reading for anyone interested in the popular appeal of the Third Reich or the ideological working of film in general. -- Marcia Klotz "Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television" Rentschler's readable, superbly researched, and meticulously documented study does not attempt to engage all of the nearly 1,100 films made during the Third Reich. Rather, the author provides measured, elegantly written assessments of several key films--such as the 'movement film' "Hitler Youth Quex," the breezy, American-style "Lucky Kids," Sirk's "La Habanera," the notorious "Jew Su ss," and the fantastic, still much beloved "Mu nchhausen"--to explore recent claims of their alleged resistance to the Nazi regime and to examine reasons for their enduring popularity, at least in Germany. Rentschler avoids both pitfalls often associated with discussions of these films--reductive ideological critique and evasive 'aesthetic' appreciation. He enhances readers' awareness of the ways Nazi filmmakers used the 'Jewish' Hollywood conventions Goebbels simultaneously feared and admired and their complex relationship with Weimar film culture. An immensely useful chronology of key events, the most extensive general bibliography of the subject ever compiled in English, and helpful filmographies of and bibliographies about the leading Nazi cineastes make this an essential acquisition. film or of the Third Reich will learn a great deal from this splendid new account. the popular appeal of the Third Reich or the ideological working of film in general. Hitler," this is the study that's long been needed of the movies' most disturbing triumph. reading. It provides delightful browsing in bits and pieces--the perfect gift for a cinephile-compulsive literate who has a magazine rack in the loo. nuanced, and highly readable book that contributes significantly to existing studies on Nazi cinema while remaining accessible to a general public interested in German history, cinema, and the study of mass media in general.

German cinema of the Third Reich, even in the 1990s, a half-century in no other country", observes director Wim Wenders, "have images and language been abused so unscrupulously as here, never before and nowhere else have they been debased so deeply as vehicles to transmit lies". More than 1000 German feature films that premiered during the reign of National Socialism survive as mementoes of what many regard as film history's darkest hour. As Eric Rentschler argues, however, 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 Suss" 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" - melodrama, 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, endeavoured to maximise film's potential, to cloak party priorities in cinematic shapes. Hitler and Goebbels were master showmen enamoured of their media i