settima

nazis

Le chagrin et la pitié [The Sorrow and the Pity] (Marcel Ophüls, 1969)

Jun

5

Sorry I Was on a Boat Day

Le chagrin et la pitié (1969)

Two smiling farmers. The interviewer asks “What did you think about?” One of them replies “Surviving. That's it.” Screenshot via. DPs: André Gazut & Jürgen Thieme.

Someone makes an excuse on Sorry I Was on a Boat Day (USA)

“One thing I find appalling is when people who were [Vichy President] Pétain supporters come up to me and tell me what they did for the Resistance. Sometimes it's unreal. “Oh, Mr. Gaspard, if only you knew what we did, what I did for the Resistance.” Go ahead, pal, tell me all about it. I try to stay calm. I'm a salesman, and I want to sell my product. The company doesn't pay me to do politics and pick fights, so sometimes I find myself obliged to listen to a song and dance of some guy who shows me a drawer and gets his wife to confirm that there was indeed a revolver in that drawer during the war, a revolver which he was supposedly ready to use on the Germans. Only he never actually used it. History doesn't lie.”

Émile Coulaudon aka Colonel Gaspard, former head of the French Resistance in Auvergne

Marcel Ophüls documents the people of Clermont-Ferrand as the microcosm of Vichy France, part of Europe's only country that happily collaborated with its occupier, Nazi Germany. What were their justifications, their excuses, their motivations? Was it survival, habit, greed? Comfort, conformity, obedience, fear?

 

And what is yours?

La caduta degli dei (Götterdämmerung) [The Damned] (Luchino Visconti, 1969)

May

18

Visit Your Relatives Day

La caduta degli dei (Götterdämmerung) (1969)

Martin Von Essenbeck (Helmut Berger) entertains the family. DPs: Pasqualino De Santis & Armando Nannuzzi.

A family gathering on Visit Your Relatives Day (USA)

“You must realize that today in Germany anything can happen, even the improbable, and it's just the beginning, Frederick. Personal morals are dead. We are an elite society where everything is permissible. These are Hitler's words. My dear Frederick, even you should give them some thought.”

– Aschenbach

The wealthy Von Essenbecks gather for a family dinner party. There is entertainment.

Der ewige Jude [The Eternal Jew] (Fritz Hippler, 1940)

Apr

4

World Rat Day

Der ewige Jude (1940)

Nazi propaganda postcard advertising an exhibition in the library of the Deutsche Museum in Munich called Der ewige Jude: Große politische Schau (“The Eternal Jew: Great Political Exhibition”). The front of the card is a reproduction of the film poster. The card is dated 1937, which is at odds with the information in this blogpost. DPs: A. Endrejat, Anton Haffner, R. Hartmann, F.C. Heeve, Heinz Kluth, Erich Stoll & H. Winterfeld.

I took a long time considering what to nominate for today's topic. This is not an easy one. And frankly, barely qualifies as as film.

 

 

In 1939, the faux #documentary Der ewige Jude, directed by the leader of Goebbels' #propaganda film department Fritz Hippler, started production. Scenes shot in Jewish ghettos in occupied Poland were intercut with real, but out-of-context documentary footage, giving it a false sense of authenticity./

“Where rats turn up, they spread diseases and carry extermination into the land. They are cunning, cowardly and cruel, they travel in large packs, exactly the way the Jews infect the races of the world.”

– narrator