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Sto caricando le informazioni... Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939di Thomas Doherty
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Doherty offers an extensive study of studio films during the years 1933 to 1939 and explains why virtually none of the studios mentioned Hitler or the horrors of what was happening in Germany. Basically, the companies did not want to lose the German audience in Germany. The only one to stand up and say no to Germany was Warner Brothers. It finally took newsreels such as MovieTone news to get the word out. A fascinating, in depth if over long study. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they understood the power of propaganda and the powerful role of cinema in promoting the party's aims. Joseph Goebbels, as Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, made it a priority to Nazify all areas of art and took a particular interest in the powerful UFA film studio. During the six years of the Nazi Reich before the beginning of World War II in 1939, the US film industry was not quick to tackle Nazism. It's not too surprising, given the strength of isolationist feeling, but Doherty tells us exactly why there was only one Hollywood film released about the Nazis and their violent practices before 1939. (I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany, whose making Doherty describes in detail.) He details how the Production Code Administration and local censorship boards quashed nearly every attempt to tackle the subject, and how the studios themselves hesitated to rock the boat and lose the opportunity to sell their own products to German distributors. For an academic publication, this is written in an almost breezy style. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but it's certainly a very readable treatment, filled with personalities and inside-Hollywood stories. Chapters about the abortive attempt to make nice with Mussolini by getting his son involved in the picture biz, Leni Riefenstahl's disastrous publicity junket to the US to promote her film Olympia, about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League's near-whiplash when Germany and the Soviet Union signed their Non-Aggression Pact, all read as entertainingly as a gossip column. Some of the most interesting parts of the book cover the role of newsreels in covering Nazi Germany. Newsreel-only theaters in New York played to full houses and audiences didn't hold back their feelings when big-name political personalities appeared on the screen. There was even a newsreel theater on 96th Street that showed pro-Nazi reels right up until Pearl Harbor. Although isolationist feeling in the US continued even after England and France declared war on Germany in 1939, Hollywood finally went to war, beginning with films like Confessions of a Nazi Spy and The Mortal Storm. They must have hit a nerve: a Warner Bros. Warsaw executive reported, after he fled Poland with just the clothes on his back, that the Polish theater owners who booked the former film "were hanged by the Nazis from the ratters of their own theaters." This is a rewarding read for anybody interested in World War II history or the history of the film industry. Double points for those interested in both nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
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Between 1933 and 1939, representations of the Nazis and the full meaning of Nazism came slowly to Hollywood, growing more ominous and distinct only as the decade wore on. Recapturing what ordinary Americans saw on the screen during the emerging Nazi threat, Thomas Doherty reclaims forgotten films, such as Hitler's Reign of Terror (1934), a pioneering anti-Nazi docudrama by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.; I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany (1936), a sensational true tale of "a Hollywood girl in Naziland!"; and Professor Mamlock (1938), an anti-Nazi film made by German refugees living in the Soviet Union. Doherty also recounts how the disproportionately Jewish backgrounds of the executives of the studios and the workers on the payroll shaded reactions to what was never simply a business decision. As Europe hurtled toward war, a proxy battle waged in Hollywood over how to conduct business with the Nazis, how to cover Hitler and his victims in the newsreels, and whether to address or ignore Nazism in Hollywood feature films. Should Hollywood lie low, or stand tall and sound the alarm? Doherty's history features a cast of charismatic personalities: Carl Laemmle, the German Jewish founder of Universal Pictures, whose production of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) enraged the nascent Nazi movement; Georg Gyssling, the Nazi consul in Los Angeles, who read the Hollywood trade press as avidly as any studio mogul; Vittorio Mussolini, son of the fascist dictator and aspiring motion picture impresario; Leni Riefenstahl, the Valkyrie goddess of the Third Reich who came to America to peddle distribution rights for Olympia (1938); screenwriters Donald Ogden Stewart and Dorothy Parker, founders of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League; and Harry and Jack Warner of Warner Bros., who yoked anti-Nazism to patriotic Americanism and finally broke the embargo against anti-Nazi cinema with Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939). Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)791.43094309The arts Recreational and performing arts Public performances Film, Radio, and Television Film History, geographic treatment, biography Europe Germany History, geographic treatment, biographyClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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Doherty writes about the subject in a fairly lighthearted manner, making this easy to read for those who don't read a lot of non-fiction. Like I said, I love non-fiction but sometimes the language makes it tough for a layperson to read, but this one isn't like that. Admittedly there were some terms I had to look up, such as "hagio-biopic" (still don't know what that means).
Besides the obvious, Doherty gives us inside looks into Hollywood's early history and gossip and the background of Nazi movies (often times in much more detail than I would have liked, but movie buffs will certainly enjoy this). Doherty's other books are also on TV & film, so certainly this is a passion of his. My favorite chapter was on Leni Riefenstahl, who directed two popular Nazi propaganda war films.
I received this book to read and review from netgalley & was not paid for my honest review. ( )