Great Love (1942)

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Movie
Original title The great love
The great love 1942 Logo 001.svg
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1942
length 100 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Rolf Hansen
script Peter Groll ,
Rolf Hansen based
on an idea by
Alexander Lernet-Holenia
production Walter Bolz
music Michael Jary
camera Franz Weihmayr ,
Gerhard Huttula (trick camera)
cut Anna Höllering
occupation

Die Große Liebe is a German Nazi propaganda feature film by UFA directed by Rolf Hansen from 1942 with Zarah Leander and Viktor Staal in the leading roles. The great love became the most commercially successful film in the Third Reich .

action

The attractive first lieutenant Paul Wendlandt is stationed as a fighter pilot in North Africa . He was posted to Berlin for one day as reporter. There he saw the popular Danish singer Hanna Holberg on the stage of the “Scala” variety show . For him it is love at first sight. When Hanna goes to meet friends after the performance, Paul follows her and speaks to her in the subway. After the reception at her friends' apartment, he accompanies her home, and then coincidence comes to his aid: because of an air raid alarm , she is forced to take him to the air-raid shelter of the apartment building. Hanna reciprocates Paul's feelings, but after spending a night together Paul has to go back to the front.

From now on, misunderstandings and missed opportunities line up. While Hanna hopes in vain for a sign of life, Paul flies missions in North Africa. When he wants to visit her in her Berlin apartment, she gives a Wehrmacht concert in Paris. Nevertheless, their bond continues to grow and arouses the jealousy of the composer Rudnitzky, who also loves the singer. Paul Hanna proposes marriage by letter; when he can finally visit her, however, he is recalled on hen party . Disappointed, Hanna travels to Rome to take on a guest performance. Even when Paul gets three weeks' leave and Hanna follows to Rome, the wedding has to be postponed because Paul feels that he is needed at the front and decides to leave, although he has not even received an order to do so. Hanna doesn't understand him, there is an argument and Paul thinks he has lost her forever.

Then the Nazi regime begins the German-Soviet war ; Paul and his comrade Etzdorf are sent to the Eastern Front. When Etzdorf fell, Paul Hanna wrote a farewell letter so that he could better endure the danger of his missions. It was only when he was finally shot down and wounded in a hospital in the mountains that there was another reunion with Hanna, who is still ready to marry him. The last pictures in the film link private happiness with the national cause: the lovers look up to the sky, happy for the future, where a German bomber squadron passes by.

Musical interludes

  • The world will not end because of this
  • Blue hussars (today the blue hussars are coming)
  • I know a miracle will happen one day
  • My life for love - yes!

All songs were composed by Michael Jary , written by Bruno Balz and sung by Zarah Leander . “That won't end the world” and “I know a miracle will happen one day” became two of the most successful hits of the Nazi era.

The political leadership valued the two songs as persistent propaganda in view of the increasingly unfavorable course of the war for Germany, on the other hand, "I know, a miracle will one day happen" was also used by opposition members and concentration camp inmates as an expression of hope for a time after National Socialism Roger that. This rather hopeful view is supported by the fact that the copywriter Bruno Balz had previously been arrested and tortured by the Gestapo several times - and threatened with the concentration camp.

Nazi propaganda

In its amalgamation of entertaining and propagandistic elements, the film is similarly a model for National Socialist cinema as the film Wunschkonzert , after Die Große Liebe the most popular film of the National Socialist era. While the tense love story staged in a request concert , the images from the North African desert, Paris and Rome and the lavish show interludes invite you to dream, The Great Love pulled out all the stops of war training: Not love, but war is the subject of the film.

The film not only contains original material from the German newsreel with pictures of German attacks on the English Channel coast - the war determines the entire plot of the film. The lesson that Hanna Holberg and thus also the audience has to learn is the nullification of individual pursuit of happiness in times when higher values ​​- here: Germany's military victory in World War II - come to the fore. The film gains its political explosiveness not from the fact that it propagates indefinitely renunciation in difficult times, but rather by weighing individual happiness against duties that far exceed military service duties. Paul is not interested in behaving correctly as a soldier, but wants to make his contribution to Germany's victory in World War II. He does not renounce Hanna because of orders that repeatedly call him to the front, but rather to serve the national cause and to sacrifice his life to Germany if necessary. In the process, Hanna learns that waiting and giving up in war must not only be accepted as a fateful thing, but that it is what makes really great love.

The film shows an unusually realistic depiction of everyday life in the war by showing the rationing of food, bomb alarms and people waiting for hours in air raid shelters. Of course, he never does this without teaching at the same time how to maintain confidence and a good mood even in difficult life situations. People from different strata of society help each other and the heroine gets to know people of far lower social status in the course of the film. In addition, Hanna overcomes her snobbery by singing for wounded soldiers.

Production and reception

The interior recordings for “The Great Love” took place from September 23, 1941 to the beginning of October 1941 in the Tobis Sascha Atelier in Vienna- Rosenhügel and in the Carl Froelich sound film studio in Berlin-Tempelhof . The outdoor shots were shot in Berlin and Rome until mid-March 1942. When censorship template in the film inspection on June 10, 1942 (Test-No. B. 57295), the film had classified a length of 2,738 meters and 100 minutes and was as family-safe and holiday free. Ufa's own Deutsche Filmvertriebs GmbH (DFV) took over the distribution. On April 18, 1944, it was submitted to the film testing agency again at a length of 2,732 meters (B. 60163) and classified in the same way as when it was first submitted.

The world premiere took place on June 12, 1942 in Berlin: in the Germania-Palast on Frankfurter Allee and in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo . "The Great Love" became the most commercially successful film of the Nazi era. It had 27 million viewers and brought in 8 million Reichsmarks . The production costs were 3 million Reichsmarks. The film testing agency awarded him the ratings "State-politically valuable", "Artistically valuable" and "Popularly valuable" - a combination that Gerhard Lamprecht's German heroic biography "Diesel" (also 1942) achieved.

After the end of the Second World War, the Control Commission of the Allied Victory Powers initially prohibited the film from being shown. The version of the world premiere on June 12, 1942 in Berlin is 2738 meters long, corresponding to 100 minutes of cinema (playback via video or, as now, DVD around 97 minutes). A version was performed in the Federal Republic from 1963 onwards, but it was shortened by a few scenes that indicate acts of war.

In 1980 the film was submitted to the FSK as it was intended to be released on video. The FSK issued a release from the age of 6, with the following cut requirement: a shortening (loudspeaker announcement at the Brandenburg Gate : "Moscow has not only broken the agreement of our friendship pact, but has betrayed it in a pathetic way. I have therefore decided to defend fate and the future of the German Reich and our people back into the hands of our soldiers. ”) This video version was sold by the Topic company for years and is still available in antiquarian fashion today.

In 1997 the film was submitted to the FSK again and approved by them without editing requirements, but with an age rating of 18 and over. This unabridged version, supplemented by 12 meters from the first verse of “I know, there will be a miracle once”, which was missing in all video versions until then, is now 2738 meters long again, which corresponds to 100 movie minutes, but just through faster playback via video or DVD around 97 minutes. Since only the running time of the theatrical versions was incorrectly stated, there was speculation about possible cuts. The current publication has been in stores in full since April 2007.

Reviews

The following should be taken into account when assessing the film Die große Liebe and, in general, entertainment films during National Socialism: "At the beginning of the 1990s, there was a decisive trend reversal in research, when the focus was no longer on the definition and categorization of Nazi films rather, it was asked about the ideological function of films from the Nazi era in their broader discursive context. "

  • Karsten Witte wrote in Film im National Socialism that the film shows, in unveiled form, the price that women paid to the war and the warring men: “Reluctantly, it harbors a bit of realism that has not yet been accepted by criticism. The fable is politically ambivalent to read: Before the victory of men stands the surrender of women. "
  • Karlheinz Wendtland, on the other hand, interpreted the film in Geliebter Kintopp as being directed against the Nazis. Bruno Balz wrote the song I know, there will be a miracle one day , under the impression that his composer Michael Jary had succeeded in freeing him from Gestapo imprisonment: “What made a perseverance after the war (only then!) was actually a mockery of the 'greatest general of all time' (in the vernacular GRÖFAZ), along with his politics and his 'general genius'! In retrospect, facts are turned upside down! "Critics like Witte are entitled to any means" to denigrate the film of the time and its artists across the board. "
  • In the article in the “Filmjournal” about films during the Nazi era, Die Große Liebe is seen in the context of Nazi propaganda: “When it became apparent in 1941 that the war was not going to end anytime soon, its portrayal in feature films was almost as good taboo. The mobilization of the home front was now aimed at films such as 'A beautiful day', 'Die große Liebe' or 'Wunschkonzert' and finally the large-scale project ' Kolberg ' that came about during the last phase of the war .

See also

literature

  • Helmut Regel: On the topography of Nazi films. in: film review. 1966, 10 (Jan), pp. 5-18.
  • Jens Thiele, Fred Ritzel: Political message and entertainment - the reality in Nazi films. The great love (1942). in: Werner Faulstich, Helmut Korte: Fischer film history. 2: The film as a social force 1925–1944. Fischer, Frankfurt / M. 1991.
  • Stephen Lowry: Pathos and Politics. Ideology in feature films of National Socialism. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1991.
  • Barbara Schrödl: Fashion and War. The body of the dress in Nazi films of the late 1930s and early 1940s. In: Christine Petersen (ed.): Signs of war in film, literature and the media. Kiel 2004, pp. 231-255.
  • Micaela Jary: I know a miracle will happen one day. Construction Verlag, Berlin 1993 (edition q), 2001.
  • Wolfgang Jacobsen , Anton Kaes, Hans Helmut Prinzler (Hrsg.): History of the German film. JB Metzler-Verlag, 2nd edition 2004, ISBN 3-476-01952-7 .
  • Karlheinz Wendtland: Beloved Kintopp. Born in 1941 and 1942. Berlin, 2nd edition 1989–1996, ISBN 3-926945-04-4 .

References and comments

  1. ^ New York Times: The Great Love (1942) . In: NY Times . Retrieved October 31, 2010. 
  2. ^ Erwin Leiser : Nazi Cinema. P. 61. ISBN 0-02-570230-0 .
  3. http://www.berlin.de/ba-charlottenburg-wilmersdorf/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/2008/pressemitteilung.197094.php
  4. ^ Francis Courtade, Pierre Cadars: History of the film in the Third Reich. Translated from the French by Florian Hopf. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1975, pp. 230-233.
  5. “... when Germany was living in a war whose end could not be foreseen. In this situation, the task of the film [The Great Love, Tk] was to strengthen morale in the homeland; especially those of the women whose men were at the front ” . Francis Courtade, Pierre Cadars: History of Film in the Third Reich. Translated from the French by Florian Hopf. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1975, p. 232.
  6. On the accusation that she supported Nazi propaganda through her films, Zarah Leander writes in her memoir: “I am almost glad that they put the label 'political idiot' on me. If I am but really, you should leave me with groundless accusations of a 'questionable' political past alone. " . Zarah Leander: It was so wonderful! My life. Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1983, p. 210.
  7. ^ Erwin Leiser : Nazi Cinema . P. 63. ISBN 0-02-570230-0 .
  8. ^ Cinzia Romani: Tainted Goddesses: Female Film Stars of the Third Reich. S 74. ISBN 0-9627613-1-1 .
  9. In addition, the film received the ratings "youth value" and "folksy"; Francis Courtade, Pierre Cadars: History of Film in the Third Reich. Translated from the French by Florian Hopf. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1975, p. 211.
  10. ^ Dealing with the film heritage of the Nazi era , filmportal.de.
  11. Karsten Witte: Film in National Socialism. in: History of German Film. 2nd edition 2004, pp. 147-148.
  12. ^ Karlheinz Wendtland: Beloved Kintopp. Born in 1941 and 1942. 2nd edition 1989–1996, p. 106.
  13. ^ Nazi propaganda films , filmportal.de.

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