Fascist and communist dictators recognized the power of cinema early on. DW discusses this with author Peter Demetz, who looked into how Hitler, Goebbels, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin dealt with the medium.
Hitler, guest of honor at a film screeningImage: picture-alliance/akg-images
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Peter Demetz, now aged 96, is a US literature scholar specialized in German studies. DW reached him on the phone at his home in New Brunswick, New Jersey to discuss his new book, Dictators in cinema: Lenin - Mussolini - Hitler - Goebbels - Stalin (not yet published in English).
DW: What fascinated you about dictators' relationship to cinema?
Peter Demetz: It's a topic that has always interested me, ever since my youth. At the time, I would always go the cinema [in Brno, a city in the Czech Republic that was occupied by the Nazis from 1939 - 1945]. Adults around me were always talking about the world's dictators. That made me curious to find out more about what those dictators thought about film.
Peter Demetz, born in Prague in 1922, now lives in the USImage: Leonhard Hilzensauer/Paul Zsolnay Verlag
You looked into five dictators and their relationships to cinema. Let's start with Adolf Hitler: Initially, he wasn't a film fan at all.
He was shocked by one of his first experiences in a movie theater in Linz, at the age of 16 or 17, where he saw a so-called Enlightenment film. It included scenes about syphilis and prostitution. He was still talking about how it shocked him years later, in the middle of the war, in 1943.
But Hitler also became a film maniac, sometimes watching several a day, from 1933 to 1939. What made him change his mind about cinema?
That was of course Joseph Goebbels' influence. But he also evolved on his own in this matter. When he went out with his circle of collaborators in Munich in the 1920s, they didn't only go for a beer or to a cabaret revue, but also to the cinema. At some point, Eva Braun showed up; she was working for Heinrich Hoffmann [who'd later become Hitler's official photographer; Braun, later Hitler's partner, was Hoffmann's assistant and model at the time].
Hoffmann always asked Eva Braun to sit next to Hitler, and that's how Hitler's interest in film grew — but only until the outbreak of World War II. After that, he would only watch newsreels to follow his own role in them. So his interest in film went from 1933 to 1939.
Goebbels (in lighter suit) and other Nazi officials going to a film screening in 1936Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Goebbels had another approach. By 1933 he had already transformed the entire film industry. Was he quicker to recognize the power of cinema as a tool of propaganda?
Actually, even Goebbels discovered cinema fairly late. His first film notes were found in a diary from 1924. He wrote about Scandinavian silent films, observing how the actors' style differed from the Germans'. He was aged 27 at the time.
Goebbels, however, remained true to his interest in cinema, and that continued through his political role as film censor, since in 1933, he was appointed Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and that's how he started managing German film production to reflect National Socialist ideals.
Goebbels and Hitler were both fans of British and Hollywood films, as several historians have found, which appears contradictory to German propaganda films. How can that be explained?
There were different reasons for this. Goebbels wished to reproduce the Americans' success. He also envisioned German war films with a civil approach. His model for this was the Hollywood film Mrs. Miniver from 1943, which centered on a family during the war. But he never managed to obtain something similar; German war films were always too solemn, compared to the American or the British ones.
Hitler had his own motivations. He was looking for himself in films; he had a strong urge to develop his biographical self-awareness. One of his favorite films was, for example, the Hollywood production Viva Villa!, a movie about the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. Hitler saw himself as the people's revolutionary. Goebbels, however, didn't want to have the film shown in German cinemas, because he found it too revolutionary and dangerous.
One of Hitler's favorite films: 'Viva Villa!' (1934) stars Wallace Beery (left) as Pancho VillaImage: Imago/United Archives
Hitler was also searching for portrayals of father-son conflicts in film, in reaction to his own complicated family background. He also had in mind the Prussian conflict between the old king Frederick William and his son who'd succeed him, Frederick the Great. He found a reflection of such conflicts in British colonial films, in which he recognized conflicts between a conservative father and a less conservative son.
The five dictators you cover in your book had different ways of dealing with their own portrayal in film. Some of them wanted to see themselves portrayed as heroes on screen…
There were major differences from one dictator to the other. In Italy under Benito Mussolini, there weren't any feature films that portrayed Mussolini as himself — though he did appear in newsreels, including for instance "Il Duce" on the beach in Riccione. The films that were shown rather promoted the image of a dictator as an icon, for example the Roman general Scipio Africanus.
Italy had an entire series of films that portrayed "helpful giants," who always helped good people. This Hercules-like heroic figure was known as Maciste. And everyone took for granted that Maciste was a metaphorical depiction of Mussolini, even though he wasn't ever named.
Actor Mikheil Gelovani often portrayed Joseph Stalin, here in 'Fortress on the Volga' 1942Image: picture-alliance/Everett Collection
What wasthe approach in the Soviet Union?
Lenin had originally forbidden all films that portrayed him as a character; he didn't allow any biographical representation. But that didn't help him once he died. He was then quickly turned into a film figure, mainly at Stalin's request, who liked to appear as the one bringing Lenin's work to completion.
Stalin encouraged direct portrayals in movies, for example in the 1950 classic Soviet realist film, The Fall of Berlin, in which personally flies into the city to free it — even though he actually avoided planes and rather traveled by train. The fact that Stalin was turned into a film character is a Soviet specialty that didn't occur under other dictators.
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Even before the Nazis' rise in 1933, anti-Semitism was present in film. After 1945, many directors struggled to deal with the Holocaust, but some continued to make movies with anti-Semitic tendencies.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Kugler
Anti-Semitism in 16th-century Prague
One of Germany's most famous silent films, "The Golem: How He Came Into the World," was made in 1920. Paul Wegener directed and played a leading role in the film set in 16th-century Prague. The Jewish ghetto is in danger and the emperor order the Jews to leave the city. Only the mythical Golem can help. It's one of the earliest films to address the persecution of Jews.
Image: picture alliance / United Archiv
Persecution of Jews in 1920s Vienna
Based on a novel by Hugo Bettauer, "The City Without Jews," is an important example of how films have taken on anti-Semitism. The Austrian-made film is set in Vienna in the 1920s and shows how the residents held Jews responsible for all social ills. Critics, however, have lamented the film's use of anti-Semitic cilches.
Image: Filmarchiv Austria
Fine line between tolerance and clichés
Four years earlier in 1916, the American director DW Griffith had created the monumental historical film,"Intolerance." The story explains historical events over the course of four episodes, taking intolerance to task. Yet in a scene showing the crucifixion of Jesus, Griffith employed Jewish stereotypes. As a result, critics have also accused "Intolerance" of demonstrating anti-Semitic tendencies.
Image: picture-alliance / Mary Evans Picture Library
Ben Hur through the decades
"Ben Hur" was first made in 1925, but has been reinvented many time since then. It tells the story of a conflict betweet Jews and Christians at the beginning of the 1st century. Jewish prince Judah Ben Hur lives in Roman-occupied Jerusalem as a contemporary of Jesus Christ. The way the Jewish-Christian relationship is showed in the Ben Hur films remains a topic of discussion today.
Image: Imago/United Archives
A trial and pogrom in 1880s Hungary
Although hardly known today, GW Pabst's "The Trial" (1948) is an astounding early example of how the cinema reacted to the Holocaust. Filmed in Austria just three years after the end of the war, Pabst tells a true story set in 1882 in Hungary. A young girl disappears from her village and Jews are blamed. Tragically, a pogrom follows.
Image: Filmarchiv Austria
Broaching the truth
"The Trial" remained an exception. After the war, it took the film industry in Europe quite some time to deal with the subject. The French director Alain Resnais was the first to address the Nazi genocide in 1956, in the unsparing 30-minute documentary "Night and Fog."
Image: picture-alliance/Mary Evans Picture Library/Ronald Grant Archive
Bringing the Holocaust to TV
It wasn't until the 1978 television mini-series "Holocaust" was made that the genocide was brought to the broader public. The four-part US production directed by Marvin J. Chomsky tells the story of a Jewish family that gets caught in the cogs of the Nazis' genocidal policies.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Steven Spielberg's 'Schindler's List'
Fifteen years later, American director Steven Spielberg was able to accomplish on the big screen what "Holocaust" had done for television audiences. "Schindler's List" portrayed the brutal reality of the Nazis' anti-Semitism in Germany, but also in Eastern Europe, spotlighting the unscrupulous SS offcer Amon Göth.
Image: picture alliance/United Archives
Claude Lanzmann and 'Shoah'
French director Claude Lanzmann harshly criticized Spielberg's drama. "He did not really reflect on the Holocaust and cinema. The Holocaust cannot be portrayed," he said in an interview. Lanzmann himself took up the subjects of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in a completely different way - through long documentaries and essay films such as "Shoah" and "Sobibor."
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Humor and the Holocaust
Italian comedian and filmmaker Roberto Bengini took a daring approach in his film on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. In 1997, "Life is Beautiful" premiered, telling the fictional story of Jews suffering in a concentration camps. The humor he wove throughout had a liberating effect.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Roman Polanski's 'The Pianist'
An equally moving film by Polish-French director Roman Polanski was released in 2002. In "The Pianist," the fate of Jewish-Polish musician Władysław Szpilman during the war years of 1943-44 was brought to the big screen. The project allowed the director, whose mother and other relatives were deported and murdered by the Nazis, to work through his own family's past.
Image: imago stock&people
Anti-Semitism and Jesus the Jew
Films about the life of Jesus Christ often come up in discussions about anti-Semitism in cinema. Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988), for example, has been accused of reinforcing anti-Semitic clichés, particularly in scenes in which Jews are indirectly associated with greed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Mel Gibson's scandalous 'The Passion of the Christ'
Much more controversial was the film that Australian Mel Gibson released two years later. Both Christians and Jews accused Gibson of explicit anti-Semitism in the film, saying he didn't counter the implications in the New Testament that Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus (who himself was Jewish). In public, Gibson likewise used anti-Semitic speech.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Turkish anti-Semitism
Audiences and critics alike decried the anti-Semitism in the Turkish film, "Valley of the Wolves." The action-packed movie version of a TV series of the same name showed a battle between Turkish soldiers and Israel. The film employed "anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic stereotypes and was inciteful," according to several organizations.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Kugler
WWII still a challenge for filmmakers
Just how difficult it can still be to address the subject matter of World War II is evident in the response to a three-part German TV series from 2013, "Generation War." The series follows a handful of German soldiers fighting on the eastern front. It was criticized in Poland for anti-Semitism and was said to have represented the Polish resistance.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Wolf
Hannah Arendt and 'the banality of evil'
Margarethe von Trotta's film about Hannah Arendt was well received in 2012. The director sketched a balanced portrait of the philosopher and publicist who, in the 1960s, grappled with a figure who was largely responsible for the Nazi genocide: Adolf Eichmann. Arendt coined the phrase "the banality of evil" to explain anti-Semitism clothed in seemingly harmless bureaucracy.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Heimatfilm/NFP
The 'Wonder Woman' controversy
Because the protagonist of the current Hollywood super hero hit "Wonder Woman" is played by Israeli Gal Gadot, the film was not shown in a number of Arab countries. Gadot herself had served in the Israeli army and defended her experience. Not showing "Wonder Woman" is anti-Semitic, according to the public sentiment in Israel.
