Mark Welch

Department of Nursing and Health Studies
University of Western Sydney
ma.welch@nepean.uws.edu.au

 

Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and its Afterlife. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996.

 
The subtitle of Eric Rentschler’s latest book, The Ministry of Illusion (1996), gives a strong clue to its real purpose. He speaks of the Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife, and as well-researched and referenced a work of film history as this book is, it is really about what the Nazi cinema means to us today, and why it has such an enduring allure.

 

It is illuminating but unsurprising that he should open his preface with a confessional note. He would not be the first and will not be the last young student to be grimly fascinated by what was an epoch of major importance for the development of the cinema. What changed for Rentschler, and what can be gained from his book, is a realization that the films he saw as “so reviled and yet so resonant” were profoundly meaningful for our contemporary understandings of the cinema, both as an artistic and a socio-cultural medium. In particular, Rentschler’s work has much that is valuable to say about how cinema helps us to construct a sense of reality, and the role the Other plays in the legitimation of our identity.

 

The figure of Goebbels is absolutely central to Rentschler’s argument and, in one of many extraordinarily detailed footnotes, he cites a report of a closing address given by Goebbels to the International Film Congress in 1933 (239). To a contemporary ear, many of the seven theses on which Goebbels expounded may sound very familiar. It is necessary, he said among other propositions, for film to recognize that it has a language of its own that is different from that of other art forms, and to develop it; while film must free itself from the “vulgar banality of a simple mass entertainment,” it must not lose its strong inner connection with people because mass taste can be educated and film has a crucial role in this; however, no art can exist without material support and the state should ensure this; film must reflect the spirit of the times if it is to speak to them; film gives expression to national identity, and in doing so creates understanding among nations; and film should develop its innermost natural essence and, if it does so, Goebbels suggests, it will conquer the world as a new artistic medium.

 

1933 was a crucial year for German cinema. On March 11th, less than two weeks after the Reichstag fire, the Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, RMVP), the eponymous Ministry of Illusion, was created. Two days later Goebbels was appointed as the Minister of Propaganda. Within two weeks of his appointment Goebbels had made important speeches, to both the heads of German radio stations and leading representatives of the German film industry, in which he called for radical reforms and productions with distinctive national contours. On 29 March 1933, Fritz Lang’s Testament of Dr. Mabuse was banned: it was not shown in Germany until 1951. During the next few months Goebbels made tax concessions available to approved sections of the film industry, offered attractive credit terms and began a level of engagement that by 1936 would see the Ministry involved in more than 70% of German feature films. He also instigated measures which restricted the right to work in the film industry to “true Germans,” and reorganized the professional bodies that represented the industry. In June 1933, after a blaze of activity, the seal was on the efforts of Goebbels to assume authority at every level for the RMVP. At the same time Hitler delivered a speech in which he said that the RMVP is to be responsible for

 

all tasks related to the spiritual guidance of the nation, to the promotion of the state, culture and the economy, to the promulgation of information to domestic and foreign sources about the nation as well as the administration of all the agencies responsible for these endeavours.

 

It was a realization of the totalitarian imagination for Goebbels, who had argued that the need for reform in the film industry was a spiritual one and must counteract the decadence of the Weimar years. With this foundation some of the most memorable, audacious, and controversial films ever made were produced in Germany over the next dozen years, films that were quite often regarded as such for the same reasons and at the same time. Rentschler notes that much of the supposed omnipotence of the RMVP has been exaggerated, and the situation may have been more confused and less simplistic than was once imagined; the RMVP was not as totalitarian nor as omnipresent as the myths which have grown around it. However, the legacy of the films’ artistic and creative innovations is still as apparent and as current as the analysis of the potential of cinema made by Goebbels.

 

Rentschler acknowledges that the traditional image of the films of the Third Reich has been framed in the light of the political regime of the Nazis, and it was once almost taboo, or at least a guilty pleasure, to admire the aesthetic qualities in isolation from their context. Much of this can be attributed to the influence of landmark critics from the Frankfurt School such as Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer, who problematized the whole notion of a pure aesthetic. While Susan Sontag confessed, somewhat riskily, to finding Fascism fascinating, it may have been in the spirit, not so much of admiration, but, more likely, of admitting to the awful fascination of seeing what unchecked certainty and uncritical dreaming could achieve. The debt that the Hollywood spectacle has to the masterly control of image-making in Nazi cinema has either been rehabilitated or ignored. Yet, this lineage of imagery continues: as recently as this year, the opening shots from the airplane in Anthony Minghella’s Oscar-winning film, The English Patient, echo the shadow that Leni Riefenstahl showed flying across the landscape of Nuremburg in The Triumph of the Will.

 

Rentschler, however, feels that to concentrate exclusively on themes, trends, and manifest content is to miss the significance of the films’ semiotic complexity. He suggests, not entirely fairly, that little has been previously said about the aesthetics of the Nazi films, those features that he feels make them so resonant and well regarded. He sees, and here his point should receive emphasis, a reciprocal link, at least aesthetically, between Hollywood and Berlin, and realizes that not every film produced in this era was crude propaganda.

 

Rentschler lays out his thesis based on five premises (16-24). He suggests that

 

• “the cinema of the Third Reich is to be seen in the context of the totalitarian state’s concerted attempt to create a culture industry in the service of mass deception.”
• “entertainment played a crucial role in Nazi culture. The era’s many genre films maintained the appearance of escapist vehicles and innocent recreations while functioning within a larger programme.”
• “Nazi film culture–and Nazi propaganda in general–must be understood in terms of what Goebbels called an ‘orchestra principle'” where not everyone was expected to play the same instrument.
• “it is by now a truism that we cannot speak of National Socialism without speaking about aesthetics.” Rentschler adds that we must also speak about mass culture.
• “when critics decry Nazi cinema as an abomination, they protest too much…. It is common to reduce all Nazi films to hate pamphlets, party hagiography, or mindless escapism, films with too much substance or none at all, either execrable or frivolous.”

 

He argues these points with reference to a number of emblematic, significant, or representative films. He includes Das blaue Licht (The Blue Light) (Dir. Riefenstahl 1932), a mountaineering film which came from the tradition of nineteenth-century German Romanticism, which is technically pre-Nazi but gets into the frame not least because of its aesthetic, its themes, and Riefenstahl’s direction. He then considers the much more grandiose Münchausen (Dir. Von Blaky 1943) and others, wishing to show each chosen film as an exemplar in its own way. He also includes two of the most famous Nazi films, and two most often cited for their propaganda content, Hitlerjunge Quex (Hitler Youth Quex) (1933) and the quite notorious Jud Süss (Jew Süss) (Dir. Harlan 1940). Indeed, had he ignored the most well-known examples altogether he might well have been considered perverse.

 

He defends his various theses with mixed success and sometimes it seems that his analysis is inconsistent and his method becomes a little fuzzy. While the contextual analysis of Nazi cinema is undoubtedly critical, he is still faced with the problem of the strident rhetoric of the RMVP and how the conditions of real life moderated action. He notes that many of the official statements emanating from the RMVP would appear to support his premise, yet, at the same time, he is also aware of degrees of subversion within the Ministry and the film industry itself which somehow conspire against any utopianism. Perhaps what we have come to learn of the chaos that lurks just below the surface of disintegrating totalitarian regimes in our own age can make us regard any protestations of unity and perfected order with a degree of skepticism. It seems to suggest that what can fall apart, will fall apart, and we should be regarding the hubris of those who think otherwise as simple folly. He warns against those who are dangerously sure of themselves.

 

As other authors (Hull, Taylor, Friedlander, Schulte-Sasse) have argued, there was often a divergence of opinion about the nature and function of film between Goebbels and Hitler. Of the two, Goebbels seemed to have the more sophisticated appreciation of the ideological content of all art forms, and realized that the public’s appetite for or capacity to absorb blatant and less than subtle presentations may be limited. So Goebbels wanted to establish the film culture in the very fabric of the nation’s mind-set. He wanted a Hollywood star system; he recognized, as many in Hollywood and the world of advertising do today, that often the most powerful messages are the ones you don’t even realize are there.

 

Apart from films, Goebbels saw the value of pageants and fetes, flags and uniforms. These all fostered a sense of identity; they signified what could be called “us,” and what was “them.” He was quick to spot any opportunity to emphasize the point, but whenever possible it was to be couched in terms of enjoyment and recreation. It is as though he believed that a content mind is an uncritical mind.

 

The aesthetics of Fascism are said by Susan Sontag to glorify and glamorize death and the body, often together and often in a disconnected way. Rentschler takes some critics to task for adopting an attitude towards the popular culture of the Third Reich that is dismissive, almost patronizing. He wants to emphasize that popular culture was exactly that, popular. It was there in songs of the period, as Goebbels’ favorite band, Charlie and His Orchestra, sang amusing light ditties about bombing London. It was there in the ordinary household items in the shops; the pictures that appeared on tea-towels and trays were choices made within this entire context. Nevertheless, in part because of the indelible images of the great spectacles and Riefenstahl’s work in particular, the idea of Fascist art, when it is skillful, remains troublesome to the Western liberal conscience. Had he wished to, it is possible that Rentschler would have found direct descendants in the MTV videos of Michael Jackson and his uniformed chorus, or the disturbing depersonalized idealization of some of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography. This is a topic that Rentschler does well to draw to our attention, and it is still full of unexplored possibilities.

 

His final premise is that the critics are, in general, as totalizing in their condemnation as they think Nazi art is in its monologism. In what may be an uncomfortable equation for many, Rentschler argues that most Nazi films are as understandable in their conventions and readings as any familiar, traditional Hollywood film. The essentials of narrative and characterization are much the same and vary just as much in terms of skillful presentation or complexity.

 

Rentschler makes an argument for a much more nuanced reading of the relationship between politics and entertainment in Nazi Germany. He is admirably careful about condemning too hastily or praising too easily. However, he does recognize that he is, as he puts it, entering a minefield of explosive issues. He notes the revisionism that has emerged since the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989 and the unification of Germany and, quite correctly, does not see himself as an apologist or driven revisionist. He admits that he is “mindful of the problematic postmodern relationship to the images and imaginary products of the Third Reich” (23). Nevertheless, he has made a major contribution to the literature. He has assembled a formidable collection of notes and appendices which run to over 200 pages, as much as the text itself. In a fascinating addition he includes a comparative historical listing of dates, films, biographies, and other important events and moments of the Nazi regime; one can almost feel the momentum of history, almost hear the clock ticking. Occasional errors notwithstanding, such as his quotation from the closing scenes of Fritz Lang’s M (1930) (although that could be taken from an unfamiliar source), his scholarship and the depth and breadth of his resources make the book fascinating and accessible to the interested beginner as well as the established scholar. It also makes an interesting conjunction with other well-publicized but less-than-orthodox histories of the Third Reich such as Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners or Linda Schulte-Sasse’s Entertaining the Third Reich, with which it shares many concerns.

 

It seems he is justified in calling his final chapter, with a sense of irony and realism, “The Testament of Dr. Goebbels.” He starts out in the book by suggesting that “as time passes, the legacy of the Third Reich looms ever larger” (23). He ends, appropriately, by saying that “more than fifty years since the demise of National Socialism, the testament of Dr. Goebbels continues to haunt us” (223). This book enhances our ability to deal with that legacy.

Works Cited

 

• Friedlander, Saul, ed. Probing the Limits of Representation. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.
• Goldhagen, Daniel. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Alfred A. Knopf & Company, 1996.
• Hull, David S. Film in the Third Reich: A Study of the German Cinema, 1933-1945. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969.
• Schulte-Sasse, Linda. Entertaining the Third Reich: Illustrations of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1996.
• Taylor, Richard. Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. London: Croom Helm, 1979.