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Author Topic: What would you do about a controversial film? Carl Martin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1424 From: Oakland, CA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-22-2003 06:03 PM                        i saw battle royale at the pacific film archive last summer. the only problem was that it sold out and they had to schedule another show at a later date (iirc i saw the 2nd show). i don't recall there being anything too gruesome in it. carl  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 02-22-2003 06:38 PM                     Michael, Is 'Triumph Des Willens' allowed to be shown in Germany today? I remember reading that there was considerable protest when it was screened at the National Film Theatre in London, sometime in the '60s or early '70s, I think, but it was shown on television a few years ago, and I don't think there were any great problems then. I have heard that, a few years ago, Germany was still quite sensitive about material from that era. I think there were fears that it could be seen as a source of inspiration for young would-be neo-nazis. This was at about the time of the reunification of the Country.  |  IP: Logged Rachel Craven Madam Moderator Posts: 2190 From: Pensacola, FL Registered: Dec 2000 posted 02-23-2003 01:05 AM                     Randy, I'm glad your show went so well! A little late posting but... My theatre caters to mostly senior citizens so we thought this movie might cause some debate. We did the same as you, warned people buying the tickets about the context but without giving away the plot. This seems to work really good, most of the people just said, "I'm over 18, I can handle it". Its very funny when the little old ladies walking with canes come out and explain bit for bit what part they liked the best.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-23-2003 10:21 AM                     Yeah, it's funny listening to people talk about movies sometimes. The week before, the film was Dr. Strangelove. (One of MY all-time favorites.) I thought it was great! Do you ever notice that as people are walking out of the theater, they are chatting about things: "Oh, that part where the guy said, <something> was good." "I didn't like it when..." "Hey, let's go get some coffee..." Well, they were all dead silent! The imagery, at the end of the movie, of the world getting blown up combined with the fact that Ol' George Bush is chomping at the bit to blow the living shit out of Saddam Insane must have really put a damper on the comversation! You'd think I handed them a bag full of dead puppies, or something! The next movie is Bowling for Columbine. Can you imagine what an emotional roller coaster these last few flix have been putting our customers through? The funniest thing is that they are all LOVING it!  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 02-24-2003 02:35 PM                        quote: What sort of a reaction do films like Max or Im toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin receive when shown there? quote: Is 'Triumph Des Willens' allowed to be shown in Germany today? Sorry, I didn`t mean to ignore the questions, I hadn`t spotted them since I look rarely into Ground Level. Anyway, I don`t know if "Triumph des Willens" is or was banned. I have only seen excerpts of it and while it is a shamless glorification of the "Aryan superman" idea, it is not (or at least the parts that I have seen) as aggressive as some other films like "Jud Süss", a vile anti-semitic propaganda film which is indeed banned and can only be watched for educational reasons. Interestingly, most people don`t know that the end of Star Wars is quoting "Triumph". Leni Riefenstahl (who I think is still alive at over a 100 or so) later took a drastic turn and went to Africa to photograph Massai warriors, this time celebrating the physique of people that her former sponsors had lebelled "subhuman", and also did some very good underwater photography. She somehow seems to have redeemed herself from her time as a propaganda film director and may have been forgiven to a certain degree. Like Albert Speer, Hitler`s favourite architect who spend decades in jail and wrote his famous memoirs, she seems to have been one of those people who were seduced by the prospect of having unlimited means for their work. I think her work is seen today rather as a strange side effect of that era than as something dangerous. I don`t think there is any danger that young Neo-Nazis could be inspired by the movie. There are far fewer Neo-Nazis here than most people would think, and most of them are really just harmless unemployed village idiots who are not taken seriously and prefer to spend their time getting drunk to watching "old movies". I haven`t seen either Max or the movie about Hitler`s secretary. The latter was on TV last year and generally received very well because it provided an unknown angle on the subject. As I said in another thread, the educated people here are very well informed about and very critical of the past. In fact, I don`t think that any other country has confronted its own history as mercilessly as people have done here since maybe the 60s. I know the story of Max outlined on imdb, and seem to recall that there is either a book or play on the subject which was also vividly discussed. We have documentaries about the Nazi era on TV all the time and we spend years in school studying the era, visiting KZs and other historic sites such as the former Gestapo headquarters in Berlin where the Wehrmacht officers who tried to kill Hitler were shot. Those sites in Berlin that remain have been incorporated into an exhibition project called "Topography of Terror". You can visit those sites and look at exhibitions about the era. If you make a film or a documentary about the Nazi time, you can be as critical as you like here. There are always lively discussions but rarely controversies in the sense that maybe somebody might feel offended by the unmasked portrayal of Nazi terror. Of course, there are a lot of idiots here who are not informed and a few who still think that the Nazis were cool, but the vast majority of people with some education are aware of what happened and ready to "confront the past". Indeed, some of the most successful historic films are those which are the most merciless such as "A Piece of Sky" (not sure if that`s the correct English release title) which tells the story of Anne Frank. And of course "Das Boot", which many people outside Germany see as a cool heroic war movie. Here, the book after which the movie was made and the movie were more seen as the the tragic story of young who were thrown away for a senseless war. The German slogo of the movie was "A story of lost men fighting a lost war". To understand this correctly, one has to know that in German, "lost" does not just mean "lost" in the sense of "we could have won, but we lost" but has very strong connotations like "meaningless, pointless, forlorn, desperate".  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 02-25-2003 11:18 AM                        The problem with Triumph des Willens is that Riefenstahl is still alive and paranoically guards her copyright. Both TdW and Olympische Spiele are in the National Film and Television Archive's '360 Classic Films' repertory at the NFT, and whenever either film is shown Riefenstahl gets a royalty payment. A major international conference on Riefenstahl had to be cancelled in 1998 because she threatened to sue many of the speakers. There is, I believe, a German government ban on Der Ewige Jude. I was at a conference on film archives and educational DVDs in Trier last September, and a Danish academic who had produced an interactive DVD around the film which interspersed clips with papers and articles was having trouble getting the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv to release the footage. Incidentally, Fritz Hippler (head of the Nazi Reichsfilmkammer and the director of Der Ewige Jude) is also still alive; or at least he was when a controversy arose over remarks he made on a website operated by the Holocaust denying 'historian' David Irving at his trial a couple of years ago.  |  IP: Logged Gerard S. Cohen Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 975 From: Forest Hills, NY, USA Registered: Sep 2001 posted 02-26-2003 09:48 AM                     Stephen & Michael, I believe excerpts from Triumph des Willens were shown in London during the Blitz, edited to ridicule Hitler and the Nazis. In the torchlit scene where Hitler addresses his followers, one asks, "Dem wo kumt ihr"[Sp?] "From where do you come?" They each answer with a place name: The Saar Valley, the Ruhr, etc., to show that all these male warrior types represent the far-flung Fatherland. But as edited, the sub-titles read: Soldier: "My dog has no nose!." Hitler: "How does he smell?" Soldier: "TERRIBLE!" There was also the goose-stepping Nazis marching backward, foreward and backward again for comic effect. And of course Hitler doing "the Lambeth Walk" by similar editing, though this might have been taken from Olympia or another film. The audiences roared, being treated to a bit of levity during really drastic times, when survival was threatened. Thus the effects of Hitler's propaganda was mitigated. Gerard  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 02-26-2003 04:44 PM                        I've seen something along the same lines, though not identical. It's the Rõhm purge scene, uncut (as far as I can tell) and the subtitles read as follows. 'A terrible curse has fallen upon the glorious German Reich. A treacherous traitor - I cannot say who - has suggested that <pregnant pause> my dog, Blondi, has fleas. MY DOG DOES NOT HAVE FLEAS!!! <enters rant mode> And if anyone, ANYONE, DARES to make that suggestion again, well... well... they'd better watch it!' I couldn't stop laughing for about a week afterwards.  |  IP: Logged

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