Abstract
The enquiry sheds new light on three blockbusters produced under National Socialism: Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda piece Triumph of the Will (1934), Veit Harlan's anti-Semitic hate film Jew Suss (1940) and Josef von Baky's fantasy comedy Munchhausen (1943). In their frequent use of collective imaginative geographies, all three movies approach 'truth' and 'authenticity' via depictions of geographical patterns. My reading of these films popular in the Third Reich highlights the how and why of place manipulation. The article further explores Nazi cinema's complex amalgam of visual aesthetics and geopolitics, yielding possible insights into the regime’s specific contradictions.
Highlights
Following Benedict Anderson’s notion of imagined communities, this article focuses on the relationship between imagination and the production of truth via space
My analysis sheds new light on three blockbusters produced under the National Socialist regime: Leni Riefenstahl’s famous propaganda piece Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935), Veit Harlan’s anti-Semitic hate film Jud Süß (Jew Süß, 1940) and Josef von Baky’s fantasy comedy Münchhausen (1943)
In her study For Space, Doreen Massey argued that the portrayal of space as a closed concept throws into question the politics of those geographies, since space, as a product of interrelations, is constructed out of multiplicity (9–13)
Summary
Following Benedict Anderson’s notion of imagined communities, this article focuses on the relationship between imagination and the production of truth via space. My article looks at the way in which Nazi films sought to create an emotional attachment by imagining and reorganising space It argues that the fusion of the visual geographies on screen with the mental geographies of the audience establishes a semiotic landscape that provokes an emotional response. The three-dimensional, cinematic landscape encourages the viewer to experience the projection as heterotopic truth that hides its own artificiality through emotional attachment This conceptual framework of space and emotion opens up wider questions concerning the politics of imagined cultural fantasies and collective desires under National Socialism, such as: What information about place is given in a particular sequence and why? Münchhausen’s world is one of chaos and disorientation, which expose Nazi cinema’s imaginary landscapes as unbelievable
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