Adventure Films Research Articles

Nazi cinema as enchantment: the politics of entertainment in the Third Reich

The Nazi regime did not merely terrorize its citizens into submission; it also seduced them by offering many of the things they wanted: stability, a traditional value system, a sense of belonging, and the hope of a better standard of living. Nazi cinema's popularity rested on its ability to express positive social fantasies and promote the enchantment of reality, creating a place so delightful that one wanted to share in the dream at any price. Nazi Cinema as Enchantment: The Politics of Entertainment in the Third Reich is an interdisciplinary study written for scholars in the fields of film studies, German studies, history, critical studies, and political science. It explores how cinema participated in the larger framework of everyday fascism. This book examines how five film genres - the historical musical, the foreign adventure film, the home-front film, the melodrama, and the problem film - enchanted audiences and enacted shared stories that can tell us much about how family, community, history, the nation, and the war were imagined in Nazi Germany. ~~ The book analyzes thirteen motion pictures including the blockbusters Wunschkonzert and Die grosse Liebe; star vehicles for Gustaf Grundgens (Tanz auf dem Vulkan), Zarah Leander (Damals), and Heinrich George (Die Degenhardts); landmark films by prominent directors Veit Harlan (Opfergang), Eduard von Borsody (Kautschuk), Hans H. Zerlett (Robert und Bertram), and Viktor Tourjansky (Verklungene Melodie); and extraordinary and little known films such as Frauen fur Golden Hill, Das Leben kann so schon sein, Der verzauberte Tag, and Via Mala). None of the films analyzed are available with English subtitles. ~~ Based on exhaustive research in German archives, Nazi Cinema as Enchantment examines, in addition to the films themselves, articles from the propaganda ministry's official organ, Der deutsche Film, daily trade sheets such as Licht-Bild-Buhne and Film-Kurier, fan magazines, and even studio press packages for individual stars and films. ~~~~~~~ MARY-ELIZABETH O'BRIEN is Professor of German at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York.

Picturing the Primitive: Visual Culture, Ethnography, and Early German Cinema

Oksiloff, Assenka. Picturing Primitive: Visual Culture, Ethnography, and Early German Cinema. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 227 pp. $65.00 hardcover. If cinema and anthropology had an uneasy relationship in turn-of-the-century England and United States, as Alison Griffiths has recently shown, same cannot be said of their first encounter in Germany. Here, according to Assenka Oksiloff, cinema and anthropology shared an obsession with body-an obsession that apparently allowed them to put aside what differences they had in other national contexts. Drawing on extensive archival research, Oksiloff analyzes primitive as a mythical topos, where discourses of German ethnography, cinema, and film theory intersect. Picturing Primitive makes an important contribution to what Thomas Elsaesser has called the new film history, a project that investigates how films and spectators draw upon existing discourses, exhibitions, and viewing practices, or develop new ones. In Section One, for instance, Oksiloff examines ways in which anthropologists such as Rudolf Poch coopt familiar images of objectivity (e.g. anthropometric photography) in context of cinema, while attempting to legitimate their use of movie camera as a scientific instrument. In treating cinema as a discursive formation devoted to visibility of body, Oksiloff shows how filmmakers seek to fix supposedly vanishing body of colonized subject, and thereby transform it into a lasting and uniquely dynamic artifact. In her fascinating analysis of Poch's 1908 Bushman Speaking Into Phonograph, one of many staged encounters between primitive and modern, Oksiloff also highlights performative aspects of ethnographic spectacle that suggest alternative, indeed contradictory meanings to those that Poch intended to document. Going beyond research film, Oksiloff explores a broad spectrum of genres, spanning documentaries, culture films, safari movies, globetrotting films, and colonial adventure films, from 1910s through 1920s. Her signal figure is Hans Schomburgk, who typically stitches together elements from several of these genres in order to make a single film, flaunting their seams instead of concealing them. According to Oksiloff, such hybrid films demonstrate how primitive literally and figuratively cuts across seemingly disparate genres, both popular and scientific. Section Two analyzes discursive cross-talk between anthropology and film theory in writings of Leo Frobenius, Georg Lukacs, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Bela Balas. Just as ethnographers establish new modes of observation and representation by harnessing new medium, film theorists employ discourse of anthropology in order to imagine origins of cinema and its nascent audience. …

Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934

Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934. By Thomas Doherty. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xvi, 430 pp. Cloth, $49.50, ISBN 0-231-11094-4. Paper, $19.50, ISBN 0-231-11095-2.) Get access Robert E. Snyder Robert E. Snyder University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 87, Issue 3, December 2000, Page 1085, https://doi.org/10.2307/2675386 Published: 01 December 2000

Viewing of mass media violence, perception of violence, personality and academic achievement

The aim of this work was to study the relationship between the viewing of and interest in violent episodes on TV, whether they be in action and adventure films or cartoons, and both personality, measured by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire(EPQ\\J), the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS\\J) and the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Scales (SP-SR), and academic achievement. The sample was made up of 235 teenage boys and 235 teenage girls. The study also took account of teachers’ reports on student personality traits and attitudes such as aggressivity, excitability, leadership, responsibility and interest in studies. Our results reveal that those boys who perceive violent cartoon films as being funny and thrilling are deemed more aggressive and excitable by their teachers. Those boys who rate action and adventure films as more interesting attain lower academic achievement. Boys and girls who perceive violent cartoon films as being thrilling and funny get higher scores on N, P, SSS\\J and SR. Those boys who rate action and adventure films watched as more interesting get higher scores on N, P, SSS\\J and SR, whereas girls do likewise on E and P, SSS\\J. The possible relationship between disinhibited, not very socialised personality and interest in violent topics on TV is thereafter discussed.

Aliens 'R' Us: A Critique of D4

John Dixon | Aliens 'R' Us: A Gritique of D4 John Dixon Boston University Aliens 4R' Us: A Gritique of D4 Video availible from Twentieth Century Fox. NewYork City receives an unexpected visitor in the epic adventure film Independence Day. It did not take people long to realize that Independence Day would be the hit movie ofthe summer. It earned $100-miIIion in only six days, surpassing the nine-day record set byJurassic Park in 1993. Since then, commentators have been trying to explain its popularity. Some have attributed its success to the perfect opening-day timing and the shrewd marketing campaign ; others to the way it satisfies the public's supposed deeprooted desire to unite against a common enemy. In a variation on this latter point, many people I have talked to have called it jingoistic, mere propaganda for the "New World Order," and have objected to its stereotyped portrayal ofwomen,Jews, and gays. Others, though, have praised its multicultural vision, pointing to the featured roles it gives to minorities. There is clearly truth in all ofthese takes on the movie. But I don't think any one ofthem satisfactorily explains why the film is so popular . Why has it struck such a chord with the public at this time? I'd like to try my hand at answering this question. I confess to having cheered involuntarily on a number ofoccasions during the film, so ifnothing else, the following can be considered an attempt at self-analysis. This movie has appeared at a moment ofwidespread anxiety about job security in a culture in which downward mobility is experienced, particularly by men, as personal failure and impotence. The male characters introduced in the opening scenes all speak to this anxiety. There is Jeff Goldblum as David, an MIT-educated satellite technician whose former girlfriend Constance (Margaret Colin), fed up with his lack of ambition, has left him to become an adviser to the President. There is Randy Quaid as Russell, a boozy former Vietnam pilot now working as a crop-duster and suffering mental problems since he was abducted and molested by aliens. And finally there is Will Smith as Capt. Steven Hiller, an Marine pilot who has failed to realize his dream of becoming an astronaut. He is in a relationship with Jasmine (Vivica Fox), a black, single mother who works as a stripper (apparently the only job left for Hollywood working-class 92 I Film & History Regular Feature | Film Reviews moms!). His fellow pilot tells him, "Nowyou're never gonna get to fly the space shuttle ifyou marry a stripper!" Even President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) is worrying if he has the right stuff. The press accuse him of being too boyish to stand up to Congress. The arrival of the aliens sets a plot in motion in which all the above characters will eventually triumph over their inadequacies. At first, however, the alien invasion only exacerbates their sense ofimpotence , rendering the nation powerless at the hands of an inscrutable force. Breaking offfrom their "mother ship," the alien crafts descend from the moon, vast, dark ovals which spread out across the globe, taking up positions over all the major world capitals and hijacking the global satellite system to coordinate their attack. All human efforts to establish contact with the aliens fail. On cue they commence destroying cities, moving from one to another, blasting them with a ray from the underbelly of the craft. Their sole governing purpose, we learn, is to travel from one planet to another, consuming all available resources. I think this vision generates such an effective sense of dread because of the strong element of paranoia in it. In a state ofparanoia we invest the external world with all our worst tendencies and qualities to maintain the fiction of our own wholeness and perfection. In this movie the aliens are a paranoid projection of the nation's destructive and threatening aspects. In their blind pursuit of self-interest, their global reach and control of satellite communication, their capacity to paralyze nation states, and their environmental destructiveness, the alien crafts bear an uncanny resemblance to multinational corporations (which include Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation , which owns Fox, which...

School Students' "Movie Menu"

As a result of the current American movie expansionism, it is primarily young viewers who are being drawn into the orbit of Western movies. To a large extent, their movie interests and tastes are being Americanized. As is well known, however, American movies differ radically from European cinema and, even more so, from ours. A special discussion is needed concerning questions such as what school students are viewing and assimilating in the movie theaters, because they will make up the future sociocultural profile of our movie theater audiences. In order to study this problem, a single month in 1993 was taken to be typical in terms of the character of the repertoire of Moscow's movie theaters. On the whole, school students attended movies in the same general audience as adults. Of the 328 films we attended, there were action pictures (18 percent), historical adventure films and fantasy action movies (14 percent each), erotic films (12 percent), comedies (10 percent), erotic comedies (7 percent), and action...

Africa on film: beyond black and white

From serious social commentary to outrageous camp, from Cry, the Beloved Country to Tarzan and Jungle Queen, American and British films have gone to Africa, either in spirit or reality, to find the treasures that lie there. More than four hundred films have been made about (or in) Africa in the English language, from the beginning of Edison films in the first decade of the twentieth century up to the present. They range from endless B movies and boys' adventure films, to the ever-popular animal documentaries and safari docudramas, to serious efforts to understand colonialism and African-American identity. Together they make a fascinating montage of European and American projections - and even occasionally offer an accurate portrait of a continent and its varied peoples. A central theme of Africa on Film is racism. But as the subtitle suggests, there is much more as well: sexism, classism, nationalism, imperialism, pan-Africanism; the complex filmic legacy of a continent in transition, and the world that both forces this transition and watches it. In fluid, amusing, and compelling prose, Cameron shows how English language films dealing with Africa have a mixed legacy of reinforcing racism, sexism, and imperialism, and at the same time challenging it.

Handbook of American film genres

Preface Introduction by Wes D. Gehring Action/Adventure Genres The Adventure Film by Thomas Sobchack The Western by Thomas Schatz The Gangster Film by John Raeburn Film Noir by Jack Nachbar The World War II Combat Film by Kathryn Kane Comedy Genres Screwball Comedy by Wes D. Gehring Populist Comedy by Wes D. Gehring Parody by Wes D. Gehring Black Humor by Wes D. Gehring Clown Comedy by Wes D. Gehring The Fantastic Horror Film by Gerald C. Wood Science Fiction by Vivian Sobchack Fantasy by Wade Jennings Songs and Soaps The Musical by James M. Collins Melodrama by Steven N. Lipkin NonTraditional Genres The Social Problem Film by Charles J. Maland Biographical Film by Carolyn Anderson The Art Film by William C. Siska Index