Product Details

• Actors: David McCullough (II), Robert Hughes, Josephine Knapp, Peter Selz, Josef Goebbels
• Format: NTSC
• Language: English, German
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Pbs Home Video
• VHS Release Date: May 13, 1997
• Run Time: 60 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00000FEHZ
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #269,658 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hitler vs. Picasso, October 2, 2000

By 

R. W. Rasband (Heber City, UT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Degenerate Art A powerful story of the Nazis' vilification of the avant-garde and their attack on modern culture [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is a riveting PBS documentary by David Grubin, acclaimed director of many "American Experience" films. This one is about the National Socialist effort to stomp out modern art in Germany 1933-45. Liberal use of archival film combined with close-up views of the paintings themselves as well as knowledgeable interviews add up to a spellbinding primer on how modernism is a threat to totalitarianism. You think you may not like some of this art either, but the fascinating explanations and historical context will change your mind. As the critic Robert Hughes points out in the film, the attempt by the Nazis to censor "grosteque" art (and regiment culture) could have resulted in the grotesque horrors displayed in the concentration camps at the end of the war. If you are at all interested in "culture wars" or the relationship between art and politics you must see this.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a must for a free society, February 19, 2000

By 

Marget Lippincott (Ft. Smith, Arkansas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Degenerate Art A powerful story of the Nazis' vilification of the avant-garde and their attack on modern culture [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is a superb presentation of one of the lesser known aspects of the Third Reich. The Block Buster Degenerate Art Show in Germany, 1936, is detailed with actual footage from the original show along with excellent footage from the recent hanging of all the surviving work from that show back in Berlin. The documentary very effectivly details the history of the German Expressionists and Hitler's collision course with their work and it puts the work into the perspective of Hitler's "House of German Art," the invasion of Poland, and most importantly the liberation of the camps and the burial of the typhoid dead. Its presentation of book burning in Nazi Germany and the connection to the burning of people is profound.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Where books are burned...people will burn.", July 8, 2003

By 

Edward E. Basse "armsgravy" (Bremerton, Wa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Degenerate Art [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This documentary was shown in my Art History class, and was used as an example of the extremes of censorship, and also the extent by which people will go to in order to silence works that they do not "get". It's a great video to watch if one would like to explore the insanities of the Third Reich further, or would like to see some great modern art pieces (a lot of great original footage).