Hitler's Heroines: Stardom and Womanhood in Nazi Cinema (Culture and the Moving Image) [Paperback]

Antje Ascheid (Author)

Book Description

Series: Culture and the Moving Image | Publication Date: March 2003

German film-goers flocked to see musicals and melodramas during the Nazi era. Although the Nazis seemed to require that every aspect of ordinary life advance the fascist project, even the most popular films depicted characters and desires that deviated from the politically correct ideal. Probing into the contradictory images of womanhood that surfaced in these films, Antje Ascheid shows how Nazi heroines negotiated the gender conflicts that confronted contemporary women. The careers of Kristina Soderbaum, Lilian Harvey, and Zarah Leander speak to the Nazis' need to address and contain the "woman question," to redirect female subjectivity and desires to self sacrifice for the common good (i.e., national socialism). Hollywood's new women and glamorous dames were out; the German wife and mother were in. The roles and star personas assigned to these actresses, though intended to entertain the public in a politically conformist way, point to the difficulty of yoking popular culture to ideology. Author note: Antje Ascheid is Assistant Professor in the Department of Drama and Theater at the University of Georgia.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The author shows Nazi cinema's adaptation of Hollywood's popular cultural forms for its own propagandistic purposes. In Ascheid's analysis, they emerge as complicated figures who reveal both the influence of fascist doctrine and, at the same time, the desires and conflicts of real German women in the thirties and forties...the book is quite convincing in showing how [Kristina] Soderbaum could reveal the tragic components of womanhood particularly in Harlan's state-ordered propagandistic melodramas." Colloquia Germanica "[a] useful and stimulating study - Ascheid's book is well-researched, tightly structured, and well written, and is a highly welcome addition to the growing body of sophisticated studies of the cinema of the Third Reich." German Studies Review "a valuable contribution to both Third Reich Film Studies and Women's Studies. Well-researched, informed by theoretical and methodological developments in Film Studies and German Studies, and lucidly written, this volume enriches current understandings both of the Nazi film industry and of the tensions between party ideology and the media's images of women in the Third Reich." Monatshefte "Hitler's Heroines is the first in-depth study of the complex role of female stars in Nazi cinema. Ascheid's detailed analysis of three of the most celebrated stars--Kristina Soderbaum, Zarah Leander, and Lilian Harvey--shows the crucial role female stars played within Joseph Goebbels's entertainment industry. Ascheid highlights womanhood as a central area of contestation within German fascism and her work is informed by a wealth of recent critical studies on the history and cinema of the Third Reich." --Gerd Gemunden, Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College "Hitler's Heroines undermines the notion of the Nazi state's total control of public attitudes. It reveals the slippages in the discourses on gender, sexuality and nation that occurred through the film industry's construction of female stardom. In the process, the book breaks new ground in the increasingly well-cultivated terrain of Nazi cinema studies." --Robert R. Shandley, Associate Professor of Film Studies and German, Texas A&M University, and author of Rubble Films: German Cinema in the Shadow of the Third Reich (Temple)

From the Publisher

The brightest stars in fascist films

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Temple Univ Pr (March 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156639984X
• ISBN-13: 978-1566399845
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,017,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Text for academics only, February 5, 2010

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K. Coscino "way2waterlogged" (New Orleans, LA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hitler's Heroines: Stardom and Womanhood in Nazi Cinema (Culture and the Moving Image) (Paperback)

This is a very well researched book with lots of information. But even though it is about film history, the text is accompanied by few photos, although those which were included were interesting and absolutely in context with the subject matter immediately at hand.

The author chose, unfortunately, to write it in such a grammatically convoluted style that it often required re-reading to understand things that could otherwise have been much more simply and directly expressed.

Additionally, one of the author's comments truly troubled me, that being a reference to Marika Rokk as presenting a "motherly" image in her Ufa films, in contrast to Lillian Harvey's "spritely" image. Nothing could be farther from the truth! Rokk was a sexy, leggy, comical song-and-dance sweetheart, full of energy and pouty self-assurance. I can give no better example than her exceptional performance in "Hallo Janine" (see my separate review of this film), where her persistance eventually won her the lead in one of the most spectacular musical numbers I've ever seen on film. She could also easily play the melodramatic, but in all the films of hers that I have been fortunate enough to view or read about, she eventually breaks out into song and triumphs over whatever circumstances have held her back---and in none of these films do I recall any reference to children or to any overly submissive role, in keeping with National Socialist policy for how women were to be portrayed on screen (i.e., careerless and in virtual subjugation to a dominant male/males, tied firmly to home and children rather than self-fulfillment).