Hitler’s Hollywood (Eureka)

This compelling documentary is director

Rüdiger Suchsland’s companion piece to his superb 2014 film, From

Caligari to Hitler: German

Cinema in the Age of the

Masses. Focusing on the years 1933 to 1945, and narrated by Udo Kier, this latest work looks at one of the most important periods in the history of German cinema. While there are actors and directors galore, the key figure in this time-frame is propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Nazi cinema was a state-controlled industry and Goebbels was the gatekeeper, ensuring that the “correct” values would be instilled in the German cinema-going audience. The documentary begins with the first film Hitler attended when he became Chancellor in 1933 (a flag waving U-Boat drama), and continues through almost 1,000 titles, until the end of the war in 1945. By 1933, many of the great German film-makers (Lang, Sirk, Wilder, Ophuls) had fled Nazi Germany for Hollywood. Others, such as the great Austrian director, GW Pabst, were caught and forced to return to Germany to make movies under the aegis of Goebbels. And then there were the likes of Leni Riefenstahl; the world-renowned documentarian who was only too happy to make movies that glorified the Third Reich. Blu-ray extras include From Caligari to Hitler, director Suchsland’s documentary looking at the social and cultural impact of German cinema during the earlier period of the Weimar Republic.