Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CGU Theses & Dissertations CGU Student Scholarship 2012 How One Writes, Makes, Markets a Movie and How an Audience Reads the Movie: Two Biographical Films of Hitler as a Case Study Nick Chi-Shu J. Yeh Claremont Graduate University Recommended Citation Yeh, Nick Chi-Shu J.. (2012). How One Writes, Makes, Markets a Movie and How an Audience Reads the Movie: Two Biographical Films of Hitler as a Case Study. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 36. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/36. doi: 10.5642/cguetd/36 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the CGU Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in CGU Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. How one Writes, Makes, Markets a Movie and how an Audience Reads the Movie: Two Biographical Films of Hitler as a Case Study by Nick J. Yeh (Chi-Shu Yeh) A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Claremont Graduate University in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Faculty of Cultural Studies with a focus on Film and Media Claremont Graduate University Spring 2012 Approved by Dr. Eve Oishi Cultural Studies © Copyright Nick J. Yeh (Chi-Shu Yeh) APPROVAL OF THE DISSERTATION We, the undersigned, certify that we have read, reviewed, and critiqued the dissertation of Nick J. Yeh (Chi-Shu Yeh) and do hereby approve it as adequate in scope and quality for meriting the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ______________________________________________(Signiture )________________ Dr. Eve Oishi Dissertation Committee Chair Cultural Studies, Claremont Graduate University _________________________________________________ (Signiture )__________________ Dr. Jennifer Merolla Political Science, Claremont Graduate University _________________________________________________ (Signiture) ___________________ Dr. Lynn Rapaport Sociology, Pomona College Abstract How one Writes, Makes, Markets a Movie and how an Audience Reads the Movie: Two Biographical Films of Hitler as a Case Study by Nick J. Yeh (Chi-Shu Yeh) Claremont Graduate University: Spring 2012 According to John Lukacs, German people's views on Hitler and Nazism once got examined right after the fall the Third Reich in the 1950s but this subject has lost its appeal since then. How do Germans nowadays, specifically those young ones raised in the "New Germany" after the fall of the Berlin Wall, think of Hitler and their country's Nazi legacy? This dissertation is to explore how six young Germans growing up in the new "unified Germany" interpret two films' representations of Hitler and Nazism. Introduction The Description of the Project The dissertation is to explore two films’ representations of Hitler and a group of young Germans’ readings of those films. Films to be examined in this research are Der Untergang (2004, English title Downfall ) and CBS mini-series Hitler: the Rise of Evil (2003). Specifically, I would like to firstly analyze the two films in terms of their contents and structures, then study the production of the films and lastly take a look at a group of young Germans’ interpretations of the films. In his book The Hitler of History, John Lukacs (1997) suggests that Hitler has been the most widely studied figure of the 20 th century, at least in terms of what has been written about him. Those writings about Hitler may come from a variety of different disciplines. Some of them are journalistic (by Kenrad Heiden a newspaper columnist in the 1930s who followed the development of the regime), come from behind-the-scene secret services (by Trevor-Roper in late 1940s, who recalled his days serving in the British Intelligence Agency) or are based on first-hand observation (by Schramm in the 1950s, who wrote about his privilege to observe Hitler closely because of Schramm’s involvement in the war diary of High Command of Wehrmacht in 1942). Lukasc’s own interest revolves around people’s reactions to Hitler. Lukacs explores how people thought of Hitler shortly after World War II. He garnered interview clips compiled in the 1950s and suggests that people’s views on Hitler after World War II can be categorized into the following types: Hitler haters (who hated Hitler for destroying the country), “average” (who believed that Hitler’s defeat resulted from being deceived by his subordinates), nostalgic (who had rosy memories of the World War II era), firm supporters (who still were firm believers of the fallen regime) and denial (who said that World War II was the past they did not want to think about anymore). 1 Ian Kershaw (2001) takes a similar approach to examine people’s views on Hitler. In his book The Hitler’s Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich , Kershaw used newspaper interview clips to demonstrate the rise and fall of Hitler’s popularity among Germans from 1930 to 1945. Hitler gave German people hope shortly after World War I. Lots of interviewees saw him as a savior and even wrote him fan letters. But this fandom started to wane in the early 1940s. Lukacs’s and Kershaw’s research projects have presented how German people viewed Hitler during the war and shortly after the war. What about the younger generation? How do Germans in the 21 st century see Hitler given what they have learnt about WWII history from their grandparents (who might have been through World War II as teenagers or young adults), parents, school and the media? Rationale As mentioned earlier, one reason why this research project is significant is that scholars have explored only German people’s views on Hitler in the 1950s. In the following paragraphs, I will further present the uniqueness of this project. Since this project is meant to be inter-disciplinary, I will review what related research projects have been done in numerous fields thus far. My basic argument is (1) in media and film studies, a research project on contemporary representations of Hitler and Nazism and an in-depth analysis on receptions of those contemporary representations of Hitler and Nazism are yet to be conducted (2) The fall of The Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany brought us a new Germany, which emerges with a new identity and possibly in turn, a new understanding of the country’s Nazi past. One of the films to be examined in this research is Hitler: the Rise of Evil , a Canadian- American-produced TV movie. Tony Barta (1998) states that, in the English-speaking world, 2 while there have been a lot of writings about Nazism and films in general, there have not been many writings about Nazism in films. I tried to figure out the credibility of this statement. I did a meta-search on World War II Germany and media using The Claremont Colleges library database search engine and Link+ search engine, the latter operated by a consortium of university libraries on the west coast including major ones such as UC Berkeley’s library. Over a hundred volumes popped up. I went through the list and checked out their tables of content and learned that these texts fell into one of the two categories—(1) media or arts during the Nazi era (2) representations of the Holocaust. The former may focus specifically on Nazi propagandas (i.e. Composing for the Screen in Germany and the USSR: Cultural Politics and Propaganda , Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany , The Reichsfilmkammer: a Study of Film Propaganda Management in Nazi Germany ). Or it may broaden its scope to explore the media and arts under the regime (i.e. Berlin Alexanderplatz: Radio, film and the Death of Weimar Culture , Nazi Cinema as Enchantment: The Politics of Entertainment in the Third Reich , The Nazification of Art: Art, Design, Music, Architecture and Film in the Third Reich ). The latter examines how the Holocaust has been represented through numerous media: (i.e. Visualizing the Holocaust: Documents, Aesthetics, Memory , The Holocaust in American Film, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust ). Using the same two search engines, I also looked for books about representations of World War II. Two comprehensive anthologies popped up: Screening the Past: Film and the Representation of History and Re-picturing the Second World War: Representations in Film and Television . I went through the tables of content of these two volumes. While the US or UK studios have made several films about key figures in the Nazi Party or the party ideology (i.e. Hitler: The last Ten Days (1973), The Bunker (1981), Inside the Third Reich (1994)), films 3 representing World War II Germany that got to be analyzed in these books were Schindler’s List in the essay “Smart Jews: From The Caine Mutiny to Schindler’s List ” by Sander L. Gilman and Conspiracy (2001) in the essay “Commissioning Mass Murder: Conspiracy and History at the Wannsee Conference” by S. Gigliotti. ( Conspiracy is about the Wansee Conference that decided the destiny of the Jewish people.) The dig into the library database confirmed and supported Barta’s statement. Scholars tend to focus on media and arts under the Nazi regime and representations of the Holocaust. While films about key figures in the Nazi Party or the ideology have been made in the English- speaking world, they have not been analyzed. Therefore, a proposed project, an analysis about Hitler: the Rise of Evil , is significant. The other film to be studied in this research is Der Untergang , a German film depicting Hitler’s last days in the bunker and the collapse of the regime. Christine Hasse (2006) states that, before Der Untergang was released, there have not been German narrative feature films essentially about Hitler or Nazism.