As the human race straddles an unprecedented pandemic, hostile divisions and conflicts, fake news (and real news) and digital opportunism, we also discover new strengths and beauty of moral courage and perseverance. This programme celebrates the Austrian master of literature, Stefan Zweig (1881 – 1942), who is famed for his steadfast pacifism, insistence on vaster understanding and intricate reading on passion and desire.
Zweig experienced two world wars. As a famous Jewish-Austrian writer, Zweig’s books were censored, vilified and destroyed by the Nazi in the 1930s and 1940s. He left his hometown, Vienna, to escape German persecution, living in England and America before settling in his final destination, Brazil. When Zweig was in exile, a journalist asked how the writer thought of Germany, he answered, “I will make no prophecy. I would not speak against Germany. I would never speak against any country.”
Zweig’s work has served as the basis of many film adaptations and inspirations.
Zweig experienced two world wars. As a famous Jewish-Austrian writer, Zweig’s books were censored, vilified and destroyed by the Nazi in the 1930s and 1940s. He left his hometown, Vienna, to escape German persecution, living in England and America before settling in his final destination, Brazil. When Zweig was in exile, a journalist asked how the writer thought of Germany, he answered, “I will make no prophecy. I would not speak against Germany. I would never speak against any country.”
Zweig’s work has served as the basis of many film adaptations and inspirations.
- 6/1/2022
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
Part I. A Filmmaker’s Apotheosis
April 20th, 1938 marked Adolf Hitler’s 49th birthday. In the past five years, he’d rebuilt Germany from destitute anarchy into a burgeoning war machine, repudiated the Versailles Treaty and, that March, incorporated Austria into his Thousand-Year Reich. In Nazi Germany, fantasy co-mingled with ideology, expressing an obsession with Germany’s mythical past through propaganda and art. Fittingly, Hitler celebrated at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin, Germany’s most prestigious cinema.
There, Nazi officials and foreign diplomats joined dignitaries of German kultur. Present were Wilhelm Furtwangler, conductor of Berlin’s Philharmonic Orchestra; Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and confidante; actor Gustaf Grundgens, transformed from Brechtian Bolshevik to director of Prussia’s State Theater; and movie star Emil Jannings, Oscar-winner of The Lost Command and The Blue Angel, now an Artist of the State. Also Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who nationalized German cinema in...
April 20th, 1938 marked Adolf Hitler’s 49th birthday. In the past five years, he’d rebuilt Germany from destitute anarchy into a burgeoning war machine, repudiated the Versailles Treaty and, that March, incorporated Austria into his Thousand-Year Reich. In Nazi Germany, fantasy co-mingled with ideology, expressing an obsession with Germany’s mythical past through propaganda and art. Fittingly, Hitler celebrated at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin, Germany’s most prestigious cinema.
There, Nazi officials and foreign diplomats joined dignitaries of German kultur. Present were Wilhelm Furtwangler, conductor of Berlin’s Philharmonic Orchestra; Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and confidante; actor Gustaf Grundgens, transformed from Brechtian Bolshevik to director of Prussia’s State Theater; and movie star Emil Jannings, Oscar-winner of The Lost Command and The Blue Angel, now an Artist of the State. Also Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who nationalized German cinema in...
- 7/8/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
Marlene Dietrich on TCM: Shanghai Express, The Scarlet Empress, The Devil Is A Woman Raoul Walsh's unpretentious Manpower (1941) is a surprisingly entertaining drama about a love triangle featuring good-time gal Marlene Dietrich and unlikely partners Edward G. Robinson and George Raft. As an ex-Nazi chanteuse/black marketer (photo), Dietrich nearly steals the show in Billy Wilder's post-war Berlin-set A Foreign Affair (1948); I say nearly because Jean Arthur is Dietrich's equal as the goody-goody American congresswoman who learns that goody-goodiness may take you far at work (at least in the movies) but not in life. In the hands of someone like Ernst Lubitsch, A Foreign Affair would have been a humorously romantic masterpiece, cleverly and subtly interweaving the personal, the social, and the political. As it is, the comedy works great whenever Arthur and Dietrich are on-screen; else, A Foreign Affair suffers from Wilder's heavy hand; lapses in judgment in Wilder,...
- 9/1/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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