Die Große Liebe
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The Great Love is a Nazi propaganda feature made by Rolf Hansen in 1941-42.
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[edit] Plot
The attractive first lieutenant Paul Wendlandt is stationed as a fighter pilot in North Africa. As a correspondent it is summoned for one day to Berlin. There he finds the popular Danish singer Hanna on the stage of the Varietés. It is love at first sight. After the appearance her and her friends leave the theatre in a Volkswagen; Paul follows it and addresses her in the underground. After the reception in the dwelling of her friends he accompanies her home, and then coincidence comes to the assistance: because of a flier alarm Paul is forced to take her into the Luftschutzkeller of the dwelling house. Hanna and Paul become close, but already after a night spent together Paul must be back at the front.
From then on misunderstanding lines up after misunderstanding, one missed opportunity follows the next. While Hanna hopes in vain for a sign of life, Paul flies back to North Africa. When he tries to visit her in their Berlin dwelling, she is giving an armed forces concert in Paris. Nevertheless their connection always grows further and wakes the jealousy of the composer Rudnitzky, who also loves the singer. Soon Paul gives Hanna a proposal; when she can finally visit him, he is recalled. Disappointed, Hanna travels to Rome in order to accept an appearance commitment there. Even as Paul gets three weeks vacation and Hanna gets to Rome, the wedding must still be shifted, because Paul feels that he is needed at the front, and decides to stay, although he did not even receive an appropriate instruction. Hanna does not understand, they argue, and Paul believes he has lost her forever. War with the USSR breaks out and Paul and his comrade Etzdorf are sent to the Eastern front. As Etzdorf, Paul writes Hanna a farewell letter, in order to be able to bear the danger of his deployment better. Only when he is shot and wounded, and is recuperating in a military hospital in the mountains, does he finally see Hanna again, who is still ready to marry him. The last shot of the film links the private luck with the national: the lovers look to the future, gladly up to the sky, where a German bomb squadron flies by.
[edit] Songs
- Davon geht die Welt nicht unter *Blaue Hussaren (Heut' kommen die blauen Husaren)
- Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder gescheh'n *Mein Leben für die Liebe!
All songs were composed by Michael Jary, written by Bruno Balz, and sung by Zarah Leander. Includes some of the most successful hits of the Nazi era; because of their political Subtext, they were very well thought of and heavily promoted. After 1942, when the military situation for Germany became ever more unfavorable, they became a component of informal anti-defeatist propaganda.
[edit] LV propaganda
In its mixture of mundane and propagandistic elements Die Große Liebe is a model of the desire concert film of National Socialist cinema. While the tension-rich produced dear history, which pictures from the North African desert, from Paris and Rome as well as the aufwändigen Showeinlagen invited on the one hand to dreaming, the large love drew “on the other hand all registers of the war training. Not the love, but the war is the actual topic of the film. The film does not only contain original Wochenschau material with pictures of German attacks on the English channel coast - the war determines the entire action of the film. The lesson, which has to through-increase Hanna getting mountain and concomitantly the public, is of individual luck striving in times, in those higher values - here: the military victory of Germany in the Second World War - into the foreground step. Its political explosiveness does not win the film by the fact that it publicises indefinitely renouncement in heavy times, but by weighing individual luck against obligations, which military Dienstpflichten exceed far. It does not concern Paul to behave as a soldier correctly but it wants to make its contribution for the victory of Germany in the Second World War. He does without Hanna not due to instructions, which call him again and again to the front, to serve but around the national thing and to sacrifice around Germany if necessary also its life. Hanna learns with the fact that control rooms and renouncement in the war must to be not only fateful accepted, but the really large love only constitute. A majority of its attraction the film owes to the play of Zarah Leander. It was, when it was selected for this role, already relevantly formed as expression-sign Darstellerin more self-confidently, more ripely, emotional sturdy women, whose life drafts are questioned by unexpected fate idioms fundamentally. Director Rolf Hansen, which co-operated here for the second time with it, had the good idea, it with a weak to bring inconspicuous male leading actor together who could hardly allude against the force of its radiant emittance. Suffering, which was imposed upon to Hanna getting mountain by their unfulfilled love, won an important additional dimension, which impressed the public deeply by its per find Unverstandensein. In order to captivate also by modernity, the film the risk for the time at that time of an unusually realistic representation of the war everyday life was received, by showing also the rationing of food, bomb alarm and enduring for hours of humans in Luftschutzkellern. It certainly never undertakes this, without teaching at the same time, how one retains confidence and good mood in heavy situations in life. Unusual were also pictures of Zarah Leander, which carried normal citizen of Berlin in this film of everyday life dresses, lived in a rented apartment and drove even with the underground.
[edit] Literature
- Martin Loiperdinger, Klaus Schönekäs, the production of cinematic indications in the service of National Socialist propaganda, represented by the example of the film “the large love”, unpublished manuscript
- Helmut rule, for the topography of the LV film; in: Film criticism, 1966, 10 (January.), P. 5-18
- Jens Thiele, Fred pinions, political message and maintenance - the reality in the LV film. The large love (1942); in: Werner putrid pass, *Helmut Korte, Fischer film history: 2: The film as social Kraft 1925-1944, Frankfurt/M. (Fischer) 1991
- Stephen Lowry, pathos and politics. Ideology in features of the national socialism, Tübingen (Niemeyer) 1991 *Barbara Schrödl: “Mode and war. The dress body in National Socialist films of the late 1930er and early 1940er years.” In: Petersen, Christine [Hg.]: Indication of the war in film, literature and the media. Kiel 2004, P. 231-255.
