Die goldene Stadt

Die goldene Stadt (Eng: The Golden City), is a 1941 German film directed by Veit Harlan, starring Kristina Söderbaum, who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, and in Agfacolor.[1]

Plot

Anna, a young, innocent country girl (a Sudeten German[2]), whose mother drowned in the swamp, dreams of the golden city of Prague. After she falls in love with a surveyor, she runs away to Prague to find him. She is instead seduced and abandoned by her cousin (a Czech). She attempts to return home, but her father rejects her, and she drowns herself in the swamp where her mother died.

Sources

The movie is based on drama Der Gigant by Austrian writer Richard Billinger.[2] In the novel, however, it is the heart-broken father who commits suicide; the Propaganda Ministry insisted that it be the daughter not the father who died.[3]

Motifs

Anna's fate and drowning are clearly represented as the natural consequence of her failure to appreciate the countryside and her longings for the city.[4] This harmonizes with the preference for the countryside of the Blood and Soil doctrine.

References

  1. ↑ "New York Times: Die Goldene Stadt (1942)". NY Times. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Anthony Rhodes, Propaganda: The art of persuasion: World War II, p20 1976, Chelsea House Publishers, New York
  3. ↑ Richard Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich, p 382, ISBN 0-03-076435-1
  4. ↑ Cinzia Romani, Tainted Goddesses: Female Film Stars of the Third Reich p86 ISBN 0-9627613-1-1

External links