Antje Ascheid

German film-goers flocked to see musicals and melodramas during the Nazi era. Although the Nazis seemed to require that every aspect of ordinary life advance the fascist project, even the most popular films depicted characters and desires that deviated from the politically correct ideal. Probing into the contradictory images of womanhood that surfaced in these films, Antje Ascheid shows how Nazi heroines negotiated the gender conflicts that confronted contemporary women.The careers of Kristina Soderbaum, Lilian Harvey, and Zarah Leander speak to the Nazis' need to address and contain the "woman question," to redirect female subjectivity and desires to self sacrifice for the common good (i.e., national socialism). Hollywood's new women and glamorous dames were out; the German wife and mother were in. The roles and star personas assigned to these actresses, though intended to entertain the public in a politically conformist way, point to the difficulty of yoking popular culture to ideology.

Stardom & Womanhood In Nazi Cinema

Hitler's Heroines

Alison Guenther-Pal

Christian Rogowski

John E. Davidson

Stefan Soldovieri

Christine Haase

Lutz Koepnick

Janet McCabe

Brad Prager

Nancy P. Nenno

Robert C. Reimer

Richard W. McCormick

Tim Bergfelder

Elizabeth Mittman

Alasdair King

Hester Baer

Light Motives undertakes a long overdue critical reassessment of German popular cinema, challenging the traditional view of German film history and offering new ways to think about popular cinema in general.

German Popular Film in Perspective

Light Motives

Antje Ascheid

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