Laughter: Popular comedies
Comedies were among the most popular genres of the period. Sieben Jahre Pech, one of the most widely screened films in the cities studied (449 screenings), related the misadventures of a man convinced that seven years of bad luck await him after breaking a mirror, preventing him from confessing his feelings to the woman he loves. Wolf Albach-Retty, Romy Schneider’s father, played the lead role alongside Hans Moser and Theo Lingen. Another huge hit of the period, Quax, der Bruchpilot (196 screenings), features a humble clerk who, through a series of misunderstandings, became a pilot. Played by Heinz Rühmann, Quax embodied the ‘everyman’ so dear to audiences of the time. He was clumsy, naïve but deeply likeable. He remained an icon of German cinema until his death.
Singing and escaping reality: musical films and Viennese films
Overall, music was omnipresent in German cinema of the 1930s and 1940s. But it played an even more central role in musical films. Songs, waltzes, operettas and dance numbers punctuated many productions. The box-office figured bear this out: Tanz mit dem Kaiser (310 screenings), Kora Terry (293 screenings), Wiener Blut (365 screenings), Operette (277 screenings) and Die grosse Liebe (357 screenings) are among the biggest hits. Musical films offer audiences a sort of ‘show within a show’ by featuring numerous dance and song sequences.
Viennese films enjoyed a particularly strong following during the war. Offering an alternative to distinctly German cultural representations, they provided audiences with a timeless escape, punctuated by misunderstandings and zany plots. In Wiener Blut, a princess returns to her hometown of Vienna and wants to introduce her German husband to the local culture. The plot is punctuated by a series of misunderstandings and plot twists, each zanier than the last. Operette pays homage to late 19th-century Viennese musical theatre.
Rediscovering a reassuring world: the ‘Heimat’ films
Heimatfilme transported the audience to villages, valleys and mountain landscapes where nature, family and traditions took a center stage. Despite the hardships, social and family order was always eventually restored. These films were also among the great cinematic successes of the war years. Heimatland (232 screenings) and Am Abend auf der Heide (141 screenings) were among the most widely shown films, alongside Der Meineidbauer and Wetterleuchten um Barbara.
Already very popular even before the Nazis came to power, Heimatfilme enjoyed a resurgence during the war. They offered to spectators an idealised image of the German countryside, portrayed as a place of stability and solidarity. More prevalent in the box-office charts in Alsace, particularly in rural towns, they depicted mountain landscapes, villages and traditions that may have seemed familiar to some spectators.
Photo 62 : Coll. BNUS – Advertising poster for the SCALA cinema promoting the screening of Tanz mit dem Kaiser (1941, Georg Jacoby) on week of March 20, 1942.
Photo 63 : Coll. part. William Gillespie – Movie poster of Die Große Liebe (1942, Rolf Hansen).
Photo 64 : Coll. Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum – Still from the film Heimatland (1939, Ernst Martin).