Words from spectators
Presenting the history of cinema in the annexed regions of Alsace and Moselle through the testimonies of spectators allowed for a more in-depth analysis of the role of this pastime during the war and under a totalitarian regime. For several decades, the issue of entertainment and leisure was absent from historical studies of the period. Despite a large number of interviews conducted with eyewitnesses to the war, they had never been asked about their cultural practices.
The experiences reported here, collected from the 2010s onwards, mainly concerned people who were teenagers at the time. Often too young to be conscripted, yet too old to be regarded as children, it was they who went to the cinema most frequently. Giving them a voice allowed us to approach Nazi-produced German cinema from a perspective other than that of propaganda alone. It meant looking at it from the perspective of its reception.
For them, going to the cinema seemed to represent an intimate experience that no one could take away from them, a means of resisting all the constraints that surrounded them. Films allowed viewers to escape and dream. In a movie theater, far from the obligations of everyday life, the magic happened. It was a unique moment for oneself, where they could identify with the actresses and actors despite the omnipresence of propaganda in the pre-show program.
Photo 72 : AVES (1 FI 96 202) – Photograph of a queue of spectators outside the doors of the U.T. cinema in Strasbourg (circa 1940–1944)
Photo 73 : AVES (1Fi92-38) – A newspaper kiosk in Strasbourg (Adolf Hitlerplatz, previously Place Broglie) displaying a film magazine featuring the film Auf Wiedersehen Franziska (1941, Helmut Käutner)