Spring 2017 Professor Alice Kelikian
Brandeis University Olin-Sang 219
History 131a
Hitler’s Europe in Film
This lecture/discussion course aims to illuminate how and why even such a familiar historic subject as Hitler’s Europe has varied in public perception across the map and down through the decades. By the same token, it means to sensitize students to how movies reflect, and even help fashion, our changing historical outlook. The class examines the strengths and weaknesses of authorial art-house productions, state-sponsored propaganda, and Hollywood cinema as mediums for interpreting the past.
Students should complete relevant reading and screenings before the Friday session. In addition to weekly assignments and regular attendance, class requirements include two analytical essays (each 25% of the final grade) five-to-seven pages in length, and a ten- to twelve-page research paper (the remaining 50% of the class evaluation). No books are required for the course; all readings and films will be available on LATTE.
Students can also consult the Goldfarb Library, which now holds a rich collection on DVD of European cinema classics, for other movies. The instructor will provide a list of films appropriate for analysis in the short essays. Students must confer with her about topics for the final research paper, which is due at noon on 2 May 2017, the last day of class. No extensions will be given on this last assignment.
This is a four-credit course (with three hours of class-time per week). Students are expected to spend a minimum of nine hours of study time each week in preparation for the course (readings, papers, films, discussion, and so on).
No work will be accepted by facsimile or by electronic mail. Papers should not be placed under the office door or in the mailbox of the instructor: Essays must be delivered in person and in hard copy. Students need to come to class and complete all assignments in a timely fashion in order to pass the course; attendance will be taken at every class. They should comply with University policy on academic integrity as set forth in the Rights and Responsibilities Handbook distributed by the Office of Campus Life. Those with a documented disability on record at the University ought to see the instructor immediately.
Goals and Outcomes: In addition to improving expository writing skills, students will learn to evaluate and interpret primary documentation and to analyze film as a historical source. They will understand the dynamics of collaboration and resistance. We will also look at cinema as artifact in order to examine the contours of European society under Nazi occupation.
I may be reached at or .
Course Schedule:
January 17 and 20 Fatal Attraction
Film: Das Blaue Licht (The Blue Light,1932)
Reading: Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of an Illusion: Nazi
Cinema and Its Afterlife, Chapter 1
Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological
History of German Film, Chapter 21
Heide Fehrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany, Chapter 1
January 24 and 27 Party Propaganda
Film: Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935)
Reading: Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of German Film, Supplement, "Propaganda and the Nazi War Film"
Eric Rentschler, "Notes on the Structure of Triumph of the Will"
Susan Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism"
January 31 Anti-Semitic Moving Images
and February 3
Film: Jud Süß (1940)
Reading: Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of an Illusion: Nazi
Cinema and Its Afterlife, Chapter 6
Ian Kershaw, The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third
Reich, Chapter 9
Omer Bartov, The "Jew" in Cinema: From The Golem to Don't
Touch My Holocaust, Chapter 1
February 7 and 10 The Polish Predicament
Film: To Be Or Not to Be (1942)
Reading: Mark Mazower, Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe, Chapters 4 and 7
Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, Chapter 5
February 14 and 17 Cinema in Occupied France
Film: Le corbeau (The Raven, 1943)
Reading: Alan Riding, And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris, Chapter 10
Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years 1940-1944, Chapter 13
14 February First Essay Due
February 28 Statelessness in Hitler's Europe
and March 3
Film: Monsieur Klein (1976)
Reading: Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years 1940-1944,
Chapter 15
March 7 and 10 Close Collaborations
Film: Lacombe Lucien (1974)
Reading: Paul Jankowski, "In Defense of Fiction: Resistance, Collaboration and 'Lacombe, Lucien'," Journal of Modern History, Vol. 63, No. 3 (September 1991)
Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France, Old Guard and New Order 1940-
1944, pp. 235-259
Charles O’Brien, Stylistic Description as Historical Method: French
Films of the German Occupation,” Style, Vol. 32, No 3 (Fall 1998)
March 14 and 17 Cinematic Liberties during Fascism
Film: Ossessione (Obsession, 1943)
Reading: Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through 20th-Century Europe, Chapter 6
William Van Watson, "Luchino Visconti's (Homosexual)
Ossessione," in Jacqueline Reich and Piero Garofalo, eds.,
Re-viewing Fascism: Italian Cinema, 1922-1943
Giovanni Sedita, "Vittorio Mussolini, Hollywood, and neorealism,"
Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3 (June 2010)
14 March Second Essay Due
March 21 and 24 Another Family in Ferrara
Film: Il giardino dei Finzi Contini (The Garden of the Finzi Continis, 1970)
Reading: Alice A. Kelikian, "The Church and Catholicism," in Adrian
Lyttelton, ed., Liberal and Fascist Italy 1900-1945, Chapter 2
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945, Chapter 5
Alexander Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish
Families Under Fascism, "Ferrara-Buchenwald-Ferrara: The
Schönheit Family"
March 28 and 31 The Occupations of Rome
Films: Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945) or
Paisà (Paisan, 1946)
Reading: Millicent Marcus, Italian Cinema in the Light of Neorealism,
Chapter 1
Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics,
1943-1988, Chapter 2
Christopher Wagstaff, "Rossellini and Neo-Realism" in David Forgacs,
Sarah Lutton, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, eds., Roberto Rossellini:
Magician of the Real
April 4 and 7 The Diaries of Anne Frank
Films: The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
The Diary of Anne Frank (2010)
Reading: Pieter Lagrou, "Victims of Genocide and National Memory: Belgium, France and the Netherlands 1945-1965,” in Past & Present, No. 154 (February 1997), pp. 181-222
Omer Bartov, film review in The American Historical Review, Vol.
101, No. 4 (Oct., 1996), pp. 1154-11
April 21 Nazi Noir
Film: The Stranger (1946)
Reading: Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, "The War Crime Trials at Nuremberg"
Jennifer Barker, "Documenting the Holocaust in Orson Welles's The
Stranger"
April 25 and 28 Hollywood and the Holocaust
Film: The Pawnbroker (1965)
Reading: Michael K. Johnson, "Traumatic Experience and the Representation of Nature in the Novel and Film The Pawnbroker"
Leonard J. Leff, "Hollywood and the Holocaust: Remembering The Pawnbroker"
Alan Rosen, "'Teach Me Gold': Pedagogy and Memory in The Pawnbroker"
May 2 Conclusion
Final Paper Due (no extensions)
January 2017
5