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THE EUROPEAN CINEMA
at their face value. Unless such intentions are realistically oriented to the specific culture involved, they end in pathetic irony, or worse. The history of German films has demonstrated this finally. Kracauer's dicta on the liberal German films of the early sound era will seem over-harsh to some. They were so brave, so interesting ! Yet it needs not Caligari to Hitler to tell us that they were neither brave enough nor interesting enough. Films of the future, of what future may be left to us in which to say a word for peace and freedom, must be intelligent as well as courageous and well-meaning. That is why I recommend Kracauer's approach as a model for critics, for all of us who have been so eager for excellence in films that we have been content with excellences irrelevant to the nature and mission of a mass-medium. Our part is now Polonius's : ' Pray you, be round with him \
What was to be the course of the Nazi cinema? After the purgation of the German Film Industry of most of its non-Aryan elements, and the famous meeting at the Propaganda Ministry at which Goebbels held up Potemkin as the model which was to be overtaken and surpassed, it was natural to assume that German films would be as violently and monotonously propagandist as Hitler's radio rantings. The assumption proved false. Goebbels knew better than his master.
Munich, appropriately enough, produced the first allNazi film. After the events of March, 1933, the Bavaria Film Company rushed Hans Westmar into production and proudly presented it to Germany's new masters early in the following summer. But, far from welcoming it as proof of loyalty, Goebbels coolly informed the Bavaria company that it could not be released until all reference to Horst Wessel, the Nazi ' martyr ' whose story it purported to tell, had been deleted or concealed. The mangled film which resulted fulfilled the worst expectations of Western observers so far as violence and crudity were concerned.
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