Die goldene Stadt : Plot, Cast, Sources, Motifs Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Die goldene Stadt

1941 film

Veit Harlan
Wolfgang Schleif

Written by

Veit Harlan
Alfred Braun
Richard Billinger [de]
Werner Eplinius

Produced byVeit HarlanStarring

CinematographyBruno MondiEdited byFriedrich Karl von Puttkamer [de]Music byHans-Otto Borgmann

Release date

25 December 1942 (1942-12-25) (Netherlands)

Running time

110 minutesCountryGermanyLanguageGermanBudget1.8 million ℛ︁ℳ︁Box office12.5 million ℛ︁ℳ︁^[1]

Die goldene Stadt (English: The Golden City), is a 1942 German color film directed by Veit Harlan, starring Kristina Söderbaum, who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress.^[2]

Plot

Anna, a young, innocent country girl (a Sudeten German^[3]), whose mother drowned in the swamp, dreams of visiting the golden city of Prague. After she falls in love with a surveyor, she runs away from the countryside near České Budějovice to Prague to find him. She is instead seduced and later abandoned by her cousin (a Czech). She attempts to return home, but her father rejects her, so she drowns herself in the same swamp where her mother died.

Cast

Kristina Söderbaum as Anna "Anuschka" Jobst
Eugen Klöpfer as Melchior Jobst, Anna's father, farmer
Annie Rosar as Donata Opferkuch, Toni's mother
Dagny Servaes as Mrs. Tandler
Paul Klinger as Christian Leidwein, engineer
Emmerich Hanus
Kurt Meisel as Toni Opferkuch, Anna's cousin
Rudolf Prack as Thomas, Anna's fiance
Liselotte Schreiner [de] as Maruschka, housekeeper
Hans Hermann Schaufuß as Nemerek, engineer
Frida Richard as Mrs. Amend
Ernst Legal as Pelikan, farmer
Valy Arnheim as Alois Wengraf, notary

Sources

The movie is based on drama Der Gigant by Austrian writer Richard Billinger [de].^[3] In the novel, however, it is the heart-broken father who commits suicide; the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, in particular Joseph Goebbels, insisted that it be the daughter rather than the father who dies.^[4]

Motifs

Anna's fate and drowning are clearly represented as the natural consequence of her failure to appreciate the countryside and her longings for the city.^[5] This harmonizes with the preference for the countryside of the Blood and Soil doctrine.

Citations

^ Noack, p. 203.
^ Hal Erickson (2012). "Die Goldene Stadt (1942)". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 3 November 2012.
^ ^a ^b Rhodes, p. 20.
^ Grunberger, p. 382.
^ Romani, p. 86.

References

Grunberger, Richard (1971). The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933–1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 978-0-03-076435-6.
Noack, Frank (2016) [2000]. Veit Harlan: The Life and Work of a Nazi Filmmaker. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-6700-8.
Rhodes, Anthony (1976). Propaganda: The Art of Persuasion: World War II. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 978-0-87754-029-8.
Romani, Cinzia (1992) [1981]. Tainted Goddesses: Female Film Stars of the Third Reich. Translated by Connolly, Robert. New York: Sarpedon. ISBN 978-0-9627613-1-7.