Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 January 8

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 8

Allied war films in Germany

What is the reception of World War II films made by Allied countries in Germany? Do they perform worse than in Allied or neutral countries? --Error (talk) 02:09, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Do you have an example? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:44, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

For example; Germany embraces 'Inglourious Basterds' - Quentin Tarantino's most successful film in the country. Alansplodge (talk) 08:56, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Other than cherry picking some random films about World War II, I'm not sure how to answer this question. Wikipedia has an article titled List of World War II films and a Category:World War II films. Any person who wants to know how those films were rated in Germany could use those lists and use those as a launching point for your research. --Jayron32 15:58, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Surely some expert has published some scholarly review? Has our OP considered searchig JSTOR? For example, here is German Studies Review, an American scholarly journal that specializes in peer-reviewed cultural analysis. I found not fewer than 800 results for film studies in that journal alone.

The specificity with which scholarly humanities journals exist is astonishing, no?

Nimur (talk) 16:48, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Possibly, although I would expect many such journals to focus on German language film studies for Germany; there's a long and deep German Language film tradition, and scholarly articles are likely to be scant for "subject opinions of one random category of films from one language as judged by people from another language". Anything is possible, it doesn't mean anything is likely. --Jayron32 19:27, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

You gave me some ideas. I searched but found not much. Peter Kramer mentions that, in general, American hits in America not always match American hits in Germany:

Finally, Hollywood films with European subject matter and/or with European personnel continued to perform particularly well in Germany throughout and after Hollywood’s takeover in the 1970s. Examples range from Young Frankenstein (1, 1975), the James Bond series and numerous World War II combat movies, to Amadeus (8, 1985) and Schindler’s List (3, 1994).

After reading your Tarantino link, my understanding is that West German audiences liked American World War films if German stars were involved.

I wonder if the situation in East Germany was different. American Cultural Diplomacy, the Cinema,and the Cold War in Central Europe says that American films were shown extensively after the war, but I don't know if that extended to the Cold War and war films which seem more sensitive from the point of view of the GDR leadership.

--Error (talk) 23:20, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Evidence has already presented itself. Of course these movies are especially popular or why else do you think there are so many?! But our own ones are the best. See Das Boot. --Kharon (talk) 09:28, 9 January 2019 (UTC)