logos.jpg“History is not about the facts. It is about the context and who is telling the story.” —Prof. Milton Fine. 

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."   –– George Orwell in his novel "1984." 

"Whoever doubts the exclusive guilt of Germany for the Second World War destroys the foundation of post–war politics." ––  Prof. Theodor Eschenberg, Rector, the University of Tübingen.

"If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how."         –  Friedrich Nietzsche

 

POSTER GALLERY  --view

over 500 German film

original posters betweenpngtree-15-years-anniversary-logo-with-ribbon-png-image_5280377-1812814530.jpg

1927–1954  from

Germany and from

many Axis and Neutral countries

across Europe!  

 

Note!  Posters in the Poster Gallery are PERMANENT

acquisitions which are NOT FOR SALE!!   ONLY the

posters listed in our POSTER STORE are for sale. 

(They have a price and order button to use.)

 

Unternehmen Michael

 

Excerpt from Karl Ritter – His Life and 'Zeitfilms' under National Socialism by William Gillespie, ©2012,2014 by William Gillespie, GFDN:

 

Both Unternehmen Michael and Urlaub auf Ehrenwort arrived in Imperialist Japan in 1940. Unternehmen Michael was highly praised by the Japanese critics and leading film directors. According to Cinema and the Swastika the film was used as the basis for the famous Japanese militarist film General, Staff and Soldiers (Dir. Taguchi Satoshi, 1942) and was one of the few foreign films to influence Japan in that era.[1]  Interestingly the Ritter film was severely censored when shown in Japan because of the battlefield slaughter, to which the Japanese censors objected. Urlaub apparently strongly influenced Shima Koji’s Twelve Hours to Departure (1943) although Tokyo critics felt Ritter’s film was superior. Urlaub also was the ‘structure’ for the July 1945 Japanese film The Last Visit Home (directors Yoshimura Misao and Tanaka Shigeo) when kamikaze pilots return home for the last time before their final mission.[2] Highly regarded film director Tomotaka Tasaka (Five Scouts, 1938, amongst others) stated that Ritter’s films ‘penetrate the Japanese viewer to the soul.’ [3]

 



[1]  Vande Winkel, R. & Welch, D; Cinema & the Swastika, (London, Palgrave, 2007), p.193 The original Japanese poster from 1940 for Unternehmen Michael can be found in the color plates of this book.

[2] High, P; The Imperial Screen, (Madison, Univ. of   Wisconsin Press, 2003), pp. 486–487. A VHS print of the film is available for screening at the UCLA Center for Japanese Studies in Westwood, Los Angeles, depicting three young Zero pilots who return home to their villages on leave, their interaction with their parents, brothers and sisters, friends, and villagers, and how they say their good–byes.  There are poignant, tearful and stoic moments, along with laughter and tenderness. One pilot’s mother returns with her son’s comrade to his air base and approaches her son’s Zero with reverence, noble music swelling, as her hand lovingly glides along the edge of the plane’s wing.

[3] Ibid, p. 301. Tasaka’s colleague Kenji Mizoguchi (Osaka Elegy, The 47th Ronin, both 1936) in the February 1940 Japanese film magazine Sutaa (Star) commented on Unternehmen Michael as follows: ‘Karl Ritter’s direction is skillful, but it is the soul of filmmaking that shines through more brilliantly than skill. The soul to make something complete is within him. A great filmmaker.’ "UNTERNEHMEN MICHAEL – Round-table Review"
Kenji Mizoguchi, Tomotaka Tasaka, Tomu Uchida, Yasujiro Ozu and Isamu Kosugi (plus Keinosuke Nanbu, Tsuneo Hasumi as moderators), Star, Feb. 1st issue (1940) pp.10 – 13.  See also: Iwasaki, A; Hitler and Film (Tokyo, Asahi Shimbun Publication, 1975).  Mizoguchi was, for his post–war films such as Sansho the Bailiff (1954) and his “women” films, called ‘one of the 20th century’s greatest filmmakers’ by the New York Times, as well as by other filmmakers, such as Orson Welles.

 

 
Year
1940
 
Director
Ritter
 
Country
Japan