German cinema

A horror-comedy that strives to disturb rather than scare, ‘Der Bunker’ meticulously creates a world of perverse pleasures.

German artists faced a painful choice under the Nazis. Many fled abroad, driven by ideology or religion; a few resisted. Those remaining had little choice beyond collaboration: Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’ dictatorial control of German culture, especially cinema, demanded public and private conformity. Usually, Goebbels tolerated a Jewish spouse or off-hand criticism, but occasionally he …

After World War II, Leni Riefenstahl couldn’t escape the Fuhrer’s shadow. Arrested first by American, then French troops, her property and money seized, she endured interrogations about her tires to the regime. Riefenstahl argued she’d been coerced into making propaganda and wasn’t aware of Nazi atrocities. The image stuck: three denazification tribunals acquitted her (one cautiously branding her a “fellow traveler”), and Riefenstahl began the road to rehabilitation.

Part I. A Filmmaker’s Apotheosis April 20th, 1938 marked Adolf Hitler’s 49th birthday. In the past five years, he’d rebuilt Germany from destitute anarchy into a burgeoning war machine, repudiated the Versailles Treaty and, that March, incorporated Austria into his Thousand-Year Reich. In Nazi Germany, fantasy co-mingled with ideology, expressing an obsession with Germany’s mythical …