Immensee: ein deutsches Volkslied (Immensee: A German Folksong) is a German film melodrama of the Nazi era, directed in 1943 by Veit Harlan and loosely based on the popular novella Immensee (1849) by Theodor Storm. It was a commercial success and, with its theme of a woman remaining faithful to her husband, was important in raising the morale of German forces; it remained popul...
Based on actual historical events - which were again made into a film by Masahiro Shinoda in 2003 - ,"Der Fall Dr. Sorge" (Harlan's preferred title) deals with a communist spy organisation operating in Tokyo during WW II. Richard Sorge is the head of this organisation called 'The Cricket', pretending to be a journalist and using his good contacts to the German embassy to pass o...
Die goldene Stadt opened in late November 1942. An anti—Czech melodrama about a country girl who goes to the big or ‘golden’ city (Prague), it loosely belonged to the Heimat genre, in that the city constitutes the ‘other'. Good Germans reside in the Heimat (by definition a city is never a Heimat) and, in this case, work the farm, while in the city, live inferior and degenerate ...
Though almost forgotten today, Veit Harlan was one of Nazi Germany's most notorious filmmakers. His most perfidious film was the treacherous anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Sü - required viewing for all SS members. An unrepentant and blindly obsessive craftsman, no figure - save for Leni Riefenstahl - is as closely associated with the cinema of the Holocaust years. (Harlan's ...
