Kolberg

                        

Veit Harlan's Kolberg is a Nazi propaganda film in the guise of a historical war film. This 1945 film chronicles the heroic resistance of a small German city to Napoleon's forces in 1807. Facing stiff odds, the defenders of the town repel a siege that targets the civilian population. This was an attempt to stiffen the resolve of an already beleaguered German citizenry as the Allies crumbled the Axis. Despite a few moving moments, the film's attempts at offering a stirring series of tableaux tends towards waxworks.

The film's two leads both embody the self sacrifice for the fatherland that the Nazi elite wanted to foster. Heinrich George, an avuncular figure on the German screen, plays Joachim Nettelbeck, a no-nonsense brewer and mayor of Kolberg. Nettelbeck personifies the resistance to French tyranny and cruelty. He is adamant that the town will not fall to Napoleon and his minions. He is shown haranguing the town's defeatist commandant, played by Paul Wegener, most famous for his role as The Golem. There are endless scenes of Nettelbeck squabbling with a weak kneed city council which tend to halt whatever momentum the film has generated.

Heinrich George and Kristina Soderbaum

Heinrich George had appeared in Harlan's Jud Suss, an Ant-Semitic period screed that is, despite many contenders, the vilest product of Nazi cinema. The female lead of both Jud Suss and Kolberg is Kristina Soderbaum, the third and final Mrs. Harlan. Soderbaum was a Swede who Harlan helped mold into the preeminent female star of Nazi cinema in such popular melodramas as Covered Tracks, The Immortal Heart, The Trip to Tilsit, and The Golden City. Soderbaum's character represents the stoic endurance the Nazi elite demanded of those on the home front. Families are shown burning their houses so they won't fall into the hands of Napoleon's forces. Farmers flood their fields to impede the advance of the French troops. Soderbaum, who often met a tragic end in Harlan's films (she was nicknamed "the floating corpse"), loses her father, two brothers, and her sweetheart during the town's siege. However, as Nettelbeck rams the point home, "death is overcome by victory."

It was this theme of self-sacrifice that Joseph Goebbels, Harlan's boss as Minister of Propaganda. wanted to convey to wartime Germany. The film's epic production began in 1942 just as the war began to tilt away from the Axis forces. Goebbels would soon be preaching a doctrine of "total war". Kolberg was shot in color and proved to be the most expensive Nazi era production. Harlan and Goebbels clashed over the depictions of the horrors of the war. Many scenes depicting the suffering of Kolberg's population were excised per Goebbels who feared they would engender pacifistic tendencies in the populace. The film boasts handsome sets and costumes, but feels truncated with some herky-jerky editing. There are countless awkward wipes as the film lurches from one incident to another and leaps back and forth through time. In the end, it was all for naught. When the film opened in early 1945, the end of the Third Reich was near and very few cinemas were still operating. A movie designed to shore up the German people's morale and turn the tide of the war disappeared as the Third Reich experienced its Gotterdammerung. The ultimate irony, hopefully, is that what was once known as Kolberg is now known as Kolobrzeg and is part of Poland.

What interest I have in Kolberg largely that of a historical nature rather an aesthetic one. The film, like most totalitarian art, is kitsch. This is not to say that Harlan was untalented, just morally bankrupt. Soderbaum has some baby doll charm. I enjoyed the scene where she is working hard at a loom, this is interspliced with a montage of Aryan labor and bounty: a paean to the toil needed to keep the fatherland strong. The finest sequence of the film is that of Napoleon visiting the tomb of Frederick the Great and intimating that if the German had living leaders of Frederick's caliber, his attempts at conquest would have been thwarted. Frederick the Great was Hitler's greatest hero and role model. Harlan had already filmed a movie about Frederick, The Great King. That picture won the Mussolini Cup as Best Picture at the 1942 Venice Film Festival amongst a fascist friendly field. Both Harlan and Goebbels wanted to draw a parallel between Germany's greatest military leader and its present Fuhrer.

Harlan was prosecuted two times after the war. Each time he was acquitted of crimes against humanity. His defense was that he was following orders and feared for his life. Both he and his missus were able to continue their film careers, albeit at a B movie level. I don't think most people would get much entertainment or insight from watching Kolberg or any of Harlan's other films, but, if you intrigued by his career, I would recommend Felix Moeller's documentary Harlan: In The Shadow of Jud Suss which balances an overview of Harlan's films with the ambivalent reminiscences of his family.