Mashup Monday: Stukas over Bayreuth
20.05.2013
This is a clip from Karl Ritter's Nazi propaganda film Stukas from 1941. The scene shows a depressed and apathetic bomber being cured by listening to Götterdämmerung at the Festspielhaus. The music gives him spirit and energy to return to the battle field to bomb England.
Before the Festspielhaus scene, the bomber and his nurse are relaxing at the Bürgerreuth Restaurant on the hill above the Festival area, still a place much visited after performances. The nurse explains to the doctor why she wants to take the pilot to Bayreuth: "Es gibt keinen Menschen, der von dort ohne Ergriffenheit weggehen kann."
Via www.wagneropera.net Thanks!
"It was a monotonous film about a bunch of obstreperous adolescents who dive bombed things and people. They bombed anything and anybody. That's all the film was - just one bombing after another. Finally the hero got bored with bombing and lost interest in life - so they took him off to the Bayreuth music festival where he listened to a few lines of Wagner's music; his soul began to breathe again, he got visions of the Fuhrer and of guns blazing away, so he impolitely left right in the middle of the first act and dashed back and started bombing things again with the old gusto."
- Howard K. Smith in "Last Train From Berlin"
No further comments! Yours truly...
Ringo Gnarr, böhmobayrischer Bilderwurm - dachte bisher, Richard Wagner sei der Hubschrauberpilot von König Ludwig. Eines besseren belehrt, hofft er nun endlich auf die höheren Weihen jener zweifelhaften Kunst: mit dem Herzen zu denken und mit dem Hirn zu fühlen.
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