The Goebbels Experiment
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Movie Reviews of The Goebbels Experiment
Movie Review: remarkable view of 1930s and 1940s
Summary: 5 Stars
A remarkable view culled from exceptional library footage of the 1930s and 1940s. I agree with other "five star" reviewers.Movie Review: What WAS the Goebbels Experiment?
Summary: 4 Stars
This is an well conceived and executed film. The vintage footage from the Weimar Republic and Third Reich era is gripping, truly giving one, as an earlier reviewer puts it, a "feel" for the period. The selections from Goebbels' diaries focus on many of the pertinent hallmarks in his life, although it's puzzling that Goebbels' reflections on the concentration and death camps, the Americans (and especially FDR), and Aryanism are completely absent from the film's narrative.
What's especially intriguing about the film is the ambiguity surrounding its title. Just what was the Goebbels experiment? It seems to me that two answers are possible. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is the "experiment" of creating a huge propaganda machine capable of manipulating public opinion. This, of course, is what Goebbels did as Minister of Propaganda. Although he initially resisted the assignment, resentfully believing that he was being side-lined, Goebbels was in pretty much complete control of German radio, propaganda, film, press, and theatre by 1934. He insisted that effective propaganda must be the right mixture of entertainment and information, and recognized the power of dramatic film in manipulating the public (the production of "Kolberg" towards the end of the war is a good example of such manipulation). As he said, "German cinema must conquer the world"--that is, cinema was an effective weapon if properly wielded.
So in one sense, Goebbels' experiment was testing the limits of public credulity, and it can scarcely be denied that his successful tactics changed the relationship between governments and media. But at another level, the Goebbels experiment refers to Goebbel's self-creation. Perhaps his greatest propaganda coup was himself. Suffering through an unhappy, sickly childhood, lonely, alienated from a culture he always referred to disdainfully as petite bourgeois, Goebbels experienced profound and sometimes suicidal depression as a young man. By 1924, he was writing that "my life lacks meaning. What a terrible fate" and "Everything I do goes wrong. No purpose. Nothing to get up for." By 1926, however, he'd found the motivational center of gravity that would give his directionless life some meaning: Hitler and National Socialism. For the next two decades, Goebbels would continue to experience bouts of self-pitying depression. But his allegiance to the "cause" of National Socialism also provided him with the prop he needed to give himself an identity. In seeing how that identity gets built, layer by layer, the viewer can't help but be struck by how powerful the human need for a sense of purposefulness is--a need so compelling, in fact, that it can be satisfied even by the destructive mythology of the Third Reich.
Movie Review: incomplete portrait of a novel type of crime and its perpetrator
Summary: 4 Stars
This is another chapter of a 20th century totalitarian saga. From it we get some glimpses at the life of Goebbels. A surviver from his birth, a child and later an adolescent who most probably had to surmount an inferiority complex inversely proportional to the dim picture he cut, Goebbels' coming of age happened to coincide with: the rise of the left in Germany/Europe, the rise of unemployment and inflation, the rise of German resentment, the rise of a fellow whom we all know by the name of Adolf Hitler, and the rise of state propaganda as enabled by the first truly mass media.
For me, this quick traversal through Goebbels' life offers only partial insight into most subjects people keep talking about in conjunction with this film. I should mention that it's a clever way to do a documentary by mixing real footage with autobiographical notes. Of great value for me were the details concerning Goebbels' being in charge with the Nazi propaganda. He was pushed, against his immediate will/desire, into the position of chief of Nazi propaganda, yet people consider him such a great propagandist. I am not sure why he deserves any praise beyond, let's say, the worshipers of state sponsored lies disseminated through mass media. Not being myself a specialist, I can only ask: Would a junior staff, lacking moral compass, in an ad agency today run circles round Goebbels? Or, was Goebbels that "good" because he was among the first who had at his disposal both the means and motive to spread ideological crime through mass media?
For the student of totalitarianism, this film offers some additional proof to how the German leadership deceptively led the German "volk" and the world to disaster. It's interesting learning Goebbels high opinions about: (a) the effectiveness of British war propaganda, and (b) Churchill, both as a propagandist and leader. I only wish the scenes when it appears that after 1943 Goebbels approached(/confronted?) Hitler about the grim realities of the war were developed more. In other words, no matter what the ordinary Germans were told, at least some people at the top knew the naked truth. The film comes also short on how German politics was run backstage. For example, Goebbels didn't like Leni Riefenstahl, yet he offered her a state prize; Was it maybe because Hitler liked her (work) so much?
All in all, Goebbels comes out as the addition of will, physical adversity, lucidity, thirst for power and total revenge, studied stage charisma. If I miss something, leave a comment please.
I hope I've managed by now to not surprise you if I award this film only 3.5 stars.
Movie Review: Interesting, well assembled 'docu-movie'
Summary: 4 Stars
So I saw this was getting fairly high reviews on here and, since I have an interst in the TR and WWII I decided to go ahead and purchase...though the price seemed a little high to me for a single DVD.
Anyhow, this is a unique documetary in that it is alomst entirely (or, maybe it does entirely...) consist of excerpts from Joseph Goebbels diary being read by Kenneth Branaugh. I thought Branaugh did a fine job with his task and I saw a great deal of footage I had never seen previously in any era documentaries I've viewed.
I recommend it really only for those with an interest in the period...not certain this would really do much for the casual documentary fan or WWII or TR enthusiast. I don't give it five stars because I thought it was a little overpriced. Still, I enjoyed it.
Movie Review: Interesting documentary feels a little incomplete
Summary: 4 Stars
After viewing this pretty interesting film drawn from the diaries of Josef Goebbels , i found i needed to go to an information web site to find out the outcome of Goebbels and his family . Yeah , i could kinda deduce what occured , but not fully . There's so much the film fails to tell me explicitly too . Obviously because those things were not put to paper . By and large interesting but less forthcoming than i had anticipated .