Munchausen, Germany, 1943

I watched Munchausen, (Nazi Germany, 1943). A lavish production, in color. The movie was commissioned by Goebbels to celebrate the anniversary of the movie studio. It was reportedly very popular in Germany, due perhaps in part to the surprising amount of nudity.



Based on the Adventures of Baron Munchausen, set in the 18th century. Munchausen is a German soldier who fights in the Russian army. A little surprising they made a movie about it since the Nazis were at war with the USSR. It was filmed during the 900-day Siege of Leningrad. Over a million Soviet people died in the siege, mostly from starvation---about the same number of people who died in the Armenian genocide---yet much of the action in this movie takes place in that city, then St Petersburg.

I never liked "tall tales". Munchausen rides a cannonball, he has a rifle that can shoot a hundred miles, he has a courier who can run hundreds of miles per hour and he rides to the moon in a hot air balloon. In the first or second grade they made us watch school movies about Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill and even back then, that kind of crap just left me cold. There's nothing remotely amusing about it.

I don't know if any actual Black people appeared in the movie, but there were white actors in blackface. Some of the action took place in the Ottoman Empire. Munchausen is enslaved but is offered a job by the Sultan if only he will convert to Islam. In a Nazi touch, Munchausen refuses. He has only one religion and one homeland just as he has only one mother.

There was a Soviet movie made years later about Baron Munchausen. Western academics interpreted it as being secretly anti-Communist. They interpret all Soviet movies this way always through some tortured logic. But they never see Nazi film this way. Why do you think that is?