Carl Ritter is the personal embodiment in the Nazi regime of the Gordian tie between aviation, cinema, myth and nationalism. The Gordian tie was developed as a result of: A. The importance of aviation to mankind. B. The parallel development of cinema in the twentieth century. C. The widespread use of mythical modernity in the Fascist regimes. D. The embodiment of airplane and pilot myths in many popular movies. Carl Ritter is a key figure in a group of Nazi filmmakers identified with this connection.
The golden age of aviation, from the early 20th century to the 1950th, coincided with that of cinema. Cinema developed just as fast and dramatically as flight, and both quickly established themselves as the most exciting and popular form of leisure and activity, while becoming an incredibly effective channel for spreading ideas. During the interwar period, popular cinema took advantage of fears of an aerial bombardment in the next great war. At the same time, cinema during this period used photographing of the pilot and the aircraft for nationalist propaganda, which showed achievements in this subject as the spearhead of the national technological initiative.
The flight experience was seen as the ultimate empowerment of life. Aviation has become the form of the new era, on which it has made its mark. The pilot was a new kind of person. The German pilot was not just a new German man. The model deserved to have a formative impact on the entire world. Germany shaped the propaganda pilot myth for propaganda purposes as early as the First World War. Ernest Udet, heir to the stereotype, came to the dream industry, where he played his character in a series of mountain films that created continuity between the Weimar Republic and the Nazi regime. Through its popular commander Hermann Goering, who was Hitler's deputy, this regime became identified with the subject of aviation. The airplane became in Nazi Germany a social-industrial-military locomotive and a mythical-propaganda icon that propelled world-wide political processes. The aviation films of Karl Ritter and his colleagues, who were all very popular in Germany, were mobilized for politics.
At the same time, the Nazis nationalized the German film industry, under the framework of the huge UFA company, which was established at the end of the First World War. At its peak, UFA also competed with the major Hollywood studios, and the German film industry was the second largest in the world. The thousands of films produced by the company, in all genres, have been watched by hundreds of millions of viewers. After the Nazis came to power, in 1933, they made it their main propaganda tool.
Carl Ritter, who came to the film industry by chance in 1926, was a fighter pilot and flight instructor in his military past, and a successful and enthusiastic Nazi graphic artist as a citizen. With a close family relationship with composer Richard Wagner, he sought to present the flight skills as appropriate to each person. The issue of aviation was identified for him with the values of the Nazi party.
In early 1933, Ritter received from Joseph Goebbels an invitation to a three-year employment contract with UFA. Under the contract he received his own production group, with which he worked during the dozen years of the Third Reich. He enjoyed a tidy production studio and budgets that otherwise would not have fallen on his part. Between the years 1936-1945 he played a major role in the creation of about twenty films. About a third of them were significant aviation films.
He clearly described his goal as a cinematic filmmaker in ideological terms: "The path of German films will uncompromisingly lead to the conclusion that every film must remain in the service of our community, of the nation and of our Fuhrer." Although he declared himself a propagandist, and worked in the studio method, he can be defined as an author. This is due to the unique background he brought to the film industry and his adherence to a typical style.
At the beginning of the Nazi regime, under the influence of the film "Potyomkin", the propaganda film "Hitler's youth Quack" (1935) was created, had a huge success and influence, and Carl Ritter was its producer. Ritter's first propaganda-plot-aviation film as a director was "Traitor" (1936), a contemporary spy thriller set in an aircraft factory. During 1937, he created a trilogy of war-propaganda films set in World War I, which was watched by some 6 million viewers. The aviation narrative in these films exists, but is still marginal.
In Nazi Germany, the shortage of original feature films stood out before the war, ones that would present the life of the German laborer as dynamic and satisfying. Carl Ritter was the first to fill in the gaps, in a style he called "Zeitsfilm". It was in fact Lenny Riefenstahl's 'Heroic Reportage' style, adopted for widespread use thanks to its modernity, surprising ability, and visual totality.
Carl Ritter films were formalists, with a high degree of redesign of reality. The clear symbol of mythical totalitarian modernism in Germany and Italy was the airplane. The Nazis formulated a neo-classical style with modern lines. The plane, with its flowing lines, had great aesthetic significance, in addition to being of technological, practical and ideological significance. The plane has been a mythical icon in cinema since its inception, and has become the central semiotic and photogenic symbol in Carl Ritter's films, using various aircraft models that star in his films, combined with their air crews. In the second circle, his films show the ground crews at the airfield. In the third circle is the civilian front, where the loved ones of the air crews live, and the plane allows for quick physical contact with them. Ritter found, in this way, a perfect format for describing the new German society.
Nazism was run as a corporation selling a brand, which is a myth cultivated for mass consumption purposes. Criticism of myth theory claims that they are intended to strengthen the political system. The world becomes through them a hollow harmonious picture. Man is inhibited by the myths, and sent by them to be a prototype that they define. Because the myths express central cultural values, they appear in mass media channels, and in particular in cinema which is a multi-participant industry. Karl Ritter, thanks to his in-depth acquaintance with the top echelons of the Nazi regime, the heads of aviation, and the artistic and ideological elite, best suited the task of shaping the Hitler Youth.
In 1938, Carl Ritter created his most important film, ''Pour Le Merite'', which was a founding cultural event, in which, semi-officially, all German history was rewritten from the end of World War I until after Hitler came to power, in a manner consistent with both the Nazi version and the development of aviation in Germany. The film deals with a group of former fighter pilots, who according to prominent biographical characteristics are from the "The Flying Circus", headed by the last commander Herman Goering. He leads his men after the war to revolt against the occupation and the new democracy in Germany.
Ritter has created, as a screenwriter, producer and / or director, several other propaganda-plot films in the style of "Zeitsfilm". Most of them are aviation films, including: "The Condor Legion" (1939), "Shtuckas" (1940), "Above All in the World" (1941), "Red Terror" (1942), "The Dora Team" (1943).
He developed, in stages, the myth of the plane and the pilot in his aviation films: the plane as a photogenic object is shown in the films "Traitor" and "The Condor Legion". The process of forging the character of the lone pilot as a national superhero is shown in the film "Pour Le Merite". The archetypal "duo" motif is central to the film "Shtuckas". The duo matures into an organized group in the romantic aviation drama "The Dora Team".
The development of aviation in Germany largely explains the phenomenon of the Nazi regime. This is not to say that other factors such as racism, anti-Semitism, anti-communism and anti-democracy did not work in it. But they were relatively negligible compared to the need to present a positive ideological discourse, in the spirit of mythical modernity, in a way that would allow them to ignore others. Ritter did not focus on the vague figure of the supernatural. His starting point was the popular forged soldier-civilian, who exist as a potential in every person.
Carl Ritter became a senior executive at UFA, earning a prestigious professorship of culture. However, his ideological zeal, connections and success, and at the same time the cumulative Luftwaffe failures from the 1940s onwards, were not liked by Joseph Goebbels, who was in charge of him, and he gradually distanced him from filmmaking.
It is wrong to see in Carl Ritter's films a reconciliation with a humane worldview. He stood out as a propaganda filmmaker and as one of the leading cultural figures in Nazi Germany. He created a popular cinema, guided by an ideological worldview, which served well the flourishing marketing machine that operated at the base of this regime.
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