The Goebbels Experiment
by Lutz Hachmeister
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DVD details
Actor: Adolf Hitler, Josef Goebbels, Magda Goebbels, Udo Samel, Wilhelm FrickDirector: Lutz Hachmeister
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); English (Original Language); German (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-05-23
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: First Run Features
DVD Reviews of The Goebbels Experiment
DVD 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.DVD Review: The Goebbels Experiment
Summary: 5 Stars
This is The Goebbels Experiment a movie about the life of Joseph Goebbels and why he did what he did. It is possible to see from the portrayal of his speeches how the German people could have been taken in by such a dramatic orator as Joseph Goebbels.
It is a general history of his life and the war. He was a major force behind the Holocaust and as this Movie/documentary tries to demonstate he was also the one behind Adolf Hitler.
The music used in the introduction is highly suitable.
DVD 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.
DVD Review: "The Goebbels Experiment" is very strongly recommended viewing
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Goebbels Experiment" is a 107 minute historical documentary focused upon the life and work of Joseph Goebbels, one of the key figures in the Nazi movement that took control of Germany in the late 1930s and was in charge of Hitler's propaganda machine throughout World War II until he took his life rather than fall into the hands of the Russians with the fall of the Third Reich in 1945. Drawing upon rare footage from the archives of German film and television, and interweaving quotations from Goebbels diaries (which he kept from 1924 to 1945) and his recorded speeches, the filmmakers Lutz Hachmeister and Michael Kloft decided not to interject commentary but let Goebbels words and recorded images speak for themselves. The German language is ably narrated in English by Kenneth Branagh. "The Goebbels Experiment" is a superbly produced documentary whose DVD format allows for the addition of Film Notes, Filmmaker Biographies, and a World War II Film Collection Preview. With its underlying message of the danger to a free and democratic society from a monolithic governmental control of the means of communication, "The Goebbels Experiment" is very strongly recommended viewing and a welcome addition to both school and community library video collections.DVD 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.
Description of The Goebbels Experiment
"Arguably the most gifted of Hitler's henchmen, Joseph Goebbels was an enigmatic genius whose successful manipulation of mass political opinion was unprecedented. His rise to power, and that of the Nazi Party itself, will forever stand as one of history's most terrifying examples of the reach of propaganda, a tool with which Goebbels's name is virtually synonymous. In their fascinating documentary, the filmmakers provide a rare and chilling glimpse into a brilliant but toxic mind. Rejecting commentary, they allow Goebbels to speak for himself (in the voice of Kenneth Branagh), via the extensive diaries that he kept from 1924 to1945. Rare clips from German film and television archives illustrate the readings. At a time when much of our news and entertainment media is controlled by a handful of corporations, The Goebbels Experiment is a cautionary reminder that equal access to the machinery of ideas may be society's most critical goal."The rise and fall of the Third Reich is chronicled on an intimately personal scale in The Goebbels Experiment, an essential addition to the vast legacy of Nazi-related documentaries. Like no other film before it, this remarkable experiment in archival biography combines two fascinating elements: rare and extensive archival footage and dramatic readings (by renowned British actor Kenneth Branagh) from the personal diaries that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels kept from 1924 until his suicide in 1945. The net effect is unexpectedly striking: As Hitler's Nazi Party gained social and political momentum in the late 1920s and early '30s, Goebbels' daily life was so thoroughly covered by newsreel cameras, home movies, and Third Reich historians that there is enough existing footage of him to match (or at least approximate) nearly every event mentioned in his diaries.
From Goebbels' growing influence as an influential orator to his surprisingly affectionate family life, the meticulously edited footage serves as both point and counterpoint to Goebbels' diaries, revealing a paranoid intellectual capable of breathtaking, if not outright schizoid, shifts from one train of thought to another. A perceptive observer of culture (especially the art of motion pictures), he both loved Hitler and felt repeatedly betrayed by the Fuhrer's perceived offenses against him. Prone to chronic bouts of depression, Goebbels found purpose in his unprecedented orchestration of epic-scale propaganda, but his inner demons haunted him until the very end, when it became obvious that the Nazis had completely lost their power. The final images of Goebbels' partially burned body (along with those of his wife and six children) serve as a chilling reminder that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Having never found a satisfying balance between his personal and professional lives as a top-ranking Nazi, Goebbels' fate seems almost predetermined. As a masterful assembly of archival materials, The Goebbels Experiment is not to be missed. --Jeff Shannon
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