Opfergang is a “free adaptation” of a novella of the same name by Rudolf Georg Binding (1867–1938), first published as part of a collection in 1911. And Opfergang is also a remarkably beautiful film (one of only a few color films produced under Hitler) with impressive performances and a truly remarkable score. In fact, the philosophy of the film is consciously and deliberately Nietzschean. There is no overt “propaganda” in Opfergang, but there are very clear, subtle, and profound philosophical messages. What I discovered was exactly the sort of “National Socialist film” I had been expecting from all the others that had disappointed me. So, I turned to Opfergang with some curiosity – especially given Žižek’s recommendation – but not very high expectations. Other films, like Die Grosse Liebe and Amphitryon, were pretty fluffy, innocuous, and devoid of ideological content. The outright propaganda films, like Hitlerjunge Quex and SA-Mann Brand, had their merits, but weren’t that interesting. As he does throughout the documentary, Žižek engages in a kind of frantic monologue, and at one point he names his three favorite films: King Vidor’s The Fountainhead (this really surprised me), Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, and Veit Harlan’s Opfergang.Ĭoincidentally, around this same time I was making a study of the films made under Hitler, acquiring quite a few DVDs from a company that specializes in Third Reich cinema:. In one segment he is shown browsing in Kim’s Video in Manhattan (at its old location on St. I learned about Opfergang from an unlikely source: a documentary on the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek.
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