"Titanic" - the breakthrough stopped by Goebbels
"Titanic" was supposed to become the definate breakthrough for Kirsten Heiberg - as one of the leading film divas in Nazi Germany. The film was an enormous and prestigeous project for Joseph Goebbels, with a price of 4 million Reichsmark, corresponding to a sum of £ 100 millions in today's value. The film was initiated already in 1940 and was planned to be a weapon against The Third Reich's main enemy at that stage of the war - Great Britain. The propaganda movie was going to convey how British capital owners were speculating with innocent people's lives to raise the value of the shares in the company that owned the ship - and then sell out for good profits. Kirsten Heiberg performs as Gloria, the mistress of Sir Ismay, chairman of the board in White Star Line. But "Titanic" came to undergo a very dramatic production process, with immense problems, ending with the death of director Herbert Selpin. When the film finally was ready, in December 1942, Goebbels demanded it to be recut, and a couple of months later, he banned the screening of "Titanic" in German cinemas: Goebbels found that the panic scenes at the end of the film, with the sinking ship, reminded the Germans too much of their own, almost daily experiences of chaos and destruction and that the propaganda would not work as intended. On the contrary: The audiences could get the idea that Germany was a sinking ship! But Goebbels' giant movie project was shown in most other occupied countries in Europe and premiered in Prague in September 1943.
View the original trailer here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3JEgD9Jyrc
Here you can also view a very interesting documentary on Goebbels' film industry
and the production of "Titanic" as part of the total German war effort.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrnRTL4bYsY
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