Leo Enticknap responds:


> If anyone's interested, the exhibition of Nazi films in modern Germany is
> discussed at some length by Eric Rentschler in 'The Ministry of Illusion:
> Nazi Cinema and its Afterlife' (Harvard U.P., 1996).  Can't remember what
> the legal position is exactly (the book is in a cardboard box in my
> parents' attic, so I can't get at it here and now), but R argues that Nazi
> entertainment films without an immediately apparent propaganda objective
> (that being defined as one which a lay viewer could not readily decipher
> without a certain level of historical background) are regularly shown in
> modern Germany without most viewers associating them with Nazism.

This, of course, is part of the issue of the use of such films in both
the book and movie versions of KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN.  (I can't
testify to how, if at all, they are used in the stage musical.)
Babenco's film gives a nice sense of the issues of "glamor" and
"stardom" in such films and their audience appeals, but the book does
a much better job of contextualing the issue by giving the synopsis of
an actual Nazi film.

Don Larsson

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Donald F. Larsson
English Department, AH 230
Minnesota State University
Mankato, MN  56001

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