Publication details
Kriegsgeschichten von Liebenden und Nationen. Internationale Romanzen in drei Co-Produktionen der späten 1950er-Jahre
| Title in English | War stories of lovers and nations international romances in three co-productions of the late 1950s |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Der lange Weg nach Hause. Konstruktionen von Heimat im europäischen Spielfilm |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Mass media, audiovision |
| Keywords | film co-productions; cinema and war; socialist cinema; romantic movies |
| Description | In the case of the three co-productions this paper focuses on, the function of the melodramatic lines in the narratives was subordinated to the allegorical representation of the respective nations' relationships. All three of the short stories in Májové hvězdy tell the myth of the Soviet nation´s sacrifice and Czechs´ gratitude, although the myth is mediated through rather intimate images of heroism. n Ročník 21, not only individuals, but also two nations – and two nations' fates – clashed. Germans are the jailors, Czechs the jailed; the (self)destructive Germans pay the high price of destroyed homeland (as well as of theirbombed homes), Czechs escape to reach their harmed, but still preserved homeland (and homes). It is just the Slovak-Georgian couple in Prerušená pieseň which reaches a happy end: the couple is engaged in an action of two small nations' mutual help in their fight against Nazism – such allegorical background open a space for a happy "international" marriage extended by reviewers into a "real life story" of a Georgian wife living a happy life in Slovakia. As this case of an "extension" of the fictional story into the "reality" confirms, it was no internal logic of dramaturgy or of narrative technique what drew these ends of the stories which had to suit to expectations in two cultural and political milieu. It was rather the public discourse on guilt, gratefulness, expulsion, and national purity, what determined the fictional fates of the lovers. |
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