User Reviews

Veit Harlan directed this dram based on the Austrian Richard Billinger's play `Der Gigant' (The Giant). In Czechoslovakia, a German farmer's daughter leaves her father to go Prague, where she is seduced and deserted by Czechoslovakian cousin. In the end she kills herself by drowning.

This second colour feature to be made in Germany has been praised by many for it's visual beauty. Filmed on location in Prague, `Die Goldene Stadt' became the most popular movie with German audiences during the years between 1933 and 1945.

Die Goldene Stadt is a set in a dream world that never was. Like a fairy tale, albeit horrifically banal and naive even for a fairy tale, it was primarily made to make war torn Germany forget about the destructiveness that the madness of the third Reich meant, not just for the numerous victims of nazi persecution but for Germans as well. When the movie started screening in the state controlled cinemas in early 1943, the tide had turned clearly against Germany and it was becoming pain fully evident for most Germans despite the enormous propaganda machine that was so representative for nazi-Germany.

This horribly boring film enabled war weary Germans to forget about war and leap into a world so surreal it made any episode of the X-files seem like a trustworthy documentary.

Swedish "actress" Kristina Söderbaum makes a laughable effort in her role as Anna Jobst, a woman whose naive take on the world for some reason, in the end, makes her commit suicide. Not a minute too soon, although for the viewer the reasons seem to be missing due to the Clumsy editing that director Veit Harlan, known nazi propaganda filmmaker, performed in a haste that managed to make this incredibly poor film even worse, quite a feat.

It could be summed up to be a stupid movie for stupid people, made by stupid people. That would however be far too simple to just dismiss this movie as a harmless movie. The plot itself is harmless, the context in which the movie was made and its purpose makes it a terrible symbol of how some people are capable of ignoring the world falling to pieces around them and happily settling for lies fed to them.

After her career in nazi-Germany with Veit Harlan, Kristina could never return to Sweden or even leave Germany due to her infamous collaboration with Harlan and his propaganda films and no doubt, due to her obvious total lack of acting skills. She stayed and lived a long life without any other than minor roles in minor productions.

"Die goldene Stadt" is a German 100-minute movie from 1942, so this one has its 75th anniversary next year. The director is the infamous Veit Harlan and he is also one of several people working on the script. The lead actress here is his wife Kristina Söderbaum, one of the defining actresses of Nazi Germany, certainly also because of her looks that were widely considered the epitome of what an Aryan woman would look like. But honestly I must say that I have seen some of her works and I do not think she is a particularly gifted actress at all. And this film here does not change my attention. Admittedly, you have to say in her favor that the script she is given to work with here is also not a strong achievement at all. It tries to be emotionally investing so hard and that we care so so much for the protagonist that it becomes pretty cringeworthy quickly. I must say I can understand somehow why German audiences really appreciated this film during the Nazi reign. Color was something they weren't used to and it's certainly breathtakingly beautiful to watch a film like this if you are used to black-and-white. But in terms of the plot, it makes me somewhat sad they fell for cheap tear-jerk material like Harlan's work. There is really nothing special at all about the writing. I did not enjoy the watch. It moved slowly and steadily, but there was absolutely nothing memorable about it. Thumbs down. Definitely a case of style over substance.

For a while I had the VHS print version of it. But the recent DVD version i bought I saw what the trouble was technically. The VHS print ,athough professional, wasn't sharp. It looked like it was from a third generation copy. The film elements that was used in the master , the contrast was a little too bright. The DVD version this is all straightened out. It came from the 1960 reissue print based on the original negative. The flesh tones don't look greenish yellow tint. Now the plot is a soap opera type. A frustrated young girl,Played by Christine Soderbaum, live with her strict father,played by Eugene Clopper,in a farm and wants to escape. As the cook,played by Liselotte Schreiner, wants to get the hooks of Ann Jobst father so she could own the farm if he dies. Ann uses this as an excuse to escape to her aunt in Praug, played by Annie Rosar. Anna gets involved with her cousin ,played by Curt Meisel, who she later finds out he was just using her because in hope that her father died she sell the farm and share the money with him in her aunt. Rejected by her father she resources to suicide. the irony is that the farm lands water is shallow how could she drown her self. It definitely a good German classic from the third Reich. Harland limits the color palette to give it some realism and makes it look like an antique.