I’ve tried to watch it… Couldn’t get into it. I’ll keep trying I’m sure.
This film (among others) in a January interim course on Nazi cinema:
A young lad finds acceptance and inclusion among members of the Hitler Youth.
We saw it under the original title.
Rope
The River
Is it a decent movie, or just agitprop?
Depends on what you means by “decent.” Yes, the Nazis are the good guys and the Communists are the bad guys, but it was produced during the Gleichshaltung period when the Propaganda Ministry was doing its best to present the Movement in a good light. So there’s nothing I’d call particularly objectionable in it. It’s more like “Belonging to the Hitler Youth is good, clean fun,” which was true for a lot of people at the time.
One thing the Nazis understood very well was that in order to sell the Movement to the general public, their propaganda had to be presented in an entertaining manner, and the film really is quite entertaining. Of course, it helps if you kind of forget everything that happened a few years later.
My main interest in the film was historical, but the cinematography was worth studying as well. German cinema has always produced very well-crafted movies.
I took one course in high school and two in college (one a general film class and one just on Bergman). I tend to conflate them but for the general class I remember:
The Rules of the Game
Bicycle Thieves
The Nights of Cabiria
Strangers on a Train
L’Aventurra (which I only remember for being boring as anything)
One Bergman ( either Smiles of a Summer Night or The Magician)
One Herzog (maybe Aguirre the Wrath of God)
Yojimbo
Day For Night
I’m surprised I remember so many after so many years but as you see it was basically one from each director. I know I did one paper on Strangers on a Train and one on Persona ( but the latter was for the Bergman course).
I would also note for any aspiring college student that taking a course called “The Films of Ingmar Bergman, formal and Freudian approaches” in New England in January will tend to make you suicidal. There is nothing like watching Winter Light (where the woman having an affair with her priest screams at him in Swedish about her eczema) to make you want to curl up in a ball and cry. Add reading Freud and trying to apply his theories of sadism and masochism to the film and it makes for a totally good time.
In High School I know we saw Nanook of the North and Olympia among others. I love the cinematography on the latter although I hate that it was Nazi propaganda. Still, you can’t deny her talent.
I love watching propaganda movie of all sorts, for the reasons you mentioned - historical… I want to see what the German (or anyone else) people saw.