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The Commentary Makes the Difference: An Analysis of the Suez War in East and West German Newsreels, 1956

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Part of the book series: Global Cinema ((GLOBALCINE))

Abstract

The Suez crisis of 1956 is a worthwhile and feasible subject for an international comparison of newsreel coverage as the event had global importance but was relatively short. The newsreel reports on the Suez focused on incidents that took place over the course of only a few weeks. This case study on the ways in which five newsreels in West and East Germany covered the Suez crisis, show that they all used exactly the same footage, which had been supplied by Pathé News and Pathé Journal. Even though the images are the same, there are remarkable differences in terms of the editing of the material, the music and the commentaries in the different newsreels. Both the West German and the East German newsreels include ideological arguments about the political confrontation during the Cold War period.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Kracauer, S. (1974) Kino. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, p. 11.

  2. 2.

    In detail: Paschen. J: “Die unabhängigste Wochenschau der Welt”?, http://dokumentarfilmforschung.de/dff/cms/?p=528#more-528 (accessed 9 August 2018).

  3. 3.

    Meanwhile there is new interest of film and media history in the newsreels, also after 1945. Recent publications include the overview of B. Kleinhans (Kleinhans, B. (2013) “Der schaerfste Ersatz fuer die Wirklichkeit”. St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag) with an overall overview about the history on newsreels in Germany from the beginning to their end in the 1970s. Sigrun Lehnert published on the relation of newsreels and television news (Lehnert, S. (2013) Wochenschau und Tagesschau in den 1950er Jahren. Konstanz, München: UVK) and wrote some articles on different topics about the post-war newsreels in West Germany. Uta Schwarz analysed the role of the image of women and West German identity (Schwarz, U. (2002) Wochenschau, westdeutsche Identität und Geschlecht in den fuenfziger Jahren. Frankfurt: Campus). An interview with newsreel cameraman Klaus Brandes on the aesthetic of newsreels was published by Karl Stamm (Stamm, K. (2005) Kleine Beitraege zur deutschen Wochenschaugeschichte. Weimar: VDG).

  4. 4.

    Lehnert, S. (2013) Wochenschau und Tagesschau in den 1950er Jahren. Konstanz, München: UVK, pp. 305–307.

  5. 5.

    Lehnert, S. (2016) Die Deutsche Kino-Wochenschau der 1950er und 1960er-Jahre als Vermittler der europäischen Idee. In: Themenportal Europäische Geschichte (http://www.europa-clio-online.de).

  6. 6.

    Imesch, K., Schade, S., Sieber, S. (eds.) (2016) Constructions of Cultural Identities in Newsreel Cinema and Television after 1945. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

  7. 7.

    Mayer, M.S. (2009) The Eisenhower Years. Checkmark Books: New York, p. 44.

  8. 8.

    http://gaumontpatharchives.com (accessed 20 August 2017).

  9. 9.

    Personal correspondence with Cyrille Lollivier (Gaumont Pathé Archives) from 7 October 2017: ‘Actually, there are no “production files” existing on the newsreel collection.’

  10. 10.

    http://www.filmothek.bundesarchiv.de/video/584205?q=Suez+1956, start: 06:00 min (accessed 9 August 2018).

  11. 11.

    http://www.filmothek.bundesarchiv.de/video/586250?q=Suez+1956, start: 05:01 min (accessed 9 August 2018).

  12. 12.

    Lehnert (2013), p. 285 (translation by K.H.).

  13. 13.

    http://www.progress-film.de/der-augenzeuge-1956-46.html, start: 00:18 min (accessed 9 August 2018).

  14. 14.

    http://www.progress-film.de/der-augenzeuge-1956-47.html, start: 00:17 min (accessed 9 August 2018).

  15. 15.

    https://www.filmothek.bundesarchiv.de/video/584212?q=suez+1956, start: 01:05 min (accessed 9 August 2018).

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Hoffmann, K. (2018). The Commentary Makes the Difference: An Analysis of the Suez War in East and West German Newsreels, 1956. In: Chambers, C., Jönsson, M., Vande Winkel, R. (eds) Researching Newsreels. Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91920-1_5

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