Considering its lowly Gower Gulch origins, and compared with the overblown hysterics and buffoonish characterizations of most Hollywood propaganda films, this is a remarkably heartfelt and even-handed treatment of lurid and melodramatic material. Goebbels is delineated as a tragically flawed human being rather than a cartoonish ogre, and his final scene amidst the rubble is strangely ambivalent. Much credit must go to director Zeisler (best known for his minimal-budget adaptation of "Crime and Punishment", entitled "Fear") who has taken measures to add a psychological and emotional background to the principals, despite the cardboard situations and some risible theatrical devices (particularly Goebbels' incidental invention of the "Heil Hitler" salute). Equally praiseworthy is the noirish cinematography of the incomparable John Alton, whose precise lighting of eyes, faces and profiles adds so much depth to the characterizations.
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goblinhairedguy27 April 2004
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sol12185 October 2005(There may be Spoilers) Highly fictional account of the life and times of Nazi Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Wolfgang Zilzer. In fact the movie "Enemy of Women" almost totally overlooks Goebbels involvement with the Nazi Party and his meteoric rise to become one the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and Nazi occupied Europe. As well being his Fhurer's most loyal and trusted henchman who was to stay with his beloved Fhurer in his bunker in Berlin to the very last in April/May 1945. Then killing, together with his equally fanatical Nazi wife Magda not only himself but their six young children as well. The film instead concentrates on Josephs very possessive and weird love life.
We see the early life of Dr. Goebbels as a failed writer, of dime store novels and stage plays, being kicked around by a young woman who he tried to make out with. Goebbels in then kicked out of the house by the girls-Maria-outraged father Colonel Brandt, H.B. Warner, when he clumsily tried to make a play for her. Depressed and feeling like sh*t Goebbels wonders into a beer-hall and for the first time hears ultra-German Nationalist Adolf Hitler give one of his hypnotic and spellbinding speeches. Right there and then Goebbels was hooked and joined Hitler's National Scoialist, or Nazi for short, party which he would be a member of-in good standing-for the rest of his life.
Now years later In a position of power Goebbels can get even with all those wise-guys bluenoses and bullies who kicked him around when he was a nobody and a more or less 98 pound weakling in the world of power and influence. Getting even with old Colonel Brandt who threw him out of his house when Joseph tried to grab and kiss his actress daughter Maria, Claudia Drake, Goebbels puts out the word to SS chief Himmler that Brandt is a disloyal traitor to Germany. That has Himmler send a few of his goons to the old mans apartment who end up putting him away with a load of slugs shot into him.
Goebbel now seeing his chance to get in good with the bereaved Maria makes as if he's very depressed over her fathers tragic death which, unknown to Maria, he was responsible for. In fact it was Goebbles himself who was targeted for elimination by Himmler but played it cool after being alerted by his friends. Goebbles gets as close as he could to Adolf Hitler knowing Himmler wouldn't dare have him shot while he was standing next to the Furher.
Getting Maria leading parts in plays and movies, through his connections as Propaganda Minister, Goebbles now expects some payback from her, like being his mistress. Instead she falls in love with charming and handsome Vienna doctor Hans Traeger, Donald Woods, which has Goebbels throw a fit. Before he can do anything the two lovebirds, Maria & Hans, skip out of Germany to Hans' native Vienna. Married and living in bliss the Traegers have it made in old Vienna until March 1938 when the German/Austrian "Anschluss" happens with the German army marching across the German/Austrian border and uniting the two countries under Nazi rule.
Stuck with nowhere to go both Maria and Hans are now at the mercy of the Nazi regime and only with Goebbles' help can they ever be able to get out of the country and into Switzland; but that help will come at a very heavy and heartbreaking price.
"Enemy of Women" is more like a soap opera then a historical movie with that rascal and scoundrel Joseph Goebbles having one affair after another with beautiful and buxom Frauleins as Germany goes down the road to destruction in the Second World War. What was Goebbles greatest love in the movie Maria Brandt ends up getting killed in a daylight USAAF bombing raid on Berlin. Poor old and crazy Joseph now all by himself gives one of his lying speeches, to the German people, on how the allied bombing campaign over Germany is a total bust. Goebbles also boasts that if they, the Americans and Brits, ever try to invade "Fortress Europe" by crossing the English Channel they'll get the worst beating of their lives. As usual Goebbles was wrong dead wrong. He, the real Joseph Goebbles, was to die by his own hand less then a year after "Enemy of Women" was released. -
bkoganbing3 January 2014Of all the gang around Adolf Hitler probably the sickest and most degenerate was Joseph Paul Goebbels. Minister for propaganda and public enlightenment, he was one of the few who was not trying to cut a deal for himself when the Third Reich was in its last days. He stayed loyal to the master to the bitter end.
If Dr. Freud could have gotten Dr. Goebbels on the couch I'm sure his notes would have been fascinating. Like Somerset Maugham's protagonist Philip Carey in Of Human Bondage, Goebbels was born with a club foot and that together with a raging libido was the story of his life. When he was a nobody he couldn't get a date, when he became minister his job included supervision of the German film industry. He had a casting couch that put L.B. Mayer's and Darryl Zanuck's to shame.
This film concerns his obsession with one he couldn't get. Claudia Drake who laughingly rejects him while he was trying to earn a living as a tutor pays for it the rest of the movie. She and father H.B. Warner and husband Donald Woods. Goebbels never forgot a slight in real life.
Wolfgang Zilzer plays Goebbels and it's a change from Martin Kosleck who usually played Goebbels when he was a character in film. If you want to see a good portrayal of Goebbels in a good film I highly recommend The Bunker where Cliff Gorman and Piper Laurie played Joe and Magda Goebbels. She's a cipher here and that's wrong in and of itself. She was as sick as he was, maybe worse. But she completely put up with his womanizing because she didn't believe in letting the grass grow under her feet. There's a fine account of that in Albert Speer's memoirs.
Making Magda a peripheral character in the story is a big mistake. And the general shoddiness of production doesn't help either. In fact at the end of the film the narrator says this story isn't finished and how could it be in 1944.
Still this World War II propaganda has some good moments in it and should be seen as a curiosity. -
richardchatten18 August 2016We are informed at the outset that "The following story unfolds the private life of the greatest scoundrel of our time". One would have thought that would have more aptly described Hitler himself (or at least Goering) rather than Goebbels; but the Doctor would have been as flattered to be considered important enough to get an entire film to himself depicting him (as 'Inglorious Basterds' later put it) as "The number two man in Hitler's Third Reich", as he would have been disdainful of the result.
At a time when far less was then known about him than has been documented since his death, as the most visible and vocal member of the Nazi hierarchy after Hitler it was widely assumed during their lifetime that Goebbels was the real brains behind the Führer. This was certainly how he was portrayed (superbly played by Henry Daniell) in Chaplin's 'The Great Dictator' (1940). Only after the war did it emerge that Goebbels had far less influence over Hitler than had generally been supposed. But that is the least of this film's many inaccuracies; and it shares with Stuart Heisler's 'Hitler' (1962) a similarly tedious fixation with it's subject's love life rather than his political activities.
Originally titled 'The Private Life of Paul Joseph Goebbels', but at some point saddled with the absurd 'Enemy of Women', the film's writer-director Alfred Zeisler was one of Hollywood's many exiles from Nazi Germany and was thus in some instances drawing upon his own memories of the period when Goebbels was consolidating Nazi control over the German film industry; while at other times embellishing with the benefit of hindsight. The result is a bizarre but lamentably dull mishmash of surprisingly recherché historical information and total fabrication. On the one hand the film surprisingly includes the Austrian clairvoyant Erik Jan Hanussen (later portrayed by Klaus Maria Brandauer in István Szabó's 'Hanussen' in 1988) accurately predicting the Reichstag fire and the rise of Rommel; and Goebbels' secretary was indeed named Hanke, as he is called here. But the character of Maria Brandt, an Austrian actress with whom the Doctor becomes chronically obsessed - not to mention the time frame involved - bears no relation at all to the affair Goebbels actually had with the Czech actress Lída Baarová during the thirties. Stranger still, in 1931 Goebbels married Magda Quandt, by whom he had six children; but in this version of events Joseph seemingly remains a bachelor, and Magda, as played by Sigrid Gurie, appears simply as the mother of a boy young Joseph is teaching history, and has just one word of dialogue: "Harald!"
The Führer himself is seen only fleetingly in longshot, Himmler is shown briefly from behind sounding like a Hollywood gangster; and that's all you see of the other Nazi leaders. Goebbels himself disappears from the film for long stretches, including much of the final third (Claudia Drake, who plays Maria Brandt, is ominously billed above supposed lead Paul Andor); and we are instead forced to watch Maria's extremely uninteresting romance with handsome and equally fictitious Dr. Hans Traeger. None of this is made any more involving by Zeisler's sluggish direction; and the end result is, alas, much duller than it sounds. -
manuel-pestalozzi23 June 2006The story of this Monogram movie is loosely based on the life and times of Nazi criminal and German propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Viewers who have the habit of first checking if every button and leather strap of the actor's different Nazi Uniforms are the right size and in the right place will have reason to be displeased. The movie does not aim at historical or geographical accuracy.
Despite of its shortcomings or maybe just because of them the basic message is plain and clear: Tyranny means the abolition of law and order and the arbitrary, unabashed invasion of any kind of private sphere and individual freedom. And unhealthy characters will enjoy unlimited power. Goebbels is depicted as a randy suck-upper". First he quite literally sucks up to the daughter of his landlord, an aspiring actress with whom he reads Roemo and Juliet helping her to prepare for the part of Juliet. The girl pushes the heated up guy away, Goebbels stumbles backwards and falls over a chair. The girl laughs at him lying there as her father, a general, enters and without further ado kicks him out.
This slight brings on Goebbel's lifelong persecution of the girl. He leaves the general's house, crosses the street, gets into a beer hall and what do you know? there is a guy there (only seen from a distance) giving a clumsy speech about the Fatherland, Germany's humiliation etc. Freshly humiliated Goebbels instantly sucks up to him, inventing the Hitler salute on the way. His rise to power has begun and soon he can do with the girl whatever he pleases. And he doesn't miss the opportunity. She is for him just a trophy to own, the tragic final scene that shows her in a kind of a golden cage, just helplessly standing there as bombs fall on Berlin make that plainly clear.
Enemy of Women succeeds in making the viewers understand the mechanics of tyranny it is closer to Charles Chaplin's The Great Dictator than to movies made later, when the USA had larger war experience. Even the heroine's flight to Free Austria is reminiscent of Chaplin's movie. John Alton's camera-work of course is a major asset, he was a true master of shadow and light. One scene of bliss for the girl and her future husband is remarkable as sticks as being extremely bright, almost blinding. I don't know how much the editing is responsible for the effect, in any case, I will not forget it. I also wondered if the director or the cameraman (or both) fell in love with Claudia Drake. Especially in the second part of the movie she is stunningly beautiful and gets a lot of screen time in the most favorable light.
The small Cinémathèque suisse recently released a DVD with its oldest treasures ("Il était une fois... la Suisse" Images cinématographiques des années 1896-1934). The last item is a newsreel report of Dr. Goebbels after a visit to the League of Nations in Geneva in 1934. Before boarding a waiting Junkers 52 he delivers a short speech saying that the German people want nothing but peace and that the German government will do anything in its power to secure it forever. He really was an unscrupulous, intelligent and eloquent liar. The final speech in Enemy of Women struck me as having exactly the same tone and phrasing. The makers of this movies must have studied the original" carefully. -
dbborroughs16 December 2009The life of Joseph Goebbels and his rise as propaganda minister for the Nazis. Odd mix of Hollywood hokum and propaganda makes for a decidedly silly film. I'm not sure how the film played originally but seeing it some 70 years on I find the film creates some unintentional giggles. An early scene that had Goebbels wandering into a meeting where Hitler was speaking and becoming mesmerized by the third rate actor playing der fuhrer had me laughing out loud. How could anyone take this seriously? I think that was part of the point of the film, but at the same time it undercut the menace that the real life counter parts created (I mean the idea of Goebbels as a skirt chaser seems so quaint). I kind of liked it but I didn't love it. I completely understand why its relegated to an almost forgotten status (never mind the title "Enemy of Women" doesn't tell you what its about or what type of film it is). Worth a shot if you run a cross it but not something to search out
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I rented this film from Netflix because I was hoping to see yet another over the top propaganda film from WWII--the type that are almost funny because the acting and characters are so over the top. However, I was very surprised to see that "Enemy of Women" was actually rather restrained. Heck, I could even see some viewers actually feeling a bit of sympathy for the focus of the film--Dr. Josef Goebbels! The film begins as Berlin is in ruins--and a radio broadcast by Dr. Goebbels is telling the people that everything is peachy. Then, the film goes back in time to 1925 and eventually works its way back to where the film began. You see Goebbels as a rather insecure man--a guy who has a difficult time with women. He is secretly in love with his landlord's daughter, Maria. When he makes a very awkward advance on her, her father throws him out of the home. And, inexplicably, Goebbels spends the entire rest of the film trying to win her love. However, along the way, Goebbels shows that he's a lover not to be trifled with and uses the power he achieves from the Nazi party to get his revenge.
This entire film is weird--very weird. That's because it seems like a real biography of the man--though most of it is fiction. Yes, there was a Goebbels and he was a sick and twisted jerk--but oddly, the Goebbels in this film is a bit vulnerable. Sure, he's evil...but somehow not altogether hateful. Because of this somewhat human aspect, the film is a standout for the genre, as propaganda films usually try very hard to de-humanize the enemy. Mind you, this did not make Goebbels look exactly good---but he was indeed human and vulnerable. Overall, it's well made and actually ages pretty well. Just remember that this is NOT a real biography, as the real Goebbels was much more complex and sick. -
Actor Paul Andor (real name Wolfgang Zilzer) bears a striking resemblance to the real Dr. Paul Goebbels, the evil Nazi head of Propaganda who spent one day as Chancellor of Germany after Hitler's suicide before killing himself. This semi-fictional account of his life takes the basic known facts and changes the names and details, but it still has a major impact on the emotional structure of this Monogram film that is two notches above most of their "B" films, giving it almost an "A" look. Claudia Drake is top billed as Maria Brandt, an actress loosely based upon the real life actress Lída Baarová who was Goebbel's real life mistress.
This film does not mention the fact that he had a wife and six children (murdered by him and his wife right before they killed themselves) and does not go into great detail about most of his evils which were probably discovered after the war ended. But being made while Goebbels was still alive, this was definitely a curiosity piece in the Hollywood propaganda machine, just as effective as "The Hitler Gang" (the story of Hitler's rise to power with a warning of how he would ultimately fall) and "None Shall Escape" which cast Alexander Knox as a Nazi officer on trial AFTER the war even though it was made the same year.
One of the most chilling sequences comes when a medium forecasts the futures of Goebbel and several other Nazi's in the room (including General Rommel) but only includes their triumphs, not the ultimate fall from power and retribution. Andor is off screen for much of the film as the story of actress Drake and her romance with a good German doctor (Donald Woods) takes over. It then moves to his blackmail over Drake in threatening Woods' safety after they return to Germany, having settled in Vienna.
Told in flashback, the storyline has Goebbels remembering his first encounter with Hitler and how he first met Brandt as a struggling playwright working as a tutor. Even then, he was teaching values which were adopted by the Nazi's. When he makes a violent pass at Brandt, her World War I veteran father (an excellent H.B. Warner) throws him out which leads to later revenge on him and reveals his obsession with her. While he is definitely presented as monstrous, Goebbels is also given shadows of sympathetic characteristics, being quite in tuned to the arts which makes his being chosen head of propaganda (which would include movies, theater and radio) a smart move on Hitler's part even though it is obvious through history that their choice of subject matter for the U.F.O. (the major German film company) was one sided.
Supporting performances by Sigrid Gurie, Ralph Morgan, Gloria Stuart and Robert Barrat add great period detail. There's a funny sequence in a Vienna café where impersonators of Hitler, Goebbels and Mussolini do a musical number. The tension of the film rises to its high point in the finale where the defeated Drake makes a drastic decision and must distract her husband in order to save his life. The final shot of Andor searching amongst the rubble of an air raid and his radio narration of the events which have recently taken place give forbearance to the creed that fascist leaders manipulate their followers through lies whether it be done blatantly or with total charm, but indeed, they are lies, and liars are always exposed. -
whpratt19 October 2008Have read various books which dealt with Joseph Goebbels one of Hitler's right hand men who carried out the murder of Millions of Jewish people and many more people from various countries. Goebbels had some very dark secrets as a young man growing up who carried out all his sick mental problems on other people. Joseph Goebbels is played by Wolfgang Zilzer who did a great job of acting and also looked very much like the real person. Goebbels in real life loved all kinds of women and he really loved Maria Brandt, (Claudia Drake) who was a very pretty German actress who gave Joseph a hard time. However, Hollywood twisted the story which made Goebbels into a person who was not as evil as he really was. In real life, Goebbels really went to bed with this famous German actress and was really married to a very beautiful woman who had to turn her back on all his affairs. Nice 1944 film.