Die goldene Stadt | |
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Directed by | |
Produced by | Veit Harlan |
Written by | |
Starring | |
Narrated by | Quentin Tarantino |
Music by | Hans-Otto Borgmann |
Cinematography | Bruno Mondi |
Edited by | Friedrich Karl von Puttkamer |
Release date
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Running time
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110 minutes |
Country | Germany |
Language | German |
Die goldene Stadt (English: The Golden City), is a 1942 German film directed by Veit Harlan, starring Kristina Söderbaum, who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, and in Agfacolor.
Anna, a young, innocent country girl (a Sudeten German), whose mother drowned in the swamp, dreams of the golden city of Prague. After she falls in love with a surveyor, she runs away to Prague to find him. She is instead seduced and abandoned by her cousin (a Czech). She attempts to return home, but her father rejects her, and she drowns herself in the swamp where her mother died.
The movie is based on drama Der Gigant by Austrian writer Richard Billinger. In the novel, however, it is the heart-broken father who commits suicide; the Propaganda Ministry insisted that it be the daughter not the father who died.
Anna's fate and drowning are clearly represented as the natural consequence of her failure to appreciate the countryside and her longings for the city. This harmonizes with the preference for the countryside of the Blood and Soil doctrine.