Trapped in America: The Americanization of the Trapp-Familie, or "Papas Kino" revisited

German Studies Review

Volumn 19, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 455-478

  Von Moltke, Johannes ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0030251007     PISSN: 01497952     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1432527     Document Type: Review

References (60)

1. This paper is based on a talk given at a conference on "Germany and the American Presence since World War II" at Duke University; I wish to thank the organizers, in particular James Rolleston, for inviting me to participate. Thanks also to Claudia Koonz for her helpful comments and suggestions. Some of the research for this paper was made possible by a grant from the Center for International Studies at Duke University.
2. Enno Patalas, quoted in Kirschen Koch, Die Bedeutung des Oberhausener Manifestes für die Filmentwicklung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1985), 53.
3. For the text of the Manifesto, see Eric Rentschler, ed., Visions and Voices. West German Filmmakers on Film (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988), 2.
4. Ulrich Gregor, Enno Patalas, Geschichte des Films (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1962), 262.
5. John Davidson, however, has persuasively argued against the facile readings of the New German Cinema which would grant it an inherently oppositional status within a nation for which it remains, after all, a valuable cultural export. Cf. "As Others Put Plays Upon a Stage: Aguirre, Neocolonialism, and the New German Cinema," New German Critique 60 (Fall 1993), 101-130.
6. The exceptions (not counting the numerous anecdotal and autobiographical retellings of postwar German film history by its makers) are few enough to be singled out: Fritz Göttler in his contribution to the first comprehensive history of German cinema takes an innovative look at the ambivalent construction of social space and identity in postwar German cinema ("Westdeutscher Nachkriegsfilm: Land der Väter" in Wolfgang Jacobsen, Anton Kaes, and Hans Helmut Prinzler, eds. Geschichte des deutschen Films [Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993]); cf. also note 22, below and Heide Fehrenbach's work on spectatorship and censorship, as in the case of Die Sünderin (BRD 1950, W. Forst) is crucial for the way in which it opens up questions of gender and national identity that, from the point of view of the "applied" Kracauer readings, have traditionally been treated as foregone conclusions See esp. Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing National Identity after Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
7. The exceptions (not counting the numerous anecdotal and autobiographical retellings of postwar German film history by its makers) are few enough to be singled out: Fritz Göttler in his contribution to the first comprehensive history of German cinema takes an innovative look at the ambivalent construction of social space and identity in postwar German cinema ("Westdeutscher Nachkriegsfilm: Land der Väter" in Wolfgang Jacobsen, Anton Kaes, and Hans Helmut Prinzler, eds. Geschichte des deutschen Films [Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993]); cf. also note 22, below and Heide Fehrenbach's work on spectatorship and censorship, as in the case of Die Sünderin (BRD 1950, W. Forst) is crucial for the way in which it opens up questions of gender and national identity that, from the point of view of the "applied" Kracauer readings, have traditionally been treated as foregone conclusions See esp. Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing National Identity after Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
8. Thus, a 1958 issue of Filmforum (whose subtitle significantly announces its status as "Unabhängige Zeitschrift für den guten Film") immediately printed excerpts from Kracauer under the title "Zahlreiche Paralleln bieten sich an"; the editors explicitly underline the potential analogy by introducing the text as "[e]ine Leseprobe, die uns, im Vergleich zum heutigen deutschen Film von besonderem Interesse scheint." (vol 7, no. 5 [May 1958]: 4). The influence of Kracauer on critical discourse within the "Filmclub"-movement of the fifties even predates the publication of his book in German: cf. Enno Patalas, "Von Caligari bis Canaris. Autorität und Revolte im deutschen Film" in film 56, no. 2 (1956): 56-66.
9. Thus, a 1958 issue of Filmforum (whose subtitle significantly announces its status as "Unabhängige Zeitschrift für den guten Film") immediately printed excerpts from Kracauer under the title "Zahlreiche Paralleln bieten sich an"; the editors explicitly underline the potential analogy by introducing the text as "[e]ine Leseprobe, die uns, im Vergleich zum heutigen deutschen Film von besonderem Interesse scheint." (vol 7, no. 5 [May 1958]: 4). The influence of Kracauer on critical discourse within the "Filmclub"-movement of the fifties even predates the publication of his book in German: cf. Enno Patalas, "Von Caligari bis Canaris. Autorität und Revolte im deutschen Film" in film 56, no. 2 (1956): 56-66.
10. Barbara Bongartz, Von Caligari zu Hitler - von Hitler zu Dr. Mabuse? Eine 'psychologische' Geschichte des deutschen Films 1946 bis 1960 (Münster: MAkS, 1992). See also Bärbel Westermann, Nationale Identität im Spielfilm der fünfziger Jahre (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1990); although Westermann explicitly rejects Kracauer's realist assumptions in her preface, her readings of individual films follow the pattern outlined above: thus, each chapter introduces an aspect of 1950s society before proceeding to find that the films bear out previous socio-historical insights (many of which, incidentally, derive from dated literature which should have been read as part of the 1950s, rather than for a "truthful" evaluation of that decade).
11. Barbara Bongartz, Von Caligari zu Hitler - von Hitler zu Dr. Mabuse? Eine 'psychologische' Geschichte des deutschen Films 1946 bis 1960 (Münster: MAkS, 1992). See also Bärbel Westermann, Nationale Identität im Spielfilm der fünfziger Jahre (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1990); although Westermann explicitly rejects Kracauer's realist assumptions in her preface, her readings of individual films follow the pattern outlined above: thus, each chapter introduces an aspect of 1950s society before proceeding to find that the films bear out previous socio-historical insights (many of which, incidentally, derive from dated literature which should have been read as part of the 1950s, rather than for a "truthful" evaluation of that decade).
12. Kracauer himself is quite explicit regarding the historical specificity of his argument: In the introduction to From Caligari to Hitler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), he stresses that "the interest here lies exclusively in such collective dispositions and tendencies as prevail within a nation at a certain stage of its development. ...In other words, this book is not concerned with establishing some national character pattern allegedly elevated above histrory, but it is concerned with the psychological pattern of a people at a particular time (8; emphasis mine).
13. Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, "Cinema/Ideology/Criticism," reprinted in Bill Nichols, ed., Movies and Methods vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976) 27
14. Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 280.
15. Fehrenbach, 11.
16. In Fact, over the course of the entire study, Fehrenbach discusses only four films in any detail: Der Apfel ist ab (D 1948, H. Käutner), Die Sünderin (BRD 1951, W. Forst), Am Brunnen vor dem Tore (BRD 1951, H. Wolff), Grün ist die Heide (BRD 1951, H. Deppe).
17. Here, Kracauer can be indeed be seen to have laid the basis for such misreadings himself. Thus, in his famous essay on the "Little Shop-Girls," he suggests: "In der unendlichen Reihe der Filme kehrt eine besgrenzte Zahl typischer Motive immer wieder; sie zeigen an, wie die Gesellschaft sich selber zu sehen wünscht. Der Inbegriff der Filmmotive ist zugleich die Summe der gesellschaftlichen Ideologien, die durch die Deutung dieser Motive entzaubert werden." (Das Ornament der Masse [Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1977], 282). Stephen Lowry has shown that this has caused Kracauer to be criticized for "contentism" (Inhaltismus), but suggests that such critiques are difficult to maintain in the face of Kracauer's sustained attention to the textual, narrative aspects of film. Cf. Stephen Lowry, "Filmgeschichte als Sozialgeschichte" (forthcoming in FFK 8: Dokumentation des 8. film - und Fernsehwissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums an der Universität Hildesheim, Oktober 1995. Ed. by Johannes v. Moltke, Elke Sudmann, and Volker Wortmann (Hildesheim: Universität Hildesheim, 1996). See also Thomas Elsaesser, "Cinema, the Irresponsible Signifier or "The Gamble with History': Film Theory or Cinema Theory" in New German Critique no. 40 (Winter 1987), 65-89.
18. Here, Kracauer can be indeed be seen to have laid the basis for such misreadings himself. Thus, in his famous essay on the "Little Shop-Girls," he suggests: "In der unendlichen Reihe der Filme kehrt eine besgrenzte Zahl typischer Motive immer wieder; sie zeigen an, wie die Gesellschaft sich selber zu sehen wünscht. Der Inbegriff der Filmmotive ist zugleich die Summe der gesellschaftlichen Ideologien, die durch die Deutung dieser Motive entzaubert werden." (Das Ornament der Masse [Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1977], 282). Stephen Lowry has shown that this has caused Kracauer to be criticized for "contentism" (Inhaltismus), but suggests that such critiques are difficult to maintain in the face of Kracauer's sustained attention to the textual, narrative aspects of film. Cf. Stephen Lowry, "Filmgeschichte als Sozialgeschichte" (forthcoming in FFK 8: Dokumentation des 8. film - und Fernsehwissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums an der Universität Hildesheim, Oktober 1995. Ed. by Johannes v. Moltke, Elke Sudmann, and Volker Wortmann (Hildesheim: Universität Hildesheim, 1996). See also Thomas Elsaesser, "Cinema, the Irresponsible Signifier or "The Gamble with History': Film Theory or Cinema Theory" in New German Critique no. 40 (Winter 1987), 65-89.
19. Here, Kracauer can be indeed be seen to have laid the basis for such misreadings himself. Thus, in his famous essay on the "Little Shop-Girls," he suggests: "In der unendlichen Reihe der Filme kehrt eine besgrenzte Zahl typischer Motive immer wieder; sie zeigen an, wie die Gesellschaft sich selber zu sehen wünscht. Der Inbegriff der Filmmotive ist zugleich die Summe der gesellschaftlichen Ideologien, die durch die Deutung dieser Motive entzaubert werden." (Das Ornament der Masse [Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1977], 282). Stephen Lowry has shown that this has caused Kracauer to be criticized for "contentism" (Inhaltismus), but suggests that such critiques are difficult to maintain in the face of Kracauer's sustained attention to the textual, narrative aspects of film. Cf. Stephen Lowry, "Filmgeschichte als Sozialgeschichte" (forthcoming in FFK 8: Dokumentation des 8. film - und Fernsehwissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums an der Universität Hildesheim, Oktober 1995. Ed. by Johannes v. Moltke, Elke Sudmann, and Volker Wortmann (Hildesheim: Universität Hildesheim, 1996). See also Thomas Elsaesser, "Cinema, the Irresponsible Signifier or "The Gamble with History': Film Theory or Cinema Theory" in New German Critique no. 40 (Winter 1987), 65-89.
20. Thus, while it was actually the ARD which launched the somewhat nostalgic "rediscovery" of 1950s Heimat with its 1980 broadcast of the prototype Grün ist die Heide (Hans Deppe, 1952), there are now two cable channels which have turned 1950s reruns into something of a trademark (Pro 7, Kabelkanal); the competitive market brought about by deregulation in the mid-eighties, however, has apparently brought the public companies to realize that this is a niche which they cannot concede entirely to the privates: thus, zapping through the offerings of a random Saturday evening at prime time (8:15 P.M., right after the Tagesschau), you might discover - as you would have on February 5, 1994 - Ernst Marischka's Alt Heidelberg (Heimatfilm, BRD 1959) on SAT1; but to watch this masterwork, you would have had to decide against the drama of Wolfgang Liebeneiner's Waldwinter (Heimatfilm, BRD 1956) on ZDF. But then again, you could have stayed up to catch Alt Heidelberg at 3:35 A.M. on Sunday; but presumably by then you would have OD'd anyway, since you probably were careful not to miss Hans Deppe's Mandolinen und Mondenschein (Musikfilm, BRD 1959) at 2 P.M. on ARD - unless, of course, you had opted for Werner Jacobs's Heimweh nach St. Pauli (Musikfilm, BRD 1963). But let's stick to the fifties.
21. Göttler in fact goes so far as to suggest that the quintessential(ly) German Heimat-genre of the fifties should be situated not in relation to the Western (as an American version of Heimat), but that it is related instead, by virtue of its somnabulic narratives, to the noir tradition. However, in the context of his discussion of postwar German cinema, Göttler himself barely follows up on this observation. Cf. "Westdeutscher Nachkriegsfilm," 197f.
22. Timothy Brennan, "The National Longing for Form," in Homi Bhabha, ed. Nation and Narration (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 44-70.
23. Cf. Homi Bhabha, "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation" in Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration, 292.
24. The translation was made by the Distribution Company (Gloria) for American and British distribution. Materials on Die Trapp-Familie and Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika are located in the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin.
25. Wolfgang Schwerbrock, "Siegeszug der Blockflöte: Zu dem film Die Trapp-Familie," in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 3 January 1957. The phrase appears in English in the review.
26. To be sure, the story of the von Trapps' emigration to the United States in 1938 is actually Austrian, the only "German" aspect being the imposition of exile after the invasion during that year. However, I refer to the "German story" advisedly, since, as I hope to show, this is indeed what is being negotiated in this film.
27. "Bloß keine Spuren hinterlassen, das ist das Trauma dieser Gesellschaft, nichts verraten davon, wie etwas geworden ist, die neue Gesellschaft und die neuen Filme. Die Arbeit soll nicht sichtbar werden, die ihr Entstehungsprozeß verlangt, sie soll erscheinen, als wäre sie ohne Vergangenheit. Das Unvollkommene soll getilgt und die Anstrengung kaschiert werden, die ihre Vollendung kostete. [...] In der Geschlossenheit der Formen soll jene Verunsicherung aufgehoben werden, die doch an der Basis diese Gesellschaft prägt. [...] Keine Spuren hinterlassen, so bleiben diese Filme an der Oberfläche, ohne daß etwas nachdrücklich sich eingraben könnte, in den Bildern auf der Leinwand, oder den Köpfen ihrer Zuschauer" (175). On the other hand, Göttler's innovative ruminations on the postwar German film also suggest quite the opposite, through a striking articulation of form with sexuality: "Das Schmuddelige und Schwule ist es, was damals verstörte im deutschen Kino, das Mehrdeutige und Oberflächliche. Geradlinigkeit und Tiefsinn propagieren implizit nach all dem Diffusen der Nazizeit die Plädoyers für den neuen Film von Walther Schmieding bis Joe Hembus. Und all die Heide- und Heimatfilme, die Operetten und Verkleidungsschwänke demonstrieren, daß das deutsche Kino, auf einer Flucht vor Eindeutigkeit, völlig verweichlichte, verschwommen und vage wurde, kindisch und weibisch." (ibid. 192). While the gender politics of this assessment are questionable at first (why would the open form be childish or feminine?), Göttler's reading of postwar German film in terms that can only be translated as queer seems striking enough to be pursued a little further: although "schwul" in German is hardly as variable a signifier as is "queer," Göttler opens up readings which move from the term's literal, (homo)sexual meaning to a question of form: queerness ("das Schwule") becomes associated (justifiably, I think) with the multiplicity or ambiguity of meaning, and with the meanings of surface/superficiality. On this reading, the terms kindisch and weibisch should perhaps be translated as boyish, effeminate?
28. Actually, the film's mise-en-scène makes efficient use of its artistic license by always representing the Statue of Liberty in the distant background, visible through the bars of the immigration office window, even though we are ostensibly on Ellis Island itself. The geographic rearrangement thus serves a clear metaphorical function within the narrative economy; While the window of opportunity has been opened, Liberty/America remain unattainable behind bars. The narrative resolution of this dilemma is eventually brought about, as I have already noted, through song.
29. The "Trapp Family Resort" is still located in Stowe, Vt.
30. Both its placing at the end of the film and the mise-en-scène identity this immigration scene as a quote from the first film.
31. I am referring to the scenes at Ellis Island and a later performance by the children, both of which serve almost exclusively to turn ethnic diversity into part of the "American" setting.
32. The film explicitly cites this cliché in a minor scene in which one of the boys explains that he is sick of singing, and envisions a career which leads straight from newspaper boy to millionaire. Ultimately, this deviant wish, which suggests that there is life outside of the family, is safely contained by the fact that the desired success is achieved through communal/ familial effort.
33. This brief sequence of dissolves might profitably be read against a well-known sequence from Luis Trenker's Der verlorene Sohn (Germany, 1934): whereas Trenker there exploits a graphic match by dissolving from a towering Alpine setting to the Manhattan skyline in order to shift from Heimat to its modern American "other" (only to return, of course, to the former), Liebeneiner reverses the direction of the dissolves from Manhattan to the mountains; moreover, this series of cuts significantly contributes to the achievement of narrative closure in America even while foregrounding issues of emigration and cultural incongruity by returning us, ultimately, to the INS. On the function of America in Der verlorene Sohn cf. Eric Rentschler, "How American Is It: The U.S. as Image and Imaginary in German Film" in The German Quarterly 57, no. 4 (Fall 1984).
34. This brief sequence of dissolves might profitably be read against a well-known sequence from Luis Trenker's Der verlorene Sohn (Germany, 1934): whereas Trenker there exploits a graphic match by dissolving from a towering Alpine setting to the Manhattan skyline in order to shift from Heimat to its modern American "other" (only to return, of course, to the former), Liebeneiner reverses the direction of the dissolves from Manhattan to the mountains; moreover, this series of cuts significantly contributes to the achievement of narrative closure in America even while foregrounding issues of emigration and cultural incongruity by returning us, ultimately, to the INS. On the function of America in Der verlorene Sohn cf. Eric Rentschler, "How American Is It: The U.S. as Image and Imaginary in German Film" in The German Quarterly 57, no. 4 (Fall 1984).
35. The performance of the final song is couched in a rhetoric of exchange: John D. Hammerfield (represented by the film as your average American millionaire) has helped the family in obtaining their immigration papers, and in return, Maria offers to sing for him and his Austrian wife. As they prepare for the final song, one of the Trapp children exclaims "Zahle per Scheck und du erwirbst dir Vertrauen, zahle bar und du erwirbst dir Freunde!" - a line which he has picked up from the "Leitfaden: Wie werde ich Millionär?" Dr. Wasner agrees, "also schön, dann zahlen wir in bar," though of course they end up paying in kind rather than in cash, substituting cultural exchange for economic currency.
36. "Heimat celebrates the local, the mundane, the domestic; it refers to geographical place of birth, but also the peculiar landscape, dialect, customs, and traditions attached to that locality. As such it has a strong emotional component, since it is invested with all the sentimental content of one's childhood. Encompassing both communal and personal identity, it denotes homeland, home, and hearth - with all of their myriad meanings and emotional associations." Fehrenbach, 150.
37. In light of this explicit construction of the GI identity, an earlier shot of a towering black man holding a smiling and very white Trapp daughter, becomes anchored as well in the historical cliché that it evokes. I owe the term "Frollein-Deutsch" to my grandmother.
38. Willi Höfig has undertaken the thankless job of providing what he calls a "quantitative analysis" of the Heimatfilm-genre from 1947 to 1960. While the ultimate methodological interest of such an endeavor escapes me, I draw on some of his results to indicate the presence of certain Heimatfilm-elements in Liebeneiner's film. Cf. Der deutsche Heimatfilm, 1947-1960 (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1973).
39. Höfig, 185.
40. In this respect, compare also again Luis Trenker's Der verlorene Sohn.
41. Cf. Höfig, 306.
42. Curt Riess has noted, "Wenn man sich die deutschen Filme jener Zeit [the early fifties] wieder ansieht, so hat man das Gefühl, als seien nicht Millionen Menschen, sondern Millionen Mitglieder von Gesangsvereinen aus ihrer Heimat vertrieben worden." (Curt Riess, Das gibt's nur einmal [Hamburg, 1958]).
43. I owe this term, as well as the argument that it is intended to make, to Hans-Otto Hügel.
44. Significantly, the word refugee is used only once in the entire film, in the following exchange among the children. Gathered in their dingy room in a Bowery appartment, they articulate the fears and hopes of various postwar biographies: #1: Alles liegt daran, daß wir keine Amerikaner sind. Deshalb mögen sie uns nicht. #2: Aber wir sind doch jetzt Amerikaner. #3: Nein, Flüchtlinge sind wir. #4: Patrick sagt, das ist das Schlimmste, was einem passieren kann. #5: Müssen wir dann verhungern? #6: Ach quatsch. In Amerika verhungert keiner.
45. Rentschler, "How American Is It," 616.
46. "Kein schöner Land in dieser Zeit/Als hier das unsre weit und breit."
47. There is a notable parallel here to a song delivered by an "Onkel aus Amerika" in Carl Boese's 1953 film by that title: the uncle, played by Hans Moser, has come for a visit from Texas, where he has been living for the past forty years, only to discover that his "authentic" experience of America is much closer to a German experience than the German myth of America would allow. The comedy plot puts him in numerous impossible positions as the representative of that myth, among them the request that he sing a real Texan song in the new "Onkel Toms Texas Bar" that has been established in his honor. But his song turns out to be about German Gemütlichkeit instead: Wenn ich die Wolkenkratzer sehe, dann wünsch ich mir ein kleines Haus Ein kleines Haus hier in der Nähe-Ich will ja gar nicht 'hoch hinaus'. Wenn ich dann aus dem Fenster schau Dann grüßen mich die Leut Und fragen: Na, wie geht es denn? Das ist's, was mich so freut. Consequently, the chorus compares: "Drüben ist alles doppelt so groß/Aber hier ist alles doppelt so schön."
48. In a sense, Maria's miraculous (and at the same time pragmatic) ability to see her family through marks her as a personification of the Wirtschaftswunder-narrative. As her husband notes, "Sie schafft alles. Ich weiß nicht, wie sie's macht, aber sie schafft alles."
49. Eric Rentschler, "How American Is It," 606f.
50. Ibid., p. 613.
51. In terms of film politics, Klaus Kreimeier has provided a classic elaboration of cultural imperialism. His book Kino und Filmindustrie in der BRD: Ideologieproduktion und Klassenwirklichkeit nach 1945 (Krinberg: Scriptor, 1973) has the one advantage of demonstrating with particular clarity the insufficiencies of this approach: while the analyses of the Filmindustrie-aspects of 1950s production are relatively useful and well documented, there is very little Kino: as usual, titles are rhetorically quoted for the purpose of making an argument, but the analysis of the films themselves is missing.
52. Cf. Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Jane Gaines, "The Queen Christina Tie-Ups: Convergence of Show Window and Screen" in Quarterly Review of Film and Video 11, no. 1; Charles Eckert, "The Carole Lombard in Macy's Window," in Jane Gaines and Charlotte Herzog, eds., Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body (New York and London: Routledge, 1990).
53. Cf. Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Jane Gaines, "The Queen Christina Tie-Ups: Convergence of Show Window and Screen" in Quarterly Review of Film and Video 11, no. 1; Charles Eckert, "The Carole Lombard in Macy's Window," in Jane Gaines and Charlotte Herzog, eds., Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body (New York and London: Routledge, 1990).
54. Cf. Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Jane Gaines, "The Queen Christina Tie-Ups: Convergence of Show Window and Screen" in Quarterly Review of Film and Video 11, no. 1; Charles Eckert, "The Carole Lombard in Macy's Window," in Jane Gaines and Charlotte Herzog, eds., Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body (New York and London: Routledge, 1990).
55. Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," in Mulvery, Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 19; note however, that the salesman insists that sex-appeal also works for men, where it means displaying your masculine charms. The reason this is not pursued is that one of the women insists that "she (i.e., Maria) wants to know."
56. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).
57. Klaus Kreimeier couldn't be further off the mark with his description of the star: "Ruth Leuwerik, nach den Maßstäben des Sittenkodex der fünfziger Jahre 'emanzipiert' - und doch nicht einmal halb emanzipiert, wenn man in Betracht zieht, daß gerade die Ruth-Leuwerik-Filme zuverlässig mit der Moral enden, daß zu jeder Familie ein Mann und die Frau letztlich an den häuslichen Herd gehört" (Kreimeier, 304).
58. Gerd Albrecht, Die großen Filmerfolge (Ebersberg: Edition Achteinhalb, 1985), 85.
59. Moreover, as in many films of this era, Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika, too, contained its own songs which became Schlager in their own right. The marketing strategy thanks to which the lyrics of all the songs were reprinted in the Illustrierte Film-Bühne accompanying the film certainly contributed to this effect.
60. Maase, 14.