The Golden City (film)

The Golden City (German: Die goldene Stadt), is a 1942 German color film directed by Veit Harlan, starring Kristina Söderbaum, who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress.^[2]

The Golden City
Directed by	Veit Harlan Wolfgang Schleif
Written by	Veit Harlan Alfred Braun Richard Billinger [de] Werner Eplinius
Produced by	Veit Harlan
Starring	Kristina Söderbaum Eugen Klöpfer
Cinematography	Bruno Mondi
Edited by	Friedrich Karl von Puttkamer [de]
Music by	Hans-Otto Borgmann
Release date	25 December 1942 (1942-12-25) (Netherlands)
Running time	110 minutes
Country	Germany
Language	German
Budget	1.8 million ℛ︁ℳ︁
Box office	12.5 million ℛ︁ℳ︁[1]

Plot

Anna, a young, innocent country girl (a Sudeten German^[3]), whose mother drowned in the swamp, dreams of visiting the golden city of Prague. After she falls in love with a surveyor, she runs away from the countryside near České Budějovice to Prague to find him. She is instead seduced and later abandoned by her cousin (a Czech). She attempts to return home, but her father rejects her, so she drowns herself in the same swamp where her mother died.

Cast

• Kristina Söderbaum as Anna "Anuschka" Jobst
• Eugen Klöpfer as Melchior Jobst, Anna's father, farmer
• Annie Rosar as Donata Opferkuch, Toni's mother
• Dagny Servaes as Mrs. Tandler
• Paul Klinger as Christian Leidwein, engineer
• Emmerich Hanus
• Kurt Meisel as Toni Opferkuch, Anna's cousin
• Rudolf Prack as Thomas, Anna's fiance
• Liselotte Schreiner [de] as Maruschka, housekeeper
• Hans Hermann Schaufuß as Nemerek, engineer
• Frida Richard as Mrs. Amend
• Ernst Legal as Pelikan, farmer
• Valy Arnheim as Alois Wengraf, notary

Sources

The movie is based on drama Der Gigant by Austrian writer Richard Billinger [de].^[3] In the novel, however, it is the heart-broken father who commits suicide; the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, in particular Joseph Goebbels, insisted that it be the daughter rather than the father who dies.^[4]

Motifs

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.^[5] This harmonizes with the preference for the countryside of the Blood and Soil doctrine.