23. Jameson, “Reification and Utopia,” 11.
24. Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 139.
25. Theodor W. Adorno, “On the Fetish-Character in Music and the
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286
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Notes to Pages 80 – 84
Regression of Listening,” The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Urizen Books, 1978), 277.
26. Der Film, June 13, 1942.
27. Released only a month after Die große Liebe, the Universal production Invisible Agent (dir. Edwin L. Martin) already poked fun at this myth of a miracle weapon. Based on a screenplay by Curt Siodmak, the film tells the story of an invisible spy placed in Nazi Germany to obtain information about Nazi war plans. Jon Halls, in the role of the indeed mostly invisible agent, challenges the way in which Leander’s dream of a miracle fuses images of mobilization with the sounds of a fantasmatic, self-present body.
28. For the most comprehensive discussion of Leander’s star persona in English see Antje Ascheid, “A Sierckian Double Image: The Narration of Zarah Leander as a National Socialist Star,” Film Criticism 23, nos. 2 –3 (winter/spring 1999): 46 –73.
29. Zarah Leander, Es war so wunderbar! Mein Leben, trans. Anna Liese Kornitzky (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1973), 138.
30. Cornelia Zumkeller, Zarah Leander: Ihre Filme— ihr Leben (Munich: Heyne, 1988), 74.
31. Filmwelt 17 (1938).
32. Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (New York: St.
Martin’s, 1986), 10.
33. For an intriguing collection of historical comments on Leander’s voice see Paul Seiler, Zarah Leander: Ich bin eine Stimme (Berlin: Ullstein, 1997), 133 –156.
34. Berliner Lokalanzeiger, September 2, 1937.
35. Charles Eckert, “The Carole Lombard in Macy’s Window,” in Movies and Mass Culture, 116.
36. See, e.g., Georg Herzberg, “La Habanera,” Film-Kurier, December 20, 1937.
37. Ernst von der Decken, “Zarah Leander wurde gefeiert,” Berliner Zeitung, December 21, 1937.
38. Ulrike Sanders, Zarah Leander— Kann denn Schlager Sünde sein? (Co-logne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1988), 36.
39. Heide Schlüpmann, “Faschistische Trugbilder weiblicher Autonomie,”
Frauen und Film 44/45 (1988): 60.
40. For more see Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1980), 8:8.
41. Katie Trumpener, “Puerto Rico Fever: Douglas Sirk, La Habanera (1937), and the Epistemology of Exoticism,” in ‘ Neue Welt’ /‘ Dritte Welt’ : In-terkulturelle Beziehungen Deutschlands zu Lateinamerika und der Karibik, ed. Sigrid Bauschinger and Susan L. Cocalis (Tübingen: Francke, 1994), 115–
140. Leander’s American critics, it should be noted, were rather dismayed by Sierck’s cinematic construction of Puerto Rico. After the U.S. release in July 1938 , the New York Times showed little enthusiasm about this “burlesque” of Puerto Rico: “Zarah Leander, the Swedish actress who has become
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rather popular on the Teutonic screen during the last year or so, has to contend with what American audiences (without exaggerated patriotism) are bound to consider an impossible story” ( New York Times, July 9, 1939).
42. Rentschler shows in detail that the film’s narrative, although at pains to establish borders between the home and the other, between the familiar and the foreign, presents the spaces of Astrée’s Aryan homeland and exotic Puerto Rico as not so distant: Puerto Rico simultaneously conceals and speaks the truth about Germany. “La Habanera emanated from a nation threatened with international quarantine and dramatized the fate of an island faced with a similar predicament. . . . Puerto Rico appears as a ‘wild’ state, a country, like Germany, that operates outside international legality. . . . Seen in this light, this German film about Puerto Rico embodies what it depicts: the ‘primitive’ island becomes both the Aryan state’s structured opposite and its displaced double”
( Ministry of Illusion, 134).
43. Stefana Sabin, Frauen am Klavier: Skizze einer Kulturgeschichte (Frankfurt /M.: Insel, 1998).
44. See, e.g., the previews and reviews in Film-Kurier, November 23, December 20, 1937; and Berliner Zeitung, December 21, 1937.
45. “Habanera gegen Weihnachtslied: Filmdramatik aus natürlichen Ge-gebenheiten,” Film-Kurier, December 10, 1937.
46. “Filme, die wir vor und nach Weihnachten sehen werden,” Der Film, December 18, 1937.
47. Klaus Kreimeier, Die UFA-Story: Geschichte eines Filmkonzerns (Munich: Hanser, 1992), 338.
48. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1995), 142.
