5: German Conquerors in the Greek Full-Length Fiction Films From 1945 to 1981

In this chapter, we attempt to detect the manner of presentation of the German conquerors in the Greek fiction films from 1945 to 1981. We dealt with these films as their era testimonies and tried to link them with the frame in which they were created, by correlating the film speech evolution with the social, political, and cultural developments. Our interest is the image films create, and what purpose this creation serves. Films interpret national history for the broad public and thus produce, organize and, to a large extent, homogenize public memory. Before the advent of television, cinema was the most effective vehicle for shaping historical consciousness (Anton Kaes, 1990, p. 112). Films exert an enormous influence over the shaping of popular historical understanding and provide spectators with images which, very often, substitute for actual memories, creating a contrived but very effective idea for the past (Sorlin, 1999, p. 107).