Der Fuehrer's Face (1943)

Directed by

Jack Kinney

Genre

comedy film, propaganda film

Country

United States

Runtime

8 min

Rated

NR

Rating

6.9 of 10 from 172 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Donald Duck works in a Nazi munitions factory during a bizarre nightmare. He is forced to salute portraits of dictators and assemble artillery shells on an assembly line. The short satirizes the fascist regime while encouraging support for war bonds.

satiricalfranticdarkly comicnightmarishpropagandisticfast-pacedabsurdtense

What happens

Der Fuehrer's Face (originally titled Donald Duck in Nutziland or A Nightmare in Nutziland) is an American animated anti-Nazi propaganda short film produced by Walt Disney Productions, created in 1942 and released on January 1, 1943, by RKO Radio Pictures. The cartoon, which features Donald Duck in a nightmare setting working at a factory in Nazi Germany, was made in an effort to sell war bonds and is an example of American propaganda during World War II. The film was directed by Jack Kinney and written by Joe Grant and Dick Huemer. Spike Jones released a version of Oliver Wallace's theme for the short before the film was released. Often considered one of the greatest animated shorts of the 20th century, Der Fuehrer's Face won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film at the 15th Academy Awards. It is the only Donald Duck film to receive the honor, although eight other films have also been nominated. In 1994, it was voted Number 22 of "the 50 Greatest Cartoons" of all time by members of the animation field. However, because of the propagandistic nature of the short and the depiction of Donald Duck as a Nazi (albeit a deeply reluctant one), Disney kept the film out of general circulation after its original release. Its first home release came in 2004 with the release of the third wave of the Walt Disney Treasures DVD sets. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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