German in American cinema

Struggling on what to write about for this AMD I resorted to that which I do best, watching movies. In this case I got to watch one of my favorite movies around. I find the film Inglorious Basterds to be an extremely well made film which makes the viewer feel as though he or she is in the middle of Nazi occupied France. This movie takes the setting as realistically as possible, having Germans speak german, French speak french, and the Americans speak english. This movie gives viewers the opportunity to indulge themselves with the German language without getting overwhelmed by that which they don't understand. Having an education in German only up to this point in 101, I was able to understand the gist of nearly every german conversation throughout the movie. Luckily for me, much of the german throughout the movie was spoken very clearly and formally so that I was able to understand. Examples of some of these dialogues in the film are:

When Adolf Hitler expresses is dismay at the knowledge that the Basterds are ravaging the ranks of German soldiers.

When the fictitious war hero Fredrick Zoller convinces Josef Goebbels to use a different movie theater for the premiere of Goebbels' new film. This dialogue was especially fun to listen to since they described how many people fit in the movie theater, who works at the theater, and why they should use that theater. Since we have learned many different descriptive words in German it was easy to understand the entirety of this dialogue.

When the Basterds describe their plans to kill Hitler at the movie premiere. This scene is 20 minutes of mostly understandable german. I watched the scene twice through. Once without subtitles and again with them. What I understood from the time without subtitles was actually rather close to the actual meaning of the scene.

It is really entertaining and enjoyable to listen to german and understand it. It makes me realize how much we have actually learned in this class, and it makes me more excited to eventually reach fluency. I find that watching movies in german helps one realize how much german they actually know.