Burda Moden – April, 1978

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BOMBER PILOT ⎔ BURDA MODEN ⎔ CRIME & PUNISHMENT ⎔ THE COMPLETE WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ⎔ MASH ⎔ OUTDOOR LIFE ⎔ TIME MAGAZINE ⎔ THE THREE LITTLE PIGS ⎔ TRAVEL HOLIDAY MAGAZINE

APPEARANCE

3:05-3:08; 3:21-3:23; 11:02-11:11; 118:52-119:36; 120:09-120:17

IDENTITY

Burda Moden magazine was the brainchild of Aenna Burda, a major figure of the “Miracle on the Rhine” (another river reference! and one with a relation to another), which describes the way Germany bounced back, economically, after WWII.

SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE

I imagine its inclusion here was to present a kind of antithesis to the hotel’s general attitude about the past being better than the present. Germany’s pre-1945 20th-century history is a fairly miserable one, not simply on the ideological level, but on the general social level as well. It really took getting over their self-image as the best country in the world for their social and economic realities to reverse, but what it cost to get them there is too grim to make light of (though Tarantino did try). Nevertheless, people like Aenna Burda came out of that nightmare, and managed to create things that were the first to build a bridge into the Soviet Union, for instance (I thought I read somewhere that it was the same with China, but don’t quote me).

The other subtext there might be that Aenna’s husband Franz, a member of the Nazi party, built this media empire in part by inheriting resources (AKA “Aryanization”) from a Jewish family, but Franz invited the owner, Reiss, to stay on, and even saved him from being interned at a concentration camp. Burda was allowed to go on publishing after the war, and the families of these two men became friends. It’s an uncommonly sweet story, and not the sort of thing you associate with the Holocaust, outside of a Spielberg movie.

It’s also neat to think that this mag almost totally eclipses the Tower of Babel reference beneath it. It could’ve been the other way around. But Burda speaks to the future getting brighter and bonds forming after a massive collapse, and the Tower of Babel speaks to an increase in confusion and atomization.

The magazine appears again in the hands of Aileen Lewis (behind Jack’s right side here), who will become more significant later. And next to the red-white-black-wearing hotel clerk, standing attention like some kind of…military guy.

The magazine makes one more appearance right beneath Bomber Pilot, and right across from Crime and Punishment. I probably don’t need to expand on that. But the watchword is…redrum!

You can’t make out any of the books behind Ullman’s desk, but what you can see is that they shift throughout their three scenes. I can’t discern any meaningful pattern (all that seems to happen is that a red book in the second image below shifts to our left by two books), but consider the fact that you would almost have to make this mistake on purpose. This doesn’t seem to be the result of a continuity person getting it wrong. Every other book is just where it was. So it could simply be drawing our attention to the Red Book on Ullman’s desk, to be seen better later. Remember, Wendy’s foot, in the second image below, is resting where the Red Book was.

There is another thing that changes in these shots, though, and that’s the eagle statue on the window sill. For Ullman, it faces our left (Ullman’s right, from his seat). For Wendy it faces our right, Ullman’s left. And for Jack’s murder it seems to look dead ahead (see below), giving more of a bullhorns shape. But there’s much to be said about the film’s lefts and rights, and I’ll be doing that elsewhere.