Topless women?!

As surprising as it may be to find black actors in a 1943 film from Nazi Germany (see that thread), what's even more astonishing is seeing a number of topless women in the harem sequence in this movie.

Granted, European films were always more liberal in this regard than American ones (although in the pre-Code days there was toplessness in several American silents, such as the 1926 BEN-HUR). But "liberal" is hardly a term one would apply to the Nazis, who among other things were at least publicly quite puritanical in their tastes in art, having shut down most of the nude reviews in Berlin's notorious cabarets and curbed sexual references in films. When I first saw MUNCHHAUSEN, I was a little surprised by the couple of black faces but bowled over by the nudity. Although the Nazi elite was morally corrupt (to put it mildly), they usually wanted to present a picture to their countrymen and the world of being physically and spiritually chaste and perfect. I guess Goebbels really did want to take peoples' minds off the war with those scenes, not to mention it undoubtedly helped insure repeat visits to the cinema and bigger box office returns. And soldiers at the front must have appreciated being treated to such sights before being sent off into the Nazis' meatgrinder.

I'm also impressed by the elaborateness of the scenes shot in the Venice canal. Someone elsewhere on this site mentioned this, and said that the Italians mustn't have been too thrilled at having a German film crew among them making a lavish production while Italy was falling under terrible hardships because of its alliance with Hitler. Probably so, but the extreme effort and attention to detail they went to to shoot this scene, which lasts maybe only a minute or two, is pretty amazing, especially as it's among the few true location shots in the film.