But in this alternate historical context, for an American to sing, “Bless my homeland forever” is downright tragic. That sort of play would no doubt appeal to Nazis, relaxing in occupied America. Ironically, this most famous “Austrian” song actually isn’t Austrian at all – it’s an American song, written by Jewish-American songwriters Rodgers and Hammerstein for The Sound of Music in 1959. The map-making imagery is also fascinating here, recounting the outcome of World War II using the visual language borrowed from numerous war movies, showing lines moving on maps and the shifting lines of power.īut the most interesting, and most poetically resonant, choice made in this sequence is the use of “Edelweiss”, sung in heavily accented English by an almost whispering female voice. Lady Liberty, Joan of Arc, and the eagle blend together effortlessly to establish believable Nazi–American iconography. We move over a map of North America as monuments have combat footage projected on and through them. The first sounds are of a film projector starting, and the sequence presents a number of images with the flickering and uneven style of projected celluloid. That notion – of a dangerous film retelling history – is woven into the fabric of the show’s title sequence, created by Elastic. The narrative revolves around film canisters containing a revolutionary re-writing of history. Dick’s alternate history novel of the same name, it’s 1962, the Allies lost World War II, and the two major Axis powers have divvied up North America between them. In Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle, an adaptation of Philip K.

The man in the highc astle