Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Adolf Hitler, My Part In His Downfall
I returned to the FACT cinema in Liverpool to see Downfall, a German movie on Hitlers final hours (A perspective you don't hear of very often). It got good reviews but people critizied its humane portrayal of Hitler and for overplaying Professor Scencks humane attempts to reduce the civilian suffering during Berlins final hours in a war that was all but lost.
It's a dark movie, as you'd expect, and it doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the gritty reality of war. Still doesn't movie the movie can't have its funnier moments, does it? One of Hitlers first lines in the movie is, when interview a new secretary, is "I make mistakes myself while dictating". There's even a joke in it, a rarity in German cinema (I've only ever heard one):
"They say Berlin is becoming a warehouse city. Everybody is walking around asking "Where is my house? Where is my house?""
Mightn't be up to Tommy Cooper standards, but if I was in a besieged city I'd be dying drunk, crackin' jokes, and probably listening to The Ramones to.
More seriously, this movie will leave you with a chill, its the realism. Hitler dosn't come across as human, he comes across as deluded, bi-polar and clearly mentally unbalanced. This is as we all envision Hitler, we can agree with that, but do we ever imagine a SS man trying to stop sensless executions by over zealous soldiers? Even if it mightn't be as objective as you would have hoped, it's still far more objective than American movies about WW2 (The kind where Bon Jovi flies a submarine to Berlin for a concert on the Reichstag), and what's more it is different and thought provoking. It still can't be taken for absoulte truth seeing that the movie is based on the accounts of the few survivors of Hitlers bunkers, who where busy trying to save themselves from death sentences, but can you ever believe what a movie tells you?
It's a dark movie, as you'd expect, and it doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the gritty reality of war. Still doesn't movie the movie can't have its funnier moments, does it? One of Hitlers first lines in the movie is, when interview a new secretary, is "I make mistakes myself while dictating". There's even a joke in it, a rarity in German cinema (I've only ever heard one):
"They say Berlin is becoming a warehouse city. Everybody is walking around asking "Where is my house? Where is my house?""
Mightn't be up to Tommy Cooper standards, but if I was in a besieged city I'd be dying drunk, crackin' jokes, and probably listening to The Ramones to.
More seriously, this movie will leave you with a chill, its the realism. Hitler dosn't come across as human, he comes across as deluded, bi-polar and clearly mentally unbalanced. This is as we all envision Hitler, we can agree with that, but do we ever imagine a SS man trying to stop sensless executions by over zealous soldiers? Even if it mightn't be as objective as you would have hoped, it's still far more objective than American movies about WW2 (The kind where Bon Jovi flies a submarine to Berlin for a concert on the Reichstag), and what's more it is different and thought provoking. It still can't be taken for absoulte truth seeing that the movie is based on the accounts of the few survivors of Hitlers bunkers, who where busy trying to save themselves from death sentences, but can you ever believe what a movie tells you?
