Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun, Bruno Ganz as Hitler and Heino Ferch as Albert Speer
Posted on 08/24/2004 1:23:22 AM PDT by MadIvan
A decades-long taboo was broken in Germany yesterday with the launch of a feature film in which Adolf Hitler appears for the first time in a central role, not as a ranting demagogue but as a soft-spoken dreamer.
The Downfall is a huge shift from the previous tendency in German cinema to show Hitler only as a background figure or a character who does not appear on camera at all.
Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun, Bruno Ganz as Hitler and Heino Ferch as Albert Speer |
The production by Bernd Eichinger, a respected director, is likely to cause controversy when it opens in German cinemas next month. It depicts the Fuhrer as an avuncular character with a penchant for chocolate cake, who slides into madness when his lifelong dream of a 1,000-year reich slips from his grasp.
Hitler is convincingly played by Germany's star actor Bruno Ganz, who once acted the part of an angel in the award-winning German film Wings of Desire.
In one scene Ganz depicts him with his hair in his eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks, as he declares: "The war is over."
Hitler is shown stroking his alsatian Blondie and treating his secretary with tenderness and patience.
 The Downfall offers a sympathetic portrayal of the Führer |
Mr Eichinger, who also wrote the screenplay, reconstructs the last days of the Third Reich as seen from the claustrophobic and dimly-lit bunker with the help of diary extracts and eye-witness accounts by Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge, who died in 2002, as well as his telephonist, and an officer, Major Freytag, who are the last two living survivors.
As well as recalling the unbearable stench of urine, sweat and diesel which dominated the bunker, Freytag described Hitler as a "physical wreck", with a limp, who hid his shaking left hand behind his back, leading to suggestions that he was suffering from Parkinson's disease.
Shot in Berlin, Munich and St Petersburg at a cost of £9 million, making it one of the most expensive German films of all time, The Downfall has been welcomed by critics for demythologising Hitler - even before they have had the chance to see it.
 Bruno Ganz as an avuncular Hitler hiding his shaking hand |
Until now Germans had been afraid to portray on screen "the man who still dominates the German imagination more than any other figure in history", he wrote.
But the tabloid Bild yesterday posed the question that an increasing number of critics will no doubt ask: "Should a monster be portrayed as a human being?" Eichinger, the 55-year-old son of a Wehrmacht soldier who fought on the eastern front, said he believed the film would offer an "emotional release" for many Germans still traumatised by the Second World War, even though only one in five living Germans experienced it.
Its release comes at a time when Germans are involved in an intense debate about their suffering in the war.
There have been several popular books and historical analyses of German suffering during Allied bombing of Dresden and other cities, most famously Gunter Grass's Crabwalk of 2002. The subject went virtually undiscussed for half a century after the war ended.
Critics say the debate is in danger of playing into the hands of revisionists - those who play down the crime of the Holocaust.
People are concentrating on the "Chocolate Cake" etc, but I am interested in seeing the vanity (hiding his shakes), and the decent into madneww as this psycho realizes that everything he worked for is crumbling around him and he sees his lies etc being exposed.
In the meantime, we can watch Kerry going through the same process. ;)
Let's see, on this thread it appears that knee-jerk peacenick Germans are once again invading France and moving forward with plans for world domination.
A lot has happened right under my nose in the last year and a half. Apparently their meagre defense budget has been secretly increased and the entire population has been re-educated solely based on a movie that has not yet been released and no one on this thread has ever seen.
For those of you who do not currently live here, let me clarify a few matters: First of all, at most 4% of Germans are racist facists - which is probably a much lower percentage than Freepers and maybe even Americans as a whole. Secondly, any neo-Nazi rally is generally countered by a rally 5 to 10 times the size. There are always more police than Nazis. Thirdly, there are currently demonstrations taking place every Monday (by the left and on a huge scale) to stop the reform of the world's most generous unemployment system. Fourth, as far as Hitler being facsinating is concerned - of course he is facsinating. As has already been pointed out, that was his power and his appeal. There are people all over the world - including in the US - who remain enthralled by his image and deeds - regardless of whether they seek to emulate or condemn them.
Germany is such a pacifist country that it should be the poster child for an American occupation. If Iraq is a modern economy full of girlymen who refuse to fight alongside us in 50 years, we have done a great job.
Lastly, my guess (since I have also not seen the film) is that Hitler is being portrayed as a banal, although insane, human being and not as a demigod-like figure as Goebbels and Reifenstahl's propaganda tried to portray. His followers want to see a god, the movie portrays him as merely a human being and even a pitiful one at that. By doing so, the blame for the crimes committed cannot rest squarely on his shoulders, but rather on the German people who made his rise and crimes possible.
Excellent post!
Btw, Ferdinand Porsche designed it, not Herr Schickelgruber.
Showing Hitler (or any other mass murderer) as a monster only de-humanizes him.
It convinces the viewer that Hitler was some "thing" that existed in a far away land a long time ago.
It densensitzes the viewer to the banality of evil -- the fact that real, live human beings can and do commit monstously evil acts.
I'm quite sure that Justice Blackman led a nice, quiet homelife with his wife, and was -- in many ways -- quite an avuncular human being.
And yet, he penned and signed a Supreme Court decision that has meant the death of millions of human lives.
Avuncular people can and do monstrous things.
Amen - I'm sure the families and neighbors of abortionists think that they are swell guys, whether they know what the "doctor" is doing to make himself rich or not.
tSG
When was the last time you visited the USA?
To suggest that as much as 4% of the American population is "racist facists" demonstrates, I think, a rather profound misperception of Americans.
And to suggest that 4% of Freepers are "racists facists" suggests to me that you might be spending to much time over at DU.
What planet are you on? Perhaps not understanding what "reading between the lines" means when it comes to some of the posts at FR and as far as the American people are concerned, my (always) conservative guess is somewhere between 4% and 6% - which is probably low. There are more than that number of Southerners alive who adamantly supported segregation and Jim Crow laws. If you want to count a few, start with the Senator from WV.
By the way, I am in the US 4-6 times a year and mostly on the liberal East Coast and rural PA. The percentages hold true - perhaps you don't get out much.
Ich lache mir einen Ast!
I am on planet Earth. Thanks for asking.
"as far as the American people are concerned, my (always) conservative guess is somewhere between 4% and 6% - which is probably low. There are more than that number of Southerners alive who adamantly supported segregation and Jim Crow laws. If you want to count a few, start with the Senator from WV."
Concerning your "guess" that 4-6% of those os us who actually live here in the USA are "racist facists", what is the basis for your "guess"?
I get out quite a bit. I live in Virginia (suburban Washington, DC). I travel to Pennsylvania and Ohio a lot. I visit my family in Nebraska two or three times a year. I visit other family members in Oklahoma once a year. I've been in all but four of the 50 states.
And I would never -- never -- suggest that anywhere near 4% of the people living here are "racist facists".
I consider it a rather grave insult to me and my countrymen to suggest that 4% of us are racist facists.
The scheme of falsely promising the masses a vehicle if they would "invest" in the peoples car in order to raise funds to build up the military was Hitler's, but he was not a designer. Maybe the specs but just suppose that at the time Porsche had refused to do Hitler's bidding?
His only legacy then would have been his name(and his family's names) on a list of "undesirables" that were sent to the ovens...
"I consider it a rather grave insult to me and my countrymen"
I guess you are gravely insulted then; wrong, but gravely insulted.
PS A grammatically correct phrase would have read "my countrymen and me" or perhaps in your special case, "my kin and me".
Let's see. I do hope I get this right.
Danke Schoen, Herr Professor.
Was I able to master German grammar?
By the way, I note that you rather deftly avoided my questions concerning the basis for your assertion that 4-6% of the American population are racist facists.
Unless, of course, you wish to say that the basis for your assertion has something to do with the attitudes of Americans 40 years ago.
In which case, I say: Ha!
And so it begins. We all knew that Germany would one day begin to play the victem, and here it is. Poor Hitler was just a misunderstood, loyal German and those evil Soviet soldiers and those evil Americans and Brits attacked for no reason.
The Germany of WW1 and WW2 is on its way back. BTW, they never learned anything. My German grandmother told me we need another Hitler in the US to straighten things out, and my aunts and uncles over there wrinkle their noses in disgust at the mere mention of the word "Juden".
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