Downfall

[poliphilo]

I watched part of the new German movie about the death of Hitler last night. It taught me that Hitler was a very bad man and more than a little bonkers in the nut. An hour and a half passed and he still hadn't chowed down on the cyanide capsule so I did some research and discovered there was another hour and a half to go. Good grief. I was feeling so tired it hurt (though this wasn't Hitler's fault) so I switched off and went to bed.

It's been said this film shows the Germans finally coming to terms with the Adolf Hitler experience. O, no it doesn't. What it does is load everything onto Hitler. He's this apelike loony, shambling around, twitching uncontrollably, throwing tantrums and tossing his sweaty locks, while all the other nazis- big or little- exchange embarrassed looks behind his back and react to events in ways that are variously courageous, noble, compassionate, sensible, stoical or- at worst- tragically misguided. Himmler is politically savvy, Goebbels is admirably loyal and as for Speer- well, Speer is a hero. So the moral of the story is we Germans are a thoroughly decent lot and the Third Reich was all down to one gibbering troll who somehow, unaccountably became our leader.

Please Miss, it wasn't me; it was him!

Comments

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I remember Bruno Ganz saying he could not get the the heart of Hitler because he did not have one.

My real feeling towards him watching this was utter contempt - this so called superman took the easy way out.

To be fair though I think it would be difficult to do anything in the film. I think in part it was Germany trying to come to terms with itself - having been the bad guys for so long I think Downfall was in part an attempt to try and get to grips with the madness that seized the country and work past it. And indeed it is a pity that the spectre of Nazism meant that Germany as a country was not able to work through its grief and anguish because of the burden of guilt.

I will be profoundly glad when the last of that generation has died.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think Ganz's line about Hitler not having a heart is a cop-out.

Something or other made him tick. There was a prog on the other day about how the Allies commissioned a psychological profile of Hitler during the war. The shrinks came up with stuff about how Hitler was brutalized by his father and adored his mother, how he compensated for an extreme sense of worthlessness by developing an idea of himself as superhuman.

There's material there for an actor to work with.