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A chillingly frank
screen portrayal of Adolf Hitler's final hours in his Berlin bunker has
spawned a national debate over
whether Germans are prepared to view the Nazi dictator as a tragic human
being rather than as a monster.
In a country where the display of Nazi emblems is banned, Germans are
long accustomed to being reminded by television and the movies that Hitler
was the 20th Century's ultimate war criminal. And in a country where the
spectre of neo-Nazism is
ever-present, anything less than the damning portrayal of Hitler in books,
on TV or in movies is suspected of playing to radical rightwing
sentiments.
Now, for the first time, Germany's best-known film producer has teamed
up with the country's best-known 20th Century historian and a top-notch
cast to risk resurrecting Hitler as never before.
Veteran "New Wave" actor Bruno Ganz stars as Hitler in producer Bernd
Eichinger's film, made with the scholarly assistance of award-winning
German historian Joachim Fest.
Movie audiences will be taken inside the bunker for an eye-witness look
at Hitler's final days in a biopic
entitled "Der Untergang - Hitler Und Das Ende Des Dritten
Reiches", which means Downfall - Hitler And The End of The Third Reich.
"Ganz iS Hitler," Fest said at a media screening of the US$15 million
film, which is scheduled for nationwide release on September 16. "I took
one look at him in full makeup and a chill ran down my spin," said Fest,
author of major Hitler biographies. "Then he opened his mouth and sounded
just like Hitler. Every nuance is there. It is a chillingly accurate
portrayal, the likes of which I have never seen before on the big screen."
Ganz is best known for his films with Wim Wenders, "The American
Friend" (1977) and "Wings of Desire" (1988), playing an angel who wants to
be human. "Viewing the finished film," Ganz told reporters, "I realize
there are moments in it when the audience might feel a bit sorry for
Hitler, might empathize with him slightly. But those moments are few and
far between, and I'm not ashamed of my portrayal. I just played the
character as he was - self-pitying and pathetic."
A veteran stage actor, 63-year-old Ganz got his major film breakthrough
in Eric Rohmer's "The Marquise of O" (1976), which was followed by Werner
Herzog's atmospheric "Nosferatu the Vampire" (1979) and Volker
Schlondorff's "Circle of Deceit." (1981) He also appeared in "The Boys
From Brazil" (1978) as a demented Nazi scientist.
Ganz had qualms about
playing Hitler but agreed to an audition in costume with full makeup. "We
were all shocked when, after half an hour in the make-up chair, Bruno Ganz
came out looking and talking just like Hitler," said Eichinger. "That's
when I figured I might as well go through with it," Ganz said.
In supporting roles are Juliane Koehler as Eva Braun, Corinna Harfouch
as Magda Goebbels, Ulrich Noethen as Heinrich Himmler and Alexandra Maria
Lara as stenographer Traudl Junge.
Eichinger said the portrayal is entirely based on historical fact. "I
sent my script to Herr Fest and if he had rejected it, my project would
have immediately disappeared into a drawer," he said.
Fest, author of a best-selling biography of Hitler and former publisher
of one of Germany's most prestigious daily newspapers, Frankfurter
Allegemeine Zeitung, said he had long been puzzled as to why no other
historian had taken up the last-days topic, "so I decided to do it
myself."
Eichinger also drew upon the memoirs of the late Traudl Junge, Hitler's
last stenographer, who published her memoirs in late 2002 after being
diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her book, published only days before she
died, contains hitherto unknown insights into life in the bunker in those
fateful final days in the spring of 1945.
(Agencies) | 
Updated: 2004-09-10 15:26
