Last Update: Wednesday, August 25, 2004. 10:39am (AEST)
New Hitler movie causes controversy
A startlingly convincing portrayal of Adolf Hitler in a new German movie about his last 12 days is causing controversy, with critics challenging its treatment of the "monster" as a human being.
The film, The Downfall (Der Untergang), based on eyewitness accounts and on the book of that name by historian Joachim Fest, opens in German theatres next month and is one of the country's first attempts to characterise Hitler in a film.
Told from the point of view of Traudl Junge, one of Hitler's personal secretaries, the film marks a more relaxed approach to Germany's past, reflected in an increasing number of German-made feature films about the Nazi era.
Confined to his sparsely furnished, bare-walled bunker, Hitler orders nonexistent units into battle and declares the defeated German nation "has shown itself unworthy" of him.
His aides drink up the last wine and discuss how best to commit suicide while outside, old men and children are ordered into pointless fighting against Russian tanks.
Hitler commits suicide on April 30, but the fighting goes on for another week.
Swiss actor Bruno Ganz achieves a photographic likeness showing a stooped, gray, 56-year-old dictator plagued by Parkinson's disease, which makes him hide his shaking hand behind his back.
His hypnotising outbursts of spitting rage at the army's inability to stem the Soviet advance on Berlin are interspersed with moments of kindness for his female staff and tenderness toward Eva Braun, whom he marries a day before their suicide.
Controversially, the portrayal of Hitler verges on the sympathetic at times, and the Holocaust is referred to only briefly in his tirades.
--Reuters/VNU