Sept. 14


GERMANY:

German Director Breaches Taboos with Hitler Film


In Toronto, a new film portrayal of Adolf Hitler shows both a ranting,
twitching, delusional madman and a father figure who speaks kindly to his
secretary and gazes fondly as blond Aryan children sing songs of praise.

But Downfall (Der Untergang), which has its world premiere at the Toronto
Film Festival on Tuesday, also breaches one of post-war Germany's last
taboos to show the Nazi leader as a human being rather than just a
monster.

It has prompted the charge that director Oliver Hirschbiegel has gone too
far.

"It's one of the last remaining taboos in Germany and we broke that
taboo," Hirschbiegel told a news conference to introduce the 2-1/2 hour
movie, set in Hitler's fortified Berlin bunker during the final 12 days
of World War II.

"There still seems to be a great fear in Germany to openly and honestly
face up to the events that made up that most terrible chapter of our
history."

The movie opens across Germany on Thursday, and it has already prompted
questions about whether German filmmakers have the right to delve deeper
into the darkest days of their country's history.

Some 50 million people died in the war, including 6 million Jews murdered
in Nazi concentration camps. Cities in Germany and elsewhere were reduced
to rubble, both in bombing raids and in the fierce fighting at the end of
the war.

But Hirschbiegel said the movie was in no way designed to provoke
sympathy for Hitler, who is shown ordering nonexistent armies into battle
as the Soviet Red Army pounds his capital with bombs and artillery fire.

Hitler, played to chilling effect by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, rants
incoherently about his generals' failure to implement his grandiose
battle plans and displays callous disregard for Berlin's increasingly
beleaguered civilian population, where children fight on the front lines.

But at the same time he is kind to the women and children in the bunker,
and steadfast in his resolution to die rather than surrender.

"The movie set out to put an end to the simplistic way of depicting
Hitler up to now," Hirschbiegel said. "We only saw Hitler as a monster,
as a mad psychopath -- a cartoon kind of character.

"What we are trying to do is give him a three-dimensional portrait,
because we know from all accounts that he was a very charming man. He
managed to seduce a whole people into barbarism -- a monster could never
achieve that."

Ganz admitted he thought long and hard about whether to take the role,
and said his character's anti-Semitic rants and callous attitude to the
Germans who had brought him to power were among the hardest things to
take.

"It became a threshold I had to cross, and then I was there," he said.

(source: Reuters)