MOVIES
When an artist or filmmaker took the trouble to confront the Nazis, the result was naturally a kind of horror, a recoil in which we ask, How could this have happened?—looking at the crowds at the Nazi rallies, for instance, and feeling perhaps subconsciously superior to them. But what Syberberg tries to do is evoke the mental states of people who believed in Hitler, from the inside, so that we can understand, both with the head and the gut, how we could very well succumb to the lure of such a movement. To accomplish this, he employs a kind of theatrical surrealism, filming on a huge soundstage and using various props, including archetypal images and art objects from German culture and cinema, photos and newsreels in back-projection, and even puppets.
Syberberg's long poetic monologues meditate on history as if it were a mysterious spectacle or dream, to be felt rather than analyzed, while various actors recite sections from the memoirs of people associated with or affected by Hitler. One early sequence involves a young German's encounter with Hitler giving a speech in the 1920s, after the terrible defeat of World War I, and the feeling of revelation, of a new burst of power, that he felt from this man's words. A long excerpt from the memoirs of Hitler's valet, describing his eating and clothing habits, emphasizes the grotesque contrast between the incredibly important nature of public actions and the petty private details of the person at the center.
With lots of German classical music—Mozart, Beethoven, and of course Wagner—on the soundtrack, the film hammers home the connection between the romantic emotionalism of 19th century Germany, and the desperate enthusiasm of Hitler's true believers, with the Horst Wessel Song and Deutschland Uber Alles as constantly returning themes. And just as we are confined to Syberberg's eerie soundstage, isolated from everything but the relentless rhetoric of fatherland and destiny, so the minds of the believers are isolated from reality. Sprinkled throughout are excerpts from recordings of speeches by Hitler, Goebbels and others, and the film runs the gamut of emotions from hope and enthusiasm to gallows humor, despair, and finally bitterness, as towards the end Syberberg talks to a Hitler puppet, explaining how the Fuhrer ruined the future for everyone.
This film is a stupendous, endlessly thought-provoking experience, and it helped begin a process of reckoning for a new generation of Germans whose parents had hidden the past from them out of shame and denial. For years, Syberberg refused to release the film on video, but it finally came out on DVD recently. There is now the convenience of being able to take breaks, or even spread one's viewing out over a few days, yet the film is still rather overwhelming, definitely one of a kind. When it was released in America it was titled Our Hitler, which is appropriate, because it's not so much about Hitler as it's about us.
Hitler: a Film From Germany is available on DVD.
© Copyright 2012, KXCI
