The Empty Mirror (1996)

User Rating:

5.8/10   

Director:

Barry J. Hershey

Writers:

R. Buckingham (writer)
Barry J. Hershey (writer)

Release Date:

29 January 1999 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | History | War

Tagline:

If he looked in the mirror, what would he see?

Plot:

Adolf Hitler faces himself and must come to terms with his infamous career in an imaginary post-war...

Plot Keywords:

Swastika | Anti Semitism | Third Reich | Scale Model Of City | Josef Stalin

Awards:

7 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Norman Rodway	...	Adolf Hitler
Camilla Søeberg	...	Eva Braun
Peter Michael Goetz	...	Sigmund Freud
Doug McKeon	...	The Typist
Glenn Shadix	...	Hermann Goering
Joel Grey	...	Josef Goebbels
Hope Allen	...	Woman in Black
Lori Scott	...	Floating Female Spirit
Raul Kobrinsky	...	Jailer
Randy Zielinski	...	Hitler Youth
Shannon Yowell	...	Hitler Youth
Courtney Dale	...	Hitler Youth
Elizabeth Hershey	...	Hitler Youth
Chris Levitus	...	Hitler Youth (as Christopher Levitus)
Chip Marks	...	Hitler Youth

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for disturbing war images and thematic material.

Runtime:

118 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

USA:PG-13

Company:

Walden Woods Film Company Ltd.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Adolf Hitler: Before us lies Germany, within us marches Germany, and after us comes Germany!

Movie Connections:

Features Triumph des Willens (1935)

Stalin rules with Terror I ruled with Passion!

**SPOILERS** German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, Norman Rodway, in a purgatory-like in between or astral world bunker is seen reviewing his life and commenting on what he did as if he's arguing his case before a judge and jury in some higher court in the sky. Having with him a number of Hitler youths, blond and blue eyed golden nuggets as Hitler calls them, and two of his top henchmen Josef Gobbels and Hermann Goering, Joel Gray & Glenn Shadix, to make him feel at home; together with an SS typist, Doug McKeon, who takes down every word that Hitler says. We the audience are given a deep and rare insight into Hitler's mind and what he thought of himself his place in history and the crimes that he committed during his lifetime.

Hitler talking about his great accomplishments, good and bad, that made him undoubtedly one of the most feared recognized and written about persons in world history makes up most of the dialog in the film. In this in-between world of life and death is also Hitler's bride of one day, April 29/30 1945, and long time mistress Eva Braun, Camilla Soeberg. There's also Sigmund Freud, Peter Michael Goetz, thrown into the movie who spends most of his time on screen psycho-analyzing Hitler to Hitler great annoyance and disgust.

With films of his life as the German dictator played over and over on a number of screens all around the, what looks like, an underground bunker that he's in Hitler for the first time in his life, if he's indeed alive in the movie, admits to his many mistakes that brought about the disaster that fell upon himself and the country that he claims to love so much Nazi Germany. A lot of what Hitler says in the movie "The Empty Mirror" has mostly to do with his generals and how they double-crossed and betrayed him in the war by selling out to save their own necks at his and Germanys expense. We also see and hear Hitler crying about how he'll,sob sob, never be able to make the German capital of Berlin the great modern metropolis that he envisioned it to be; with him seen sadly playing, like a little boy, with a toy scale model of the city.

Hitler also admits that his two greatest mistakes in the war was his invasion of the USSR in the summer of 1941 and later that year declaring war against the United States as an obligation that he had to his Japanese allies, after that country's attack on Pearl Horbor. This just days after his panzer divisions were defeated and thrown back from the gates of Moscow by the Red Army and the brutal Russian Winter.

The movie gets overly esoteric as Hitler starts to suddenly turn snow white and age becoming almost unrecognizable, looking like an unkempt and disheveled Captain Kangaroo, as he sees the results of his actions, that throughout the movie he tried to overlook and ignore. Hitler sees films of liberated concentration camps and the thousands of dead found in them and literally goes mad as if that's his ultimate punishment.

Interesting but just a bit too talky of a movie with Hitler, as if he's in a Broadway Musical, having a number of unnecessary costume changes as if to show us in the audience what and extensive wardrobe he had and how good he look wearing it. We even see Hitler cracking jokes, which no one with him in the bunker would dare, about himself as if he were doing some stand-up comic routine. The films of Hitler and Nazi Germany get a bit too much since they never for once let up and give you a chance to digest what's happening in the movie. By the time "The Empty Mirror" is over your almost as worn out watching the movie as Hitler or actor Norman Rodway is in being in it.