Why on Earth was this film made? I mean, really? Didn't anyone stop to think about what they were doing?
In this fantasy tale in we get to see Adolf Hitler as a tortured artist. But here's the problem. This story didn't happen. And why in heaven's name do we need to see a fantasy about, for God's sake, Adolf Hitler?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not offended per se by never-coulda-happened movies about Adolf Hitler. I loved "Hitler Dead or Alive." "Inglorious Basterds" was a wonderful thrill ride. But when you film an earnest character study about the formative years of the fellow who becomes the greatest evil ever known, you owe it to your audience to ground the story in reality.
Things LIKE this story happened. But not this particular story. So we wind up with something so incredibly false that when I sat in my living room watching it on cable TV last night my jaw about fell open. And running through my head was the title song from "Springtime for Hitler," that brilliant musical-within-a-movie from "The Producers." At least we knew that was supposed to be a joke.
I read a book years ago about Hitler's starving-artist period, and as the movie began I thought this might be an interesting story about a little-known chapter of Hitler's life. But any illusion I might have had about the movie's reality was dispelled when I saw John Cusack listening to an early-'30s tombstone radio (in 1919!), to a radio report about the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Umm, radio broadcasting started in 1920; newscasts came later. It's sort of like seeing a movie in which Lewis and Clark settle in for the winter and spend it playing Super Mario Brothers.
That was when the truth began to dawn on me, and I put the movie on pause to check the Internet and confirm my suspicion. Yes, they were making the whole thing up.
From that point I watched with a growing sense of horror. Like when Hitler explains that his political speeches are actually a new form of art. Or when I watched John Cusack deliver the line, deadpan, "You're a hard man to like, Hitler."
We see Hitler in 1920 or so sketching his plans for the Nuremberg rally of 1936 and for the shimmering imperial city we know from the never-built blueprints of Albert Speer. His buddy Cusack, an art dealer, delightedly pronounces them "future kitsch!" So Hitler readies them for an art exhibition that never comes off -- and because it doesn't happen he takes a different path and becomes Fuhrer instead. And the Astoundingly Manipulative Coincidence that ends the movie is really, really just too much to bear.
This movie is so wretched in its conception, so appalling in its construction, and so serious about it all, that it deserves a place of honor among the worst films of all time. Heartily recommended for fans of "Plan Nine From Outer Space," but now that I've seen it I'll skip a repeat showing and go watch Hogan's Heroes instead.
In this fantasy tale in we get to see Adolf Hitler as a tortured artist. But here's the problem. This story didn't happen. And why in heaven's name do we need to see a fantasy about, for God's sake, Adolf Hitler?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not offended per se by never-coulda-happened movies about Adolf Hitler. I loved "Hitler Dead or Alive." "Inglorious Basterds" was a wonderful thrill ride. But when you film an earnest character study about the formative years of the fellow who becomes the greatest evil ever known, you owe it to your audience to ground the story in reality.
Things LIKE this story happened. But not this particular story. So we wind up with something so incredibly false that when I sat in my living room watching it on cable TV last night my jaw about fell open. And running through my head was the title song from "Springtime for Hitler," that brilliant musical-within-a-movie from "The Producers." At least we knew that was supposed to be a joke.
I read a book years ago about Hitler's starving-artist period, and as the movie began I thought this might be an interesting story about a little-known chapter of Hitler's life. But any illusion I might have had about the movie's reality was dispelled when I saw John Cusack listening to an early-'30s tombstone radio (in 1919!), to a radio report about the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Umm, radio broadcasting started in 1920; newscasts came later. It's sort of like seeing a movie in which Lewis and Clark settle in for the winter and spend it playing Super Mario Brothers.
That was when the truth began to dawn on me, and I put the movie on pause to check the Internet and confirm my suspicion. Yes, they were making the whole thing up.
From that point I watched with a growing sense of horror. Like when Hitler explains that his political speeches are actually a new form of art. Or when I watched John Cusack deliver the line, deadpan, "You're a hard man to like, Hitler."
We see Hitler in 1920 or so sketching his plans for the Nuremberg rally of 1936 and for the shimmering imperial city we know from the never-built blueprints of Albert Speer. His buddy Cusack, an art dealer, delightedly pronounces them "future kitsch!" So Hitler readies them for an art exhibition that never comes off -- and because it doesn't happen he takes a different path and becomes Fuhrer instead. And the Astoundingly Manipulative Coincidence that ends the movie is really, really just too much to bear.
This movie is so wretched in its conception, so appalling in its construction, and so serious about it all, that it deserves a place of honor among the worst films of all time. Heartily recommended for fans of "Plan Nine From Outer Space," but now that I've seen it I'll skip a repeat showing and go watch Hogan's Heroes instead.