A NAZI STATE OF MIND Part One

THE NIGHT OF THE GENERALS  (1967: Dir. Anatole Litvak)

As a child I was fascinated by the Nazis. With their Germanic obsessiveness for colour coordinated uniforms festooned with Swatsikas and other sigils, the Nazis were the most enviously accessorized villains in television and cinema. They were, for generations of viewers, the perfect visual personification of evil elegance. During World War II and for many years afterward, there was a reluctance by filmmakers to tell stories from the German point-of-view. Their crimes were deemed so monstrous, that for simple entertainment purposes it was easier to portray them as cold adversaries rather than complex emotional human beings. This trepidation gave way in the Fifties with a few early films such as The One That Got Away (1957), an atypical British film detailing the astonishing true tale of a German pilot who escaped from numerous Allied prison camps. Pioneering productions such as this, told the stories of German war heroes who did not share the Nazi philosophy and were therefore sympathetic as protagonists. Exploring the pathology of Nazism from the inside, didn't really become acceptable until after the last great war crime trial of Adolph Eichmann, whose subsequent hanging in 1962 was a cathartic event for a world still scarred by Hitler's diabolical scourge. Published the same year, the novel The Night of the Generals by Hans Hellmut Kirst dared to expose the grisly sex murder of a prostitute by a member of the German High Command, and the subsequent internal investigation that exposes all manner of collusion and deviance among the Nazi hierarchy. Sensing an unprecedented opportunity to challenge conventions of habit and taste, producer Sam Spiegel (Lawrence of Arabia), purchased the rights to the book and proceeded to turn this WWII murder-mystery into one of his typical large cast super-productions. Attempting to paint a lurid portrait of Nazi moral corruption, Spiegel unfortunately hired Anatole Litvak, a Russian-born journeyman director who had previously directed the sensitive and atmospheric WWII drama Decision Before Dawn (1951), but now was mostly associated with anodyne Hollywood melodramas like Anastasia (1956). The results, despite being photographed on authentic Polish locations, had Litvak choosing camp villainy over true psychological horror. One's enjoyment of the film therefore depends upon an almost fetishistic love of eye-popping military regalia as brandished by the starry cast, including all-purpose foreigner Omar Sharif as a sober military investigator, and bottle blonde Peter O'Toole as a eye-rollingly unhinged SS General. It all amounts to epic cinema with enough Nazi-filled chicanery to please the twelve year-old in all of us. DVD & BLU-RAY