A NAZI STATE OF MIND Part Two

HITLER: THE LAST TEN DAYS (1973: Dir. Ennio de Concini)

After Dracula, Adolph Hitler is probably the most imitated villain in cinema history. Despite his ubiquitous association with goose-stepping silliness, Mel Brooks wasn't the first to reveal the risible qualities of the Nazis and their gesticulating founder. The Three Stooges were in fact the first satirists to take on Hitler in their 1940 two-reeler You Nazty Spy!. Later that same year Charlie Chaplin released his attack on Der Fuhrer in his masterpiece The Great Dictator. America had still not entered World War II, yet Hollywood was now less timid in criticizing the German Chancellor and his policies. During and shortly after the War, the role of Hitler was virtually owned by two actors, the first was Norwegian-born Carl Ekberg who played him five times, beginning with Citizen Kane in 1941. After the U.S. joined the Allies in 1942, American actor Bobby Watson became famous for his eerie facsimile in ten films including Hitler-- Dead Or Alive (1942),  and The Hitler Gang (1944). The first major biographical film on the subject wasn't produced until 1962's Hitler starring Richard Basehart in a studied interpretation that did little to capture the dictator's volatile persona. Another decade would pass before the most authentic and historically accurate English language impersonations of Hitler would reach audiences, those of Frank Finlay in the television production of The Death of Adolph Hitler (1973), and the major motion picture Hitler: The Last Ten Days, starring Alec Guinness. Finlay's may have given the more flamboyant madman performance, but Guinness plays the part with a greater range of emotion, from paternalistic arrogance to paranoid rage, sprinkled with brief moments of pathos and avuncular humour. His Adolph is not some unknowable monster, but an all too human bully boy with delusions of intellectual and artistic grandeur. It is a compellingly authoritative performance often cited by Guinness as one of his proudest achievements, and together with the film's utilitarian production design, combines to make this British-Italian co-production, a plausible adaptation of the eyewitness memoir by Gerhardt Boldt, an actual survivor of the Fuhrerbunker. At the time of the film's release it appeared that the public was expecting an account full of more juicy gossip and seamy dramatics, than the almost prosaic presentation that they got instead. It was however a turning point for Nazi cinema, and cleared the path for other lauded interpretations of Hitler, most notably those of Anthony Hopkins in the made-for-tv film The Bunker (1984) and the haunting portrayal of Hitler's final days by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz in Oliver Hirshbiegel's Downfall (2004). For those who believe in the value of history, all of these films present facets of iconic evil as a warning for generations to come. DVD & BLU-RAY