Conversation with the beast

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Conversation with the beast
Original title Conversation with the Beast
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1996
length 95 minutes
Rod
Director Armin Mueller-Stahl
script Armin Mueller-Stahl,
Tom Abrams
production Rudolf Steiner
camera Gérard Vandenberg
cut Ingo Ehrlich
occupation

Conversation with the Beast , international title: Conversation with the Beast , also run on television under the title Conversation with the Beast , is a German feature film from 1996. In his directorial debut, the actor Armin Mueller-Stahl takes part in a fictional role-play apart from the person of Adolf Hitler , whom he also plays himself. In addition to Mueller-Stahl, well-known character actors such as Harald Juhnke and Katharina Böhm appear in the film.

action

The film is based on the idea that Adolf Hitler , the "beast" of the film title, is still alive - hidden in a bunker and meanwhile (1992) 103 years old. The protagonist sits in a wheelchair and speaks English . This "real" Hitler invites six Hitler doubles into the bunker vaults, furnished with Nazi remains, in which he lives with his apparently very young wife Hortense.

The game of confusion becomes complete when Webster, an American journalist, breaks into the bunker and asks unpleasant questions. Webster interviews the supposed Hitler for ten days before shooting him on the last day of the interview, as he is now certain that he is seeing the real Hitler.

Reviews

The film is praised in the Dirk Jasper FilmLexikon : “At the age of 66, Armin Mueller-Stahl made his sensational debut as an author and director. He plays the man who has haunted him all his life. He plays Hitler in order to demystify and dismantle him in his own very personal way. ”The Film Service calls the Hitler play“ an evil black farce with tragicomic moments, which, however, due to weaknesses in the staging and wooden dialogues, do not convey a history lesson , but nothing more than a partially interesting character study. "

In Die Zeit, Hans-Christoph Blumenberg goes into the genesis of the film: “One of the wonders of this film is that it actually exists. The German funding, especially the Berlin-Brandenburgische Filmverhinderungsanstalt of Professor Keil, rejected the project. Money came from television (Arte and ORB), in the form of benefits in kind (Studio Babelsberg built the studio) and through fee reserves. The producer Rudolf Steiner was able to produce a film that really belongs on the screen with barely more than a million marks in cash. And as the German voice of Bob Balaban commit no less than Wolfgang Draeger , the dubbing artist, who has spoken to Woody Allen for so long and so wonderfully that he himself considers the original to be the original. "

Festivals

The film was first shown on September 10, 1996 in Toronto and then shown in cinemas and at over 20 festivals worldwide. So far Conversation with the Beast not been released on DVD.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Conversation with the Beast" ( memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) ( Dirk Jasper Filmlexikon )
  2. ^ Film Service , 4/1997
  3. ↑ "The Patriarch's Spring" . In: Die Zeit , 9/1997