Mein Führer - The really truest truth about Adolf Hitler
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Mein Führer - The really truest truth about Adolf Hitler |
 | |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2007 |
| length | 94 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 12 JMK 10 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Dani Levy |
| script | Dani Levy |
| production | Stefan Arndt , X Films |
| music | Niki Reiser |
| camera |
Carl-Friedrich Koschnick Carsten Thiele |
| cut | Peter R. Adam |
| occupation | |
| |
Mein Führer - The Truly Truth About Adolf Hitler is a 2007 Hitler parody by director Dani Levy . The film takes place during World War II and deals with Adolf Hitler's condition, who is about to give a big speech on New Year's Day. He should be rhetorically prepared for this by the Jewish actor Adolf Grünbaum.
action
At the beginning, Professor Adolf Grünbaum, a Jewish world actor, introduces the story as the narrator: He wants to tell people his story, which is so true that it may never appear in a history book:
Grünbaum is imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp with his wife and four children . In the meantime , Adolf Hitler lives in the New Reich Chancellery in bombed Berlin . The German propaganda machine around Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels is preparing a mass event in Berlin's Lustgarten for New Year's Day 1945 , which is intended to give the war-weary Germans new motivation. But Hitler himself is weak and confused. That is why Grünbaum was brought out of the concentration camp in order to get Hitler back in shape, to motivate him and to support him as a teacher. After initial rejection, Hitler increasingly trusts his mentor and reveals personal feelings and childhood memories to him - for example, that his father abused him. Grünbaum is engaged in an internal conflict and repeatedly considers killing Hitler; paradoxically, he even thwarted an attempted murder of Hitler and reminded his wife that the Führer was also a victim of his childhood.
During Grünbaum's meetings with Hitler, the two are observed and wiretapped by numerous leaders. Together with the Minister of the Interior and Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, Goebbels is planning an assassination attempt on Hitler, which is to take place during the New Year's address, as this endangers the " final victory ". A bomb is to be placed under Hitler's lectern, the blame is to be placed on Grünbaum, who is now close to Hitler. This attack is intended to strengthen the hatred of the Jews in the German people and thus contribute to the success of the war.
Grünbaum regularly discusses the success of the meetings with Hitler with Goebbels, who supervises Hitler's teaching. Grünbaum negotiates the release of his family with Goebbels, which is granted to him. When he asked for the inmates of Sachsenhausen to be released, he was refused. Therefore Grünbaum refuses to continue working for Goebbels and is deported back to Sachsenhausen with his family on Goebbels' orders. Meanwhile, Hitler is waiting impatiently for his lesson and arranges for Grünbaum and his family to be fetched back over the phone. In order to be able to keep Grünbaum going, Goebbels faked him the release of the inmates of the concentration camp.
On Hitler's route through the destroyed Berlin from the Reich Chancellery to the Lustgarten, the destroyed buildings are reconstructed by panel-shaped wooden structures, so that the film recordings of the elevator can show an undamaged Berlin.
On the day of the speech, Hitler becomes so hoarse that he can no longer speak. Since a cancellation of the 3.5 million Reichsmark expensive event, which is to be recorded by several cameras, is out of the question according to Goebbels, Grünbaum, standing under the podium, has to speak over the loudspeaker system while Hitler only moves his lips and to it gesticulates. After a short time, Grünbaum deviates from the planned text and begins to make fun of Hitler, who, like his father, can only harm the weak. Grünbaum is then shot, and Hitler fled from the lectern in shock just before the bomb explodes. Fatally injured, Grünbaum tells the story to the end: He predicts that the war will soon be over and that the Führer will eventually take his own life. In addition, in a hundred years, authors would still be writing about Hitler and actors would portray him.
background
The film premiere took place on January 9, 2007 in the Lichtburg in Essen . It was released in Germany on January 11th, in Switzerland on January 18th and in Austria on January 19th of the same year. The film ran in the cinema for 5 months and had around 790,000 viewers. In September 2007 the film was released on DVD.
The German Film and Media Evaluation FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating: "valuable" .
production
My guide was shot from January to March 2006. The filming locations were outdoor backdrops on the outdoor area of Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam and several places in Berlin , including the Federal Ministry of Finance (former Reich Aviation Ministry ) and the Berlin Cathedral on Museum Island.
The production was funded by the Filmstiftung NRW , the Filmförderungsanstalt FFA Berlin, the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the Investitionsbank Hessen .
occupation
Katja Riemann embodied for the second time in a feature film, according to Goebbels and patiently , Eva Braun ; and Ulrich Noethen already presented in The Fall of the Reich leader SS Heinrich Himmler . It was the last film directed by Ulrich Mühe , who died on July 22, 2007 of cancer. Sylvester Groth played his role as Joseph Goebbels again in 2009 in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds .
Alternative versions
Originally, Helge Schneider was supposed to begin the story as Hitler. Another ending was also filmed. At this end, Hitler survived World War II. In the final scene you can see him as a 117 year old man who lives under the code name Baron Alois in the Sauerland. There he paints pictures of his dog Blondi and explains to the audience that he is available again as Chancellor at any time. After the first trial screenings, Levy decided not to use this frame perspective, as the theatrical version now with the shift in focus to the Jewish fate is better suited to "give the audience a certainty of conscience", as he explained in a conversation on January 8, 2007 on 3sat .
Furthermore, a storyline that deals with a Goebbels affair with Eva Braun was completely removed because it would have distracted too much from the actual subject of the film. Only one scene remained in the film; This, however, is shortened and in a completely different context: In this sequence, Hitler and Eva Braun try to have sexual intercourse with each other, which fails because of Hitler's impotence. In the final version, the scene takes place on New Year's Eve.
The originally planned cut version is included on the DVD.
Reviews
Even in the run-up to the film's release, Levy's concept of making a comedy about Adolf Hitler was criticized. Above all, it was stated that there was a risk of playing down the crimes of National Socialism. After publication, the reviews also clearly referred to this point.
Shortly before the premiere, leading actor Helge Schneider criticized the final cut of the film in an interview with the Swiss tabloid Blick . The statement was "changed in retrospect" and the focus was shifted by Hitler "with all his might on (the) Jewish history". The figure of Hitler was "too profane" for him and he could "not laugh" about it. But the film is “not a bad film. Just someone else. ”This was sometimes taken up in the German press as“ distancing ”.
Dieter Graumann , Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said that Hitler “was not a cute robber Hotzenplotz”, the film was promoting the “transfiguration” of Hitler and his time. The playwright Rolf Hochhuth criticized that it was “inexplicable how a man who is himself a Jew can bring such a falsification of history into the cinema”.
In the Frankfurter Rundschau , Viktor Rotthaler points out that "Grünbaum" is probably a homage to Fritz Grünbaum , who was murdered in Dachau .
“A caricature that touches: It's these absurd moments that make this film special. Helge Schneider manages that his Hitler is exposed to ridicule, but never taken by surprise with clumsy comedy. […] Director Dani Levy created a caricature. Not one that jumps on the viewer - as Walter Moers does in his comic 'Ich hock' in mein Bonker '. But one that touches you, that makes you laugh. He also overdraws the other figures - Goebbels, Himmler, Speer, Bormann - so that a complete work is created that triggers a smile, even a liberating laugh [...] "
“[…] Levy tries to show Hitler as a sausage, which he certainly does not want to succeed because a sausage that says about itself that it is poor can no longer be. And so that no one gets the idea to accuse him of playing down the Third Reich or making fun of the suffering of the victims, Levy uses the family of the Jewish actor Grünbaum as a moral counterweight to the Nazis. […] So the film falls apart: into an absurd part that is not absurd enough and a moral part that is too moral. But a knuckle of pork does not turn into a kosher delicacy, no matter how hard the cook tries. "
“[…] My verdict: Dani Levy took the risk. We have dealt with Hitler in many programs on WDR, but never in this way. Dani Levy managed to expose the Nazi system in a mercilessly parodic way. The film shows the primitiveness, perfidy, amorality and criminality of the Hitler regime on the highest artistic level in a very impressive way. [...] Helge Schneider played Hitler maliciously well, Ulrich Mühe as the opponent is also a brilliant cast. "
"Only the victims could grant us the right to laugh at Hitler."
“Can you laugh at Hitler? Let's start with an easier exercise. Let's have a laugh at Bruno Ganz . He was the seemingly impeccable element of the Eichinger film The Downfall . [...] Helge Schneider, whose portrayal of the main role dominates Dani Levy's film Mein Fuehrer in a similar way to Entire Fall , does not play Hitler at all. He plays Bruno Ganz. And Dani Levy's film is set in Nazi Germany, but the ghost he mocks is far from over. It is the current media madness to want to bring the Hitler era to life from archival treasures and re-enactments - just like the Roman or Mayan era on the same channels. [...] No, you have to fear laughing at Hitler far less than the pleasant shower. [...] "
“Director Daniel Levy propagates his approach very clearly: The whole world is now laughing at the 'Führer', it is time for the Germans to learn to laugh at him too, so as not to let him become a myth . And in order to underline this approach directly, he casts the main role with Helge Schneider. First of all, that gives rise to the worst fears: a senile, stammering Hitler who has nothing to do with the image of history and then again does not allow any reference to reality? Not at all! Schneider puts on 'his' Hitler moderately (t) seriously and thereby creates comic situations [...] "
“The film, which alternates between absurdity and fake tragedy, is staged solidly, but above all suffers from its indecision. He doesn't ask too much of the German star cast. "
Quotes
“The film Mein Führer is an expression of my dream that I could intervene in the story with subversive imagination. I wrote the texts for the Nazis and delivered them to the knife. In my film I am God and I am above Hitler. "
Web links
- My Fuehrer - The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Mein Führer - The Truly Truth About Adolf Hitler In The Online Film Database
- Official page for the film
- Side of the X films
- May we laugh at Hitler? , FAZ interviewwith Dani Levy, December 16, 2006
- For me, Hitler represents a zeitgeist , NZZ interviewwith Dani Levy, January 6, 2007
Individual evidence
- ↑ Age rating for Mein Führer - The really truest truth about Adolf Hitler . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ FFA hit list, February 2007.
- ↑ 100 years of Babelsberg: The Berliner Strasse. www.tip-berlin.de, accessed on February 27, 2012.
- ↑ Wants no more to hear about Hitler's nonsense. In: look . December 29, 2006, accessed December 2, 2013 .
- ↑ Helge Schneider can't laugh at his Hitler film. In: The world . January 4, 2007, accessed December 2, 2013 .
- ↑ Schneider distances himself from Hitler film. In: Der Spiegel . January 4, 2007, accessed December 2, 2013 .
- ↑ Helge Schneider doesn't think the Hitler film is funny. In: Stern . January 5, 2007, accessed December 2, 2013 .
- ↑ "I can't laugh at this Hitler." Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 5, 2007, 10:21 am.
- ↑ Massive criticism of Levy's Hitler satire. Spiegel Online, January 9, 2007.
- ↑ Historical role model for Hitler's acting teacher? ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Frankfurter Rundschau, January 13, 2007 (archived version, original no longer available).
- ↑ Hail to myself! Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 5, 2007, 3:20 p.m.
- ^ Henryk M. Broder: The Jew is good for you . In: Der Spiegel . No. 2 , 2007, p. 214 ( online - January 8, 2007 ).
- ↑ “I think the film is very good.” WDR Westdeutscher Rundfunk, January 10, 2007 (no longer available online).
- ↑ Cinema release: Mein Führer ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, January 10, 2007
- ↑ Laughter against the cozy shower. ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Frankfurter Rundschau, January 9, 2007 (fee required).
- ↑ Mein Führer - The really truest truth about Adolf Hitler . www.moviemaster.de, January 21, 2007, accessed on February 5, 2010.
- ↑ Mein Führer - The really truest truth about Adolf Hitler. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ In: Die Zeit No. 3, January 11, 2007, p. 58.
