| advertisement |
|
|
| advertisement |
|
|
|
| ‘The Truly Truest Truth about Hitler’
|
|
 |
Film director, Dani Levy
|
|
|
| Page tools |
 |
|
|
|
BERLIN (EJP)--- The first German-language comedy about Hitler is to be shown in German cinemas this January.
“The film with the title ’Mein Fuehrer: The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler’ will be a fantasy version of the last days of the Fuehrer,” said director Dani Levy.
The Swiss-born Jewish director paints Hitler as a bed-wetting drug addict with erectile problems.
A new approach
Like the German film ’Downfall’, which was produced by Bernd Eichinger and shown in German cinemas in 2004, this new film focuses on the big players in the Nazi regime.
But Levy said he wants people to see his film as a "counter" to films that put Hitler on a pedestal. Germany has never made a comedy about the Third Reich, but foreign films such as Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator have always had a cult following in the country.
Eccentric German artist and musician Helge Schneider plays the leading role in The Truly Truest Truth, showing Hitler on screen in both a tracksuit and a nightdress. He also takes a bath with a toy battleship and dresses his dog, Blondi, in an SS uniform.
The film initially caused controversy when Levy covered Berlin with swastikas on red banners and filled streets with extras wearing Nazi uniforms. He also placed guards outside historic Berlin locations and filmed hundreds of extras chanting "Sieg Heil!".
However, after the recent press screening, the controversy has faded, with reviewers calling the project more "harmless" than "provocative".
Depressed Fuehrer
The film is supposed to show a Hitler tired and depressed after twelve years as the Fuehrer, but a person who still needs motivate people for the final battle. On New Year’s Day 1944 he needs to give a speech but is not in the right frame of mind.
The film shows propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels deciding to hire famous Jewish actor Adolf Gruenbaum, who is being held in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, as he seems to be the only one who could get Adolf Hitler in top form within five days.
Though mainly fiction, the script of the film does borrow a little from history. Paul Devrient, an opera singer, taught Adolf Hitler presentation techniques in 1932 and accompanied the future Fuehrer on his travels before writing a dairy of what he had experienced. This diary was later published in a book called ’Mein Schüler Adolf Hitler’ - ’My student Adolf Hitler’.
Dani Levy gained fame with his 2005 comedy ’Go for Zucker!’ which was a major success in Germany. The award-winning film was the first to detail the life of a modern Jewish family in present day Germany.
|
|
 |
|