- A film that taps the memoirs of Adolf Hitler's secretary
for a controversially intimate portrait of the Nazi leader's final days
in his Berlin bunker has received a standing ovation at its debut in Germany.
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- With its chillingly lifelike portrayal of Hitler by the
veteran Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, the film has drawn praise, but critics
are also raising the question of whether Hitler should be portrayed as
human at all, particularly in a German-made movie.
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- Der Untergang (The Downfall) shows the Fuehrer stroking
dogs and chatting amiably with female aides. It also shows him raging at
his desk as the Soviet army closes in on Berlin and demanding his followers
not give up on the "final victory".
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- At the gala premiere in Munich on Thursday night, the
producer, Bernd Eichinger, said his aim was to avoid simply demonising
Hitler. The director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, argued that it was time for
a film documenting the Nazis from a German perspective.
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- "These were people and not robots, not schizophrenic,
but people with an incredibly destructive insanity," Eichinger said.
"It is part of human nature that we can be monsters as well as do
good."
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- The 150-minute film starts with April 20, 1945 - Hitler's
56th birthday - and leads viewers through his joint suicide ten days later
with Eva Braun.
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- Also in the film, which opens across Germany next Thursday,
is the suicide of Josef Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief, after he and
his wife killed their six children.
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- Eichinger, one of Germany's best-known film producers,
and Hirschbiegel tell the story from the perspective of Traudl Junge, the
secretary who took down Hitler's will and told her story in a documentary
released shortly before her 2002 death.
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- Critics say the film glosses over the broader historical
context, including the Holocaust, in favor of what one called Hollywood-style
drama. "The question of what situation a person like Hitler was in
during the last days of April 1945 may not be uninteresting, but it contributes
little to history," the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said.
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- "It's a solid German film, but with a Hitler one
can feel pity for," commented Berlin's Der Tagesspiegel. "Should
one do this: show Hitler as though at the end he were only a victim, a
victim of the circumstances he had created?"
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