Customer Reviews

Hitler: A Film from Germany [VHS]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a very rare film, unavailable in the U.S. for several years.

In 1977, Syberberg made a statement during an interview: "I think in five to ten years, the filmmaking business will shift from the way of the movie theater to the house. People will watch films like they listen to records - on cassettes on a big wall". The timescale and medium may be wrong, but he was right about the trend.

At more than seven hours, 'Our Hitler' is an ideal example of a film which is virtually unwatchable in a theater setting, but perfect for the home environment, where the action can be paused and restarted at will, and spread over several evenings, if necessary.

Syberberg's style is unmistakeable, combining front-projected images, stage props, tableaux and puppets, overlaid with Wagner's music and long monologues. Daunting? Not at all. The key to appreciating this wonderful film is to pace your viewing. Think more in terms of atmosphere rather than action, content rather than plot. A knowledge of German history and culture is useful, but not essential. Just sit back and allow the film to to enter your mind.

The twin DVD set includes the four parts of the film, plus fragments of a documentary produced when the film was first shown in New York. The documentary is derived from a badly-deteriorated VHS copy, and is riddled with sound dropouts and tracking errors, but is still fascinating. The package also includes a fifty-page guide to the film (which is handy for those of us who can't recognize Thomas Mann when we see him). The booklet includes reviews by Susan Sontag and Anton Kaes.

The film itself is available in the English or German versions. The chosen language determines the language of the subtitles and some of the voiceovers.

I saw this film many years ago, on British television. I've been looking for it ever since. It's marvellous that it should be available on DVD at last. The other two films in this trilogy ('Ludwig - Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König' and 'Karl May') have just been released on DVD in Germany. I hope these titles will soon be available in the U.S.

Susan Sontag called this film "the most extraordinary film I've ever seen". While this may seem hyperbolic, it isn't. This is an extraordinary film, and I completely understand Sontag's adoration of it. This is a brilliant film, one that has had me thinking for days about it. I watched it over 2 nights, and there's so much in it and so much to take in that I'm planning on renting it again or perhaps purchasing it. Despite its nearly 7 1/2 hour length, there isn't one dull moment in it. I only watched it over 2 nights because I had to go to sleep. If I had had the time to watch the whole thing in one sitting, I would have done so without thinking. I haven't felt this glued to the screen in I don't know how long.

The film is absolutely mesmerizing. This film has been unavailable for many, many years, and this is the first time it's been offered on home video. The director, Hans Jurgen Syberberg, had posted the film on his website, but watching it on a TV or projected is the best way to see it. The film is operatic, theatrical, mind bending, sad, haunting, angry, depressing, and just about everything else you can think of. The 4th part is a little boring (the first 30 minutes of part four is one long monologue), but after this monologue is concluded, the film takes off again to a stunning conclusion.

Never does the film feel padded. Like in Wagner's great operas (Wagner figures prominently here), a film like this needs to be long to tell its story, and that should be respected. The actors throughout the film give excellent performances, and the film is one of the most thought provoking films that I've seen in recent memory.

It is interesting to note that this film, despite its mammoth length, cost a mere $500,000 dollars and only took 20 days to shoot (even though the pre-production period was longer than most films). The DVD has an excellent booklet with many essays on the film, but the most (and justifiably) famous essay is the one written by the great, late Susan Sontag, who championed this film and who should be congratulated for her insight and dedication to this filmic masterpiece.

This incredible film of staggering originality is as profound and visually imaginative as cinema can get. Not widely seen in this country, but perhaps even more meaningful today as we face ever new forms of an ancient evil that we are all to eager to embrace with a rationale of religion and/or politics.

Hitler was one of us.

Don't waste your $$$$ on this.........A very interesting movie has been ruined via a transfer from a vhs tape......VERY POOR QUALITY........the packaging is scanned and on close inspection the discs have a laserprinted label with no indication as to copyright etc.........the images are out-of-focus having VERY low resolution. AND AT A VERY HIGH PRICE........Amazon shouldn't allow this to be offered for sale

What can be written about this film that hasn't already been written? I found the film captivating....mesmerizing. Though it is indeed very long (7+ hours) I would have no reservation watching it again in its entirety. The production of the film is unique...unlikely anything at least this reviewer has ever seen. I was drawn to the film because it was produced by Germans and I am really curious how Germans feel about the whole National Socialism movement, or at least how some of them may have viewed that era looking back from the 1970's. There are portions of the film that do indeed seem to drag on a little too long (the monologues by the young German intellectual, for example) but I've always had a fascination with the entire movement and in particular Hitler that I still enjoyed the film. How could it all really take place?, I ask myself. Anyhow, if you are interested in this period or German history I would highly recommend this film. If you have little to no interest in either of these two subjects you will probably have little to no patience for this film. I loved it, however.

I have watched movies for at least 45 years, and since my earliest age I sought to be discriminating. This is one of the most important films I have ever seen. Like many others, I sought to understand Nazism and read books of history, political science and mass psychology, including William Reich's masterpiece. Yet, this information did not really enable me to understand the core of that which created Nazism. This movie has catalyzed into place all other information previously available to me, and enabled me to finally understand. The movie is not descriptive but evocative, as it conveys a massive "something" which albeit not rational and beyond the limits of language, is nonetheless real and was a major factor in the events of Germany at that time. It is a "something" which, in good and evil, belongs to the legacy of the western world. The theatrical medium is perfect, and perhaps the only one, to bring this "something" to the fore. This movie is not for everyone, and may just be for a few. Training in Wagnerian music and mythology is a prerequisite. Those who do not love Wagner should not bother buying it.

Syberberg's grand, hysterical, haunting, beautiful, and profoundly original attempt to piece together images, ideas, feelings, and concepts about Hitler and the demise of Europe in the 20th century. A bit OTT, to say the least, but unlike anything else ever put on film.

Someone said that this movie will defy and challenge the critics, and I can testify to that. I concede that it's beyond my capacity to really do justice to 7 1/2 hours of poetry, performance art, puppetry, theatre, history, philosophy, music and spectacle focusing on the person and legacy of Adolf Hitler. At the very least, it can be safely said that it's like no movie you've ever seen before. However, there is one thing I'd like to comment on.

Although it hardly needs to be said that the movie is anti-Hitler, the overall effect was something very different to me. With its extensive use of Hitler's speeches and writings, set against a soundtrack of the most powerful Wagnerian scores, and played against a rear projection of mountains, galaxies and other scenes of monumental grandeur, with its Germanic philosophizing and obsessive rumination on the minutia of this man's life and influence, this film seems to have achieved an effect not dissimilar to that of the Nuremberg rallies, which was to make Hitler into a cosmological figure, an avatar, a deity of sorts. Someone said that that was precisely the purpose of the filmmaker, who wanted to show how Hitler appealed to the German people. Well, if that was so, he did a bang-up job. Hitler, I think, wouldn't be altogether displeased, despite the somewhat uncomplimentary portrayals in certain parts; after all, the sheer magnitude of the attention, whether positive or negative, that he commands this long after his physical demise immortalizes him in a way; "let them hate, so long as I dominate their thoughts." It's interesting that the director, Syberberg, has gotten in trouble for comments he made about what he called the soulless and tyrannical Jewish spirit that has seduced the race of "superior men" in postwar Europe. Whether that means he was subconsciously magnifying Hitler in this film, I don't know, but this movie is a must-see for anyone fascinated by this man Hitler whom history cannot ignore or forget.

I was introduced to this film about eight years ago and my astonishment has not faded. I have long been captivated by the drama of Hitler and his Nazi party. I must place emphasis on the word drama! I certainly have no regard for Hitler, but find endless fascination with the staging of his madness. It is my opinion that this film should be required viewing for both college and high school students. Syberberg has managed to offer a cinematic treatment of the insanity that was. And he has managed to do so in a manner that is simultaneously artful, visually impactful and weighted with a perspective laden voice that communicates the deep psychosis of what was happening in Germany during Adolph's demented leadership. This film is both visually and intellectually lush and is an adept expression of deep historical moments of night. When my friend John Rininger first placed this film before me, I had no idea that I was about to be captured by what I believe to be cinematic greatness. As the announcer in this film states, "This film is not about righteous anger". For me, it is about intellectual and artistic perspective of how wrong life can go when diligence is abandoned.

Hans Jurgen Sybeberg's 7 hour opus about Hitler came very highly recommended by Susan Sontag, who shed some light on the film's obscurity at the time of its American release.

The film is however, in my (albeit preliminary) judgment, a fundamental abuse of the cinematic form. The filmmaker seeks to reconcile the tarnished history of his country (via releasing a 7 hour prolegomena on the particulars of Hitler's being, which Sybeberg conceives of as the distorted apotheosis of German Romanticism) with the sophistication and apparent brilliance of the heart of European civilization. However, the film is highly pedantic; passages proceed with monologues that recount the microscopic details of Hitler ad nauseum. There are endless discussions of Hitler's clothes, of the films and composers he loved, etc. etc. Not all of it is uninteresting, but this seems to me an exercise in absurdist-intellectual-Brechtianism, and an utter disregard (and lack of faith in), the cinematic form's narrative capacity to disclose truths about a given subject. Sybeberg's grand stage is baroque, creative, and yet at the same time economic, yet it is also clumsy and long-winded.

I suspect that the intellectual community admires this work for the density of its text, and for the filmmaker's audacious, far-reaching sociological register. However, 7 hours of Sybeberg's pontifications fail to convey the philosophical/political horror that was the Holocaust that 30 minutes of Alain Resnais' `Night and Fog' was able to convey with mere photographs and documentary footage. This is an undeniable failing as a filmmaker in my judgment.

Never the less, Sybeberg's film is undoubtedly rich, and everyone should see it. Perhaps I have merely misunderstood his lengthy piece, but I suspect that my initial reaction is correct. See it and judge for yourself.