7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Artistic, Mesermizing, Horrifying, Shocking., December 18, 2007
This review is from: Hitler's Diaries, Starring Adolf Hitler. The Rise & Fall & Mind & God of Adolf Hitler (DVD)
Hitler's Diaries is like Felini on acid. Very stream of consciousness. Hitler's Voice forms the soundtrack. Several of Hitler's speeches are presented. Hitler is like a shaman, a preacher at a revival meeting, and everything is very gothic, like a Wagnerian opera. We see two Hitlers. The super-madman, and the feminine hysteric.
Side B presents us with the Rape of Nanking. The style is similar to Hitler's Diaires, except now there is narration and the story is told in a straightforward chronological order using archival photographs and film-footage. This is a rather shocking film, not because the pictures are so terrible, but because the brutality of the Japanese Imperial army is so stunning and horrifying, soldiers laughing while they burn people to death, with beheadings, bayonneting, live burials going on for weeks.
Most Westerns are aware of what the Nazis did. Few have actually seen anything on film about Japanese atrocities. This DVD presents both sides of WWII, its really two DVDs in one.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Truly awful, abysmal., December 9, 2007
This review is from: Hitler's Diaries, Starring Adolf Hitler. The Rise & Fall & Mind & God of Adolf Hitler (DVD)
Where do you start on a DVD like this. ?
I will start with the better part on side B dealing with Japanese atrocities in Asia & in particular with the Nanking massacres.
The film is graphic, shocking & based on facts with a scholarly / historical approach. There are extensive eye witness accounts of the most appalling brutality not just from Chinese surviviors but also Western journalists & even a genuine German Nazi whi tried to shelter some of the Chinese. There are also eye witness accounts from Japanese soldiers, officers, journalists & even from contemporary Japanese newspapers with photographs.
The massacres were sustained (c 8 weeks in Nanking alone), widespread & sanctioned from the very top as a war tactic aimed at cowing resistance to Imperial Japan.
This movie is not for the squemish or the faint hearted.
That's the (relatively) good part. The Hitler diaries is just the opposite. It is full of action shots of explosions, deaths, atrocities, mass murder etc but it jumps around in a bizarre manner. The film follows the conventional chronology starting with Hitler's early years, his brutal childhood & teenage poverty in Vienna. Then on into the 1st World War thru to the end in 1945.
There are glaring errors, Hitler did not conceive of & begin the Autobahn construction, he accelerated it after he came to power. He did not design the Volkswagen, he commissioned Ferdinand Porsche to do it.
As we get to the war years the film becomes increasingly muddled with continuous flashbacks to the 30's newsreels & Triumph of the Will. This is not only inaccurate, it is confusing. Do we really need to see the Leibstandarte marching in the Triumph sequence three times but with different music ? Why do we get to see Hitler's 1930's Newsreels in the middle of the war footage ? Why put Hitler descending the steps at Berchtesgaden to the Badenweiler march ? This is just silly.
Why is the Holocaust dealt with twice but with much of the same footage ?
We are told early on that Hitler was guided by something called "the voice". This told him all sorts of things incl that he must slaughter the Jews. There are other continous pseudo-magic / paranormal claims throughout. Indeed if this film has a central theme it could be said to be "blame the voice" ! If this is true it presumably means that Hitler was what would now be called a schizophrenic, insane which lets him off the hook for any guilt or blame.
The film does not explicitly make this claim it only implies it but without anything like enough evidence for such a conclusion.
I am inclined to think that without such evidence that "the voice is innocent".
A truly awful, pointless movie.
Lastly, despite the title, there is no mention anywhere of Hitler's diaries.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
What a waste!, December 6, 2007
This review is from: Hitler's Diaries, Starring Adolf Hitler. The Rise & Fall & Mind & God of Adolf Hitler (DVD)
Waste of money! This DVD is just a collection of footage and text on the screen with excerpts from a diary. With no narrator or dramaturgic variation or story line, this seems like a cheap spin-off product just made fro making a profit. There are many other GOOD movies and documentaries in the same category that are far more recommendable! Save your money and shelf space on this one...
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