An inquiry into decades of cultural fascination with the Nazi leader, and the ramifications of such a fascination on present day politics.An inquiry into decades of cultural fascination with the Nazi leader, and the ramifications of such a fascination on present day politics.An inquiry into decades of cultural fascination with the Nazi leader, and the ramifications of such a fascination on present day politics.
- Awards
- 1 nomination
Adolf Hitler
- Self
- (archive footage)
Mike Taibbi
- Self
- (archive footage)
Sebastian Haffner
- Self
- (archive footage)
Yehuda Bauer
- Self - Historian: Rethinking the Holocaust
- (as Prof. Yehuda Bauer)
Peter Theiss-Abendroth
- Self - Psychiatrist
- (as Dr. Peter Theiss-Abendroth)
Winfried Nerdinger
- Self - Historian: Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism
- (as Prof. Winfried Nerdinger)
Alexander Gauland
- Self - Far-Right German Leader
- (archive footage)
- Directors
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- ConnectionsFeatures Triumph of the Will (1935)
Featured review
Commits the Sins it Would Save us From
This is an odd enterprise that seems to be an endless series of prefaces without a main analytical claim or narrative. Initially, it purports to shine new light on the relevance of the myth of Hitler and the fissures or wounds in a social culture that make fascism seductive for many people, but despite lining up some famous historians, these experts are never allowed to shape a coherent argument or narrative, but are often edited to speak in gnomic, mysterious sound-bytes that the documentarians use to launch, free-associationally, to literally some other person, place and a new set of observations. The documentary also clutters its path with the voguish but already tedious convention of lavishing screen-time on the clap-board apparatus of each interview. This is telling, as the documentary is more obsessed with its appearances and its mechanics than in being insightful or explanatory. It changes locales and interviewees about every 90 seconds, yet the film spends over ten minutes with a dull, clownish anti-historian notorious for claiming Hitler had no role in the Holocaust and was a "friend to the Jews." The documentarian says "how could we make a documentary about Hitler and not talk to" this guy? Uh, they could/ should have, and stuck to their original claim. Due to the experts it does allow to speak, the whole film is still interesting, but it tantalizes and torments more than it informs and spends too much time recycling known iconography, film clips (I bet you never saw clips of "Triumph of the Will" before), and familiar biographical and historical material, thus evading the promise of the film, which was to explain the appeal of fascism, which is now tormenting the West again, as many politicians in the first decade after the war were terrified it eventually might. They merely needed to live long enough to see a culture filled with apocalypse-courting, nationalistic, conspiracy-minded, half-educated truth-deniers with cheap, online broadcast opportunities. The moment 1940s experts feared is here. How our moment apparently resembles the 1930s in key ways, despite obvious economic differences, and how and why Hitler, a failure at everything but hypnotizing a nation of 80 million people into joining him in a suicide pact, appealed to Germans in the 1930s, is not made a coherent argument. The best thing the film may do is advertise the 1978 book by Sebastian Haffner, "The Meaning of Hitler"--that is a compact book-length argument. Though the film borrows some chapter titles from the book, it doesn't really reveal Haffner's analysis.
helpful•56
- Johann_Cat
- Dec 29, 2021
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official site
- Languages
- Also known as
- Mit Hitlera
- Filming locations
- Berlin, Germany(Bunker Site)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $12,804
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $4,976
- Aug 15, 2021
- Gross worldwide
- $12,804
- Runtime1 hour 32 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1
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By what name was The Meaning of Hitler (2020) officially released in Canada in English?
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