H-NET FILM REVIEW
Published by H-German@h-net.msu.edu (April 2003)

"Hitler: The Rise of Evil." CBS, May 18 and 20, 2003. Directed by Christian
Duguay, produced by John Pielmeier and John Ryan, screenplay by John
Pielmeier and G. Ross Parker. 2002, color.

Reviewed for H-German by Theodore Rippey <theodor@bgnet.bgsu.edu>,
Department of German, Russian & East Asian Languages, Bowling Green State
University

High Stakes, Small Screen

Only in his wildest speculation could Nietzsche have foreseen the uses and
abuses to which history would be put in its age of technical
reproducibility, and Marx could scarcely have imagined the farce-potential
formed by the convergence of history and television. Were that they were
here with us to witness the culture industry's latest self-aggrandizing
attempt to Say Something Important. They could have made plenty of hay of
"Hitler: The Rise of Evil" (produced by Alliance Atlantis, directed by
Christian Duguay, and aired on CBS). Farcical indeed (even if
unintentionally so) and abusive in any number of ways, the two-part series
also offers plenty of fuel for the effort to continue Karl's musings
base/superstructure and re-hash Friedrich's principle of eternal recurrence.


The Hitler Story

We have known at least since _The Great Dictator_ that one can use Hitler to
make a hit, and the Fuehrer's allure (before, during, and after the Third
Reich) has been grappled with through the years by such able practitioners
of pen- and/or camera craft as Brecht, Tabori, Syberberg, Delillo, and Mel
Brooks, to name but a few. Whether comic or deadpan, creative works have as
often sidestepped the psychological-realist pretense of traditional
historical fiction when it comes to this particular man as they have tried
to explain who Hitler was. Ironically, charting the chilling labyrinth of
Hitler's psyche has been a task largely left to historians (of all kinds),
and since no one actually reads the academic stuff, the History Channel
(which my grad school roommate dubbed The Hitler Channel) has provided
society at large a convenient and compelling thumbnail that I will call The
Hitler Story. It goes like this: Hitler was a nasty and hateful guy, and he
especially hated the Jews. He was crazy, but he was also a genius. He had
the power to mesmerize people, and he used his evil gifts line up an entire
nation in lock-step behind him and march them into destruction. Anyone who
resisted his charismatic pull was run out of the country, tossed in jail, or
shot on the spot. That's about it.

CBS allotted Alliance and Duguay four hours of air to tell their tale. The
series Web site flaunts its scholar-consultants and claims the film focuses
on "closely on how the embittered, politically fragmented and economically
buffeted German society after World War I made that ascent possible." But
what do they really make of their chance to challenge and enlighten the
sweeps-week audience? Did they add something new to The Hitler Story, or is
their "television event of the season!" just more of the same?


NIGHT 1

Segment 1: Strength, determination, purity, and a naked blonde

Fasten your seatbelts. It's time to go from Linz, 1899 to the Western Front,
1918 in seventeen minutes. Before the opening credits even conclude, we've
seen young "Adi" beaten by his father (who cites Parsifal as the embodiment
of the above-mentioned virtues) and doted on by Mutti Clara (Stockard
Channing). Even as a boy, Hitler has that look in his eye (Duguay is liberal
with his close-ups right from the outset), and the score's generous helpings
of creepy, low-register strings (Normand Corbeil) prod us into visceral
acknowledgment of the presence of evil. One telling scene begins with an
extreme close-up of young Adolf's fork as it pierces the skin of that
classic German phallic symbol, a sausage. The next thing we know, papa is
collapsing in his death throes as a steely Adi turns back to his plate
rather than help. Nothing if not determined, a juvenile Hitler castigates
his breast cancer-stricken mother for doing "anything to ruin my career." He
makes it to the art academy nonetheless, but as we see (in full view; good
way to sop the accidental viewer from changing channels), Hitler folds in
the face of the figure drawing model's blond-braided, bare glory. Life is
hard for a budding artist with minimal talent, a castrating father, and a
smothering mother, it would appear. (It is Vienna, after all, so the writers
take the opportunity to play Freud.) Already penniless, Hitler is told by
his teacher that the people in his paintings "have no life to them." (Get
it? He's a sociopath.) His existential dilemma and economic plight make his
mind fertile ground for anti-Semitic conspiracy theory--he happens along to
a Karl Luegar speech in one scene--and he's soon off to Germany, then to the
trenches to fight for his people. During the war we "learn" that Hitler is
manipulative, cruel (he beats his dog), and obsessively anti-Semitic.

Segment 2: Emergency

Hitler finally meets a man he can look up to, a certain Captain Roehm, who
rolls in with a Freikorps detachment as the scene opens to gun down some
reds and restore German order and pride. (The score in this sequence is
disturbingly heroic.) Hired as an informant by the army after the Bavarian
Soviet is bloodily dispatched, Hitler informs a superior officer that the
Jews should and (crucially) could be got rid of. Duguay frames Carlyle's
face tightly and shoots him from below as he poses the ominous question,
"Can you imagine a world without them?" Again, the strings are there to
underscore the point. In the next shot, Roehm (Peter Stormare) looks on with
interest, and Hitler has begun to catch others' interest as well. The crowds
for his beer-hall speeches are growing, and journalist Fritz Gerlich (our
Good German for the evening, played by Matthew Modine) is in the seats for
one particularly fiery session. The TV audience of course knows what the
beer-hall audience doesn't, but we are encouraged to sympathize (empathize?)
with them as they are swept away by the gifted orator. Duguay reaches into
his bag of tricks to take us to that emotional place: he uses a dizzying,
"ER"-style 360-degree tracking shot to whirl us around Hitler as he delivers
arousing bit about purifying the nation. No shock, then, that nurse Carol
Hathaway enters the story in the next sequence. Julianna Margulies plays
Helene Hanfstaengl, and she and her husband, Ernst (Liev Schreiber), later
introduce Hitler to his first deep pockets.

Segment 3: "One big political brawl"

More beer-hall bluster, and Duguay starts quoting Riefenstahl here with the
occasional low camera angle and nifty bit of mass-leader choreography. We
spend some time in Friedrich Hollaender's Tingel-Tangel cabaret (he and
Hanfstaengl were school pals), but we get more insight into Blandine
Ebinger/Nicole Marischka's bustier than into leftist satire. Hollaender does
note that he's going o see Hitler because he "needs new material," and
Hanfstaengl, curious, tags along. Hanfstaengl becomes smitten, and the
alliance of capitalism and fascism is struck. As Hitler leads the crowd in
repeated cheers of "we will triumph", we're treated to another dramatic
swoop if the camera. (This one hurtles over the heads of the crowd right
into the Fuehrer's face). The next day, Hanfstaengl's piano rendition of
Wagner jerks a tear from Adolf, and the businessman explains to the corporal
the importance of rich backers. Gerlich is warming up to Hitler as well, or
at least finding him a fascinating contributor to the "big political brawl"
that should yield Germany a new leader and a new sense of direction.

Segment 4: "I think it's very hypnotic"

Hitler shows up in his best Lederhosen for a society dinner at the
Hanfstaengls. He alienates a baron whose father was Jewish but wins new
supporters, among them another captain (Goering, played by Chris Larkin).
Hitler takes the warm reception as an opportunity to reveal his new party
symbol. With the swastika poster stretched across his midsection, he turns
to Frau Hanfstaengl and asks her opinion. She scans the artist's work (but
only that? Margulies's eye movements and facial expressions are expertly
ambivalent here) and characterizes what she sees as "very hypnotic." It
looks like she's an easy mark for Adolf--her dress and shawl mark her
pre-existing preference for red and black. More beer-hall oratory follows,
and Hitler maneuvers Anton Drexler out of and himself in to control of the
party. It is 1921.

Segment 5: Hitler was a crumby guy

Remember the post-war German inflation? It has only now come to the writers'
minds, and they "teach" us about it by having Hitler snarl something about
wheelbarrows not being large enough o haul all the money it takes to buy a
loaf of bread. Commissar von Kahr orders Hitler to desist, so Hitler visits
the influential Gerlich on Hanfstaengl's advice. Be careful: there are so
many people trying to trip Hitler up at this point that you might start to
get behind him. Just to make sure you don't, Duguay works in a
shot/countershot sequence with Gerlich and Hitler that culminates in an
unappetizing close-up of Adolf as he simultaneously spews anti-Semitic
vitriol and tea-cake crumbs. He hates the Jews, he spits when he speaks
about how he hates them, and he talks with his mouth full. Bad, very bad.
But that doesn't stop those Germans from turning out in ever-larger numbers.
At segment's end, 8,000 pack the Circus Krone to scream along about racial
victory, and Duguay give us the most _Triumph_-like sequence we have yet
seen.

Segment 6: Is that a gun to your head or are you just happy to see me?

The Putsch goes down (figuratively, then literally). Hitler has brought Kahr
et al. to heel and dreams of an advance on Berlin, but Luedendorff's
bumbling (apparently much more than the comparatively minuscule degree of
public support) hampers the operation. On the run from the police, Hitler
seeks refuge at he Hanfstaengl home. He and Helene have an oddly erotic
face-to-face (far from his pocket, his gun is pressed to his temple), and
Carlyle's collapse is a touch too pathetic. (Granted, it's hard to play
Hitler and not overact). But of course, Hitler is not an honorable guy, so
he doesn't take the honorable way out. Having revealed his feelings to
Helene in his inimitable way, he is hustled off by the Schupos to stand
trial for treason.

Segment 7: Trial and error

Unreconstructed nationalists have feelings, too, and Gerlich gets downright
distraught after witnessing the eruption of support for Hitler in the very
court that should be extinguishing the rabid neophyte's budding political
career. "He's not human; he's studied people to appear human," Gerlich tells
his wife, Sophie (Patrizia Netzer). Convicted for his role in the putsch,
the monster seems (not for the last time, of course) boxed in when he really
has everything and everyone just where he wants them. There is a pattern
developing here. Hitler's psychological-emotional tentacles of attraction
grip most occupants every social space he enters (the beer-hall, the old
money dining room, the court). He brings people under his sway with
near-magical aplomb. It's The Hitler Story redux, and it does little to
expose the intricacies of aestheticized Nazi politics.


NIGHT 2

Segment 1: "Come closer"

Hitler spends time in Landsberg (a Weimar-era version of the country club
jail), where he pens _Mein Kampf_ and pines for Helene Hanfstaengl (as we
see upon their reunion). But there is a new woman in Hitler's life: Geli
(his half-sister's daughter, played by Jena Malone) fits the Aryan ideal to
her last golden lock, and the impotence that defined Hitler's encounter with
the Germania-like figure model is a distant memory here. "Uncle Dolf"
controls Geli's movements obsessively and (as we see in a scene where he
orders her to walk increasingly rapid, smaller circles around him) to great
libidinal effect. As she pants and pleads, we listen to the strains of
Wagner that fill Adolf's head. That's what Hitler finds sexy. Sick, sick,
sick.

Segment 2: "He's a monster"

The party re-unites under Hitler's forceful hand, Luedendorff is set out on
the curb, and Roehm marches off in a huff. These opening segments stress
Hitler's (dare I say) degeneracy--bemoaning her stifling life under uncle
Dolf's wing, Geli tells their driver, "You have no idea what he [Hitler]
asks of me"--but in their favor it can be said that the filmmakers also
start to reveal him as a tactician. This is positive because it sheds at
least some light on the complicated flow of economic and political capital
that the Nazis, led by Hitler, exploited. The narrated time is briefer in
night two, and Duguay seems to take the opportunity to relax in this
segment, laying off camera and editing acrobatics in an effort to consider
calmly some of the political twists and turns of the republic's
stabilization phase. The big loser here is Roehm, who is told by Hitler that
"the wheels of history have turned," and left the SA as the collective odd
man out.

Segment 3: Come to the cabaret, old chum

Hanfstaengl sense Hitler and Helene's intensifying mutual interest, and
Helene dives into Nazi politics as a hostess/fundraiser. Duguay takes Herr
Hanfstaengl back to Hollaender's cabaret, where Hollaender informs his old
friend that the cabaret doesn't "serve your kind anymore." The cabaret song
(a satire of anti-Semitism) becomes the underlying soundtrack for a montage
of Hitler's campaigns in the late 1920s. As electoral success increases, so
does Hitler's tyrannical rule over Geli. Gerlich, meanwhile, is chafing
under his publisher's ban on Hitler reporting. In the midst of all this,
we're shown a 2-3 second shot of a front-page story on the 1929 stock market
crash. Remember the Depression? Remember Weimar's terminal unemployment
crisis? I hope so, because that is all you will see of it here. Geli,
stifled under Hitler's thumb, is driven to suicide and Eva Braun steps in to
fill the Aryan Maiden role.

Segments 4-5: "How would I answer to God?"

It is February, 1932, and Hitler is finally a German citizen. He has all
sorts of relationship problems, though: Geli is gone, Roehm is bristling
under Hitler's comparatively diplomatic political strategy, and Hindenburg's
distaste for the "Bohemian corporal" (conveyed with just the right amount of
grizzle and gruff by Peter O'Toole) is keeping Hitler's hands off the prize.
He can neither beat the Generalfeldmarschall in the presidential election
nor force his way into the chancellor's chair. He is not helped by Gerlich,
now a Vernunftrepublikaner who defies the boss's wishes and starts to
scrutinize Hitler in the _Muenchener Neueste Nachrichten_. Eva is now the
main decoration in the Eagle's Nest, and Angela's warnings to Hitler's new
girlfriend only produce a confrontation.

As the torchlight procession marches past his window singing the "Horst
Wessel Lied" on the evening he appoints Hitler chancellor, Hindenburg is
left to contemplate what to say when he meets his maker. By this point, the
movie as a movie has become a great deal more watchable: Carlyle's Hitler
has become more character than caricature, the supporting cast (Schreiber
and Stormare in particular) is consistently hitting the right notes, and the
Gerlich storyline is threatening to become an engaging examination of
politics and media. It doesn't, and indeed the screenplay's untamable
voyeuristic and pop-psychoanalytic impulses continue compromise the film's
didactic potential. The silliness of the earlier Angela/Eva standoff sets
the stage for another gratuitous, overwrought scene twisted eroticism that
puts Hitler's face in Eva's lap just before he makes the call to arrange the
meeting with Papen, which finally sets the Fuehrer on the path to the
chancellorship.

Segment 6: "Certain civil rights must be suspended"

Hindenburg's wish to leave his country in capable hands is fulfilled, albeit
not in the way he had hoped. According to the Fuehrer, the
Generalfeldmarschall is a "stupid, old fool" just like Papa Hitler. The
brownshirted block has held the Reichstag hostage long enough to force the
latest castrating father to succumb, and the engineered Reichstag fire gives
Hitler his pretext for the Enabling Act. With Hitler's Kroll Opera speech,
Duguay gets his chance to show us in one, fell swoop how the Nazis picked
democracy and civil apart in Germany. Camera angles and movement put us back
in Riefenstahl territory here, but Duguay allows plenty of grumbling in the
assembled parliamentary ranks and intercuts the speech with Gerlich's final
editorial meeting at _Der Gerade Weg_ to show us how serious and horrible
this historical moment is. Gerlich is put out of commission by Roehm's boot,
and Goering leads a stirring rendition of "Deutschland, Deutschland ueber
alles" to get the unruly representatives on board. When all else fails, give
ham-fisted patriotism a try--a maxim with which we are all too familiar
these days.

Segment 7: "Just outside the village of Dachau"

Our story closes (could it have been otherwise?) with the Holocaust. Hitler
brings his gun to bear on Roehm (raised in the moment before he enters
Roehm's room, the barrel looks just like the index and middle fingers Hitler
extends when orating), and the blood of the Nazis' enemies (including that
of Gerlich, now the last Good German standing) flows as Hitler tightens his
absolute grip. The Tingel-Tangel is shut down, and a Modine voice-over reads
Gerlich's last letter to Sophie, in which he urges "others to speak out" and
"embrace courage as a gift." Hanfstaengl gets Hitler's permission to travel
to America for a reunion, but Helene is not interested. "I have finally
found someone who I can believe in," she says, making it clear that she will
stand with the Fuehrer in Germany's moment of truth. A concluding montage of
black-and-white photos, overlaid with text, gives us a two-minute history of
the Nazi war effort and the Final Solution. What began with Parsifal on the
gramophone ends with the crematoria, and in case you've been wondering along
the way, "The only necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing."


The Hitler Story

How do you like your Hitler? Petty, ratlike, and psychosexually
dysfunctional? Or driven, dynamic, and diabolically inspired? "Hitler: The
Rise of Evil" gives us both, and as each vies for supremacy, one recalls
that Elvis Costello refrain: "Two little Hitlers will fight it out until /
One little Hitler does the other one's will." And as the wrestling match
unfolds, one pauses occasionally to wonder about the contribution these four
hours make to popular understandings of fascism and modern German history.
And here one is forced to conclude that this contribution is at best
essentially meaningless and at worst thoroughly counterproductive. In its
simplistic equation of Hitler with evil--not to mention the even more
simplistic motto the filmmakers borrow from Burke--and its near-absolute
failure to expose the complexities of "the embittered, politically
fragmented and economically buffeted German society after World War I made
[Hitler's] ascent possible," the film makes no progress toward complicating
The Hitler Story. What it offers instead is sensationalistic embellishment
to an all too familiar tale, one that has been told the wrong way enough
times to move a conscientious student of history to tears but will perhaps
one day, in the same major-network forum, be done right. Hitler, after all,
is not going anywhere.


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