Gotterdammerung : the Reich on the pyre

Rating: 9/10 (7 May 2006)

Adolph Hitler has accumulated more film reals than even the worst of his rivals. We can ask which is your favourite Hitler movie? We could not say the same for FDR, Churchill or Hitler's equally brutal nemeses the dictator Joseph Stallin.
This version carefully tracks the Historical accounts rendered by reputable historians Trevor-Roper and John Toland. And we have two prior films specifically dealing with Hitler's demise and the collapse of the Reich: Last Days and The Bunker which follow the same general line. However some in recent years have questioned whether this account is correct.
Some say the account given us is far too heroic, a tale shaped into a Wagnerian epic. I suppose we'll never know what really occurred in the Bunker but the performance of Bruno Gantz as Hitler was grand eloquent. I'm sorry I know only a smattering of Deutch insufficient to follow the dialogue without sub-titles but Ganz does not read lines they echo off his face. One needs no sub-titles when he acts.
None of the versions of the Untergang (literally Going Under) talk of Hitler's double, found by the Russians stuffed in a chimney in the Reich Chancellery Garden. I wonder why.
Bravo I gave this a ******** 9 **********