Best Hitler Movie Ever

Rating: 10/10 (24 March 2006)

I saw this movie on DVD, forgetting all the hoopla over the premier of a movie that "humanized" Hitler. It did precisely that: it humanized a monster because he was really human and it showed him for the ugly, little cruel man he was. That he was kind to his help and his dog weighs light in his balance against his mass murder and all out war. Bruno Ganz blew away all those pompous Brits who normally star in those Hitler-in-the-Berlin-bunker sort of movie. He was awesome, almost real. The scenes above ground in bomb/shell/bullet ravaged Berlin are like Dutch master portraits of hell. Here, we see Berlin in her death agony at the end of the greatest war. Now it's the Zero Hour, Stunde Null, in Berlin in all the horror and absurdity. Ironically, they used the ultimate WW ll victim city as for location, St. Petersburg or Leningrad. It captures the feeling of one of the most horrific battles in modern history, in small, block by block scenes of small scale horror. The most horrible scene however, occurred in the bunker, as ugly Frau and Herr Goebbels poison their five children to death, before doing the world a favor by killing each other.
The movie is based on Traudl Junge's story, a pretty young steno/secretary of Hitler, and what she saw in those horrible last days. She was a teenager from Bavaria who was hired to be Hitler's steno in 1942, when the war seemed distant and going well, and lived in his court from then on. She adored Hitler like a teeny bopper going nuts over some rock star. But in the end, with the horror swirling around her and her idol ranting about killing even the German people and all his entourage off as the climax to his 1000 Year Reich, she reconsiders him a bit. Eva Braun was portrayed as some sort of party animal, drinking and dancing in a house as the Russians shelled it. and telling Traudl how much she hated Hitler's German shepherd Biondi. It is all fact based so anyone familiar with history knows the plot. Bravo for making such an ugly and real movie!