European Films

Helge Schneider as Adolf Hitler in Dani Levy's comedy 'Mein Führer - Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler'. Photo (c): X Verleih, 2006.

Swiss-born Jewish director Dani Levy shocked and delighted German audiences with his German Jewish comedy hit Alles auf Zucker! (Go for Zucker!) in 2004, which swept the German National Film Prizes, the Lolas. It was seen by over a million people in the cinema and stirred a fierce debate over how the Germans of today should deal with the Jews in their country: would they be allowed to laugh at them after what happened sixty years ago? Judging from the success of Zucker, the answer seems to be a resounding yes. After Zucker's contemporary story, which dealt with Germans' uneasiness with all things Jewish in the country's past only indirectly, Levy will next tackle the issue head-on with the January release of his Hitler comedy Mein Führer - Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (lit. My Führer - The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler).

Levi's film is a fictive look at the week between Christmas and New Year's in 1944-45, when it started to dawn on Hitler he was losing the war. Hitler (played by Helge Schneider) is in  a severe state of depression, though he is scheduled to deliver a rousing speech to the nation on New Year's Day. Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) then decides that what the Führer needs in order to deliver a speech that inspires the nation is some help from his former theatre teacher and namesake Adolf Israel Grünbaum -- a Jew (played by Ulrich Mühe, EFA Best Actor winner for his role as a Stasi officer in Das Leben der Anderen/The Lives of Others). 

Of course, what is most interesting about Levy's work is the sort of societal and historical dynamics that surround the release of his audacious, ground-breaking ideas. His films are much more than entertainments, exactly because he treats the plots of his films like normal subjects for a comedy or farce, when in truth these have been, erm, nonkosher for the past sixty years in Germany. In that sense, his films contribute to the healthy debate about how Germans should treat their own recent past that was also partially inspired by books such as Schlink's Der Vorleser and films such as Der Untergang (Downfall), which reconstructed the last days and hours of Hitler (and starred Bruno Ganz -- a Swiss actor -- as Hitler); and Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl - The Final Days), about a real-life German Nazi-resistance hero.  

Mein Führer - Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler will be released in Germany on January 11, and co-stars Katja Riemann as Eva Braun, Ulrich Noethen as Heinrich Himmler and Stefan Kurt as Albert Speer.

Related links:

>The official website of the film (also includes the trailer)
>An interview with director Dani Levy about Alles auf Zucker! (Go for Zucker!)  

Related items:

>review: Alles auf Zucker! (Go for Zucker!)
>review: Der Untergang (Downfall)
>previous preview: La môme (La vie en rose)

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