Swastika Movie Review

It is hard to imagine that anyone could recall the Third Reich with affection and nostalgia, but this 1973 British film by Philippe Mora did infuriate many who first saw it at the Cannes Film Festival that year. The most stunning portions of the film feature color home movies shot by Eva Braun at Berchtesgaden. Mora retained a lip reader to determine what Hitler and his friends were saying to each other and then found an actor who could mimic the Fuhrer's style of social chatter. The conversation is completely banal, and so are most of the activities on the terrace at Berchtesgaden. It was this very banality that disgusted the audiences who first saw the confiscated films, one referring to “the appalling normality of Hitler's home life.” Swastika also includes propaganda movies extolling the virtues of National Socialism as well as segments of the infamous Jud Suess, a film that so horrified Ferdinand Marian, its guilt-ridden star, that he later committed suicide. Mora's objective in revealing Hitler and his cronies in all their boring blandness was to render them comprehensible as human beings rather than as monsters. But to watch Eva Braun preening in front of the camera to the tune of Helen Morgan's “What Wouldn't I Do for That Man” and to hear Hitler blather about how all the women present would prefer a screening of Gone with the Wind with Clark Gable is an absolutely surreal experience. How could Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and Dachau have existed with these numbskulls at the helm? Swastika, the sort of documentary that makes you want to crawl under your seat when you see it theatrically, is also available for private appraisal on home video.

1973 ?m/C GB D: Philippe Mora. VHS