Hitler (1962)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Stuart Heisler directs this seldom seen film about the private life of Adolf Hitler. Hoping to find an explanation of the madman's methodical rise to power and demise of his domination of his war torn country ...look somewhere else. The evil dictator is shown struggling with his love life and reluctance to cooperate with his doctor(John Wengraf), who was trying to treat the leader with his impotency and Oedipal complex. Maria Emo plays Eva Braun; Heinrich Himmler is portrayed by Rick Traeger and Martin Kosleck plays Joseph Goebbels. The megalomaniac Hiter doesn't seem to see how his paranoia affects his decision making. Archival footage is employed to glue the movie's progression. Other cast members: Celia Lovsky, Narda Onyx, Gregory Gaye, John Mitchum, Carl Esmond and Sirry Steffen. This film is also known as Women of Nazi Germany. Those that harbor curiosity of Hitler should be pleased.

I have to draw a distinction between aesthetic properties and informative values when it comes to this movie.On the one hand, looking at the movie from an educational point of view, it may be of genuine value. Surveys consistently find that Americans, especially young Americans, are a people without history. Focus groups following the release of "Pearl Harbor" ten years ago discovered that an alarming percentage of the intended audience thought that John F. Kennedy was president when the attack occurred. A student at a famous Midwestern university complimented Barbara Tuchman for her lecture of the origins of World War I because he'd "always wondered why the other was called World War II." A survey done in 2010 found that one in five Americans didn't know which country the United States had won its independence from. I could go on but won't. I'll conclude by saying that for far too many of us, this movie, which identifies the guy named Adolf Hitler and suggests the role he played in the story of the 20th century, is invaluable.Now, as a polished piece of movie making, it's plain terrible. First, Richard Basehart is badly miscast. But then anyone would have been miscast in trying to play a figure from a patriotic cartoon in 1943. There is no "character arc." Hitler begins as a scowling, trigger-tempered character who berates everyone around him, lusts openly to dominate the world, and is beset by indistinct but definite Freudian problems that he steadfastly denies. The only time he smiles -- rather than smirks -- is at the end, when he is completely loony and is ordering divisions around on a map after he's been told they don't exist.There really isn't much about his conduct of the war. It's more about his inability to love and his paranoia with regard to subordinates. Here's an example of what I mean.He enters the office of his personal physician and asks gruffly, "So how is your patient today?" "You look pale. The fight with Hindenberg must have been strenuous. Are you still suffering from the headaches?" "I'm not HERE to talk about THAT!" Some of the material is highly conjectural. Hitler develops an affection for his niece, Geli, and when he fails in his attempt to make love to her, she threatens to let the world know that he is not a real man. This is a big mistake on Geli's part. It's also a big mistake on the part of Adolf. Anybody who is physically unable to get it on with the lovely, sixteen-year-old Cordula Trantow, who has scarcely lost her pubescent chubbiness, is in serious hormonal trouble.But the movie denies Hitler any sign of humanity. (His beloved German shepherd, Blondi, never appears.) He has Geli murdered. He tolerates the presence of Eva Braun only because of her loyalty to him. It's not clear whether he ever gets it on with Eva Braun or not. I think, that if the mores of the time had permitted it, the movie would have given us a homosexual Hitler. As it is, his intolerance for smoking is ridiculed and it's mentioned that he eats nothing but vegetables -- not like a real man, who prefers his meat ripped from the quivering flank of the nearest antelope.The movie is a trembling and insane wreck, rather like Himself after the assassination attempt. Yet I urge everyone under the age of forty to see it. It will help them to distinguish between Hitler and Charlie Chaplin, if they should ever hear of Charlie Chaplin.

The most terrible dictator of the 20th century is portrayed convincingly by the star Richard Basehart. The ruthless hate and mania of Hitler knew no bounds and this film portrays Hitler unsympathetically at different stages of his ascent to power in Germany. There is a perverse fascination to see Basehart's Hitler suffer in his personal life.Though the characters portrayed were real, this is a drama and not a documentary. If you're looking for a comprehensive study of Hitler's life, many books at the library are available. Watch this film for a straightforward look at Hitler's psychotic character as it may have manifested itself to those closest to him.This movie offers an "inside view" of Hitler's relationships with the women closest to him, Geli Raubal and Eva Braun. We also see the possibility that a pivotal and controversial event in the Nazi's rise to power--the burning of the Reichstag--was in all probability an arson committed by the Nazis themselves.The martial soundtrack by Hans J. Salter is an added bonus.

Richard Basehart is OK as Hitler, even if a bit over the top. The rest of the cast is horrible, frankly. The film is an attempt to render Hitler from a psychological perspective, but the insights it offers are cartoonish oversimplifications at best, and can't make up its mind what Hitler's "problem" was. At one point it is implied he was impotent, at another point it is suggested he was homosexual. And always the business about his mother. The film offers more speculation than fact. The time frame of the film is a bit skewed too. Nothing of Hitler's youth is presented for a supposed psychological study. The year 1934 takes up nearly half the film; World War II gets at most ten minutes start to finish. In the end you have no more understanding of Hitler's personality, or his appeal to Germans, than you did at the outset. Which marks the film as a failure.