4/23/2005|||111426794078078141||||||

A CRITIC

While I hate to be out of step with a historian as distinguished as Michael Burleigh, I’m still scratching my head over his TLS review of the magnificent Berlin '45 film, "Downfall". (Sadly, the piece isn’t yet on-line.) Burleigh loathed almost everything, from the "amateurish" battle scenes to the decision to cast “a Bruce Willis lookalike as the SS medical corps answer to Florence Nightingale”. Not to mention the failure to show Hitler killing himself:

We see plenty of SS men blasting their brains out, but the film turns coy when it is the Fuehrer’s turn. We see a corpse wrapped in a blanket, and a bit of blood on the sofa, but not the annihilating moment. But then to show Hitler shooting himself might indicate a certain finality, the last thing anyone inadvertently collusive with Nazi myth-making seems to welcome.”

What a strange article. File under "missing the point". For a more rounded view, try Martha B.

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2005/04/critic-while-i-hate-to-be-out-of-step.html|||4/23/2005 04:32:00 pm||||||

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