Hitler, a Career (1977)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1977
	Director: Joachim Fest, Christian Herrendoerfer
	Actors: Gert Westphal, Stephen Murray, Artur Axmann
	Country: D
	Genre: Documentary, War
	Conditions of visioning: 25.02.2017, VOD, 42" TV
Synopsis: The story of Adolf Hitler's life with emphasis on his talent for seducing crowds.
Review: I have recently been interested in learning more about The Third Reich and Adolf Hitler's life, topics of which I am frankly quasi ignorant apart from the biased French view taught at school and the American one in the more known movies and Documentaries. So I promptly started this German Documentary when I saw it on Netflix in spite of its duration of two and a half hours. It is so well made that I realized only after visioning that is is now 40 years-old, older than me, and that its production year is now as close to the events it depicts as it is to today. It was produced in West Germany which was still more than ten years away from re-unification, so the mind-set at the time was different from today but it doesn't really show on this Documentary that I could have believed was made last year. The movie consists solely of archive footage of Hitler, his entourage, contemporary events and the occasional stock footage to illustrate how the world looked like at the time. The video is accompanied by a narrator's voice (in English in the version I watched) guiding you through what you see. For me the tour de force in this Documentary, and its main interest, is the analysis made of Hitler's character supported by archive footage that was put together at a time before the digital age. The historical and political background is always present, but the Documentary constantly focuses on the evolution of its main character, and how events had an influence (or not) on him. This is already obvious from the very beginning when a full 10-minute speech by the Führer at its height is peeled in details, from the pause at the beginning to the hand gestures and the increasing confidence in the words. A quite fascinating approach. The rest of the Documentary is of the same style, deciphering the mystery of how can one man entice millions, become so powerful, and in the end be the major cause behind 50 million death. Well at least this is how the Documentary shows it. For Dramas set in Germany during WWII JoRafCinema can advise Hannah Arendt, Lore, Elser or Frantz, and about WWII in other countries Roman Polanski's The Pianist and Paul Verhoeven's Black Book. And the German Die Welle is a must-watch.
Rating: 7 /10