An American historian (played by Robert Balaban) makes the discovery of his career: Adolf Hitler is alive and well and living in a basement in the Kantstrasse. Of course, he is now 103 years old and confined to a wheelchair, but he has a younger-looking new wife, Hortense (Katharina Bhm).
Over 10 days of interviews, he explains that Goebbels had cleverly suggested - when the Third Reich looked doomed - that an actor and doppelgnger would sacrifice himself so Hitler could escape. Unfortunately, after the war, no one would believe the real Hitler's story and he has some difficulty convincing the researcher now!
For his first film as director (and writer and leading player), one of the Berlinale's most welcome regulars Armin Mueller-Stahl has confected an outrageous burlesque. It dances over the black humours of Lubitsch, Chaplin and Mel Brooks, and brilliantly blends documentary-like black-and-white footage with the aged Hitler's present-day protestations that he lost the war "because of women - that's why I hate them!"
Largely shot in Babelsberg, over 24 days on a budget of DM2.5 (US$1.6) million, the film makes a new departure also for executive producer Gert Golde, founding a new film and TV company with Rudolf Steiner. "I wanted this historical time not to be forgotten, especially in view of some tendencies today. And we made it without subsidies," he emphasises. Phillip Bergson
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