HITLER'S HIT PARADE
Directed by: Oliver Axer & Susanne Benze.
Produced by: C. Cay Wesnigk.
Edited by: Mechthild Bruns.
Language: German with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Germany. 76 min. Not Rated.

During this 76-minute montage of Nazi-era film and music, a young girl plays in her miniature home with a framed photo of Hitler hanging on the wall. The red and black of the Nazi banners boldly stand out during public celebrations. And in a section entitled "A Country in Bloom," beautiful blonde women harvest grapes. This documentary offers the real "Springtime for Hitler." For a little cheesecake, two women offer a peek at their panties, dancing up a storm on a bench with knees wide apart. This footage is intercut with reactions shots (from another film source) of service men enjoying the view. In fact, the sources for this collection of Third Reich artifacts are not identified at all, but are presumably from home movies, studio films, newsreels, and propaganda. Throughout the film, there is neither narration nor any intertitles providing background information.

Undercutting the onscreen frivolity is footage of the destruction of World War II, archival scenes from the Warsaw Ghetto and the Theresienstadt concentration camp, set to upbeat music. Among the disturbing images in "Funtime!" is the public humiliation of a young man and woman having their heads shaved in front of their neighbors (although the images do speak for themselves to some extent, countless questions are raised while viewing the film). And in the chapter "Gas," hydrogen cyanide being made in a laboratory leads to a close-up of a Zyklon-b canister and then concentration camp footage, where you can practically smell the stench. At one level, the film is fascinating. But without context, Hitler's Hit Parade amounts to a repetition of contrasting images, proving irony only goes so far. Kent Turner
January 5, 2005