FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
HITLER'S HIT PARADE
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
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