Although some fine people like Alec Guinness, Anthony Hopkins, and Everett Sloane have played Adolph Hitler on the big screen, Robert Carlyle in playing the psychotic dictator of Nazi Germany struck out into new territory. For the only time I can recall we see the roots of Hitler first as a juvenile, a frustrated artist, a soldier in World War I and his gradual involvement with right wing politics in the post war yeas. The film ends with him finally attaining total power with the death of President Hindenburg and the combination of the offices of President and Chancellor. After that we get into grounds far more familiar to American audiences.
Watching newsreels of Hitler these days with his Charlie Chaplin like mustache, not to mention Chaplin's own devastating satire of Hitler in The Great Dictator he comes off as a comic little character. Millions of feet of film from World War II with Nazis portrayed as bumbling idiots and the German language reduced to guttural double talk by comedians like Danny Kaye and the Three Stooges have tended to level the impact of Hitler. What Carlyle does and it's his greatest accomplishment is to show the power of Hitler as orator, something that I fear if you are not fluent in German you cannot comprehend. Carlyle's speeches in English show exactly how powerful this man could be and how he could sway a nation to evil.
Another thing that Hitler: The Rise of Evil shows are the many women around him in the early years. In fact some of the other Nazi male figures are reduced to cardboard figures. Other than Carlyle, it's the women who have the best parts in this film from Stockard Channing as Hitler's doting mother, to Jena Malone his niece Geli Raubal and presumed first love who committed suicide as the official accounts have, to Julianna Margulies as Frieda Hanfstaengl married to Ernest 'Putzi' Hanfstaengl played by Liev Schreiber, an American who married Schreiber and became entranced by Hitler's charisma.
The opposition as it were is characterized by Matthew Modine and his wife Patricia Neker. Modine is an investigative reporter who sees and writes about the danger that Hitler personifies. Not enough read what he has to say, but one of them was Adolph Hitler and Modine becomes one of the first inmates of the newly formed concentration camps.
Peter O'Toole is the biggest name in the cast as President Hindenburg, a man who was just too old and tired to deal with the Bohemian corporal as Hitler was contemptuously characterized by a lot of the professional military. O'Toole is outstanding as usual. One thing not shown was that Hindenburg's own son had become a Nazi party member and that had to have had a crippling affect on whatever course of action Hindenburg wanted to pursue.
This is one story that should get retold every few years and Hitler: The Rise Of Evil is as good a telling as it can get.
Watching newsreels of Hitler these days with his Charlie Chaplin like mustache, not to mention Chaplin's own devastating satire of Hitler in The Great Dictator he comes off as a comic little character. Millions of feet of film from World War II with Nazis portrayed as bumbling idiots and the German language reduced to guttural double talk by comedians like Danny Kaye and the Three Stooges have tended to level the impact of Hitler. What Carlyle does and it's his greatest accomplishment is to show the power of Hitler as orator, something that I fear if you are not fluent in German you cannot comprehend. Carlyle's speeches in English show exactly how powerful this man could be and how he could sway a nation to evil.
Another thing that Hitler: The Rise of Evil shows are the many women around him in the early years. In fact some of the other Nazi male figures are reduced to cardboard figures. Other than Carlyle, it's the women who have the best parts in this film from Stockard Channing as Hitler's doting mother, to Jena Malone his niece Geli Raubal and presumed first love who committed suicide as the official accounts have, to Julianna Margulies as Frieda Hanfstaengl married to Ernest 'Putzi' Hanfstaengl played by Liev Schreiber, an American who married Schreiber and became entranced by Hitler's charisma.
The opposition as it were is characterized by Matthew Modine and his wife Patricia Neker. Modine is an investigative reporter who sees and writes about the danger that Hitler personifies. Not enough read what he has to say, but one of them was Adolph Hitler and Modine becomes one of the first inmates of the newly formed concentration camps.
Peter O'Toole is the biggest name in the cast as President Hindenburg, a man who was just too old and tired to deal with the Bohemian corporal as Hitler was contemptuously characterized by a lot of the professional military. O'Toole is outstanding as usual. One thing not shown was that Hindenburg's own son had become a Nazi party member and that had to have had a crippling affect on whatever course of action Hindenburg wanted to pursue.
This is one story that should get retold every few years and Hitler: The Rise Of Evil is as good a telling as it can get.