For many people Adolf Hitler is the personification of evil, and someone incapable of being viewed on a human plane. Long before Oliver Hirschbiegal’s Downfall, however, the controversial 1973 documentary Swastika put an astounding and unnerving private face on the mastermind of the Holocaust, interweaving rare propaganda films with private home video footage shot by Eva Braun. When one talks about the banality of evil, it’s a work like Swastika which breathes life into the phenomenon of which they’re speaking.
Director Philippe Mora, in what is far and away his masterwork, applies a collagist’s instinct to his film, stitching together footage to provide a sort of impressionistic autobiography of Hitler’s rise and eventual fall, from the formation of the Nazi state through the end of World War II. It’s mostly wordless, apart from the audio attached to the archival footage itself, and simple translations of German speeches and personal exchanges.
Still, the movie builds and swells like a fine orchestration, and its astounding moments are many: footage of the Hindenburg disaster, Jesse Owens talking about his positive impression of Germany, and of course British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain touting his secured non-aggression promise from Hitler.
The most powerful footage, though, of course relates directly to Hitler and Braun, who is seen shelling peas, picking flowers, ice skating and practicing gymnastics. It was this material that most caused an uproar upon the movie’s release, and remains even today quite arresting. Some of it is strikingly mundane — Hitler commenting on the rise in popularity of color photography, and asking guests how a movie they screened the previous evening stacked up against Gone With the Wind, one of Braun’s favorites — while other bits are much more humanizing, like Hitler greeting grieving family members of slain German soldiers, or playing with and holding the hand of a walking toddler.
Of course, Hitler also regards puppies with distrust (“They don’t appreciate a friend”) and, in a jaw-dropping moment, holds forth on the inhumanity of hunting boar with a gun instead of a spear. Even today, a certain mythology surrounding Hitler and Nazi Germany endures; Swastika, though, shows the simple ingredients behind this madness — a man, a political machine, and a country swept up in the energetic presentation of blinkered nationalistic pride and, later, fear-mongering, war and bigotry. It’s an amazing historical document, but also a film that holds an important lesson.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Swastika comes to DVD via Kino Lorber, divided into a dozen chapters and presented in 1.33:1 full frame, with a motion menu and a considerable slate of bonus features. A two-minute introduction by professor Jonathan Petropoulos kicks things off, providing a good context for both the film’s debut and its use as a teaching tool. There are also tidbits on propagandist Leni Riefenstahl and the use of color film in Nazi Germany, as well as an interview with Nazi architect Albert Speer.
Far and away the most illuminating supplemental extra, however, is a 30-minute featurette which gathers Mora, writer Lutz Becker and producers Sanford Lieberson and David Puttnam for a conversation. In reliving their collaboration some three-and-a-half decades removed, they recount amazing stories about getting (9½mm) home movies from Speer, and other astonishing tales of exhaustive archival research victories. They revive the movie’s tumultuous response at its Cannes Film Festival premiere, as well as the subsequent controversy over who owned elements of the film (Braun’s surviving sister and others fought against its release, which required some unique legal maneuvering). As startling as Swastika is, some of these incredible stories of its inception and making are just as mind-boggling in their own right. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; if Half is your thing, meanwhile, click here. A (Movie) A- (Disc)