Hitler: a film from Germany = Hitler, Ein Film Aus Deutschland

In confronting Nazism Syberberg was not interested in the conventions of realism. In Syberberg’s view, ‘one doesn’t fight Hitler with the statistics of Auschwitz and the sociology of his economic system, but with Richard Wagner and Mozart’. In a series of surrealist tableaux in a variety of dramatic modes - fairytale, circus, morality play, allegorical pageant, magic ceremony, philosophical dialogue - in four parts, Syberberg seeks to embrace, in the words of John Sandford, ‘the mythic totality of Hitler’s world (‘pathos’) and the confrontation of the mythic with reality (‘irony’), the sublime with the ridiculous’. For Susan Sontag ‘it is a ghostly film haunted by (Syberberg’s) great cinematic models (Melies, Eisenstein) and antimodels (Riefenstahl, Hollywood), by German Romanticism (and) above all by Wagner and his music’. Contents: Der gral The grail (96 min.)—A German dream Ein Deutscher Traun (126 min.)—The end of a winter’s tale and the final victory of progress Das ende eines wintermarchens (93 min.)—We children of hell remember the European age Wir kinder der holle (100 min.) Also includes the book ‘Syberberg, A filmmaker from Germany’. In German and English with English subtitles.