Fritz Kortner (5/13)

found in filmreference.comHans-Jürgen Syberberg Nationality: German. Born: Nossendorf, Pomerania, 8 December 1935. Education: Educated in literature and art history, Munich. Career: Lived in East Berlin, then moved to West Germany, 1953; The films of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg are at times annoying, confusing, and overlong—but they are also ambitious and compelling. In no way is he ever conventional or commercial: critics and audiences have alternately labeled his work brilliant and boring, absorbing and pretentious, and his films today are still rarely screened. Stylistically, it is difficult to link him with any other filmmaker or cinema tradition. In this regard he is an original, the most controversial of all the New German filmmakers and a figure who is at the vanguard of the resurgence of experimental filmmaking in his homeland.Not unlike his contemporary, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Syberberg's most characteristic films examine recent German history: a documentary about Richard Wagner's daughter-in-law, a close friend of Hitler; his trilogy covering 100 years of Germany's past (Ludwig II: Requiem for a Virgin King, Karl May, and, most famously, Hitler, A Film from Germany, also known as Our Hitler). These last are linked in their depictions of Germans as hypocrites, liars, and egocentrics, and in the final part he presents the rise of the Third Reich as an outgrowth of German romanticism.Even more significantly, Syberberg is concerned with the cinema's relationship to that history. Our Hitler, seven hours and nine minutes long, in four parts and 22 specific chapters, is at once a fictional movie, a documentary, a three-ring circus (the "greatest show on earth"), and a filmed theatrical marathon. The Führer is presented with some semblance of reality, via Hans Schubert's performance. But he is also caricatured, in the form of various identities and disguises: in one sequence alone, several actors play him as a house painter, Chaplin's Great Dictator, the Frankenstein monster, Parsifal (Syberberg subsequently filmed the Wagner opera), and a joker. Hitler is also portrayed as an object, a ventriloquist's doll, and a stuffed dog. In all, twelve different actors play the role, and 120 dummy Führers appear in the film. The result: Syberberg's Hitler is painted as both a fascist dictator who could have risen to power at any point in time in any number of political climates (though the filmmaker in no way excuses his homeland for allowing Hitler to exist, let alone thrive), and a monstrous movie mogul whose Intolerance would be the Holocaust.In recent years, Syberberg has remained relatively inactive as a filmmaker. None of his latter work has earned him the visibility, let alone the acclaim, of his earlier films. Since Parsifal, his version of the Wagnerian opera which was his most widely seen film, he has collaborated only with one of that film's stars, Edith Clever. Their artistic ventures have included a number of theatrical monologues, a few of which have been videotaped or filmed. The series commenced with Die Nacht, a six-hour-long examination of how an individual may act or what an individual may ponder deep into the night.Syberberg, however, has spoken out on issues relating to his homeland. He especially is troubled by the Americanization of world culture, and has hypothesized that the resurgence of neo-Nazism in Germany, especially among the nation's youth, is a natural response to the hollowness of the capitalist culture which enveloped Germany in the post-World War II years. Thus, even in the wake of German unification, the memory of Hitler—despite the fact that he ultimately brought catastrophe and anguish to Germany—continues to influence and mold the national psyche.—Rob Edelman

Channel: Education
Uploaded: November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am
Author: kleineglocke

Length: 08:27
Rating: 5.00
Views: 560

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