Hitler The Last Ten Days

Product Description Hitler: The Last Ten Days is cinema at its most powerful. Oscar® winner Alec Guinness portrays the dictator in one of his most memorable performances. Spanning the final days from Hitler's 56th birthday to his death, this unflinching peek into the bunker shows us the downfall of a madman. Guinness explores every facet of the challenging role and Doris Kunstmann co-stars as doomed mistress Eva Braun. Review Once upon a time, the memory of WW2 was so fresh that documentaries and movies about its atrocities were rare. Many moviegoers saw their first glimpse of the more brutal concentration camp footage in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg. The final hours of the Third Reich, with Hitler's diehards holding out in the last bunker in Berlin were considered too morbid to serve as the basis for entertainment. The West Germans did it first in 1955 in Der letze akt, directed by G.W. Pabst. The latest and perhaps best dramatization of the subject is 2004's Downfall, starring Bruno Ganz as Hitler. 1973's Hitler: The Last Ten Days is an Italian production starring mostly English actors and best remembered as the film where Alec Guinness plays Hitler. All three productions stay close to the historical facts, particularly the record of Hitler's personal secretary, one of the few survivors. To transform himself into Adolf Hitler, Guinness adopts a gruff manner and a croaking voice similar to that of Gully Jimpson in The Horse's Mouth. He's quite good as the desperate, tantrum-throwing monster cornered in his final lair. Berlin is falling quickly under the onslaught of the vengeful Russian army. Refusing to flee, Adolf Hitler (Alec Guinness) festers in the last concrete bunker surrounded by the surviving elite of the Third Reich […] Downfall trumps Hitler: The Last Ten Days in almost every respect, from its use of the German language to its interesting idea of telling the story through the experience of Hitler's secretary. Just the same, this respectable version works up a considerable mood of morbid dread. Guarded by a few S.S. fanatics, seventy-five holdouts live in a concrete box hammered day and night by artillery fire. The drug addled and disease ridden Hitler does his best to maintain his dignity, still behaving as if a good word from Der Führer is all that is needed to turn bad news into good. The rat-like Dr. Goebbels has toned down som