Our Hitler

I was recently reminded of the nearly 8 hour experimental film Our Hitler directed by Hans-Jurgen Syberberg released in 1977. It came to Buffalo in August 1979 if I recall right. I had heard a lot about this film and looked forward to seeing it. I had also recently graduated with a degree in film studies from Temple University's School of Communications and Theater and had seen lots of experimental films but never anything quite like this project.

Becky and I went down to the Shea's Buffalo theater for the all day two part showing but we couldn’t last through the whole thing and left the theater after the 6 hour mark. Tedious was not quite the right word.  It was a long avant-garde experimental film that went for hours and scenes that quickly made their impact were dragged on and on way beyond the normal bounds of a filmmaker. There were endless scenes of people talking into the camera and using puppets too. Obviously Syberberg did not have an editor.  

I did like the fictional scenes of Hitler's valet but the director's relentless use of mind numbing pseudo talking head interviews went on for hours. There were some interesting philosophical constructs inserted throughout the verbal mayhem and chaos but nothing I saw in film school was as boring, tedious and self indulgent as this "masterpiece". The hardest part was going back to the theater after dinner for the second half because after about six hours the film degenerated into a talking head reading the script of scenes that were never shot.. We left. There were moments of great film making which could have been edited into a brilliant two hour film. IMHO

Becky’s sister stayed and watched the entire 8 hours and she later told us at the end during the credits someone in the audience shouted “play it again”.

The film is available on YouTube broken into smaller parts.

Yes, and ow we have our own "Our Hitler" in America right there on Twitter every day. His ongoing daily racists rants and calls for hate and violence has become worse and practically his only response to the pandemic and the racial justice demonstrations. His Law and Order mantra. Reminds us of someone else.