N A3INTERNATIONALTHE NEW YORK TIMES THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 2007

By MARK LANDLERBERLIN, Jan. 10 — Perhaps it was

inevitable that the first German-made film comedy about Hitlerwould get a mixed reception in Ger-many — a country still haunted, sixdecades after the fall of the ThirdReich, by the mystery of how thisstrange madman once held it inthrall.

What is more surprising and re-vealing, perhaps, is the nature of thecritiques, which have lambasted themovie but not the idea that Hitlercould be the subject of a comedy.

The advance buzz about “MeinFührer: The Truly Truest TruthAbout Adolf Hitler,” which openshere Thursday, has been almost uni-formly negative, with German crit-ics and commentators proclaimingthe film naïve, bizarre, vulgar and —most damning of all — not funny.

“One laughs about two and a halftimes during the film,” Michael Alth-en, a critic for the newspaper Frank-furter Allgemeine Zeitung, wrote,comparing it unfavorably to classicNazi satires like Charlie Chaplin’s“Great Dictator” or Ernst Lubitsch’s“To Be or Not to Be.”

“Most of the jokes are flat, harm-less or stale, and what’s particularlyoffensive is that Adolf Hitler, of allpeople, is given quite sympatheticcharacter traits,” wrote Harald Pe-ters in Welt am Sonntag.

Even Helge Schneider, the madcapGerman comedian and actor whoportrays Hitler, has distanced him-self from the film, saying in a radiointerview here: “It didn’t thrill me. Ijust don’t find it funny.”

No doubt, some of the bad reactionis a matter of taste. “Mein Führer,”directed by a Jewish filmmaker, de-picts Hitler in scenes that could bedrawn from a movie by the Farrellybrothers — wetting his bed, playingwith a toy battleship in the bath, pad-ding around his office on all fourswhile barking like a dog and so on.

But the noisy national debate —

over what is by all accounts a flawedfilm that the public has not yet seen— shows that Hitler remains an en-duringly uncomfortable topic formany here.

“As soon as you mention Hitler, theentire subject of German historycomes up again,” said Henryk M.Broder, a German Jewish journalistwho gave “Mein Führer” a mixed re-view in the magazine Der Spiegel.“Like a congested toilet, everythingthat was flushed down comes back.”

Two years ago, Germans debatedanother Hitler movie, “Der Unter-gang” (“The Downfall”), asking ifthe filmmakers had broken an un-written code by portraying Hitler asa human being, given to moments oftenderness, rather than just a mon-ster. At issue now is whether Hitlershould be a source of humor — atleast in a German-made film.

“Hitler was not some poor soul; hewas a fanatic and a mass murderer,”said Lea Rosh, a publicist who lob-bied for the construction of the Me-morial to the Murdered Jews of Eu-rope in Berlin. “One must show a lit-tle respect for his victims,” said Ms.Rosh, who has not seen the film andsaid she had no plans to see it.

To some extent, the critical andcommercial success of “The Down-fall” helped settle the debate overHitler’s suitability as a subject in fa-vor of the filmmakers. Ms. Roshaside, few people here argue that Hit-ler is not fair game for a comedy —any more than he was off limits for amelodrama about the last days of theThird Reich.

The trouble is, most critics sayGermany’s first stab at a humorousHitler does not have enough laughs.

“Mein Führer” opens in late 1944,with Hitler emotionally paralyzed,contemplating the ruin of Nazi Ger-many. His advisers, desperate tobuck up their leader, recruit a fic-tional Jewish acting coach, AdolfGrünbaum, to prep the Führer for aNew Year’s Day speech aimed atrallying his people.

Grünbaum, whose assignmentgives him and his family a tempo-rary reprieve from a concentrationcamp, makes Hitler wear a mustard-yellow tracksuit and practice exer-cises, which include dropping to allfours and barking in the manner ofhis beloved Alsatian, Blondi.

Emotionally stunted, sexually in-adequate (“I can’t feel you, my Führ-er,” Eva Braun wails during a failedencounter), and psychologicallyscarred by an abusive father, Hitlerends up taking to the couch, in scenesthat play like a particularly dark

twist on a Woody Allen movie.“The more grotesque you get in

treating this subject, the closer youget to artists who did it better,” saidLutz Hachmeister, who recentlymade a documentary about Hitler’spropaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels.

Treating Hitler as a satirical sub-ject worked for Chaplin, the criticshere agree, but he was a cinematicgenius. And Chaplin himself said in1964 that he would not have been ableto poke fun at the Nazi leader had heknown in 1940 about the horrors ofthe Holocaust.

“The Producers,” a Mel Brooksmusical farce about a Nazi-themedtheater production, is not known tohave been staged in Germany but thefilm version opened last spring to noparticular controversy.

“Mein Führer” was written and di-rected by Dani Levy, known for his2004 film, “Alles auf Zucker!” (“Gofor Zucker!”) That film also plowed

new ground, with a comic look at twoGerman Jewish brothers reunited af-ter the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Mr. Levy said he was resigned tothe storm of criticism over “MeinFührer.” “This is not a consensusmovie, I know that,” he said, sittingin his sparsely furnished office here.“In Germany, whenever you touchthis subject, you’re immediately atthe edge of good taste.”

He noted, however, that the filmhad played well with preview audi-ences around the country, and Mr.Schneider, the film’s star, said hehad softened his criticism after see-ing a final cut this week.

Yet even Mr. Levy had to accom-modate the sensitivities of a Germanaudience. “Mein Führer” was origi-nally told from the point of view ofHitler, who had survived the war andwas plotting his return to power.That version deeply unsettled view-ers at a test screening last summer.

So Mr. Levy re-edited the film togive Grünbaum, the Jewish actingcoach, and his family a bigger role.They function as a sort of moralcounterweight to the banality of Hit-ler and his henchmen.

“It was always my intention thatthe movie be a tragedy and a com-edy,” Mr. Levy said. One of his inspi-rations was “Life Is Beautiful,” Ro-berto Benigni’s bittersweet fableabout life in a concentration camp.

Even here, though, Mr. Levy couldnot satisfy his critics. Mr. Broder,the journalist, who said the moviewas not as bad as its reviews, never-theless complained that the doomednobility of Grünbaum and his familybogged down what could have been ahard-edged, unapologetic comedyabout a nasty man.

But that would be a film, Mr. Brod-er acknowledged, for which Ger-mans are not ready. “Germans areembarrassed by Hitler,” he said.“Here is someone you wouldn’t wantto share a seat on a train with for halfan hour, and yet he sat atop the Ger-man nation for 12 years.”

X-Verleih, via European Pressphoto Agency

Helge Schneider, a German comedian and actor, in “Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler,” by Dani Levy, a Jewish filmmaker.

In Germany, a Hitler Comedy Goes Over With a Thud

Critics call a portrayal

of the Führer naïve,

bizarre, vulgar, flat

and worse: not funny.

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