Hamburg - A 'comedy' film portraying Adolf Hitler that is set to premiere next week in Germany has been attacked by the actor who plays the role of Hitler, and early reviews say the parody is sad rather than funny.
An undated still from a bathtub scene from the film Mein Fuehrer (My Leader) showing Helge Schneider in his role as Adolf Hitler. Jewish director Dani Levy presents the satire in which Hitler is shown as a picture of misery. EPA/X-Verleih
The movie's Berlin-based Jewish director, Dani Levy, 49, had promised to exercise 'subversive Jewish humour' against the Nazi dictator. But there are not many laughs in the far-fetched story about Hitler taking oratory lessons from a Holocaust victim.
There are a few German puns. There is some clowning with constant Heil Hitler salutes. Hitler looks ridiculous in a mustard-yellow tracksuit or spitting food as he talks with his mouth full.
But there are no scenes of mirthful release from the suspense of wondering if the speech teacher will kill Hitler or vice versa.
Amid echoing sets and melodramatic music, a weeping 'Hitler' describes his unhappy childhood. Scenes portray his secret drinking problem, insomnia, sexual impotence, incontinence and laryngitis, and some of the audience might even feel sorry for the character.
'Mein Fuehrer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler' is set for release nationwide in Germany on Thursday, January 11.
In faint praise, the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung warned readers that they might get a smirk out of the movie 'as a whole'.
The German weekly newspaper Die Zeit said this week the comedy had been blotted out by the film's tragedy and the movie was the first ever to portray Hitler as 'a pitiable but rather average guy.'
Helge Schneider, the German musician who played the Hitler role, admitted Friday that he did not like the finished movie at all.
'It didn't thrill me,' he told Radioeins, a Berlin radio station, on Friday. 'I just don't find it funny.'
To a newspaper, Die Welt, he suggested that director Levy had been overly focused on his theory that Hitler turned bad from being smacked too often as a child. 'Dani was trying to tell a young audience: be better than that to your own children,' said Schneider.
The film's publicists tried to dampen down the impact, with producer Stefan Arndt claiming Schneider had been tired or depressed when he gave the interview and would grow to love the movie later.
Schneider was unrepentant. 'Dani and I are still friends,' he said of the director. 'You don't have to declare a film you helped to make to be brilliant just for the sake of solidarity.'
The movie's release has also been preceded by debate about whether Germans should be encouraged to laugh about Hitler at all.
There has been earnest debate for several weeks in the arts media about Levy's insistence that Germans do enjoy jokes in private about the Nazis but suppress them in public for fear that they will seem heartless towards Holocaust victims.
Die Zeit advised readers to go looking for better Hitler humour on websites such as www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com, which shows cats with Hitler moustaches, or with video skits on the website Youtube.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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