It was and it is an embarrassing moment for the German magazine "Stern", what happened while dealing with the famous fake "Hitler Diaries" which definitely brought them fame but from a different site. Such a disaster deserves a movie based upon it, describing the creation, the quotes and the medial attention to Hitler's diaries, which later were discovered as a grotesque fake. And here we have it.
In a small charming reference to the genius and timeless Charlie Chaplin satire we got a movie that is based on the famous fake of the 80s in which went out into the world. As it is a satire of the actual events the characters are a bit different than in real life. Maybe a few extra situations were included. But this makes it even more funny.
This movie is starring some famous German actors e.g. Uwe Ochsenknecht, Götz George, Ulrich Mühe, Armin Rohde, Harald Juhnke, Veronika Ferres etc. And they all do a great performance in portraying their characters, especially Ochsenknecht as the faker Fritz Knobel/Konrad Kujau who looks more like Hitler himself during the process (I write his handwriting better than my own) and George as the journalist Hermann Willié/Gerd Heidemann who becomes more crazy about the diaries and everything about Hitler that he is willing to do everything, just for a good story and is even willing to buy a bunch of burned book pages and underwear which is sold to him as the ash of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. And even hopes to find the real Hitler alive.
The story is told with many actual details including the famous FH on the diary's cover, instead of AH (for Adolf Hitler), also including the editors' ideas for the meaning of FH, actual quotes, the press conference with the diaries and many more.
Another interesting fact is that this movie not only features a lot of music from the Third Reich (the great Zarah Leander) or related music (Richard Wagner), it also features people who were related to the Third Reich, like Karl Schönböck who was in some Nazi Propaganda movies, like in 1943's "Titanic". Also Götz George's father Heinrich was the biggest actor in the 30s and 40s, starring in the biggest Nazi (propaganda) movies.
Later I also saw the British TV-series "Selling Hitler", which is based on the same events, but features the actual names of the real people and companies. It was also a very good one but it plays in a completely different league than "Schtonk", not only is it longer and gives a more detailed description of the events. But in this movie the directors were more concentrated on describing the story from the German site. So you can't compare these two at all.
I can definitely recommend this movie. It's an entertaining and funny movie, which can be seen again and again.
In a small charming reference to the genius and timeless Charlie Chaplin satire we got a movie that is based on the famous fake of the 80s in which went out into the world. As it is a satire of the actual events the characters are a bit different than in real life. Maybe a few extra situations were included. But this makes it even more funny.
This movie is starring some famous German actors e.g. Uwe Ochsenknecht, Götz George, Ulrich Mühe, Armin Rohde, Harald Juhnke, Veronika Ferres etc. And they all do a great performance in portraying their characters, especially Ochsenknecht as the faker Fritz Knobel/Konrad Kujau who looks more like Hitler himself during the process (I write his handwriting better than my own) and George as the journalist Hermann Willié/Gerd Heidemann who becomes more crazy about the diaries and everything about Hitler that he is willing to do everything, just for a good story and is even willing to buy a bunch of burned book pages and underwear which is sold to him as the ash of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. And even hopes to find the real Hitler alive.
The story is told with many actual details including the famous FH on the diary's cover, instead of AH (for Adolf Hitler), also including the editors' ideas for the meaning of FH, actual quotes, the press conference with the diaries and many more.
Another interesting fact is that this movie not only features a lot of music from the Third Reich (the great Zarah Leander) or related music (Richard Wagner), it also features people who were related to the Third Reich, like Karl Schönböck who was in some Nazi Propaganda movies, like in 1943's "Titanic". Also Götz George's father Heinrich was the biggest actor in the 30s and 40s, starring in the biggest Nazi (propaganda) movies.
Later I also saw the British TV-series "Selling Hitler", which is based on the same events, but features the actual names of the real people and companies. It was also a very good one but it plays in a completely different league than "Schtonk", not only is it longer and gives a more detailed description of the events. But in this movie the directors were more concentrated on describing the story from the German site. So you can't compare these two at all.
I can definitely recommend this movie. It's an entertaining and funny movie, which can be seen again and again.