Horst_In_Translation Review of Hitler: A Career

Hitler: A Career (1977)

Solid summary of the Nazis' rise and fall with focus on their most impactful character

[6/10 · 25 November 2016]

"Hitler - Eine Karriere" is a West German 2.5-hour documentary from 1977 directed by Joachim Fest and Christian Herrendoerfer and Fest is also credited as the writer. It will have its 40th anniversary next year. And after watching this pretty long movie, I must say it turned out exactly what I expected. The focus is as the title suggests mostly on Hitler, but it is of course not difficult to set the decisions he made into a global political context as all he did had an immediate impact on Germany and the political situation of the entire world and obviously this was mostly in a negative context. I may be a bit biased as the years of Nazi Germany and World War II have always been my most favorite part in history, the times that I found the most interesting, which is probably why I enjoyed this film more than the average audience member will do. But this does not mean of course that I don't recommend checking it out. On the contrary. It is a good watch for everybody who does not have too much knowledge about the years 1933-1945 (and also slightly before), but wants to expand his horizon. This film makes a good choice if such is your plan. For people like myself who already know a very great deal about these years, it probably will not teach anything new and this may occasionally result in a feeling that the film drags a bit. But it is still nicely done. And the argument "does not teach anything new really" has also be used carefully as we should not forget when this documentary was made and that a lot of the other stuff we may have seen was made much later, even if we may have watched it before this one. I kinda enjoyed seeing this one and I can see why it is considered one of Fest's most known and most successful works to this date. I recommend you to watch it as well, unless you really dislike black-and-white stuff as probably 95% of the scenes are in black-and-white, but looking at the era it depicts one can impossibly be surprised.