I have a bit of a penchant for WWII movies, preferably British ones and even better for me are films made between 1940 and 1960 a period when cinemas were filled with movies about genuine heroism. However, tonight’s movie is a bit different. Hitler The Rise of Evil tells the story of Adolf Hitler’s life and his rise to power in Germany from his childhood right through to taking power in the early 1930’s.
It is a fascinating study of a warped man becoming even more warped with each new tranche of power that he got. The central character of Adolf Hitler is played in this 2003 TV movie most admirably by Robert Carlyle who is better known for films like Trainspotting and The Full Monty.
Mr Carlyle plays Hitler with just the right amount of characterisation. He never in my view ‘hams it up’ (a temptation for some actors when faced with playing such a high profile character) and in his portrayal keeps just the right balance in showing a man straddling the border between sanity and madness.
His portrayal of one of the 20th century’s most evil dictators, does show a man psychologically damaged by his childhood and family experiences with an oppressive and violent father coupled with an overprotective mother and who finally finds a family of sorts in the World War I German military. You truly get the impression from Mr Carlyle’s performance as Adolf that here is a man who despite not being sane managed, in the feverish and divided political landscape of post WWI Germany, to get hordes of people to follow him. You see the central character go from a person with little to offer but blind obedience to his superiors end up demanding blind obedience to him from everyone else.
This was in my view a good biopic but one about which I have one or two reservations. Because it is a TV movie it was probably very difficult for the producers to illustrate some of the more troubling sexual perversions, such as coprophilia and an attraction to very young women that Hitler allegedly suffered from. These sorts of perversions and paraphilias do affect a persons psychological make up and may have played a part in creating this monster.
All in all this is a pretty good biopic of one of the many appalling monsters that the 20th century produced. I enjoyed, if you can put it that way, this move and I hope that you also find it interesting.
