What “Downfall” didn’t dare to show, will now be shown in “Dear Friend Hitler”: Whether Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun will dance is uncertain.
BY HANNS-GEORG RODEK
In the Bollywood-Adaption of the story of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, actress and model Neha Dhupia is supposed to play the role of Braun
We will have to ask Bernd Eichinger why he kept all these scenes from the Bunker from us. Hitler and Braun execute the traditional alpine Bhangra, jump to the ground and swing their arms. Next up, a love song; Eva stands in a wind-blown dress on the highest edge of a collapsed house wall while Adolf, dancing on the ruins like a chamois, flatters her.
Finally, the marriage-song. She in the satin-sari, pants with a fan-shaped apron and fitting choli, around the waist a belt with silver plates, to it chains, arm rings and feet-bells. He places a floral wreath on her head, which Blondie had previously grabbed with its snout from the last still opened Berlin nursery and brought through bulletstorm and grenades to the Reichs-chancellory in a dramatic sequence.
Hitler’s closest relationship
We will now be allowed to expect from “Dear Friend Hitler” what Downfall didn’t dare to show - if Bollywood stays true to itself. There, the Bunker has been discovered, filming will begin in the coming month. The “Mumbai Mirror” cites a source from the production: “The movie shows Hitler’s relationship with his closest surroundings - those who loved him, those who betrayed him and those who stuck to him until the end.” Furthermore, “The film will grant an insight into Hitler’s insecurities, his charisma, his paranoia and his pure genius.”
Those involved aren’t part of the Bolly-Creme, but nevertheless to be taken serious. Anupam Kher is designated as Adolf Hitler, a friendly half-bald head who in the past 30 years played over 300 predominantly comical roles in the Indian cinema; he can also be found among a half a dozen Shah-Rukh-Khan-movies, in “The Large Hearted Will Take the Bride” as his father.
The mistress of the Fuhrer: Only now a serious Biography about Adolf Hitler’s life companion has been published.
Eva Braun turns out to be the previous Miss India, Neha Dhupia went the path of many Bollywood-starlets from beauty queen to the silver-screen. Director Rakesh Ranjan Kumar also remains an unknown quantity. The fact that he chose Hitler for his off-screen debut is less absurd than it may appear at first. The title cites the address which Mahatma Ghandi chose for to letters to the dictator, in which he implored not to start a war (Anupam Kher in turn recently played a man who had imagined to have killed Ghandi). The swastika goes back to an old Hindu symbol and continues to fascinate many Indians.
Hitler-Germany and its role for India
Hitler’s Germany played an important role for India’s fight against the British colonial power. Under the leaders of the independence-movement - Mahatma Ghandi, Pandit Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose - Bose was the most militant and fled to Germany in 1942. The later 20th-July-conspirator Adam von Trott zu Solz facilitated a meeting with Hitler which lead to the creation of the Legion “Freies Indien”: Its soldiers wore Wehrmacht-uniforms, many with a Turban. They swore their oath on Hitler and Bose.
Even Bollywood contains German roots: The Bavarian Franz Osten, who had orchestrated noble people and grand feelings in a beautiful environment in his Ludwig Ganghofer-adaption, went to India in 1934 and shot 16 movies for the company Bombay Talkies. Willy Haas, the founder of the “Literarische Welt” [A literature review magazine, daughter of the source newspaper’s company, now discontinued; Schuultz], who had fled from the Nazis to India, wrote screenplays for him. Without Osten’s fusion of western professionalism and eastern culture, Bollywood would not be Bollywood today. With the start of the war the British interned the “enemy aliens”.
Five years ago, an Indian team had already filmed a Bose-biography in Berlin, “The Forgotten Hero”, with Udo Schenk as Hitler. The Legion “Freies Indien” is also supposed to play an important role in Rakesh Ranjan Kumar’s film. Maybe it unexpectedly the Bunker to grant Kumar’s romantic comedy an happy ending. Things don’t always have to end like in the history books. Of that, Tarantino has already cured us.
