Im toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin

Film: Im toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin
(Blind Spot: Hilter's Secretary)
Director: André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer
Year: 2002
15 word synap:
Hilter’s secratery reaccounts her experiences with the dictator half a centery later.
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I had read articles about this documentary a last year because it made quite a stir at the Berlin film festival. I believe the complaints of the film were that the Frau Junge was in many cases too kind to the dictator and too kind to herself in the role she played in the history of National Socialism. Because of the possibly scandal nature of the film, I found myself drawn to it, but instead, like many things that have a very interesting topic, the presentation was quite dull.

The documentary is basically a narrative in which the Frau Junge, a young girl at the time of National Socialism, tells of her job as hitler's secretary. She not only worked for him, but because of the war, was required to spend her time in tight quarters with him and the other high officials and friends. She got to know his personal habits, like how he treated his dog -Blondie - or how he acted around Eve Braun. And she goes into detail about the final days in the bunker. Still, even at the end, she seems to find herself relatively free of guilt, even with such close association.

The style of filmmaking is not to my taste as it is all done in "talking head" style. The narrative is purely Frau Junge talking, which means that the viemerelyarly sees her talking for an hour and half. This makes the story, no matter how thrilling, pretty boring. There are no action shots. There is no cut away to photographs and no real creative film making. The filmmakers assume that the Frau Junge will be enough to "sell" the story, which is unfortunately pretty boring.