HITLER, BEAST OF BERLIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 49, 31 May 1940, Page 30

HITLER, BEAST OF BERLIN

(Associated Distributors) "Professor Mamlock" was welcomed officially in New Zealand just after Russia, where the film was made to damn the German treatment of Communists, had made a pact with the persecuting Nazis. "Hitler, Beast of Berlin," is propaganda that misfires through the same barrel and another one as well. It should be said first that the picture does not represent Hitler as a beast, except by allusion. It tells almost exactly the same story as "Professor Mamlock," with as much restraint, and as much emphasis. The two films differ only in the difference between the technique of the Russian direction and the technique of the British direction. And

the difference is not so great that any but Russophobes will bother to make a distinction. Without the tiresome necessity for interpreting language in captions, this latest film will probably be more appreciated than the Russian, given that those other things are equal. The label of the film does not do justice to its contents. The man who wrote the title-after the film was made -was obviously just a good showman who had not forgotten that one of the most profitable propaganda films of Great War I. was "The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin." This is also propaganda, and will readily be recognised as such, since in these days the word is in everyman’s dictionary. Propaganda, of course; ceases to become propaganda as soon as it is recognised; but this film, in spite of its

name, manages to be interesting in spite of itself, and in spite of the fact that it is telling people what by now they have known for 10 years: that the habits of the Nazi are unpleasant, As a film, then, it is a good film; but considered as propaganda it is confusing. It works up sympathy for radical agitators, for example, as "Professor Mamlock" did, while the authorities are busy arresting them behind the Home Front. And its other misfire is the tendency to contradict what Duff-Cooper said the other day about fighting the German people as well as their rulers. It draws between the persecuted German people and their Nazi rulers a distinction which must be and will be contradicted by the sensations of every man behind -a bayonet at this moment, by every man in a tank, behind a machine-gun, or artillery, in the cockpit of an aeroplane, or at the other end of the earthward journey of a bomb,

"We have been talking too much; now we are punching them on the nosé," said Lord Lothian, after the first big raid on Sylt. In "Hitler, Beast of Berlin,’ we are still by those standards talking too much. It will be a nice point for the propagandists to decide how far they can go with the policy of being nice to the Germans without finding that it also means being nice to the Nazis. As war propaganda, then, the film slips. As a movie, it gives Ronald Drew (Hans), Steffi Duna (Ailsa), and Alan Ladd (Karl), the opportunity to make a thoroughly good job of acting Truth Driven Underground, to Burrow Like a Mole. It puts its theme into a complete and satisfying picture, and it does this without the lack of artistic restraint im- | plied in its name.