Neil Young's Film Lounge

Neil Young’s Film Lounge – Blind Spot – Hitler’s Secretary

BLIND SPOT HITLERS SECRETARY

7/10

Im toten winkel Hitlers sekretarin : Germany 2002 : Andre HELLER & Othmar SCHMIDERER : 90 mins (original version 95 mins)

In theory, ninety or so minutes of a single talking head sounds like a recipe for cinematic tedium. And there are a couple of moments in Blind Spot, a series of extended interviews with 82-year-old Traudl Junge who served as Hitlers last secretary, from 1942 to 1944 when even the most attentive viewers interest may wander for a moment. But this is such a remarkable story that directors Heller and Schmiderer were wise to avoid dressing it up with distracting bells and whistles there’s no background music, no illustration (photos or film), and very little in the way of audible questioning.

Its very different from the approach taken in Errol Morriss 2003 contribution to the testimony cinema sub-genre, The Fog of War interviews with a former US Defense Secretary subtitled Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S McNamara. There are certainly no attempts to draw explicit lessons from Junges story an interviewer is occasionally heard, but in no way does he try anything remotely approaching interrogation, and he makes no attempt to guide or divert Junges flow of recollections.

There are also no rival voices to confirm or deny her statements – one presumes that Junge (who died on the day after Blind Spot premiered at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival) was the final survivor from Hitlers desperate last days in his Berlin bunker. Some baldly informative intertitles appear at the beginning and end, but otherwise the only addition to Junges to-camera address are brief interpolated sequences, filmed after the main body of evidence, in which Junge silently watches herself on the screen, at one point commenting on what she sees and providing further clarification.

In terms of film criticism, there isn’t much that can be said Blind Spot: this isn’t a piece of work that can or should be profitably compared with anything else that’s being released in cinemas at the moment – even Fog of War is doing something rather different. Heller and Schmiderer succeed in their austere aims to stand as an invaluable, informative historical record of Hitler and his times: a touch monotonous, perhaps, but mostly bracing in its rigorous austerity.

8th February, 2004
(seen 7^th February : PictureHouse at FACT, Liverpool)

by Neil Young

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