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Courtesy of the international BBCiPlayer, I saw this film, which has two titles, the former being the original one which when this tv film was given an international release was abandoned for the flashier, if slightly inaccurate "Hitler on Trial". Never mind the title, though, it's a film which deals with an actual event and a person who deserves to be better known than they are, and for the most part does so in a faithful-to-actual-history manner. I'm referring to Hans Litten, a brilliant lawyer who in 19331, i.e. two years before the Third Reich started, subpoenad Hitler and called him as a witness in the so called "Tanzpalast Eden" trial, which dealt with two workers who had been stabbed by four SA men. Part of the considerable street violence at the time, and the key issue here was that Hitler in order to get as many rich industrialist backers on board as possible was portraying himself as a responsible mature politician who would put an end to said violence, while of course at the same time the Nazis were to a great degree responsible for that same violence, and he couldn't afford to lose his cred with the thugs in his movement, either. What Litten was trying to do was to establish that Hitler's disavowal of violence (which he had gone on oath on in a previous trial six month earlier, also as a witness) was a lie (and perjury), and that the leadership of the party (i.e. Hitler) was directly responsible for the violent actions of the SA. In short, you have a real life court room drama starring one of the worst murderous megalomaniacs of all time.
Which is what this film is, a court room drama; there are a few scenes set during the immediate aftermath as a sort of epilogue, but we don't see what happened to Litten once Hitler actually came to power (he was among the first to be arrested, was repeateadly tortured and in 1938 committed suicide in the concentration camp Dachau), we're informed of it via scrolling writing. Similarly, the film starts with the actual attacks in the Eden Dance Hall, and then immediately moves to the scene where the idea of calling Hitler as a witness in order to connect the attacks to him is pitched to Hans Litten by his mentor. Similarly, the cast of characters is slimmed down to the absolute essentials; Hans Litten, his two bffs with whom he's sharing an apartment, carpenter Max Fürst and his girlfriend (later wife), who is also Litten's Girl Friday, Margot, Litten's parents, Litten's mentor, the presiding judge, two SA thugs, one SA leader who is disgruntled with Hitler and Hitler himself. This allows for a tight focus and for the audience to follow the plot without much background knowledge. (For example, I was curious how the film would deal with the fact our legal system was then and is now different from the Anglosaxon model; we don't have a jury, and Litten wasn't the state prosecutor, he was presenting the surviving victims of the SA attack as their lawyer. The film deals with this by letting the judge address him and referr to him as "the private prosecutor" which as a title didn't exist but describes accurately what he was doing in the trial.) The actors are excellent, from the minor yet important parts - Ruth McCabe as Litten's mother, for example, Anton Lesser as the mentor - to the two crucial ones, Ed "Son of Tom" Stoppard as Hans Litten and Ian Hart as Hitler. As for the script, scriptwriter Mark Hayhurst sometimes can't resist going for the blatant exposition (the scene between Litten and his parents, for example, has to convey that Litten's father is a conservative and a Jew who converted who Christianity and who is opposed to the Weimar Republic, his son's leftist convictions and getting involved; with the result that every line out of his mouth is a predictable statement and he doesn't feel real the way the other characters do. But for the most part, the script is smart and energetic. The early bantery scenes between Litten and his bffs makes you wish there was a tv series with them as the regulars, solving and representing cases by the week (which could be done; Litten earned his reputation as a "labor lawyer" throughout the twenties by a lot of cases), and of course it makes for a chilling and effective compare and contrast when Hitler enters the narrative, because the courtroom genre demands that after some obstacles he'd be defeated/exposed by the smart lawyer, but the awareness of history lets you know this can't end well for Hans Litten.
As for the part where Litten cross examines Hitler (which in rl he did for three hours, and thereafter nobody was allowed to mention his name in Hitler's presence), a quick check through the internet tells me the dialogue the film used is in fact the actual dialogue, notably this:
Litten: (...) Did you know that in the circles of the SA there is talk of a special rollkommando?
Hitler: I haven't heard anything about a rollkommando. (...)
Litten: You said that there will be no violent acts on the part of the National Socialist Party. Didn't Goebbels create the slogan, "one must pound the adversary to a pulp?"
Hitler: This is to be understood as "one must dispatch and destroy opposing organizations". (...)
(The presiding judge read a question formulated by Litten): Did Hitler, as he named Goebbels Reich Minister of Propaganda, know of the passage from his book, where Goebbels declares that fear of the coup d'état cannot be permitted, that parliament should be blown up and the government hunted to hell and where the call to revolution was made again, letter-spaced?
Hitler: I can no longer testify under oath, if I knew Goebbels' book at the time. The theme (...) is absolutely of no account to the Party, as the booklet doesn't bear the Party emblem and is also not officially sanctioned by the Party. (...)
Litten: Must it not be measured against Goebbels' example, to awaken the notion in the Party, that the legality scheme is not far away, if you neither reprimanded nor shut out a man like Goebbels, rather straightaway made him head of Reich Propaganda?
Hitler: The entire Party stands on legal ground and Goebbels (...) likewise. (...) He is in Berlin and can be called here anytime.
Litten: Has Herr Goebbels prohibited the further dissemination of his work?
Hitler: I don't know.
[In the afternoon, Litten returned to this subject.]
Litten: Is it correct that Goebbels' revolutionary journal, The Commitment to Illegality [Das Bekenntnis zur Illegalität], has now been taken over by the Party and has reached a circulation of 120,000? (...) I have concluded that the journal is sanctioned by the Party. (...)
Presiding judge: Herr Hitler, in point of fact, you testified this morning, that Goebbels' work is not official Party [material].
Hitler: And it isn't, either. A publication is an official Party [organ] when it bears the emblem of the Party.
Hitler (shouting, red-faced): How dare you say, Herr Attorney, that is an invitation to illegality? That is a statement without proof!
Litten: How is it possible that the Party publishing house takes over a journal that stands in stark contrast to the Party line?
Presiding judge: That doesn't have anything to do with this trial.
Ian Hart does a great job of letting Hitler start out calmly and in tune with the image Hitler was trying to portray at the time and then showing the mounting rage and frustration of finding himself out of his usual arena (the first time he goes into a speech, Litten stops him and demands an answer to the question asked instead). If you've seen him last as Professor Quirrel in the first Harry Potter movie, it must be eerie, and if like me you've seen him play John Lennon not once but twice it's even weirder, but there is no problem of suspending disbelief here. (Also, the script with two exceptions - when he gets the summons, and mid-trial, when he has a brief staring at himself in the mirror moment in the restroom - never shows Hitler outside the courtroom; this is not a Hitler bio pic, we're strictly in Litten's pov. Ed Stoppard, who carries the film, conveys both the breezy confidence of a successful lawyer (which gets shaken) and the burning sincerity of Litten's belief. Frustratingly, his very last line is one of those few occasions where the script goes for bland instead of accurate. Litten gets told by his friends that he should get out of Germany now. In the film, Litten replies with a statement of needing to stay in order to remind the nation of their better selves and not to give up the fight against Hitler, which is so movie-esque vaguely good intentioned and so fake, as opposed to the rest of the film. What he actually said was "The millions of workers can't leave here, so I must stay too". Litten's socialism was one reason why it took the West quite a while to discover him as a hero post war (the fact he was also solidly anti-Stalin and made no secret about it was the reason East Germany ignored him, too). But must we in 2013 still make sure the hero of a film can in no way be taken for a Commie? In a BBC production, no less? Really, BBC. Really.
Anyway. Should you, like me, be able to watch the international BBCiPlayer, check out the film; it's very worth it. And fulfills the need to see Hitler, of all the people, be confronted legally and forced to answer where he doesn't want to, which I wasn't surprised I had.
Which is what this film is, a court room drama; there are a few scenes set during the immediate aftermath as a sort of epilogue, but we don't see what happened to Litten once Hitler actually came to power (he was among the first to be arrested, was repeateadly tortured and in 1938 committed suicide in the concentration camp Dachau), we're informed of it via scrolling writing. Similarly, the film starts with the actual attacks in the Eden Dance Hall, and then immediately moves to the scene where the idea of calling Hitler as a witness in order to connect the attacks to him is pitched to Hans Litten by his mentor. Similarly, the cast of characters is slimmed down to the absolute essentials; Hans Litten, his two bffs with whom he's sharing an apartment, carpenter Max Fürst and his girlfriend (later wife), who is also Litten's Girl Friday, Margot, Litten's parents, Litten's mentor, the presiding judge, two SA thugs, one SA leader who is disgruntled with Hitler and Hitler himself. This allows for a tight focus and for the audience to follow the plot without much background knowledge. (For example, I was curious how the film would deal with the fact our legal system was then and is now different from the Anglosaxon model; we don't have a jury, and Litten wasn't the state prosecutor, he was presenting the surviving victims of the SA attack as their lawyer. The film deals with this by letting the judge address him and referr to him as "the private prosecutor" which as a title didn't exist but describes accurately what he was doing in the trial.) The actors are excellent, from the minor yet important parts - Ruth McCabe as Litten's mother, for example, Anton Lesser as the mentor - to the two crucial ones, Ed "Son of Tom" Stoppard as Hans Litten and Ian Hart as Hitler. As for the script, scriptwriter Mark Hayhurst sometimes can't resist going for the blatant exposition (the scene between Litten and his parents, for example, has to convey that Litten's father is a conservative and a Jew who converted who Christianity and who is opposed to the Weimar Republic, his son's leftist convictions and getting involved; with the result that every line out of his mouth is a predictable statement and he doesn't feel real the way the other characters do. But for the most part, the script is smart and energetic. The early bantery scenes between Litten and his bffs makes you wish there was a tv series with them as the regulars, solving and representing cases by the week (which could be done; Litten earned his reputation as a "labor lawyer" throughout the twenties by a lot of cases), and of course it makes for a chilling and effective compare and contrast when Hitler enters the narrative, because the courtroom genre demands that after some obstacles he'd be defeated/exposed by the smart lawyer, but the awareness of history lets you know this can't end well for Hans Litten.
As for the part where Litten cross examines Hitler (which in rl he did for three hours, and thereafter nobody was allowed to mention his name in Hitler's presence), a quick check through the internet tells me the dialogue the film used is in fact the actual dialogue, notably this:
Litten: (...) Did you know that in the circles of the SA there is talk of a special rollkommando?
Hitler: I haven't heard anything about a rollkommando. (...)
Litten: You said that there will be no violent acts on the part of the National Socialist Party. Didn't Goebbels create the slogan, "one must pound the adversary to a pulp?"
Hitler: This is to be understood as "one must dispatch and destroy opposing organizations". (...)
(The presiding judge read a question formulated by Litten): Did Hitler, as he named Goebbels Reich Minister of Propaganda, know of the passage from his book, where Goebbels declares that fear of the coup d'état cannot be permitted, that parliament should be blown up and the government hunted to hell and where the call to revolution was made again, letter-spaced?
Hitler: I can no longer testify under oath, if I knew Goebbels' book at the time. The theme (...) is absolutely of no account to the Party, as the booklet doesn't bear the Party emblem and is also not officially sanctioned by the Party. (...)
Litten: Must it not be measured against Goebbels' example, to awaken the notion in the Party, that the legality scheme is not far away, if you neither reprimanded nor shut out a man like Goebbels, rather straightaway made him head of Reich Propaganda?
Hitler: The entire Party stands on legal ground and Goebbels (...) likewise. (...) He is in Berlin and can be called here anytime.
Litten: Has Herr Goebbels prohibited the further dissemination of his work?
Hitler: I don't know.
[In the afternoon, Litten returned to this subject.]
Litten: Is it correct that Goebbels' revolutionary journal, The Commitment to Illegality [Das Bekenntnis zur Illegalität], has now been taken over by the Party and has reached a circulation of 120,000? (...) I have concluded that the journal is sanctioned by the Party. (...)
Presiding judge: Herr Hitler, in point of fact, you testified this morning, that Goebbels' work is not official Party [material].
Hitler: And it isn't, either. A publication is an official Party [organ] when it bears the emblem of the Party.
Hitler (shouting, red-faced): How dare you say, Herr Attorney, that is an invitation to illegality? That is a statement without proof!
Litten: How is it possible that the Party publishing house takes over a journal that stands in stark contrast to the Party line?
Presiding judge: That doesn't have anything to do with this trial.
Ian Hart does a great job of letting Hitler start out calmly and in tune with the image Hitler was trying to portray at the time and then showing the mounting rage and frustration of finding himself out of his usual arena (the first time he goes into a speech, Litten stops him and demands an answer to the question asked instead). If you've seen him last as Professor Quirrel in the first Harry Potter movie, it must be eerie, and if like me you've seen him play John Lennon not once but twice it's even weirder, but there is no problem of suspending disbelief here. (Also, the script with two exceptions - when he gets the summons, and mid-trial, when he has a brief staring at himself in the mirror moment in the restroom - never shows Hitler outside the courtroom; this is not a Hitler bio pic, we're strictly in Litten's pov. Ed Stoppard, who carries the film, conveys both the breezy confidence of a successful lawyer (which gets shaken) and the burning sincerity of Litten's belief. Frustratingly, his very last line is one of those few occasions where the script goes for bland instead of accurate. Litten gets told by his friends that he should get out of Germany now. In the film, Litten replies with a statement of needing to stay in order to remind the nation of their better selves and not to give up the fight against Hitler, which is so movie-esque vaguely good intentioned and so fake, as opposed to the rest of the film. What he actually said was "The millions of workers can't leave here, so I must stay too". Litten's socialism was one reason why it took the West quite a while to discover him as a hero post war (the fact he was also solidly anti-Stalin and made no secret about it was the reason East Germany ignored him, too). But must we in 2013 still make sure the hero of a film can in no way be taken for a Commie? In a BBC production, no less? Really, BBC. Really.
Anyway. Should you, like me, be able to watch the international BBCiPlayer, check out the film; it's very worth it. And fulfills the need to see Hitler, of all the people, be confronted legally and forced to answer where he doesn't want to, which I wasn't surprised I had.
