History for Beginners.

Tom Cruise plays the Hitler assassin Stauffenberg in "Operation Valkyrie" good and credible. But that is not enough, criticized historian Philipp Gassert. The film, which now has Germany premiere, draws a naive, hero-dimensional image - and thus its potential is wasted.

 

Since Steven Spielberg's Holocaust drama "Schindler's List" (1993) does not have a Hollywood movie so much attention among German historians and Feuilletonisten time to be considered as "Operation Valkyrie" (2008), Bryan Singer film about Hitler's assassination, 20 July 1944, on this Thursday in German cinema starts.

Photo: DPA
Video: JKR

After widespread media Patzern during production and a fourfold shifted start after the dispute over the verquasten filming permit in Bendler Block, and the religious orientation of the main actor Tom Cruise (as Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg) were the expectations of the movie very low .

Perhaps could "Valkyrie," said the original title, so only positive surprise. As a technically savvy, professionally-made, at times even exciting cinema, as a thriller against the backdrop of historical works, the film took place in the eyes of most critics and grace by the U.S. was also well received by audiences.

Nearly 80 million U.S. dollars, he has since the 25th December in the United States implemented - a flop looks different. And also an apology for Nazi Germany, such as Roger Friedman in the ultra-conservative Fox News hysterically claimed, is "Operation Valkyrie" now truly not.

PERSONAL

Philipp Gassert is deputy head of the German Historical Institute in Washington DC Among the priorities of Heidelberg, Angers and Michigan are trained historian of Nazism and the German post-war period and the history of transatlantic relations. Gassert is the author of numerous books and publications, including "America in the Third Reich: Ideology, Propaganda and Public Opinion, 1933 - 1945" (1997) and "Short History of the United States" (2007). He is currently working on a study of anti-Americanism in the 20th Century.

He is also not what some of the "FAZ" editor Frank Schirrmacher and Oscar-winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck him from trying to make.

The fact that "Germany's hope," Tom Cruise should read (Donnersmarck); that he had the image, "that the world makes of us Germans, change" would (Schirrmacher) - sounded like the marketing slogans of Deutschland AG.

Certainly, the use of funds paid off when a few million historically low vorgebildeter German, Americans and Europeans know that there is a serious military resistance against Hitler was. Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise just pulls the audience.

But more than this necessary correction of a little more today, exclusively from the Nazi past, Germany certain image abroad, as Schirrmacher Donnersmarck and in complete disregard of the Federal Republic of perception between New York and San Francisco believe that the film will not.

Beyond a re-enactment of the July-insurgency, which in many historical details highly flawed, is in "Operation Valkyrie" done little reconnaissance. What is missing, at least from a German perspective, the sting, the challenge to deal with the remarkable ambivalence of resistance.

VIDEOS ON FILM

Photo: Twentieth Century Fox
Video: Twentieth Century Fox

Operation Walküre - Das Stauffenberg assassination
Trailers and movie clips

Film clip: "The leader has arrived"
Film clip: "Find a Way"
Film clip: "I've said worse"

At this point the film awards, the potential of its main character and the other protagonists. The Hitler's bombers striking similar Cruise plays a total of credible Stauffenberg. He even put his "Star Appeal" and assigns something back into the ensemble of top British and German actors, including Christian Berkel, Bill Nighy, a. His account can forget the critical voices that warned the opposition icon Stauffenberg was confirmed by the embodiment of an avowed Scientologist irretrievably damaged. Artists and art, however, are strictly separated, and from sectarian zeal Cruises Stauffenberg is really nothing to feel.

More seriously, and this is the director, the screenwriters (Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander), but also the main actor to be ashamed that they are a one-dimensional Stauffenberg designed without corners and edges without pasts and dark sides. An average movie hero is as projected onto the canvas, not an aristocratic elite officer, who as a young man made a pact with the devil closed.

Here is the comparison with "Schindler's List" instructive. Steven Spielberg dramatized the unsayable convincingly by haunting, moving, long characterized subsequent images, and created in the shape of Oskar Schindler (embodied in the no airs and graces, advance laurels and pre-loaded criticism Liam Neeson) a bad hero, the very reason identification possibilities opened . "Operation Valkyrie", however, refused from a historical perspective on the whole line.

Director Bryan Singer ( "X-Men," "Superman Returns") brings us in the form of light Stauffenberg a knight performed flawlessly, and beyond reach of life. Aufgerüttelt had Singer and Cruise, the film mitproduzierte when racism, militarism, the rabiaten Antibolschewismus and Stauffenberg initial enthusiasm for the "Third Reich" was shown. Would not it be interesting to explain how and why, what winding paths, from enthusiastic supporters of the Nazis and Mittätern opponents at the end of Hitler and the Nazis were?

YOUR OPINION IS ASKED

Discuss this article

"Operation Valkyrie" but is naive. The film brings the German resistance quasi reception of the first decades after 1945 according to Hollywood. In the fifties and sixties was the 20th July by German politicians such as German President Theodor Heuss sweeping heroisiert. Against the widespread skepticism about the "July-traitors" should be a positive tradition created. The men (and women) behind the attack were precursors to a democratic order umgedeutet to icons of the "better Germany" stylized.

This was the face of massive remnants of Nazi orientations in the post-war German society is a necessary step. But today, we can acknowledge that the members of the German resistance no agents of a Western orientation and liberalization were no constitutional patriots avant la lettre, without the high respect for her personal courage and their sacrifice would diminish.

Many were reactionary to the bone, much to the old order before the Pervertierungen of Nazism oriented. Only a few, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, stood for freedom and democracy. Behind them, the history is long-known facts "Valkyrie" far back.

Schade: Sometimes could be great cinema for more historical information to do so.