The
last episode of Selling Hitler brings
the story to its disastrous conclusion, as the inauthenticity of the diaries
becomes too evident to ignore. Thanks to
a great deal of hubris, greed, and obsession, a lot of people are made to look
incredibly foolish.
It’s
interesting to watch how far Gerd, Thomas, and company go with their
denials. The paper contains chemicals
that weren’t invented in the ‘40s? Must
have spilled on them in the intervening years.
Other documents from the same collection are no-question-about-it
forgeries? Well, that doesn’t mean the
diaries themselves are forgeries. Pages
from the diaries are definitely fake?
Maybe some of it is still
genuine. And on and on it goes – it’s
like a sickness.
While
Gerd takes that last word pretty literally, going off the rails in a rather
spectacular way, Thomas practically shuts down. He’s the first to receive the news of the
diaries’ unavoidable falsity, and he’s the one who has to interrupt the bosses’
celebration over the lucrative publishing deal and the forthcoming special
edition of the magazine. Entering the
room with such a grim expression, you’d think he’d been made to deliver a death
warrant to his own puppy, he breaks the news.
He spends the resting of the episode presumably probably cursing himself
for not sticking to his original skeptic guns.
In all,
it’s an unusual little miniseries. The
subtly of the humor fluctuates pretty significantly, and PC doesn’t get too
much more than scraps to work with.
Still, the story itself is an intriguing nugget from history, and my
fascination re: everyone’s denial has already been noted above. Glad I watched it, anyway.
Last
thoughts:
Accent Watch
Scottish. Still not sure why he has the odd accent out
compared to all his English-sounding German compatriots. He’s not quite
the only one; Alexei Sayle’s character speaks with a Northern accent, but with
the class connotations that it suggests, it’s not quite the same situation.
Recommend?
In
General
– A modest maybe. Far from perfect, but
the subject matter’s interesting, and there are some good performances.
PC-wise – Not
necessarily. While Thomas is an enjoyable
enough character whenever he pops up, he doesn’t get much focus, and a decent
chunk of his screen time is single lines or brief reaction shots in group
scenes.
Warnings
Nothing
new to report.
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