Thanks to Michael Chaiken's column about new dvd releases in "Film Comment," I found out that the Chicago-based Facets is releasing the 1978 epic "Out Hitler: A Film From Germany" on dvd.
The film from Hans-Jurgen Syberberg has both its admirors and detractors. Leonard Maltin has dismissed as an opus mess, but the late Susan Sontag called it: "one of the great works of art of the 20th century."
Chaiken said the film is a 'surrealist, tour de force' which gives a 'satirical indictment' of the rise of the Third Reich.
The seven-hour film, which originally aired on German television, retails for $79.95 (I'll settle for putting it on my Netflix que myself). It was first shown in the United States through Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope distributor in 1980.
As someone who admires German filmmaker Wim Wenders, I have always had an appreciation for both classic and modern German films, which was inticed by a film class at Hollins University taught by Klaus Phillips.
In a recent blog entry, I ranked Wenders' 1987 film "Wings of Desire," which was turned into an awful Nicholas Cage-Meg Ryan film "City of Angels," as my personal favorite foreign film of all time.
For another interesting look at German cinema history, I recommend the 1982 documentary "Burden of Dreams" about Werner Herzog's efforts to film "Fitzcarraldo." Some say Blank's film even surpasses Herzog's brilliant journey down the Amazon River.
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