Sam Gray

This unusual documentary feature makes the case that the whole Nazi movement was an outgrowth of a perverted German aesthetic which placed an inordinate value on cleanliness and magnified the bourgeois country's tendencies to elevate kitsch and sentimentality to the level of central cultural values. In order to make his case, the filmmaker has gathered an unrivaled collection of clips and photos of the art and architecture of the period which shows tendencies in this direction. Adolf Hitler himself is shown to have been a failed painter of architectural scenes with a strong penchant for all these obsessions. There are logical connections, the filmmaker asserts, between this aesthetic and the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis. Whether the logic is compelling to the viewer or not, this documentary contains a wealth of carefully assembled and thought-provoking images, many of them seen nowhere else.