BLIND SPOT - HITLER'S SECRETARY/IM TOTEN WINKEL – HITLERS SECRETARIN
Germany, 2002, 90 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Andre Heller, Othmar Smidderer.
If you were told that you were to spend the next ninety minutes watching a film that was all interview, a focus on a talking head without any visual relief except the interviewee's change of clothes and, sometimes, watching herself on a video monitor, you might well beg out of the experience. But, you would be mistaken. This is an absorbing documentary, an interview with a woman who brings to life the last years of the Third Reich.
Traudl Junge was one of Hitler's private secretaries from 1942. He dictated his last will and testament to her. On the whole, she did not see much of Hitler until she was in the Bunker in the final days, although she was interviewed by him for the job.
Her description of those times becomes increasingly vivid and detailed as she warms to her subject (although it is a relief to hear her say at various times that she does not remember some things). The interview is at its most powerful in her recollections of the very last days, an eyewitness to Hitler's retreat into another world while still blaming the German people for not responding to his vision and their mission, especially to rid Europe of the Jews.
The important aspect of the interviews is Frau Junge's continually asking herself why and how as a twenty year old, she could have been so unquestioningly caught up in Third Reich propaganda, could have been charmed by Hitler's personality and not asked herself what was really going on. For decades, she did not give interviews but, finally, she was persuaded to talk to film-maker, Andre Heller, in 2001. Her testimony is honest, self-condemnatory, puzzled at herself as a young girl - and finding some small way to atone and to forgive herself. It is recording of interviews like this that remind us how important it is to have visual records for the future.
Sadly, Frau Junge died of cancer the morning after the film was screened at the Berlin Film Festival in February, 2002, at the age of 81.
