Architektur des Untergangs

"The Architecture of Doom" is the best surgical picking apart of Hitler's brain I've seen. It thoroughly examines Hitler's aesthetic worldview and how it could have lead to an artistic obsession to recreate the world to fit that vision. Its thoroughness is something Hitler himself might have admired! However, the power of this film is regrettably blunted quite a bit by the poor English narration. Perhaps Bruno Ganz's original narration with subtitles would have been better--though I haven't seen the latter to say for sure. In any case, narration is crucial in films like these (For a great example, listen to Trevor Howard in "Memory of the Camps"), and this lifeless, inflectionless reader really hurts a film that deserves a lot better treatment.

This fast moving film postulates that the ideas that the Nazi hierarchy held about art influenced the drive to cleanse the race and make it pure. The Nazi's loved the classical ideal and hated anything that was impressionistic or modern and used it as proof of genetic impurity. The film recreates a lecture that toured Germany which showed how modern or degenerate art was based on deformed people. We see the images from the degenerate art and how they are compared to the mental and physically handicapped. This, the film argues, allowed the Nazis to then begin to sculpt the German people into the perfect physical being through murder (after all they are less then human).

Its an interesting idea but I don't think it was as big a deal as the film makes it out to be. Certainly there was the drive to create the perfect little Nazi, but I don't think it was as formalized as the movie says. I think the nice ideas of art and race were less intertwined as this film thinks. That said this movie is kick in the pants and in the head. The ideas it puts forward were probably at the very least operating on a subconscious level as a form of positive re-enforcement. Its all very plausible, which is scary.

Definitely worth seeing for anyone wanting to further color their understanding of Nazi ideas. You may not wholly agree with whats presented, but it will make you think, which isn't a bad thing.

A documentary worthy of the work of Richard J Evans, looking in depth at the importance f art to the NSDAP regime and top Hitler's weltpolitik. However, I'm not clear as to why many reviewers have singled out Sam Gray's narration for particular derision. True, there are a couple of instances where his pronunciation is not perfect, such as Berchtesgaden, and referring to "the Grecian capital" seems strange, but then he's American and perhaps it's like others referring to Beijing as Peking; to each his own. One can also hear gasps of air and creaking of chairs, particularly when Hitler's Berghof chalet is described which seems a bit careless of the producer, and the sounds of birds chirping during Hitler's three hour tour of Paris are incongruous to say the least. However, Gray's narratives competent and judicious which is not surprising as he has played judges and doctors for so long on television: Judge Greenspan in The Sopranos, Judges Chabot and Leon in Law and Order, Dr. Hough in Equal Justice, Judge Weiss in the film Suspect, Dr. Henry Spivak in C.A.T. Squad, Judge Kaufman in Concealed Enemies, Judge Mineon in Rage of Angels, Dr. John Wolff in Hanky Panky and Dr. Bernstein in A Little Sex. Remark has also been made as to this monotone delivery but, again, I don't know how else he should speak- in the same excitable manner as that of the German propaganda films? www.tracesofevil.blogspot.com

One of the best documentaries i have ever seen. The disecting of nazism and especially Hitlers various obsession of race, purity, strength, the german people and the ideas and architecture behind it all is nothing but brilliant.

So many excellent photos and films and so well "framed" through the music and the narrator that i cant even begin to describe the feeling you will get from seeing this masterpiece!

Just take my word for it - if you are historically interrested into nazism and its background you have to make time for this one here.

This is an excellent documentary and exposé into the psychology and ideals that, in great part, were responsible for Hitler's passion and vision that would drive the dynamics of Germany's politics. As absurd and surreal his ambitions may have been... there was a part of his dream that oddly seems honest and noble but character flawed. By no means should anyone admire the reality of his vision but be fascinated by how fast and furious Hitler and the Nazi doctrine brought a crushed post WWI Germany and its people to the brink of world domination in less then a decade. Indeed Hitler was an example of extreme self anointed indulgence and a deluded fantasy that millions paid the price by being murdered and exterminated as human vermin. A tragedy and a mind that I hope will never see the light of day ever again.

Highly recommended 9/10