Springtime for Hitler and Russia
It features high-kicking Nazis, a potato-peeling Eva Braun and a hapless Russian spy lording it in the SS. Welcome to Hitler Kaput! Super Agents 008, a Russian farce wowing native audiences.
The spoof comedy, which has been reigning supreme at the top of the Russian box-office for the past fortnight, describes the rollicking adventures of a Soviet undercover agent in the top echelons of the Third Reich. Herr Hitler gets high on cocaine and plans his military proceedures using potatoes for troops, while Braun pleads for a holiday in Dubai as she slaves over the spuds.
The Russian hero is no James Bond either. He sings Soviet patriotic songs in Nazi bars, builds models of the Kremlin at Gestapo headquarters, and flashes a passport stamped "Official Soviet Spy ID" at checkpoints. But even if he's a raving nut, the mole never forgets his love for Mother Russia. When he has sex in a cornfield, he leaves behind him a trail of crushed stalks in the shape of a sickle and hammer.
In a country that is sensitive about the Great Patriotic War, Hitler Kaput! is a runaway hit. It raked in £2.8m in two weeks, more than three times what Hollywood blockbuster Journey to the Centre of the Earth made in the country during the same time period.
But many in Russia are not amused. Outraged Communist politicians in St Petersburg asked the ministry of culture to block the movie's release. They believed the film would "damage the health and moral condition of veterans of the war, victims of the blockade, and all who respect the memory of dead Soviet soldiers". Around 27 million people from the Soviet Union died during the second world war.
Unlike the film's hero, critics protest, "Soviet intelligence officers sacrificed, every day carried out the most difficult work in exhaustion, risked themselves, outsmarted the enemy intellectually and spiritually, and in this common fake, the central character - supposedly a Soviet patriot - endlessly performs Western dances, sings, drinks booze and goes to bed with any woman who appears on the scene."
But for the film-makers, Hitler Kaput! is a light-hearted way to show one's love for the motherland. "For me, it's a very patriotic act," director Marius Veisberg told The New York Times. "It forces you to laugh. It forces you to say goodbye to certain complexes."..
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
The spoof comedy, which has been reigning supreme at the top of the Russian box-office for the past fortnight, describes the rollicking adventures of a Soviet undercover agent in the top echelons of the Third Reich. Herr Hitler gets high on cocaine and plans his military proceedures using potatoes for troops, while Braun pleads for a holiday in Dubai as she slaves over the spuds.
The Russian hero is no James Bond either. He sings Soviet patriotic songs in Nazi bars, builds models of the Kremlin at Gestapo headquarters, and flashes a passport stamped "Official Soviet Spy ID" at checkpoints. But even if he's a raving nut, the mole never forgets his love for Mother Russia. When he has sex in a cornfield, he leaves behind him a trail of crushed stalks in the shape of a sickle and hammer.
In a country that is sensitive about the Great Patriotic War, Hitler Kaput! is a runaway hit. It raked in £2.8m in two weeks, more than three times what Hollywood blockbuster Journey to the Centre of the Earth made in the country during the same time period.
But many in Russia are not amused. Outraged Communist politicians in St Petersburg asked the ministry of culture to block the movie's release. They believed the film would "damage the health and moral condition of veterans of the war, victims of the blockade, and all who respect the memory of dead Soviet soldiers". Around 27 million people from the Soviet Union died during the second world war.
Unlike the film's hero, critics protest, "Soviet intelligence officers sacrificed, every day carried out the most difficult work in exhaustion, risked themselves, outsmarted the enemy intellectually and spiritually, and in this common fake, the central character - supposedly a Soviet patriot - endlessly performs Western dances, sings, drinks booze and goes to bed with any woman who appears on the scene."
But for the film-makers, Hitler Kaput! is a light-hearted way to show one's love for the motherland. "For me, it's a very patriotic act," director Marius Veisberg told The New York Times. "It forces you to laugh. It forces you to say goodbye to certain complexes."..