Rating: PG
Genre:
History
Theatrical Release: 01/24/2003(USA
Release Date: 10/28/2003
SubTitles: English/French/Espanol
Dubbed: Ger
Sound: DD
Run Time: 87 min
Flags: Adult Situations
Distributor/Studio: Columbia TriStar
Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary is a feature-length interview with 81-year-old Austrian
Traudl Junge, who served as
Hitler's personal secretary from 1942 to 1945, when she was in her early twenties. She saw
Hitler in his everyday life, right up until his final days, and she witnessed, firsthand, the collapse of the Nazi regime. After the war,
Junge was "de-Nazified" by Allied forces as part of a program of amnesty for young people. She remained silent about her experiences for nearly 60 years, until she agreed to be interviewed by artist
Andre Heller, whose own Jewish father escaped Austria as the Nazis came to power.
Heller and documentarian
Othmar Schmiderer edited ten hours of interview footage into the 90-minute film, which uses no archival footage, photos, or background music. It's just
Junge describing her experiences on camera and occasionally watching the video playback of herself as she describes those experiences.
Junge denies any real knowledge or understanding of what the Nazis were doing while she worked for them. She discusses how she was taken in by
Hitler, who seemed fatherly and kind. She describes his personality. She goes into harrowing detail about the last days in the bunker. At times, she seems overwhelmed by her sense of shame at her own ignorance and naïveté. Presumably unburdened after decades of guilt,
Junge passed away just hours after
Blind Spot was shown at the
2002 Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Panorama Audience Prize. The film was also shown at the
2002 Toronto Film Festival, and the
2002 New York Film Festival.
~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary is a deceptively simple
documentary, and a compelling example of the form. Some may complain that the film lacks the breadth and power of such Holocaust documents as
Claude Lanzmann's
Shoah, which used a similarly direct, bare-bones technique in its interviews with both survivors and collaborators. But the film does illuminate its subject, which is not
Hitler himself, who remains a fairly unfathomable figure, but
Traudl Junge.
Junge was once a naïve and optimistic young woman who accepted a job working for the Nazis more out of curiosity than ideology. The film presents her in her dotage, but her recollection of her experiences is vivid. For a while, the film just shows
Junge relating her carefree earlier days working for the Nazis, and her girlish interests, and she doesn't seem especially remorseful about her past. She describes her family as "apolitical," and claims that she came to work for the Nazis through "coincidence, chance, and foolishness." She describes how she won
Hitler over during her initial interview with him by making him laugh. But filmmakers
Andre Heller and
Othmar Schmiderer cannily convey the extent of
Junge's remorse by sporadically cutting to a shot of her watching her own testimony as it unfolds. She watches herself in a tremulous and agitated state, mouthing her words back as she listens to them, interrupting with corrections and clarifications. It's clear that she's still wrestling demons. The information she provides is sometimes limited to banal details about
Hitler's eating habits and the like, but her distinct point-of-view is critical to improving our understanding of the events she witnessed.
~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
