The release of Taika Waititi’s ‘anti-hate satire’ recasts Hitler as a buffoonish imaginary friend and it’s not the first time film-makers have wanted us to laugh at the fuhrer
“In time of war, it’s typical, sometimes even useful, to demonize your enemy … Caricatures and jokes, not always in the best of taste, rise to the forefront because it’s our way of relieving aggression.” Those words come from film historian Leonard Maltin, as he gives a bit of cultural context in a recorded introduction to the 1943
Disney short Der Fuehrer’s Face. In the nine-minute cartoon, Donald Duck awakens in Nazi
Germany as a good little member of the Third Reich, sieg-heiling in feverish devotion to a sparingly depicted Adolf Hitler. His daily routine goes from austere to nightmarish – from eating a wooden-bread-and-sliced-single-bean sandwich to running himself ragged at a hallucinatory munitions factory – until the “real” Donald wakes up in the US of A, full of tearful gratitude to be a free American.
Related: Jojo Rabbit review – Scarlett Johansson lifts smug Hitler
comedy