LOOK WHO´S BACK

Director David Wnendt, nominated with LOOK WHO’S BACK for EUROPEAN COMEDY 2016, talks about laughing about Hitler, the shooting techniques, and the public’s reactions

Can you briefly describe what your film is about?
Hitler comes back to life.

How would you define the humour of your film? How did you find the right tone?
Without knowing whether I truly succeeded this is what I wanted and tried: The humour evolves as the film goes on. LOOK WHO’S BACK starts out funny and is supposed to make you laugh. It then gets darker and even makes you question and regret that you laughed at all. The humour is in a way a spoonful of sugar to bait the audience and to get it to swallow the medicine.

A film like LOOK WHO’S BACK also raises the question of whether one should laugh about Hitler at all. Why make a comedy about one of the worst criminals in human history?
I believe it is a good thing to make fun of him as a person, rather than portraying him as some kind of monster. Laughter reduces him to normal size. It would be easy to blame a monster and a monster alone for the holocaust. But this would be far from the truth. It is Germany that brought Hitler to power. It was ordinary Germans who carried out the atrocities. There is no larger-than-life Hitler to hide behind.

The fine line is to make fun of Hitler, to make fun of Germans, but to never make fun of the crimes or the victims.

How did you find your cast? And how do you work with your actors?
I found the main cast through a normal casting process. My wonderful casting director Ulrike Müller keeps coming up with stunning ideas and we had several rounds of casting to find the best actors for every role. I try to do the casting rounds in a way that I test aspects of a character that I think are needed in the film. So, in the case of Hitler we needed someone who would be able to convince as Hitler as well as someone who would be able and brave enough to go out in the streets as Hitler. Oliver Masucci brought all this to the role. And he also brought a special kind of humour. He filled the role with theatrical pathos fitting to Hitler but funny when used to hail the excellence of a candy bar.

This film called for a special way of working. We had many scenes that were unscripted. Oliver Masucci as Hitler confronted normal people all over Germany. We were shooting with a small crew in the “real” world. So I tried to prepare Oliver for this. We had many test scenes, I provided him with texts he could use as Hitler for different circumstances and about different topics. With these texts he was able to act as Hitler and say things Hitler would have said – no matter what kind of people we met. In addition to that, Oliver would sometimes wear a tiny earpiece through which I could communicate with him while he was in an interaction. I was able to feed him more lines or give him ideas of what to do next.

Comedy is not always easy to translate to other languages and cultures, even within Europe. Why does it work with your film?
Probably some jokes were lost in translation. Some refer to specific German television shows which are probably unknown to an international audience. BUT, I do believe that all audiences can relate to the central theme of the film. In essence, it is about whether Hitler could succeed again in our world and in our times.

In the novel, Hitler comes back to live in Berlin in 2014 and the readers find out how Germans react to him. The film tries to take this premise literally. We really went with Hitler through Germany and filmed in documentary scenes of how people reacted. We were shocked ourselves by these reactions. People just loved our Hitler and what he had to say. In his presence they opened up about their fear and hatred of immigrants, their wish for a strong leader and their resentment of the media and democratic politicians.

So, yes, people are still open for fascist ideas and for the false promises of demagogues. To see proof for this, besides our film, you just have to turn on the news.

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