What is the name of the movie about Hitler who at a certain point during the movie is replaced by an impostor? the movie I believe was made ib=n the 50s.

thank you so much

Downfall actually tries to go beyond the cliched depiction of Hitler as an outright lunatic who duped the Germans to show that he had a deceptively human side to his character which appealed to people who thought of themselves as ordinary, decent folks. If anything, the bunker scene is an aberration, though I'm not surprised it sticks in people's minds. It's a shame Mr. Rosenbaum so completely misunderstood the film or his comments about the use of the scene for comic purposes might have been useful.

Speaking of useful, don't you think it might have been interesting to interview some, you know, Germans, for this story? Just saying...

Interesting discussion.

I do, however, have to correct something. Rosenbaum said "Godwin's Law grew out of the tendency of commenters on blogs to always take things to the Hitler level."

In fact, Godwin's Law was formulated long before there was such a thing as a blog. It dates to Usenet, circa 1990. Ask Mike Godwin.

It might be interesting to do a story on how each new mode of online discussion is supplanted by the next so thoroughly that the old one is almost completely forgotten -- except by a few who cling to it desperately.

Oh yeah, after the war, Chaplin said that had he had any idea of the genocide the Nazis were committing against the Jews, he never would have made "The Great Dictator."

By 1940 (the year "The Great Dictator" was released) WWII was already underway. How could Hitler not be taken seriously. I doubt spoofs of Hitler, be it by Chaplin, The Three Stooges, Warner Brothers cartoons or Spike Jones ("Der Fuehrer's Face"), made him any less menacing. It was just another weapon against him & his screwy followers.

A four-foot, bespectacled gnome of a Jewish friend once told me of his mischievous glee at attending a performance of Die Walkure in East Berlin during the 1950’s and sitting, for the price of 50 cents, in Hitler’s box. Now that’s revenge! Charging a special price for such a pleasure, however, would strike me as problematic at best. Filmmakers ought to be permitted to represent Hitler any way they see fit, but, as the child of one of his victims, I question their exclusive right to those representations. The delicacy here has to do not with the tastefulness of the interpretation but with the chutzpah of asserting an ongoing commercial claim. (By the way, you neglected to mention OTM's hilarious send-up of Hitler making his comeback on the talk show circuit.)

This is one of the most absurd interviews I've ever heard. Both films are excellent movies. In neither movie was Hitler portrayed as anything other than what he was which was a maniacal psychopathic thug.

Downfall is a portrayal of what happens to that type of individual at the end of his story.

I just don't see how you can watch The Great Dictator and not see the "absurdity of extremes" so eloquently expressed above. It, perhaps, is more frightening than Downfall, particularly considering when it was made.

Mr. Rosenbaum severely misrepresents the movie. The movie is about the moments of transformation of military and political leaders back into regular people, hence its title, "Downfall". Mr. Hitler was made into a "comic psycho monster" long before this movie came along, more likely be western war propaganda. No one is exculpated. It's a great movie, I recommend it.

Excerpt:
RON ROSENBAUM: ... The film itself was an exculpation of the German people by making Hitler into a kind of comic psycho monster and thus blaming all the evil of the Holocaust on Hitler and the other people in the bunker...

Rosenbaum's comments on Down Fall and The Great Dictator are way off the mark and historically inaccurate. How could Chaplin's film be considered a friendly and humors take on Hitler and help America avoid the war? In 1940 France had fallen, Britain was fighting for it's existence. The Nazi's were not seen as buffoons doing the goose step at this point.

In Down Fall Hitler was for the first time portrayed accurately and not as some stereo typical screaming monster but a human being committing horrific acts for a bankrupt ideology.

Portraying Hitler in youtube video's for any reason only shows the absurdity of extremes – that's why the Hitler parodies are so popular.

I absolutely admire OTM and often listen twice (or more) per weekend to catch details again.
But in future coverage of Gulf oil mess, PLEASE don't keep calling it a "spill." (My engineer-husband's blood pressure goes up every time, I think.) It's not a spill, it's a LEAK. Spills are from ships that run aground or capsize; containers, etc. that cease to contain, from breakage, penetration, age, whatever. Not to distinguish promotes misunderstanding. I hope we're not so uneducated we can't tell the difference!

The Mark Twain quotation takes me a little astray to something I've been thinking about for a while. I recall Johnny Carson's occasional unsuccessful Lincoln jokes. After one of them bombed with his audience he would observe that you can't make jokes about Abraham Lincoln. In the last years I've noticed late-night comedians getting away with Lincoln jokes. So I've been wondering whether it's because we're another generation or more away from the Carson audiences that held Lincoln in too much reverence to laugh at, i.e., that it's been long enough for tragedy to become humor. At age 62, I'm still a little shocked at joking about Lincoln--except for "So other than that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" (Which I now see isn't even about Lincoln as a comic character.)

Correction: Mel Brooks' 'The Producers' came out in 1968, not in '64.

Also, Chaplin didn't contribute to America underestimating Hitler; it was a public who confused satire with documentary fact that did this, if in fact Hitler was underestimated.