Is it Hitler?
I don't believe that was really Hitler in the film. Can anyone give an authoritative judgment?
shareI think it was, just some archive footage, just like Lennon, Nixon and more in Forest Gump.
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MovieChat Forums > Zelig (1983) Discussion > Is it Hitler?
in the rally scenes shot outside, it’s the real hitler, but during the speech interrupted by zelig, it is clearly a pretty bad impersionation.
shareIt was bad, but clearly some people can't spot obvious things like this.
The rest of the film though had mightily convincing reenactments.
The speech is definitely actual archival footage. It is not a, "...pretty bad impersionation [sic]." It is Hitler.
I'm no historian but I'm fairly certain this is the, "Proclamation to the German Nation," speech made the day after Hitler was appointed Chancellor.* There is a YouTube video of the event. It is cobbled together from various footage and in some cases the visual has obviously been lost but the audio survives. There is more than enough visual to determine that the footage in Zelig is real. Maybe, just maybe, the part where Hitler turns around is staged but the preceding is actual footage.
*I edit this to indicate the speech is probably from a few weeks later.
All footage was actually Hitler except the speech inside where Zelig is behind him, the audio of the speech is actually Hitler though, it's one he made in Triumph of the Will (1935) which is the source for all the footage. They played the actual speech but had an actor dressed up as Hitler lip-sync and re-enact for this segment.
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it's one he made in Triumph of the Will (1935)
It is actually an earlier speech. And I think Zelig used archival footage. In other words, it is Hitler.
Triumph of the Will documents events of September 1934 in Nuremberg. The footage in Zelig is of a rally in and around the Sportpalast in Berlin, probably on February 10 or March 2, 1933.
As for reenactment, compare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzFqvoSd5Bw (Zelig) from 4:04
to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHHCKtiFkwg (documentary footage). Hitler starts speaking around 12:29. Go to 20:56.
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