The Hidden Führer

Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, the duo responsible for Party Monster, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and Inside Deep Throat, here offer a documentary much less likely to attract widespread public attention--an investigation of the claim in a recent book by German historian Lothar Machtan that Adolf Hitler was a repressed homosexual. The film feigns objectivity, offering strong critiques of Machtan's conclusions and his manipulation of evidence from other scholars, including the historian's own mentor (who happens to be gay), but in actuality the overall presentation assumes the truth of the contention. And while it incorporates a good deal of interesting news footage, the program also resorts to very questionable visual expedients, such as including excerpts from Luchino Visconti's extravagant fictional film The Damned to illustrate the fall of Ernst R(hm and his Storm Troopers in 1934. Portions of The Hidden Führer are quite illuminating (a segment dealing with 19th-century German gay movements and theories of homosexual superiority, for example, is fascinating), but they tend to be peripheral to the main subject. On the central matter, however, the film exhibits crippling methodological weaknesses that ultimately make it more sensational than scholarly. Optional. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)