Plots(1)
Making a documentary about the Front Theatre during World War II became a precarious affair for the members of the German filmers' cooperative 'Die Thede'. It is clear from the interviews that it has not become the film they had in mind: the people involved cannot remember anything or show off their Nazi-sympathies. By coincidence, the filmmakers encounter an elderly gentleman who tells them about his past. He claims to be the son of the famous film director Ernst Lubitsch. He tells about his perilous mission to smuggle weapons into the Warsaw ghetto. According to him, Warsaw was also the place where he wrote the script for his father's film to be or not to be. He contends to be the man that provided the Anti-Nazi League in Hollywood with information. His fantastic stories seem to be confirmed by authentic films of the Nazi-stronghold Obersalzburg. When Lubitsch Junior gives his opinion about present-day politics, the filmmakers grow suspicious. War experts expose his films as authentic Nazi-propaganda, and a psycho-analist explains the old man's behaviour: the adopted Lubitsch-identity is merely a blind for his Nazi-past. He gives the filmmakers the advice to confront Junior with his lies in Warsaw. Gracefully, the film makes the search for truth and the disclosure of the lie to its theme. The form is fiction, with some documentary elements. A number of actors play the part of the people they are in reality. What is more, the archive material is authentic. Lubitsch junior is an amusing film with a cynical undertone. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)
(more)