The Architecture of Doom
| The Architecture of Doom | |
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| Original title | Undergångens arkitektur |
| Directed by | Peter Cohen |
| Produced by | Peter Cohen |
| Written by | Peter Cohen |
| Narrated by |
Rolf Arsenius |
| Music by |
Peter Cohen Sven Ahlin Richard Wagner (non-original music) |
| Cinematography | Mikael Cohen Gerhard Fromm Peter Östlund |
| Edited by | Peter Cohen |
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Production
companies |
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| Distributed by | Sandrew Film & Teater AB, Stockholm (1989) |
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Release date
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Running time
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123 minutes |
| Country | Sweden |
| Language | Swedish (Also German and English versions) |
Rolf Arsenius
Bruno Ganz (German)
The Architecture of Doom (Swedish: Undergångens arkitektur) is a 1989 documentary by Swedish director Peter Cohen and narrated by Rolf Arsenius. German- and English-language versions have also been released.
The film explores the obsession Adolf Hitler had with his own particular vision of what was and was not aesthetically acceptable and how he applied these notions while running the Third Reich. His obsession with art he considered pure, in opposition to the supposedly degenerate avant-garde works by Jewish and Soviet artists, reveals itself to be deeply connected to Hitler's equally subjective and strict ideal of physical beauty and health. A series of so-called degenerate art exhibitions were sponsored in order to depict modernist painting and sculpture as expressions of mental illness and general depravity. Classical art that reinforced Hitler's personal taste, from Roman statuary to Dutch oil paintings, was scavenged from across Nazi occupied Europe.
Hitler is shown as an amateur architect, planning new building designs for the Third Reich that express his vision of a Nordic empire to rival those of classical antiquity. He is said to be intimately familiar with the grand opera houses of Europe. He visits Paris with a group of architects and artists who will be tasked with rebuilding Berlin to suit the Nazi aesthetic. Designs for new structures include depictions of the ruins they will make for distant generations.
The film posits that Hitler's affinity for Greek and Roman antiquity is also expressed in his insistence of a totalizing strategy of war. In what Hitler imagined to be the style of Sparta and Rome, war was meant to annihilate the enemy, enslaving the population and erasing the history of the vanquished.
Although Caryn James found the period photos and film footage valuable, she thought that the The Architecture of Doom was "simplistic" and "dangerously facile."Washington Post reviewer Benjamin Forgey wrote that the film-maker "marshals his arguments and his evidence masterfully," and in a separate review Desson Howe said that the film was a "dryly effective documentary."Austin Chronicle reviewer Steve Davis declared that the "impeccably researched documentary The Architecture of Doom formulates a convincing thesis about Hitler and his legacy." Ed Simmons wrote in Crisis magazine that Cohen had made a "remarkably insightful film which shows the Führer not as a psychotic, an anti-Christ, or even Aryan Angel."
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Wikipedia