User reviews

In this age of A&E's Biography, and cable channels devoted to documentaries, sometimes it's eye-opening and entertaining to go back and watch one made "in the past" when theatrical showings were the only outlet.

Then again, sometimes it's not.

Black Fox actually seems older than it is- I'm surprised when I see that it was filmed in 1962, because it comes across as a heavy-handed propaganda piece concurrent with Hitler's reign.

It's almost embarrassing to watch, as the "documentary" actually has very little to say, and Marlene Dietrich gives her all to give it some kind of meaning. The film switches back and forth between Hitler's machinations and doings, and an odd, old folk-tale of a "black fox" and his dealings with his fellow animals. The folk-tale is illustrated with static woodcuts- you half expect a picture of Vlad Tepes somewhere along the way. It's as if the directors were either trying to put the whole WW2/Europe story into something acceptable for children, or were trying to emulate George Orwell's Animal Farm, and turn history into an anthropomorphic parable.

The film is very heavy-handed, and the parable just bogs the whole thing down. I admit I write this with a view of the modern documentary in mind... but Black Fox isn't entertaining, isn't educational, and was a waste of a purchase.

Two years after she played the widow of a German general in Judgement At Nuremberg, Marlene Dietrich took up the task of narrating the documentary The Black Fox. Dietrich who certainly saw in her life the beginnings of Adolph Hitler's rise to power. Fortunately she had the good sense to leave Germany. She visited there post World War II on a few occasions, but Dietrich was never really welcomed back. She died in 1991 in Paris and only then did she come back to Germany to be buried.

What's different here is the use of a German folk tale The Black Fox with accompanying art work, interpolated into the film between scenes of the usual newsreel footage. Dietrich reads part of the tale which was adapted by Goethe and it's entertaining with a new perspective. Especially for German audiences brought up Goethe's literature.

I also noticed that the story Dietrich narrated was encapsulated in many ways by Burt Lancaster's speech acknowledging his guilt in Judgement At Nuremberg. Run that after The Black Fox and you'll see what I mean.

It's a story that cannot be told often enough and The Black Fox won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 1962. Quite deserved.

I rented this movie years ago and it was the first time I had seen any of the old archive footage of the atrocities of Adolf Hitler. The scenes of the ovens, the starving masses and the Allied soldiers helping the survivors and bulldozing the hundreds and hundreds of emancipated corpses, made me burst into tears. It may not be the quintessential "Holocaust" movie (Schindler's List perhaps?), but it is worth seeing. Even though it is painful to watch. While not for young children, curious older teens should only watch this with their parents so it can be discussed and their questions answered. This kind of movie makes us all witnesses and jurors to this horrid time in history, and keepers of the truth so that it will never happen again.

~Learn the lessons from History, lest we be doomed to repeat~

I have to completely disagree with a couple of the reviews that I read regarding this documentary. As the History Channel and A&E do justice to many of Hitler's documentaries and more current information, we need to remember that this documentary was made in 1962 and not all the information was so readily at hand. I felt that though Marlene Dietrich was very eloquent and understandable as did my history teacher husband. This documentary didn't have all the "re-creations" of History Channel and many, many other well done docs, but for it's time it was finely executed. It used real footage, authentic photos and actual quotations. "Reynard" was used as to compare Hitler and his ego. If you ever read "Reynard" or studied the story Reynard the Fox was medieval Europe's trickster figure, a nasty but charismatic character who was always in trouble but always able to talk his way out of any retribution. I thought that this movie is a beautiful study of human tragedy as well as human condition. I could find no contradictions nor any reason to not study this movie as a piece of art and history. In 1962 this topic was still so fresh and unbelievable in peoples' minds that to see this from their perspective would have been shocking and unbelievable. I believe that this is raw and real and it speaks the truth. It does not romanticize nor glamorize what took place.

Louis Stoumen's Academy Award-winning "Black Fox: The True Story of Adolf Hitler" looks at the life of the man whose name is synonymous with evil. It consists of footage and photographs from the Fuhrer's birth to the Nuremberg trials. Probably the main things to take from it are that the reparations imposed on Germany undeniably created the conditions that led to Hitler's rise to power, and his crimes against humanity couldn't have happened without the complicity of individuals. The scene where US and Soviet troops meet in Germany calls to mind that two years later, the WWII-era superpowers became enemies. The war known as a good war gave way to an undeclared war that unleashed horrendous crimes by both sides.

Seeing Hitler's methods, it's hard not to see a parallel with the current crop of demagogues. A certain orange man is the obvious one, but Europe now has a new set of them (the UK's Nigel Farage, Hungary's Viktor Orban, and others). How long before another global war breaks out?

Marlene Dietrich narrates the documentary. She's an unusual choice to narrate, but the story remains the important part. The world had seen genocides before Hitler's actions and there have been genocides since. Can the human race ever stop doing this?

Yes. Indeed. This Nazi/WW2 history-documentary from 1962 certainly had its fair share of good points, as well as its decidedly bad points, too.

Topping the list of its most detrimental deficits of all was having to endure listening to Hollywood, glamour queen, Marlene Dietrich do the voice-over narration.

Delivering her "spiel" in a strictly "phone-in" fashion - Dietrich had a really annoying habit of pronouncing her r's as if they were w's. For example - She pronounced the word "brave" as "bwave", and "great" as "gweat".

As you can well-imagine - Listening to Dietrich ramble on this way with her extra-thick, German accent quickly began to grate on my nerves like you wouldn't believe.

Had this history-documentary offered the viewer the option for subtitles (which it didn't), then, yes, I could have easily turned a total deaf-ear to that doofus Dietrich (who came across to me sounding like a female Elmer Fudd).

Anyway - On the positive side - This documentary certainly did contain some really excellent, vintage, newsreel footage that made it a worthwhile program to watch, in the long run.

I watched this documentary for one reason--it won the Oscar. However, my perspective on this film is a bit different from most people, as I am a history teacher and actually took a class entitled "Adolf Hitler"--and studied the man in great depth and read thousands of pages of biographies, commentaries and even "Mein Kampf". Needless to say, I probably will be more of a stickler than most when it comes to the quality of the film.

The movie is narrated by Marlene Dietrich--an ardent anti-Nazi who was forced to leave her homeland because of her hatred of Hitler and his regime--so she was a good choice for this role. It's just a shame that the stuff she had to read was at times pretty poor--with a storybook section that just seemed stupid and trivialized the evil of Hitler. As for the rest of the film, I was disappointed--as the film had way too many photos (some very grainy), irrelevant engravings and filler and not nearly enough actual period film footage. I agree wholeheartedly with another reviewer that said that the History Channel and A&E have spoiled us for such documentaries as they simply are better and feature nothing but film footage and interviews--excellent ones at that.

So why, if the film isn't a great documentary about Hitler, did it win the Oscar? Well, perhaps at the time it was among the best films about him or perhaps the AMPAS members just liked the idea of an anti-Nazi film (hardly a risky decision on their part!). Regardless there are today so many better films that I could recommend (such as "Hitler and Stalin: Roots of Evil"--oddly not listed on IMDb) that this one is easy to skip.

Fascinating and disturbing especially in it's parable like comparison of Hitler's rise and fall with the old germanic folktale of Reynard the Fox. M.Dietrich's voice/narration is at times haunting and the use of photos and woodcuts is visually stimulating. The film almost seems as if it's geared towards children which only highlights the grim horrors it depicts. In today's world of our own country engaging in criminal wars of conquest in the middle east and our govt. being run by illegitimately elected "officials", our own Reichstag fire (9-11) the patriot act and the fraudulent "war on terror" it seems we've learned nothing from watching films like this.

Good try but the format does not work. Comparing Hitler to classical allegory is like comparing apples and oranges. The Hitler story does not need to be compared with anything because it is incomparable. Hitler's story speaks for itself. Comparing him or his career with fictional characters in superfluous, and does injustice the latter. No character in fiction can duplicate Adolf Hitler. Hitler's story is so unique that further metaphorical embellishments serve as mere distractions. And when depicting Hitler's entourage, comparisons with fiction become ludicrous. Hitler was an orator but one need not compare him to a bellow or a megaphone, though such comparisons could be amusing. Hitler as a black fox? No way. Hitler was Hitler; leave the fox alone.