Der Fuehrer's Face (1943)

The Worst Film Ever

Pretty Good

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It's a common opinion that all kinds of propaganda movies should be banned altogether and not made accessible to the public. This 8-minute Donald Duck short film is the perfect example of why that would be a huge mistake. These kind of films are often a great way to understand historical context from times long gone and are also a fascinating watch in order to witness how they tried to and often succeeded to manipulate the people. "Der Fuehrer's Face" is possibly the most famous political cartoon from World War II. The only other one that may reach the same status is MGM's Blitz Wolf from the same year. "Der Fuehrer's Face" BTW. also won the Oscar over that one in a year where it was the only Disney entry in the animated short category, a rather unusual occurrence as Disney occasionally took 4 of the 5 spots with their films.In any case, the film is packed with a few subtle and very many not-so-subtle Nazi symbolisms and metaphors, like the windmill or Donald's house. But also the Italians and Japanese get their fair share of shade. The story can be summarized pretty quickly. Donald wakes up as a proud Nazi, but his lack of great living conditions, especially food, and hard work make him quickly turn insane as he has knives put to his neck and is constantly treated with noisy propaganda. The end is as patriotic as it gets and it's easy to see why people liked it that much in times like these. An important historical document.

WWII-era filmmakers used two broad approaches when attempting to discredit Adolf Hitler and Germany in general. The first, and least interesting in my view, was to treat them with the utmost seriousness, painting the Nazis are perverted, sadistic and evil baby-killers, and the like. Secondly, there was the comedic approach, by which Hitler was belittled through having entire audiences laughing in his face. 'The Great Dictator (1940)' and 'To Be or Not to Be (1942)' accomplish this hilariously well, but what about the younger demographics? To help communicate the evils of Nazism to children, the Walt Disney cartoon 'Der Fuhrer's Face (1942)' tosses Donald Duck (voiced by Clarence Nash) amid Hitler's militaristic regime, where he slaves away for "48 hours a day" in a munitions factory, continually bombarded with the swastika symbol and the phrase "heil Hitler!" At the end of the cartoon, after a surreal montage of Nazi (or "Nutzi," as the film says) oppression, Donald wakes up in America, thankfully sighing "am I glad to be a citizen of the United States of America."Despite winning an Oscar in 1943 for Best Short Subject Cartoon, 'Der Fuehrer's Face' was rarely seen following the end of the war. As the atrocities of Hitler's "Final Solution" came to light, the Nazi badge quickly became something, not to be merely ridiculed, but to be loathed. Nevertheless, the sheer audacity of Jack Kinney's cartoon has to be seen to be believed. There's hardly a frame in which the swastika is not visible in one form or another, and Donald is ludicrously forced to bark "Heil Hitler" whenever he comes across a photograph of the Fuhrer. The cartoon's climax is a dizzyingly-surreal montage in which anthropomorphised Nazi machinery relentlessly beats Donald into submission. It's all a little disconcerting, as was its intention, but it's also a lot of fun. Also featured is Oliver Wallace's song "Der Fuehrer's Face," which was covered by Spike Jones and His City Slickers with great success. Indeed, the name of this cartoon was changed from "Donald Duck in Nutzi Land" to capitalise on the song's popularity.

In this marvelously surreal and funny short, Donald Duck is a subject of Nazi Germany, forced to make munitions for the Reich. He has to endure abysmal food rations (wooden bread, Aroma of Bacon and Eggs, and coffee brewed from a single bean), superhuman workloads, 30 seconds of forced calisthenics for his "vacation", and an unrelenting barrage of Hitler portraits which he must hail unfailingly - or else! It's all too much for Donald, who has a nervous breakdown, and the film disintegrates into a bizarre phantasmagoria of dancing missiles and stomping boots. Thankfully, it was all just a bad dream, and Donald is relieved to see that the hailing shadow on the wall is cast by his Statue of Liberty on the window sill. As he kisses it he proclaims, wearing his star-spangled jammies, "Am I glad to be a citizen of the United States of America." This cartoon, perhaps the most savagely satirical Disney ever made, was a sensation in its day, winning the Oscar and spawning a hit song. After the war, however, it was shelved and kept out of public circulation - and not without reason. Now it has been released on DVD as part of the excellent Walt Disney Treasures collection, "Walt Disney on the Front Lines", for discerning film buffs to enjoy. Many will find it disquieting to see a beloved American icon wearing a brownshirt uniform with swastika armband, hailing pictures of Hitler, and goose stepping to work; but then, Donald doesn't seem too thrilled about it, either. In no way does this cartoon promote Nazism. Instead, it punctures its pretensions of superiority by reducing its brutality to absurd slapstick, turning its Ubermensch into buffoonish caricatures. (Bear in mind that at the time of this cartoon the true extent of Hitler's inhumanity was unknown to the Allied countries.) As Mel Brooks has noted, the best way to deal with monsters like Hitler is to laugh at them. So go ahead and laugh, laugh, right at Der Fuehrer's Face.

I once heard that Disney's marketing department was concerned about how Mickey Mouse was depicted in 1995's Runaway Brain, because Mickey's brain was switched with an evil brain, making Mickey a rampaging villain in the cartoon. I wonder what they would think if they had to market Der Fuehrer's Face with Donald Duck wearing a Nazi uniform and, at one point, resembling Hitler. Of course, this isn't the real Donald (as it wasn't the real Mickey in Runaway Brain); it was all a bad dream for Donald. However, the image alone of Donald in `Nutzi Land' is somewhat shocking.Nevertheless, Der Fuehrer's Face exhibits some of the greatest gags I've seen in any cartoon. In Donald's nightmare, he has to do some odd exercises that contort his body into a swastika-like shape. His cuckoo clock bird looks like Hitler as he comes out of the clock doing a Heil Hitler salute. And poor Donald is forced to work in an ammunition factory where he has to salute Hitler every time he sees his picture, which is about after every other ammunition shell. It's just so surprising to seeing Hitler and the Nazis being made fun of in this way, in a cartoon no less, you can't help but laugh.Finally Donald wakes up in his red, white, and blue pajamas and is relieved to see his Statue of Liberty souvenir and realizing he's always lived in the `good, old United States of America.' This cartoon is really quite a sight to see. It makes fun of the enemy, gives people a good laugh, and displays some great patriotism. A great cartoon, in my opinion, even if it borders on controversial nowadays. It's a product of its time, and it's just a fine piece of entertainment.My IMDb Rating: 10/10