Udo Kier and David Hayman star in a story where a Holocaust survivor suspects his new neighbor is Adolf Hitler
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
What if you were a Holocaust survivor, living out your years in 1960 in some South American backwater, mourning the deaths of your wife and children, and your new neighbor was none other than the secretly still-alive Adolf Hitler? This is the intriguing and darkly comic premise of Russian-born Israeli Leon Prudovsky’s very clever and delightfully acted film, featuring one of the final performances of the great, widely beloved German actor Udo Kier.
Has Marek Polsky (Scotsman David Hayman, a longstanding stalwart of British television and cinema), whose time in the camps is proved by the tattoo on his arm, been driven mad by his grief and isolation? He has lived alone for years in South America, without learning Spanish, in a rundown property with a tiled roof, wooden walls, dirt lawns and a dingy whitewashed exterior.
The house next door is a bit more posh with a front porch, cement path and more land. Just a couple of weeks after Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped in Buenos Aires and spirited away to Jerusalem for trial by the Mossad, a new neighbor arrives in the middle of the night with a big, barking German Shepherd, two brawny, blond-haired haulers and an attractive middle-aged woman with a German accent shouting orders. In fact, civil records reveal that Polsky’s property extends beyond its legal lines, and he must move his fence and lose his prize possession: his black rose bush. It is the only thing he loves, dotes upon and nourishes with eggshells like his avid gardener wife used to do.
The heavily salt-and-pepper bearded man next door is named Herzog (Kier), or so he says, and when his dark shades fall off his face, Polsky sees what he believes are Hitler’s “dead blue eyes.” Polsky and Herzog live in the foggy outskirts of a town with a library and a courthouse, where Polsky tries to convince a local government official (a very good Kineret Peled) that Herzog is Hitler. Only Herzog treats the Black mail carrier worse than Polsky, who is a glutton for the daily newspaper (Does he secretly know Spanish?), especially the chess column. Polsky is a former master chess player who once saw Hitler and those eyes close up and personal at a championship match. Polsky pickles cucumbers, too.
As it turns out, Herzog is also an avid chess player. The game gives them a reason to get together. Polsky refers to Herzog as a “stinking kraut.” If he could, Polsky would pee on Herzog’s car. Polsky buys a Minolta camera and a telescopic lens to build his case that “Herzog” is really Hitler by spying on him. Herzog paints. Polsky studies books about Hitler’s art and compares Herzog’s work to Hitler’s. They are similar. Polsky tacks photos to the wall beside the window from which he takes his pictures.
“My Neighbor Hitler,” whose comic slant, however dark, is revealed by its title, often resembles that classic of elderly apoplexy “Grumpy Old Men” (1993) with former “Odd Couple” roommates Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau gloriously reunited as feuding Minnesota senior citizens whose rivalry goes nuclear when a beautiful, sexy older woman (Ann-Margret) moves in. In fact, Herzog shows some interest in the figure of the order-shouting woman we come to know as Frau Kaltenbrunner (Austrian actor Olivia Silhavy, “Woman in Gold”). The same is true of Polsky, another link between them.
Still, Polsky covers the photo of his dead family when Herzog is in his house. They argue over a letter, each not giving an inch. They play chess, fighting for every piece on the board. Herzog suspects that Polsky lets him win occasionally. Polsky, who wears a permanent scowl, is afraid of Herzog’s beloved dog “Wolfie.” But he likes Herzog’s self-baked cookies. When Polsky almost accidentally kills Wolfie, Herzog thinks the dog was hit by a car. They bury the creature together in the rain. Herzog quotes “Faust.” They get drunk on Polsky’s vodka; electric doorbells howl like the denizens of hell.
Kier, of course, was the beautiful-faced young man who played a witch hunter in the 1970 West German grindhouse hit “Mark of the Devil,” then Victor Frankenstein in “Flesh For Frankenstein” and the Count in “Blood For Dracula,” both Andy Warhol productions. According to IMDb, Kier had an incredible 279 acting credits. He did his most memorable work in genre films and appeared in many of Lars von Trier’s works, most notably the great made-for-TV series “The Kingdom II” (1997), an unhinged, sometimes hilarious horror show set in a haunted Danish hospital. Kier can also be seen playing a haunted Holocaust survivor opposite Wagner Moura in Brazil’s Oscar selection “The Secret Agent.”
Director Prudovsky, who co-wrote the “My Neighbor Adolf” screenplay with Dmitry Malinsky, has created something rare in Holocaust cinema, outside of Mel Brooks, a darkly comic take on a war that left the film’s two men deeply scarred, angry and isolated. and he delivers a twist that you (or at least I) honestly didn’t see coming. Hayman rages as the half-mad Polsky, as the character builds his case that Herzog is the Führer, while Kier slowly lets Herzog loosen up and then utters the word, “m…o…r…e,” with such Mephistophelian haughtiness that you must laugh. Is he Hitler?
‘My Neighbor Adolf’
Rating: Not Rated, violence, profanity, mature themes
Cast: David Hayman, Udo Kier, Olivia Silhavy
Director: Leop Prudovsky
Writers: Dmitry Malinsky, Prudovsky
Running time: 96 minutes
Where to watch: In theaters
Grade: A-
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