Grey Wolf : Hitler’s Escape to Argentina

‘Grey Wolf : Hitler’s Escape to Argentina’ is the least enigmatic title you’ll hear today. It is a docu-drama about, you guessed it, Hitler’s supposed escape to Argentina at the end of WWII. He didn’t die you see, in a move that marks him as significantly more cowardly than his (actual) course of action, he ran away. What a little shit. Needless to say, there are quite a lot of issues with this film. Starting with the obvious, that title. It leaves nothing to the imagination. Now, we live in a post Titanic world, whilst that film serves as a bastion of predictability in a volatile world, at least that wasn’t actually called “Titanic : It sinks”. To help out the film makers when they try to tell this film overseas I have come up with a few better potential titles. They are as follows: ‘HITLER : ALIVE’ – Short, to the point, and straight up scary, I’d watch this in an instant. ‘Return to Castle Grey Wolfenstein’ – To get the early 2000’s video game crowd interested, they are all grown up now and never met anyone to reproduce with (because: gamer stereotype) so have all the money. Finally, ‘Hitler’s Summer Kampf’ – which beside being in brilliantly bad taste is significantly better than ‘Grey Wolf’ which sounds like an action movie with an aging cast, plus the laboriously boring “Hitler’s Escape to Argentina”. If you are going to make an exploitative, ridiculous film like this at least name it
appropriately. One doesn’t need to watch the film because clearly its going to tell me that Hitler, fully the most hated man of WWII, didn’t in fact die in a bunker as his reich collapsed around him, but went and escaped to Argentina. He really, probably, almost certainly, probably, didn’t. There is an attempt to imply that the FBI were aware of all these nefarious goings on and let it go. One was not fully paying attention at this point (snoozing) but it is safe to say, the reasons given fall under the category of farm waste. The second issue with the film is perhaps a little more nuanced. It is based on a book, which apparently is far more detailed, as if more detail were needed in the telling of this annoying little story, which in turn relies in the eye witness testimonies of … eye witnesses. The film is structured in such a way that each of these eye witnesses basically voice overs their section of the story, so there is pretty much zero diagetic dialogue. This has two side effects. The first is that every time a new person starts speaking their name is written across the screen, even if we have heard them eight or nine times. The second, far more vexatious side effect is that, aside from the voice over, it is essentially a silent film, with exactly the sort of over zealous, flamboyant acting that silent films are famous for. Hitler’s friends in Argentina come off like a sort of collection of incongruous clowns, mugging and gesturing at each other as if emotion can only be conveyed via the medium of over zealous facial expressiveness. Finally though, what it comes down to is Hitler. No one is a fan of Hitler. I mean, say one was in the pub, slightly half cut, and woozily leans over to ones chum and stating “Hitler didn’t kill himself you know, he went to Argentina and lived there in a big old house then died… like, when he was old. He went all mad with the guilt and that as well”, thats interesting, thats a conversation starter, thats a way to awaken you and your drinking aide from an alcohol induced intellectual fug with a rousing “No bloody way, who says? there is no way that is true” before googling it to find out that only four ‘eye witnesses exist’. The point is, it doesn’t, shouldn’t, take 94 precious minutes to convey this idea. If it is true, so what? The asshole escaped justice by offing himself anyway, and the film implies that whilst he was shacked up in a pretty nice place in Argentina he hardly lived the life of riley even if he didn’t end it all in 1945, what with everyone in the world hating him, being betrayed by his own men, and generally losing his mind (one hopes from guilt). Telling this story isn’t going to make anyone feel any better about the man. Lets go back to that title attempt: “Grey Wolf: Hitler might have escaped to Argentina, where he died”. Now you don’t need to watch the film.