This Sunday night play for ITV was the final days in the bunker of the Hitler regime.
Comparisons will be made with Bruno Ganz's performance in Downfall.
Both productions share similarities. Which means the writers must have gone to similar historical sources regarding Adolf Hitler's final days, even final hours. The rest is conjecture.
Frank Finlay gives a highly volatile performance as Adolf Hitler. Regularly pumped up with drugs by his doctors. He thinks it is vitamins and he has been an addict for years.
His close circle know that Hitler is deranged. Flip flopping at any minutes, ranging between moments of calmness to madness. He could not decide whether to leave the bunker and Berlin and escape elsewhere.
In an early scene he reduces his deputy Hermann Göring to tears by insulting him in front of others.
Then there is Hitler's complex relationship with his longtime lover Eva Braun. The drama places a doubt as to how much he might have really loved her. She too was disturbed as well.
They finally get married as the Russians are advancing on Berlin. Looking forward to the wedding breakfast, likely to be a cyanide pill or a bullet.
Everyone seemed to be without remorse even with the end in sight. From death, destruction to genocide. The Nazis were still convinced they were in the right even though the war was lost.
This drama shown in 1973, is lower budget than Downfall. This was a studio bound production made 30 years before the more expensive feature film. It is riveting stuff.
