2/10
How not to make a Nazi-themed movie
17 September 2016
Warning: Spoilers
"Eine Armee Gretchen" (and there are a handful of English-language titles for this one) is a Swiss German-language film from 1973, so this one will soon have its 45th anniversary already. It is one of the more known films by Swiss writer and director Erwin C. Dietrich, who adapted a novel by Karl-Heinz Helms-Liesenhoff for this film here. I cannot imagine he appreciated what Dietrich did with his base material unless it was as trashy and as much garbage as this film here. It runs for approximately 100 minutes and takes place during the days of World War II. The plot is that the German women want to do their best in order to help Hitler win the war and as Diietrich's films almost always have an erotic component, "the best" means in this case that they want to have sex with as many German soldiers as possible and help them in winning the war because if you are dead, you cannot have sex again and you would not want to miss out on these Gretchens after the War, do you? Oh yeah, this story sounds like the perfect component for a trashy guilty pleasure film, but it turns out no such thing.

Actually, it is garbage and you could also say it is offensive somehow. It was made less than 30 years and at that point, really many (female) survivors from this terrible time in German history were still alive. They had to live through terrible times and this film mocking them and their (possibly dead) husbands must have been so painful to watch. The argument that the women from back then are not alive any more today is not valid, because they were alive when this film came out. Apart from that, the film also gives leukemia patients a bad name in Dietrich's extremely clumsy attempt to give this film more dramatic relevance. Another major problem with this film is that you are supposed to like the protagonists, especially the female ones, but this gets really difficult to do when you see them approve of and appreciate Hitler from start to finish.

All in all, this film is a gigantic failure and really never should have been made. The fact that Dietrich fails in more areas than usual, for example the historic component that is missing entirely in his other many many stinkers that he made in his career, takes this film to a completely new level in terms of screwing-up. This is why I believe when you look for the worst film from his career, this one is definitely in contention. It is never interesting, pretty offensive to all kinds of women, irrelevant from the (historic) story-telling perspective, never funny despite being categorized as a comedy and just a prime example of how many German-language really sucked in the 1970s. Many people do not know Hitler was actually Austrian. Many people also do now know that Dietrich is Swiss. And both of them did huge damage in their respective fields with their works. I highly recommend to stay away from this movie.
4 out of 4 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed