Guardian film critic downplays Hitler comments of director Lars von Trier

Here are a few passages from a Feb. 20 review by the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw of a new film by Danish director Lars von Trier called ‘Nymphomaniac’:

For the very first time, I think Von Trier has given us a film without any of the tiresome hoax provocation that has always been a part of even his most admired works. heartfelt and even passionate, especially in one image of Joe, utterly alone in a stark landscape, reaching towards a gnarled tree trunk: the part her father had once told her was the “soul” of a tree. That is not to say that the director has gone without any of his old tricksiness. He playfully alludes to his earlier films Breaking the Waves and Antichrist, and is still clearly very prickly about the “Nazi” controversy of two years ago, when he was thrown out of the Cannes film festival for making a Hitler joke at a press conference.

Bradshaw is referring to a press conference in 2011 at the Cannes Film Festival, for the film Melancholia, where Von Trier was asked to expound on a recent interview in which he expressed interest in his German roots.

Here’s a video clip of the press conference with Von Trier and the film’s star Kirsten Dunst.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LayW8aq4GLw]

Though Von Trier apologized after the row, he later retracted his apology during an interview with GQ.

Moreover, as you can see in the clip, the director may have attempted a bit of humor towards the end to break the tension, but seemed quite serious when stating that he sympathized with Hitler “a little bit”. And, the French Police evidently didn’t think it was merely a joke when they investigated Von Trier for a possible violation of French laws against the justification of war crimes.

Finally, this episode may evoke memories for some CiF Watch fans of a previous episode in which a Guardian culture critic downplayed remarks by an artist which were sympathetic to Adolf Hitler.