h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As a fourteen year old, when I saw this film back in the Cold War 1970's, I really thought this WAS Billy Wilder's best film. Seeing it on video twenty years later I still enjoyed Cagney's bravura performance (when didn't he give a great showing) but I found the film too heavy-handed, especially toward post-war Germans, all of whom are lampooned as boobs and Nazis.
As a former Austrian Jew, I can well understand Wilder's vehemance against the horrors of Hitler and his psycho-gang, but his humor is hard to seperate from sledgehammer propaganda. Yes, I know this was 1961 and we were locked in a military and economic contest with a totallatarian regime. But much of the humor in Wilder's film is almost over-the-top, like he was commisioned to make a film that would show Russias and Germans as Forrest Gumps.
There is also a lenghty seguence with Red Buttons as an American MP which is as poorly as anything he and AL Diamond ever did. It seems Wilder's film doesn't stand the test of time: if you want to see the Master at his best check out "Double Indemnity", "The Apartment" of "Sunset Blvd."

Hi Researcher 199458,

thanks for your comments. Now that you said it, the Red Buttons scene is in fact the weakest part of the film. I wouldn't regard any aspect of the film as propaganda, because, as I wanted to say in my entry, everyone is mocked, Russians, Americans, Germans all the like. I would never claim that the film is balanced but much of the things said about East Germans and Russians actually proved to be true after the fall of the iron curtain.

Thanks again for commenting.

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