Film review: ‘The Bunker’ (1981)

This is a very short review, ‘The bunker‘ is a pretty good film with stellar acting.
Of course today we’ve all been spoiled by the amazing depiction of the same story in ‘Der Untergang‘ with Bruno Ganz, but in this older film we have the also quite superb Anthony Hopkins playing Hitler.
The film also has several other very good actors and a good script, so I didn’t have a lot to complain about.

Honestly, it’s better than this trailer suggests:

However… there’s one particular bug-bear in historical films that drives me mad: anachronistic hairstyles.
Can you see what’s wrong in these screenshots?

The hair is too long, it’s too 1980s and not enough 1940s.

In may films the costume/make-up department and/or director either don’t care about getting the hairstyles right, are too lousy at doing basic research to realise they’re not right, or they think they are too weird for their audiences.
All ridiculous reasons of course.
And this film, as good as it is, is such a perfect example of this.

In all of history, there was a specific, relatively short moment in time when men had very short hair, at least in Europe.
During the 1930s-1940s it was short back and sides everywhere in the West.
Especially in Germany the hair was extremely short, some call it a ‘fade’ these days I think.
Look at the original photos, the film footage, the newsreels.
Anyone who spends more than a few minutes doing basic research should notice this, short hair was the fashion.
And of course in the military it was even more so.
You could have your occasional hobo, poet, unemployed modern artist or theoretical physicist who would now and then let standards slip a bit and walk around with longer hair, but pretty much every other man would have very very short hair.
It also just made sense, they would use hair products (like Brylcreem) that could be quite greasy, so if your hair was too long it would touch your collar and that would upset your mum.

Here’s is genuine 1930s/40s photo of a German soldier during WW2 getting a haircut:

And although it wasn’t always this extreme in other countries at the time, it would be rare to find a photo of any allied soldier with hair much longer than this.
Having said all that, let’s enjoy the glorious 1980s styles in this film a bit more;

You may wonder why this upsets me so much.
In part it’s childhood trauma, I grew up in the 1970s being really annoyed with all the long haired hippies who kept visiting my parents (who were also hippies) 😉
But besides it simply not being historically accurate, it also dates a film.
A good, authentic looking film, will still look fine decades later.
This very good film now looks dated, it looks 1980s.
You of course always get that a bit, technology changes, the quality of special effects, etc. eventually something will always make a film look typical of its age.
But when you at least get the costumes, sets, vehicles and props right… and give your actors the right look, it will still look a lot less dated for decades to come.

Once you know this, you can’t help yourself from noticing it, its especially bad with WW2 films of the 1950s-70s.
It may drive you a little bit insane as well, sorry about that.

Another weird thing I spotted was this scene:

Air raid over Berlin, sirens going off… but curtains open and lights on.
Blackout?
Never heard of it.

And the swastika flag in the background here;

The white space between the arms of the swastika should officially have been as wide as the arms.
With other words that iffy flag is even iffier than it already was.
And of course people who made nazi flags back then sometimes messed it up, but this is a MASSIVE one that was hanging behind Hitler himself, they would have gotten that one right:

The great and very young and lovely Michael Kitchen (who I’ve been a little bit in love with ever since ‘Foyle’s war’) did a great job and looked splendid though:

Terrence Hardiman is also in it!
Great actor.
Major Reinhardt in the fantastic ‘Secret Army’, but to our younger viewers perhaps better known as ‘The Demon Headmaster‘:

So,again, this film has many impressive actors, good acting, decent story and was a pretty good film for when it was made, but it of course fades next to ‘Der Untergang’ from 2004.
And once more for the film makers in the back: Caring about details, authenticity & historical accuracy can avoid films being dated.

Anyway, at least both films had a happy ending: