The Confessions of Winifred Wagner

'He had that perfect Austrian warmth and understanding': Winifred Wagner (78-year-old widow of Richard Wagner's son Siegfried) on the human face and personal charm of Adolf Hitler. Hitler's passion for Wagner inevitably led him to Winifred, organiser of the Bayreuth Festival. During their 22-year friendship, to whose memory she is stubbornly faithful, Hitler doted on her family and mentioned nothing of politics: 'I would say he was too easily influenced and gave in to radical demands,' is her only criticism, made apparently without irony. This film features Winifred Wagner's first interview (shot almost entirely in medium close-up) about Hitler as a patron of the arts. It's an extraordinary document - about the role of art in a society, about its relation to politics, and about degrees of unawareness. The original cut ran five hours.