‘A Kitten for Hitler’: Ken Russell’s bizarre final film
Ken Russell started his career with some rather inoffensive movies, like the comedy French Dressing and the Michael Caine espionage movie Billion Dollar Brain, but soon enough, he was exploring what his heart really desired, and that was cinematic subversion.
In 1969, he shocked audiences with his Oscar-nominated Women in Love, but really, people should have expected as much from an adaptation of a DH Lawrence novel. With plenty of nudity and eroticised scenes, including some naked wrestling, Russell asserted himself as a filmmaker who wasn’t afraid of going against the grain. But nothing could prepare people for his 1971 movie The Devils, a tale of witchcraft, sexual repression, and possession that was significantly censored upon its release.
Could Russell make a movie more controversial than The Devils? With its mixture of sex, violence, and religion, all depicted very explicitly, it remains his most well-known yet shocking output. What most people are unaware of, though, is that the filmmaker actually made something much more offensive (depends how you look at it) in 2007, making his final mark on cinema with the short film A Kitten for Hitler.
Russell didn’t just come up with the Nazi-themed film out of nowhere. The idea actually arose from a challenge posed by broadcaster Melvyn Bragg following a conversation with Russell about censorship. Of course, it’s a topic that the filmmaker was long familiar with, but could Russell make something so shocking that even he would consider it worthy of being banned?
So, that’s where A Kitten for Hitler stemmed from, a bet, a purposeful attempt at causing offence. When you know that it’s deeply satirical, the film becomes slightly less offensive, in a way, but above anything, it’s just absolutely insane, both thematically and visually.
You see, the first issue that Russell ran into was casting an actor to play the little Jewish child who decides to buy a kitten for Hitler in the hopes of softening him up. No child actors were willing to sign on; it seems like the parents were being sensible for once, and so Russell had to hire an adult actor with dwarfism instead. He ended up casting Rusty Goffe, who you might recognise as an Oompa Loompa in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Playing a young Jewish boy who learns about Hitler’s evilness, he visits the dictator and gives him a kitten (played by a lovely cuddly toy) in a quest to make him happy.
Hitler is moved to tears, and he and Eva Braun are delighted when the boy reveals a swastika tattooed on his stomach. Eva even gives him a bagel in the shape of a swastika, which the boy begins eating, only for Hitler to then notice the Star of David around his neck. Throwing the kitten (a cartoon cat wail sounding in the background), Hitler becomes enraged, leading Eva to say, “I’ll fetch the knife”.
We then cut to Adolf and Eva in bed together, kissing as Eva salutes, and when she turns the light out, the lamp is revealed to be made out of the boy’s skin. Clearly, Russell succeeded in making something controversial, because with every scene, you find yourself gasping and laughing out of sheer disbelief. And none of this is even to mention that it was all shot on a green screen, with the most terrible special effects and graphics imaginable added in.
It’s purposefully awful, but at the same time, it’s worth watching to see what Russell chose to end his career with. It’s ridiculous, but of course, it’s so deeply satirical on every level that it’s hard to feel genuinely offended by it. Rather, it’s a work of boundary-pushing, a work of cinematic commentary, one soaked in the darkest humour imaginable.
