Arts Screen Gabe Friedman Typing “Hitler” into the search bar on Netflix yields an array of Holocaust and World War II-themed movies and TV shows, many of them with one Nazi or another in their titles. A viewer who has consumed any of that content might expect something fresh — a piece of bombshell news unearthed in newly found documents, or the use of some kind of flashy new cinematic technology — to headline the newest such addition to the streaming giant, “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial.” That kind of viewer might be disappointed.
The six-part documentary — which flashes back and forth between a chronicling of the Nuremberg Trials and a chronicling of Hitler’s methodical rise to power — doesn’t offer much if anything new, content-wise. The difference, however, is in the packaging, and that’s the framework that started the project. The series uses archival footage and audio and makes use of the standard talking-heads format.
But with the help of dramatically recreated scenes from history and frequent flashbacks, it’s constructed more like a narrative thriller miniseries than a documentary. Director Joe Berlinger — who’s well known among true-crime documentary fans for films such as “Brother’s Keeper” and his “Conversations With a Killer” series — said that the content lent itself to a gripping retelling that hasn’t been pulled off in the documentary space. “How this has been presented in the past is just your information blab.
