A Kitten for Hitler (2007)
The result of a challenge from Melvyn Bragg to write a film that Ken Russell himself would be eager to see banned, was A Kitten For Hitler – a 10-minute short in which a plucky young Jewish boy traverses the globe on a quest to warm the Führer's heart with the gift of a cuddly feline.
rating 6/10 User rating 9 votes 47% ❄ Christmas Connection
The entire premise is built around a Christmas gift. A Jewish boy in 1941 Brooklyn decides to give Hitler a kitten for Christmas, reasoning that nobody has ever given the dictator a present. Santa Claus is name-checked in the opening scene, and the holiday gifting logic drives every plot beat that follows.
Our Review
A Kitten for Hitler is nine minutes long. It contains Adolf Hitler, a kitten, a Jewish child played by an adult man with dwarfism, Eva Braun, Harry S. Truman, and a lampshade. It is a Christmas film. Ken Russell made it in 2007 when he was 79 years old, because a television presenter dared him to make something he himself would want banned. Russell, never one to back down from a provocation, took the dare seriously.
What Ken Russell Actually Wanted Banned
The backstory is almost as good as the film. Russell and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg were working together on The South Bank Show when they got into an argument about censorship. Bragg was against it. Russell was for it. Bragg, apparently not thinking this through, challenged Russell to write a script that Russell himself believed should be censored. Russell obliged. When Bragg read the draft, his response was: "Ken, if ever you make this film and it is shown, you will be lynched."
Russell made the film anyway. That is the most Ken Russell thing possible.
The plot is simple enough to fit on a napkin. It is 1941. A Jewish woman and her son Lenny are watching a newsreel at a Brooklyn cinema. Hitler appears on screen. The audience boos. Lenny asks his mother why nobody likes Hitler. She explains. Lenny wonders what Santa Claus will bring Hitler for Christmas. His mother says Hitler won't get anything. Lenny decides to fix this. A child's Christmas logic, applied to the Holocaust.
The Casting Problem Russell Solved Badly (on Purpose)
Russell wanted an actual child to play Lenny. No child actor's parents would permit it. This is not surprising given the script. So Russell cast Rusty Goffe, a 58-year-old English actor with dwarfism, in the role of the small Jewish boy. Goffe already had an impressive career before this particular assignment: Oompa-Loompa in the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a Jawa in Star Wars, a goblin in multiple Harry Potter films. He adds "boy who gets murdered by Hitler" to that list without apparent complaint.
The casting decision makes the film stranger and more uncomfortable than a child actor would have. An adult man in children's clothing, playing naive holiday optimism, traveling to Nazi Germany with a box containing a kitten. Russell knew exactly what he was doing. The wrongness is the point.
The Structure of a Bad Joke Told Perfectly
The film has the structure of a children's story, which makes it worse. Lenny crosses America. Lenny crosses the Atlantic. Lenny arrives at Hitler's headquarters and presents his gift. Hitler, suspicious, tosses the box to Eva Braun. Eva opens it. The kitten emerges. Hitler weeps. For a brief moment, Russell lets you think the absurd premise has paid off with an absurd happy ending.
Then Hitler notices Lenny's Star of David necklace. Then he notices Lenny has a swastika-shaped birthmark. The mood changes. The film ends with Lenny skinned, his hide fashioned into a lampshade, in explicit reference to one of the most notorious atrocity myths associated with Nazi Germany. The Christmas kitten sits with Hitler. The credits roll.
Russell later described this as his most shocking work, more so than The Devils (1971), his banned drama about sexual hysteria in a French convent that received an X rating in both Britain and America. That film starred Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave and took years to get a proper release. This one is nine minutes and features a man dressed as a child being killed by Adolf Hitler. Russell's sense of scale was his own.
Is This a Christmas Film?
Technically, yes. Christmas is not incidental to the plot. The entire premise runs on Christmas gift logic. Lenny's reasoning is childlike and seasonal: nobody gave Hitler a present, Santa Claus would not bring him one, so Lenny will. Remove Christmas from this film and there is no film. The holiday is the engine.
Whether you want to watch it on Christmas Eve with the family is a different question. The Guardian included it in their 2012 list of alternative Christmas films, which suggests there is an audience for this kind of festive viewing. That audience is probably not large.
What Russell Was Actually Doing
Russell spent his career testing what cinema was allowed to show and say. The Devils was banned or cut in multiple countries. Tommy featured Ann-Margret writhing in baked beans. Altered States put William Hurt through psychedelic evolutionary regression. Russell was not interested in comfort.
A Kitten for Hitler sits at the end of that career as a kind of summary statement. It is deliberately cheap, shot on a low budget with minimal production value. The comedy is broad and the violence is blunt. The film does not attempt to redeem itself or offer a lesson. It does exactly what it says it will do and stops.
The film premiered on the website Comedybox.tv on 1 July 2007. Ken Russell died on 27 November 2011, at 84. Phil Pritchard plays Hitler. Russell's wife, Lisi Tribble, plays Lenny's mother. Rosey Thewlis plays Eva Braun. Rufus Graham appears as Harry S. Truman, for reasons the film makes no effort to fully explain.
Russell called it a comedy. He was not entirely wrong. The premise is a joke. The execution is a punchline. Whether you laugh depends entirely on what you think humor is for, and what you think the limits of bad taste are. Russell's answer to that second question was: further than this.
Fun Facts
Melvyn Bragg's challenge to Russell originated during their collaboration on The South Bank Show, a British arts television program that ran from 1978 to 2010. Bragg told Russell "if ever you make this film and it is shown, you will be lynched" after reading the draft script.
Rusty Goffe, who plays Lenny, was born on 30 October 1948 and stands 4 feet 2 inches tall. He had already appeared in Star Wars (1977) as a Jawa and in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) as a Gringotts goblin before taking this role.
Russell could not convince any child actor's parents to allow their son to appear in the film, which led directly to the decision to cast an adult man with dwarfism in the role of the young Jewish boy.
Russell described A Kitten for Hitler as more bizarre and shocking than The Devils (1971), the film that received an X rating in both the UK and the USA and was banned in several countries outright.
The film premiered on the comedy website Comedybox.tv on 1 July 2007, a platform that no longer exists. It was never given a theatrical release.
In December 2012, more than a year after Russell's death, The Guardian included the film in a list of six alternative Christmas films, written by critic Charlie Lyne.
Phil Pritchard, who plays Adolf Hitler, appears opposite Ken Russell's real wife Lisi Tribble, who plays Lenny's mother. The casting of family members in low-budget projects was a recurring feature of Russell's later work.
The film's lampshade ending references a specific Holocaust atrocity claim that historians have since debated extensively, making it both one of the most charged and one of the most studied elements of Russell's script.
Cast
