My Daily Express feature on Georg Elser, the carpenter who came close to assassinating Hitler and who is now the subject of Oliver “Downfall” Hirschbiegel’s excellent film, “13 Minutes”:
The Elser we see on film is no dour ideologue or embittered misfit but an outsider with charm and wit, a ladies’ man who is a gifted musician as well as a fine craftsman. Photographs taken of him after his capture show, understandably enough, a downbeat, unkempt figure. But Hirschbiegel insists that the Elser who emerged during research was much more debonair. “I had descriptions, by ladies basically, all describing him as a very beautiful man, with very good manners,” he says. “And they say he had beautiful hands. Overall he felt like a character out of time, you know – a bit like a hippy, a smart hippy. He’s totally uneducated but he’s a free mind, a pirate.”
Clive Davis 