After the jump, I’ve got your trailer for Bollywood’s Ghandi to Hitler (ooh, sounds just like From Justin to Kelly!), which is variously called Dear Friend Hitler. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it’s got a shot of Hitler, then a shot of Ghandi, then a young girl in a white dress running through a field in slow motion, then back to Hitler, then BOOM! Girl in the white dress takes a bullet in the chest with an exploding squib. PUNCH A HOOKER IN THE MOUTH, THAT IS SOME DAMN FINE EDITING! We freeze on the dead girl, then back to Hitler, then the trailer promises a “CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES.” And if that clash of ideologies doesn’t end with Ghandi and Hitler doing a duet dance number in a field somewhere, everything I know about Bollywood cinema is wrong. God damn this looks awesome.
When it was still called Dear Friend Hitler (UPDATE: clarification from our boy at Twitch, Dear Friend Hitler is the international title, Ghandi to Hitler is the Indian title), the film was screened for exhibitors at Cannes, and Hollywood Reporter was there to review it. An excerpt:
Mel Brooks has got to see this one: Somebody has actually made Springtime for Hitler, but called it Dear Friend Hitler. The funniest thing about this film from India is that it’s dead-on serious, replete with all Indian actors playing the leaders of the Third Reich.
Reportedly, Gandhi penned two letters to Hitler, one in 1939 and another in 1945, both imploring him to change his ways. Set primarily during Hitler’s April bunker days at the end of World War, this peculiar spring-time saga is so preposterous and inept that it would make Brooks’ fictional producers seem reputable.
Indicative of the ineptitude here, the film’s subtitles spell out “Eva Brown” which, like most of film, is unintentionally funny and jarringly incompetent. [THR via Twitch]
I think “Eva Brown” is actually an AMAZING name for an Indian actress playing Hitler’s mistress. Though I would’ve also accepted African-American porn star. A saucy, 70s black porn star, Foxy Eva Brown, starring in “Black Panzer.” I guess what I’m trying to say is, this Indian Hitler flick sounds amazing.
[check out the poster over at Twitch]