These two German films-Mein Führer and Der Untergang-strike me as particularly interesting examples of this balancing act between transgression and containment. As productions located squarely in the mainstream of the German film industry, both films received a high degree of media attention for what was perceived to be a risky, potentially transgressive conceit: an intense focus on the figure of Adolf Hitler as the film’s central character. More specifically, both films explore-or exploit-their unique use of the figure of Hitler as the hook or punch line of what new Hollywood has been calling “high concept.” Responding originally to television’s need to summarize an entire film in a thirty-second advertising segment, the term is linked largely to the Hollywood blockbuster. Though neither one of the two films falls, strictly speaking, into this category, they nonetheless provide insights into other national film industries and their appropriation and modification of the economic and aesthetic model developed in the U.S. They are, one might say, German interpretations of American ‘high concept’. This applies not just in the sense that their basic plot premise is simple and striking and easily summarized in a sentence or two (“a unique idea whose originality could be conveyed briefly” Wyatt 8), but, more importantly, to the fact that their marketability is largely “based upon stars, the match between a star and a premise, or a subject matter which is fashionable” (Wyatt 12-3). In other words, the casting and performance of the actor portraying Hitler can-and does, in these specific cases- serve as the lynchpin of the public debate as it is constructed and structured by the films’ own marketing campaigns.