Realization
Remembering, analyzing and regretting, this Hitler begins to break down and to let loose the fantasies and illusions to which he so stubbornly clung and which he foisted upon the world. Moving from the blackly comic to the hauntingly emotional, Hitler is visited by a host of characters, real and imagined, ranging from Eva Braun and Joseph Goebbels to The Woman in Black.
A Lions Gate Films presentation, The Empty Mirror is directed by Barry J. Hershey from a story by Barry J. Hershey and screenplay by Barry J. Hershey and R. Buckingham. The film is produced by Jay Roach, David D. Johnson, and William Dance. Norman Rodway stars as a Hitler never before seen on screen in a performance of enormous range and creativity. He is joined by a cast of European and American talents including Oscar-winner Joel Grey as the infamous Joseph Goebbels, Danish award winner Camilla Soeberg as Eva Braun, Glenn Shadix as Göring, Peter Michael Goetz as Sigmund Freud and Doug McKeon as Hitler's stoic typist. (see Cast.)
Hershey began this film odyssey in June 1987, when an image came to him: Hitler standing next to a projector watching film images of himself. Initially, Hershey saw it as a very short film. Yet this image daisy-chained into a whole series of visual images, characters, dialogues, themes and scenes - ideas which were generated for more than three years before commencing the writing of The Empty Mirror (see Creation Narrative).
