"Der Stern von Afrika" or "The Star of Africa" or "Hauptmann Marseille" is a West German black-and-white film from 1957 and like an uncountable number of other German films from that decade, it is a cinematic attempt at coming to terms with what happened more than a decade earlier in Nazi Germany. But this film is not really about those who were totally in charge and what they did, but really more about these following orders, namely a very young generation of German pilots, especially Hans Joachim Marseille, a man who really existed. I must say I have not been familiar with the name at all, but after seeing this film, he must have been the World War II equivalent to Manfred von Richthofen. It is about a new generation of men, blinded by wrong ideas and by their enthusiasm and nationalistic spirit that they imbibed from their infancy. So despite the film being pretty wild and enthusiastic, it is actually a fairly sad story really how this generation was somewhat lost, especially the title character too. He is played by Joachim Hansen and I cannot say I have heard the name before I think. But Felmy and Koch are still somewhat known today to German film fans, maybe Hansen too and it's just my failure. Overall, the story of this 100-minute film was not too interesting to me, maybe because military-themed movies have never been my preferred choice really. If you think differently about the subject, then you may actually enjoy the watch a lot more than I did. I personally would have preferred watching a documentary on the subject.
Review of Der Stern von Afrika
