Did Hitler really have food tasters? Was his inner circle so paranoid about the risk of assassination by poisoning that young women were forced to sample every dish that was due to pass his lips? That was the account given to a German newspaper in 2012 by the then 95-year-old Margot Wölk, who claimed to have been one of Hitler’s food tasters. Historians have pointed to lack of evidence, with nothing in the records to back up her witness testimony.
Whatever the veracity of the story, it has been turned into a shaky, unconvincing historical drama by Silvio Soldini, whose film is an adaptation of a novel by Rosella Postorino. Elisa Schlott plays the fictional Rosa, a young woman from Berlin whose soldier husband is missing on the eastern front. After heavy bombing in the city, she flees to her in-laws in east Prussia close to Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair military headquarters. One day, the Nazis come knocking for Rosa, and load her on to a van with six other terrified young women.
The scenes depicting the food tastings are deeply uncomfortable. The first time the women sit down to eat they have no clue why they are in Hitler’s HQ being served a vegetarian feast. Half-starved after years of food shortages, they tuck in with gusto. Later, after discovering the truth, they can barely bring a spoon to their lips; it might as well be dog shit. Hitler’s personal chef often sits in, feeding them titbits; the Führer gave up meat after a visit to an abattoir, he tells them.
Other moments verge on unwatchable for different reasons. There is Rosa’s affair with the degenerate Nazi officer in charge (Max Riemelt). Rosa is presented to us as steely and brave, a protector of the weak; her relationship with the Nazi makes no sense, and the depiction here of pure evil is worryingly shallow. Whatever the facts about Hitler’s food tasters, the film doesn’t feel artistically truthful.
• The Tasters is in UK and Irish cinemas from 13 March.
