Winifred Wagner

Back from exile, Klaus Mann travelled through Germany in summer '45, wondering if he would find anyone who still believed in Nazism. He found just one, hiding in the mountains - and it was an Englishwoman! But Winifred Wagner was no ordinary Englishwoman.

She had been the teenage bride whom Richard Wagner's only son Siegfried was pressured into marrying, to provide the longed-for heir. Obligingly, they produced two of each sex in four years, and made an outward show of a close marriage, apparently confirmed by Winifred in this 5-hour interview, the only one she ever gave in her long life. But it doesn't ring true. Siegfried went back to his secret life of gay pickups, and Winifred was fatally drawn to the piercing blue eyes of an obscure young politician called Adolf Hitler.

The obsession comes flooding through her words, even fifty years later. "I couldn't banish him from my mind... I will never deny my friendship with him... If he came through that door today, I would be just as happy to see him." It is disingenuous of her to claim that she would not have married him if she could (even though Siegfried's will only granted her control over the festival as long as she did not re-marry.) But Hitler said that Germany was his bride, and that Winifred must stay single, to 'remain a Queen'.

Yet it is not entirely disingenuous of her to claim that she knew little of Hitler's appalling crimes. For Bayreuth was not just another German town. It was the Wagner shrine, and the nearest thing to a hearth and home that Hitler ever knew. This was where he was always on his best behaviour, often smartly dinner-jacketed as he escorted Winifred to the opera. She is speaking no more than the truth when she says "For us, he was not the Führer. Just a wonderful family friend." Here of all places, he could relax and confide in a strong, sensible woman, as well as acting kind uncle to her children. And with his guard down, he was liable to reveal more to her than to others of his circle.

For example, we learn that Hitler had once tried to write an opera himself, and played the piano reasonably well - a new one on me, at least. When the theatre staff refuse to demolish the ageing scenery 'that the Master's eyes had rested on', having been there since 1882, Winifred has to get Hitler to order them to change it. And when she takes him for a drive in her own car, he finds it strange, because he normally shouts rude things at women drivers.

It is hard to see what Hans-Jürgen Syberberg is trying to achieve in this disappointingly shapeless film, with its endless questions, many of them taking up the thread of arguments from before the war. Neither Syberberg nor Winifred's grandson Gottfried are shown, so we never know who is speaking the lines. (And it is reported that there was some dialogue recorded without her knowledge.) There is no theming whatever, and the later part is too full of resentful talk about the bombing of the theatre and mansion. The film could be comfortably edited-down to half its length, with no loss of impact.

I found it intriguing, though, that she was currently reading a book about Unity Mitford, the silly and inadequate Nazi deb who committed a botched and delayed suicide, and whom we might call Hitler's other Englishwoman.