The director of The Kiss in Düsseldorf had been born in Philadelphia, but he thought of himself as an émigré; he said his parents were Russian Jews who were wise to get out of Russia and come to America from Europe. He knew a lot more about Nazis than I did. He wanted film of Hess, Röhm, and Bormann when they were young men—“even if they’re so young that we don’t recognize them,” the director told me. He was a great guy; I really liked him. His idea was to intercut the archival footage of future Nazis with the fictional characters and their made-up story. He wanted me to find—on the youthful faces of these right-wing nationalists in the Freikorps—“some indication of their intrinsic intolerance, their xenophobic hatred of others.” (The Freikorps were anti-communist, and they seemed to have some anti-Slavic racism going for them; the ones who later became Nazis took to the ideology of anti-Semitism and ethnic cleansing rather naturally.)

As for the elderly and crippled projectionist who screened the hours (and hours) of archival footage for me, he was the right age to have been a Nazi. The director and I were convinced that he had to have been a participant. The projectionist not only recognized Hess, Röhm, and Bormann when they were too young to look like the monsters they would become, but when they appeared onscreen, he stood and saluted them. During the lengthier screenings, the elderly projectionist was inclined to detach his prosthetic leg, which he bent at the knee before he placed it on an adjacent chair. As a result, when we were viewing the longer archival films, the projectionist stood and saluted Hess, Röhm, and Bormann on one leg.

The Freikorps guys weren’t my only “research job” for the little Barlows. There was archival film of Hitler’s speech to the Industry Club in Düsseldorf in 1932—these industrial magnates included many of Germany’s wealthiest men. In their screenplay, the writing team was very clear concerning how they wanted the speech to be used. We see Hitler assuring the Industry Club that National Socialism would be good for business, but there is no sound; while we watch Hitler speak, we hear (as voice-over) the mundane conversation of the two SA men who are lovers.