The clip, and countless others that have been posted in its wake, took footage from the award-winning 2004 film Downfall (Der Untergang in its native German), to which Constantin Films owns the rights, and changed the subtitles to make it appear Hitler was angry not at his lost war, but at something far more trivial. In this case, how he was banned from Xbox Live.
Deciding enough was enough, Constantin has filed a copyright protection claim with YouTube, and as a result the service’s Content ID program has begun removing the videos from the popular online video sharing site.
A shame for those who spent the time constructing the clips, then, but in all honesty the joke had run its course a couple of years ago. Having it scrubbed from the decks of the internet might be for the best (provided, that is, some copies are still floating around for posterity’s sake).
You’ve got to wonder about Constantin’s motives in this, though. And the timing. Sure, on the one hand it was a little crass reducing the most powerful moment of such a powerful film to expletive-riddled comedy, but surely it also encouraged millions upon millions of people who otherwise hadn’t see the small-scale movie to go check it out?
Hitler “Downfall Meme” gets taken down [Open Video Alliance]
Jeff Pearce
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 2:18 PMIt’s a great film.
Cyttorak
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 2:34 PMthe meme is still alive and well, they are just flipping the clips horazontally so the contentID cant pick it up
Alex Cullinan
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 3:24 PMlol’d. If that fails in the future, we could get some dedicated fans to reenact the scene.
James Mac
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 2:37 PMThere was one about South Australian hospitals.
Best inside joke going round in ages, made me go find the origional film… which was excellent by the way.
ryan keable
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 3:27 PMI had no idea about this movie till this meme, i ended up buying the movie cuz i liked the concept of it!
Cheezel
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 3:24 PMI wonder if someone’s going to make take that Downfall scene, and turn it into a scene about Downfall being pulled from youtube.
Interesting!
Hunted
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 5:04 PMAlready done i think.
Justin Robson
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 5:16 PMAhhh, I remember when that joke was still funny, good times. I watched the original before it was cut and everything :3
If anything the clip made me interested enough to watch the film, hell, I even went and bought the novel it was based on I liked it so much. I was already into WWII history, but I probably wouldn’t have been aware this film existed if it wasn’t for the Xbox Live subtitle clip, hahaha… I don’t know what they’re so worried about.
PlasmaDavid
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 10:52 PMThe film was hauntingly incredible. I never watched any “Hitler” videos (aside from the original) because of their trivialisation of such a fantastic film\performance and such an important, human portrayal as one of histories great butchers.
sharmona
Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 1:28 PMthat is really silly.
Jimu_Hsien
Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 10:03 AMGreedy
Slappa
Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 12:37 PMIt was overdone & some of them were crap, but the good ones were always worth a look.
Oh well, I’m sure there’ll be a torrent of every single Hitler vid appearing soon…