New Tom Cruise film stirs Nazi controversy
By Behind The Scenes TV on Jun 27, 2007 in Filmmaking, Hollywood, News
Two hot-button issues in Germany — the Nazi era and Scientology — are being pushed simultaneously by a new film in which Tom Cruise plays the country’s most-famous anti-Hitler plotter, sparking controversy in Berlin.
Cruise, one of Scientology’s best-known adherents, is to play Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg — the aristocratic army officer executed after a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1944 — in director Bryan Singer’s new film “Valkyrie.” The film’s German co-producers say they were given permission to use the former German general staff headquarters in Berlin, where Stauffenberg worked and where he was executed, and that they plan a detailed, historically accurate treatment.
But word that a Scientologist would play Stauffenberg has rubbed some the wrong way. Germany’s government considers Scientology a commercial enterprise that takes advantage of vulnerable people, and critics maintain that one of its adherents should not be playing one of the Nazi-era’s few heroes.
(Source: Associated Press)
P.SOHRWIDE | Jul 4, 2007 | Reply
Scientology is a relatively new “religion”. I’ve always believed von Staufenberg to be Roman Catholic. How is it possible that he is now considered a Scientologist?