MOST OF THE CONTRIBUTIONS to this special forum section on the documentary A German Life (2016) begin with an observation about the filmmakers’ techniques. In particular, the film's interpreters tend to take notice of the extraordinary impact of its black and white cinematography, considering whether the black and white are meant to serve as index of good and evil, or as an allegory of dark personal depths in contrast with more visible physiological surfaces. Speculations along these lines tend to be furthered by the film's consistent employment of closeups, most of which highlight Brunhilde Pomsel's advanced age, and which prompt some to draw parallels with Leni Riefenstahl and to the interviews in which she participated when she was over ninety years old. The cinematographic choices displayed in A German Life have provided ample food for thought, but so have some of the film's revelations, including Pomsel's surprising anecdote about her access to the Scholl files, and the pride she shows when discussing her restraint in choosing not to browse them. The fleeting reference to Hans and Sophie Scholl is one route by which some of this forum's contributors were led to consider similarities and contrasts with an earlier interview film, Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary (2002), in which Sophie Scholl is also mentioned, and Pomsel's account invites the fundamental question as to whether the film, on the one hand, makes a moral judgment against its chief interviewee or whether it, on the other hand, is more concerned with implicating its viewers in her all-tooevident moral failings.

Not all of the forum's contributors are in agreement with one another. Tobias Boes offers a critical assessment of the film, asserting that it takes too few strides in advancing our understanding of why people harm one another. Boes is not the only one to propose that different, more incisive lines of questioning might have been pursued. William Collins Donahue begins his observations with a plea for more information, indicating that it would have been instructive to know specifically what words prompted Pomsel's varied responses.