Es Lebe Unser Heiliges Hollywood

The pious of all faiths have long had a penchant for indignant moral condemnation of theories they cannot understand, books they have not read and films they have not seen. A spokesbeing for the German Protestant church has now taken this brilliant tradition one step further by condemning a film which hasn't even been completed yet. The film is about Operation Valkyrie, the attempt by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and his colleagues to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944. It will be directed by Bryan Singer and will star Tom Cruise, so we can safely dismiss any suspicion of its being much good; but Thomas Gandow, the German Protestants' chief spokesbeing on rival religious cults, has called Cruise "the Goebbels of Scientology" and claims that the film "will have the same propaganda advantages for Scientology as the 1936 Olympics had for the Nazis". A conservative member of the German parliament, whose experience of Cruise in action is evidently of the slightest, says that "he uses his popularity very cleverly in the interests of the totalitarian sect"; but it is difficult to see how he will manage this in a film "based on a true story" and set in 1944, particularly given that Scientology was not invented until 1952 and that Stauffenberg himself was a Roman Catholic. All in all, it seems likely that any propaganda for Scientology which the screenwriters manage to smuggle in will be subtle enough to elude a target audience doubtless anticipating a moving portrayal of Stauffenberg as yet another heroic American fratboy.