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The German film about last days of Hitler and his Reich is presented through the eys of his secretary. Bruno Ganz gives us yet another Hitler, and is convincing. Romanian born Alexandra Maria Lara plays the secretary... you might recall her in Dr. Zhivago, where she played Tonya.Films like that should not be analyzed using standard movies measures. For their subject matter is so significant that it propells them towards glorious fiish, even if your typical attributes leave something to be desired.
The movie gives a plausible presentation of the last days, and as such it immediately occupies the spot among recommended history films.
You could argue about some episodes, but that is hardly important, as the overall package is strong.
If you love history, or if you want your children to learn and most importantly FEEL the pulse of that era, this is a good movie to spend three hours.
Follow Ups:
I feel the same way about Star Wars.
Rob CThe world was made for people not cursed with self-awareness
the secretary wanted to make him one-dimensional or if the director did. But the fact is, this portrait shows nothing new about him.
Of course, to humanize the man would be too scary: we like our monsters to be kept a safe distance from the rest of us. Unfortunately, for film's sake, it also makes for a very trite portrayal: what you are left with is what you always have known, and become comfortable with.
It's strange that the secretary was so insignificant in it: it was based on her recollections. Did she distance herself for "guilt"purposes?
Not a terrible effort, certainly, but Hitler is the reason one wanted to see the film and curiously his part is under-written.
A man doesn't lead as he did, and inspire such crazed loyalty, and "act" the way Ganz did. Again, by making him seem so distant and un-charismatic (to make him seem less "appealing") the viewer is left with... an unreasonable vacuum.
I do not think that the purpose of the film was necessarily to educate the viewer about Hitler, but rather to put us in the bunker with him during the last days. Much has been written about Hitler during his rise, and fall. But what transpired within the bunker has, in any real detail, been a mystery. Particularly because, as he became more paranoid about those around him, his circle of confidantes became smaller, and towards the end, there was no real recitation of events, until his secretary came forward.I have seen a fair amount of films about Hitler, but I do not recall such a film with such an authoritative and believable point of view, about only HItler. They are mostly about his ideology, and how those beliefs affected his policies. Many are theoretical, some show glimpses. But I am not familiar with a film that shows him, only. Most show Hitler as being incidental, but the real films are about the exterminations, or the assassination attempts, or the snipers, or Normandy, or the French invasion, or how the Brits treated Hitler. But very few about the man. And almost none about what transpired within the bunker.
Re: earlier comments about what led to Hitler's rise. I recommend Wilhelm Reich's "Mass Psychology of Facism". I agree with Reich: given a certain set of circumstances, this could happen ANYWHERE.And re: "Barbarossa" beginning in June...thank God for the Greek resisters that so angered Hitler that he spent 6 weeks putting them down just before launching his attack on the Soviet Union. One of the great unanswered questions of this period in history is: what if the German army had seen the spires of Moscow in late October instead of early December?
We of course don't know, but the fact is the plan was good, except... it underestimated the resistance. And from there it was all downhill. The unitial strike didn't reach for the heart, and it became a flesh wound - painful but not lethal.Perhaps if there was no Zhukov the outcome would have been different.
Victor, in one of my history textbooks, several pages from a German soldier's diary are reprinted. The soldier was fighting at Stalingrad and at first thought they would all be home for parades and honors by Christmas. A few entries later he is cursing the resisters and asking why they are sacrificing themselves for something that they will obviously lose. A few more entries later...well, I'm sure you know how it ends...the soldier is waiting for capture and imprisonment...and that's if he is lucky.But the Russians had to resist. As you have pointed out before, they had no choice. All they had to look forward to if the Nazis succeeded was slaughter and total, abject enslavement. Hitler had made that quite clear.
Your comments about American entertainment stereotypes of the "buffoonish" Nazis led me to ask my wife a question: Did her father enjoy programs like "Hogan's Heroes"? (He was a POW at Stalag Luft III). Unfortunately, she could not remember, and he was very tight-lipped about his experiences in the war. She and her brothers knew he had served, knew he had been a POW, but never thought to ask him about it...even when watching "The Great Escape" on TV (the events of which took place before he arrived at Stalag Luft III)!
The history we are losing from simply not knowing to ask is amazing.
That is exactly why we put my father-in-law in front of a camera and recorded about 8 hours of his stories - from childhood, through his service before the WWII, surrender and captivity, concentration camps, escape, partisans, then service in the Red Army again... he is 95 but his memory is sharp as the best katana. We will probably record more.But unfortunately that horrible war is receding in the past, and in a few more years will look just like any other war in history book - no big difference between the Zulu warriors and the Wehrmacht.
One of the reasons Hitler was so popular was that he got Germany out of the Depression, and long before any country (other than Italy) crawled out.And he expressed "populist" German sentiment, including reclamation of German speaking "ethnic" provinces severed in the treaty of Versailles and hatred of the Jews (Friedrich Nietzsch, Richard Wagner and many more).
It is not that the idiocy of the victors of WWI made Hitler inevitable . . . they did not. It is that the idiocy of the victors made Hitler possible . . . and that France, Britain and the US were so devoid of will that they did not dare confront him . . . until it was too late to quiesce the situation. And until Hitler's success by audacity made him think that his enemies were "worms".
Chamberlain, the isolationists in the US and the corruption of the French political system are the quintescence of the old dictum, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
I too enjoyed the film very much. I approached it more as film that would appear on the History Channel. Not what I would technically label a documentary, but a drama which serves the same purpose. I do not recall another film which sheds light so exhaustively on Hitler's last moments in the bunker. I saw the documentary Blind Spot with his secretary, and this film helps to put some meat on the bones, to fill in what was a recitation of events.I do not understand the problems with showing Hitler as a human being. Frankly, I think that doing so makes him scarier. Are you afraid of the boogeyman? Probably not, because you know it does not exist. On the other hand, showing Hitler from our human community makes him scarier because we are reminded that he was among us, going to school, to the store, to a movie, which should put us on guard to avoid allowing such a thing to happen in the future. He loved dogs, hated smoking, was a vegetarian, could be very nice. I am not sure knowing any of those things ever mitigates the evil inside the man, nor why we assume that a film maker was attempting to do so by giving us a complete picture. An historian should not make judgments. An historian should report the history, factually, then allow the reader, viewer, or listener to place some value or interpretation.
I think Ebert hit the nail on the head in his review wherein he wrote that the Nazi's have become a prop or plot device in films, usually in comedies, which reduces the true horror the regime. I wonder if kinds growing up today, whose only frame of reference are those films, consider the Nazis with the terror they deserve. Or are they a joke? This film reminds of the madman. That is good, I think.
I also think that this film does a decent job of showing that this evil was not Hitler's alone. Too many times, I think, we consider the Third Reich as Hitler. But many fed at Hitler's table, including many civilians. Goebbels depiction was the most striking to me, particularly Frau Goebbels. Her statements that she does not want herself, nor her children, to live in a world without National Socialism rose to a level of scary that almost equalled Hitler's. My first thought was that she did live a world without National Socialism. What was the difference? Well, she probably enjoyed a better life, with more authority under National Socialism. At the expense of millions of people. And she sacrificed her own children.
This film confirms my belief that the National Socialists were largely people who were less educated, less intelligent, less experienced, and who had no standing in society without the state. They needed National Socialism to give them their identity. Ironic, that none of them were the blond haired, blue eyed ideal they estalblished.
The scene where Hitler is marrying Braun, and he is asked to estalblish his Aryan heritage to get married. Well, it is the law, he is told. One of his lieutenants informs the man who performed the ceremony that "This is the Fuhrer." Well, we never learned about Hitler's Aryan heritage, I suspect because he had none.
To WWII buffs, the film also does a very good job showing how insane Hitler really was. Up until the end, he imagines troops on a map that are not there, moving them as they were pawns in chess. He has plans to encircle the Soviet troops, when his military men know that there is no way out. I often wondered how anyone in their right mind would invade the Soviet Union in Winter, or waste planes bombing England, or devoting troops to Northern Africa. Well, because, when merely looking at a map, and simply looking at troops on paper, there is no winter, dessert, water to cross, no elements to confront. His military experts, who obviously knew better, are trained to obey orders, and the film shows them arguing with each other about following orders versus giving opinions on the futility of the order.
Yes, those are good observations, and I would only like to amplify one point - that of turning the Nazi into comedy characters to be ridiculed, played practical jokes on and defeated easily.That has been my long standing irritation with the American war films. I come from a very different background, where no such lighthearted treatment would ever be possible, and where you learned early on how truly anti-human the Nazi were - perhaps one of the very few truths that the society had allowed to exist and be told - to their advantage, to be sure.
Therefore my continuous disdain for many American war films, where the depth of true evil is hard to notice.
Whether I made that point before Ebert is immaterial... sufficient to say that is a correct observation.
One minor correction - Hitler invaded Russia not in winter, but in June. His plans called for the campaing be completed before the cold weather.
"One minor correction - Hitler invaded Russia not in winter, but in June."Then if the campaign failed given better weather than I thought, it was even dumber than I thought. Perhaps he should have started in the Winter, then met with good weather when the troops are more tired. But then he was a madman, reasoned decisions are not par for the course. In any event, the world was better served by his mistakes.
"I come from a very different background, where no such lighthearted treatment would ever be possible, and where you learned early on how truly anti-human the Nazi were"
I think that most American war films were not designed to educate, but to entertain. Of course, these things are not mutually exclusive. John Wayne leading the troops, etc. I think possibly the reason is that WWII was not fought on these shores, and Americans did not see first hand the horrors of Hitler.
The comedy aspect probably arose with Mel Brooks. I saw an interview with him in which he explained himself thusly: he was stationed in Europe towards the end of the war. Being Jewish, he had relatives who were exterminated. He joined in an effort to kill Hitler. He was in Europe when Hitler committed suicide. Not being able to kill Hitler, he decided that the only way to "get" Hitler was to make him a joke, people lauhing at him.
Yes, I have read something about that, and I can sympathize with his desire to deal with it in that particular way... except I think it did not work in the long run.
This movie is just another B. Eichinger trash.....
http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?title1=Downfall (Movie)&title2=Downfall (Movie)&reviewer=A. O. Scott&v_id=293961
- http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=films&n=34675&highlight=der+untergang&r=&session= (Open in New Window)
I read your comments after I made my post - I usually do it that way, to avoid being influenced.I think you judged the film based on those merits that I said were completely wrong criteria in that case. You should not judge it as a product of movie art, but more as a "documentary with human face".
For every thousand of "Friday the 13th" our kids watch, I wish there was at least one such film.
People were just totally insane about Hitler. It's too bad all the hours of documentary film I've seen doesn't quite convey his magnetism.Goebel's wife was absolutely chilling.
People turn on different part of their brain watching documentaries, so their effect is sometimes shall we say, "academic"?This film - for all its faults - brings it close to home, to your daily lives and emotions.
Too bad they didn't get the Russian Marchall's uniform right!
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