Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by dave c (A) on March 08, 2007 at 12:20:42

For once the film noir style is directed at WW2 instead of the usual crime story, although this is a crime story as much as anything.
At the time of the Potsdam Conference a US journalist (Clooney looking like a chunkier Gable)comes to Berlin where he meets old flame... no, old obsession (its noir!) Blanchett (very sad eyed Deitrich) against a backdrop on the destroyed city. A city where anything is bought and sold and money is as cheap as life. Yes, its very noir.
Blanchett in being made to look less glamourous comes across as dark lipped and shadowy eyed and like a bottomless pit of the desperation to live from surviving in the heart of the battle for Berlin.
The live action is cut with newsreel footage and the destruction of the city somehow seems more real than something like The Pianist, although some of the interiors seem suspiciously neat between the rubble. But despite this and the artificiality of the styling, the portrayal of the post war feeding frenzy for German scientists and the willingness to overlook their involvement in Nazi horrors is convincingly amoral.
There is even a last scene with a plane leaving in the rain in homage to Casablanca, perhaps the best known Film Noir about the war.
I give it a thumbs up with the proviso about the style. If you don't like Noir, then I doubt you will find this more than stilted. But if you do...