Downfall

[Ghostboy]

Hitler also had chutzpah.

This comment of JB's made me want to start a thread on this film, which is about the final days of the Third Reich, told from within Hitler's bunker in Berlin. It's incredibly powerful and unsettling material, mainly because it remains completely objective. Because it is not told from a judgemental point of view, it effeectively humanizes, for better or worse (and as much as they can be humanized), Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and the rest. Bruno Ganz (from Wings Of Desire) plays Hitler, and it's an incredibly brave performance; the scenes where the sad old man becomes the petulant monster we know from newsreel footage and history books are shocking - again, because of the objective point of view which allows no preconceived notions about the man other than the ones the audiences brings into the theater with them.

This was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film; it lost out on Sunday to the vastly inferior The Sea Inside. It's rolling out around the country at the moment, and I strongly recommend it. I'll probably have a longer review up next week, when it opens in Dallas.

[pete]

is it completely objective like how Elephant is "completely objective"?  or is it better than elephant?

[lamas]

just saw Ebert and Roeper review this.  looks incredible.  

[03]

because i have a new growing phobia of starting threads, i wanted to say that Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's film Hitler: A film from Germany (1977) has been uploaded to his website in it's entirety (410 min.)

[jonas]

I just saw this last night, it's a great film.

Bruno Ganz is phenominal as Hitler. The best part of the movie is that it doesn't pull it's punches, it depicts what happened in Hitler's last 10 days and the fall of the Nazi regime very realistically.

At 2.5 hours, it's long but one of the best WWII movies I've ever seen.

[bluejaytwist]

I'd have to agree. It was quite well done. A few good shock moments, and a good flow. True, Mistah Hitlah vas played qvite brilliant-like. I was frightened at the beginning, it seemed like it was going to be one of those films that tries to subtly put in facts just to have them in there...but it quickly broke away from that and blossomed nicely (??)...

[cron]

Desperately seeking Adolph

What's it like to play one of the most evil men in history? As new movie Downfall sets out to humanise the tyrant, six actors reveal all
 
Bruno Ganz
I had some doubts when I was first offered the part of Hitler in Downfall. I asked myself whether I really wanted to get involved in this ugly, terrible stuff. But it was also a temptation - the subject has a fascinating side - so I agreed.
I did four months of research. The producers sent me a tape, secretly recorded in Finland in 1942, with Hitler's natural voice - not the screaming orator we are used to, but a soft, attractive voice, a calm baritone. I tried to capture that.


I became convinced Hitler had Parkinson's disease: there is newsreel of him presenting medals to the Hitler Youth a few days before his death, and you can see his hand shaking, so I visited a hospital and observed Parkinson's sufferers.
There was no strategy in the film to say: "Let's show a new Hitler." I just wanted to show him as the evidence and the testimony of witnesses suggests. Witnesses say he was kind to dogs, charming to women, nice to children, but then he could just say: "Let's kill 5,000 people." In the film, when he and his generals are discussing military problems, one says to him: "What about the 100,000 young German officers on the eastern front? They are going to die." He says: "But they are born to die." He was completely pitiless.

What fascinated me was that he was not just supported by the German people; he was loved. The relationship between him and them was almost religious. There was also that Wagnerian undercurrent - the hero dressed in white, standing against a corrupt world. Look at the bunker - the way Goebbels's wife is willing to kill her children because she can't imagine life after national socialism. It is like a cult. So it helped me that I am Swiss, not German. I'm not saying that I couldn't have played the part if I had been German, but it was useful to be able to put my Swiss passport between my heart and Mr Hitler, so that he couldn't touch me.

Having played him, I cannot claim to understand Hitler. Even the witnesses who had been in the bunker with him were not really able to describe the essence of the man. He had no pity, no compassion, no understanding of what the victims of war suffered. Ultimately, I could not get to the heart of Hitler because there was none.

Hubert Kramar
My first role as a Nazi was in Schindler's List, when I was asked to play a Nazi officer. Then, in 1997, I got the part as Hitler in a play in Krakow called Nazis in Space. This was a very controversial piece, because until then nobody in Europe had attempted to make fun of this horrific chapter in history.

I played the part of a hippy Hitler who smokes pot and comes back to Earth with Eva Braun in a spaceship. Everyone said I was the most authentic Hitler they had ever seen. I think it is because I grew up in postwar Austria. My whole life had been soaked with images of Hitler: the way he talked, the way he walked. He was a neurotic, psychotic and sick man, but while the make-up was being plastered on, I would climb into his skin and something would change inside me. He would get into my blood and let the ghost out of the bottle. It is good to put all your emotions into acting, but it can also be dangerous. I started to get egoistical in real life and, as a result, my girlfriend left me.

Once, after a rehearsal, I went out on to the streets in my Hitler outfit, accompanied by two actors in adjutant outfits. One man nearly crashed his car and another banged into a lamppost. The reaction was very different in Paris. When standing at the base of the Eiffel Tower dressed as Hitler, I was pounced on by scores of Japanese tourists who wanted my autograph.

In 2000, I bought a ticket for the Vienna Opera Ball, a big political and social event. I decided to go in a Hitler costume to make a political statement against rightwing extremists. I was hooked up with a mini-TV camera and managed to get through the security gates because I was in a chauffeur driven Rolls-Royce with darkened windows. I got out of the car and the other guests were completely mesmerised. They stood there with their eyes almost popping out of their sockets. A couple of people said: "Heil Hitler!" To this day, I don't know if they were joking. I was arrested and they tried to put me in prison, because it is against the law to wear Nazi outfits in Austria. But I just claimed that I had dressed up for a fancy-dress party.

A couple of years ago, I read a Hitler biography written by Hitler's voice trainer, Paul Devrient. It gives an incredible insight into Hitler's life - how he was such a dramatist in public, but a broken man at heart. I turned the book into a play called Hitler as a Pupil, and we have toured all over Europe with it. It is very easy to put a monster label on Hitler, but he was also a human being, and I try to get across the idea that we all have many faces and we all have the potential to be evil.

Michael Sheard
I've played Hitler at least half a dozen times - Rogue Male, The Dirty Dozen, Second Assignment, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Tomorrow People, Hitler of the Andes. I've also played Himmler twice and Goering, though I needed padding for him. The one most people remember is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where Hitler attends a book-burning and gives Indiana his autograph.

My first Hitler was in Rogue Male. The film was successful and, after that, casting directors would tend to think of me for the role. My wife is half-Jewish and when I was offered the part, I remember saying I had qualms and asking her what she thought. "Don't be so stupid," she said. "It's just a role." I've tended to put all the atrocities in a cupboard and play him as a fanatical madman. I'm not one of those actors who has to become the character. I want to hang up the Hitler coat in the dressing room when I go home and pick it up again the next morning.

I speak German fluently, which helps to explain why I've played so many Nazis and so many other Germans. I have no trouble doing the oratory. I once played alongside Alec Guinness when he played Hitler in The Last Ten Days. While he had the shuffle off to perfection, he found all the declaiming difficult. You need a powerful voice.

I don't think there is any taboo around playing Hitler. I would play him as a comic figure if the script were good enough - Chaplin showed there was a comic dimension. I was offered a part in a film where Hitler escaped to England and was living in London's Notting Hill Gate dressed as a woman. I would have accepted it, but the second half was much weaker than the first.

I've never had any hostility to the roles I've played, though there have been a couple of embarrassments. At a film convention in Germany, I was sitting at a table with a still photo showing me playing Hitler in Indiana Jones. "You do know it's illegal to display the swastika in Germany, don't you?" said the person sitting next to me. The Nazi legacy still festers there.

Steven Berkoff
I played Hitler in 1988 in War and Remembrance, a TV series based on the novels of Herman Wouk. A lot of actors auditioned for it, but I knew it was the role for me. I arrived at the audition looking healthy and suntanned and was sent to put on a wig and uniform. As soon as I put on that strange little moustache, everything clicked. I looked astonishingly like him and after my audition, Dan Curtis, the director, just sat there stunned. He more or less gave me the part on the spot.

Watching masses of tapes, I was struck by the roughness of his voice, with its Austrian accent, and the fluency of his gestures. He was very histrionic, with his stabbing finger, sweeping arm and manic stare. I tried to capture that intensity. Curtis wanted me to play him as a psychotic, demonic character. It was the last two years of the war: everything was collapsing around him and he was becoming demented and flaccid. I wasn't breathing fire in every scene, but I wanted to get across that he was a psychotic. Hardy Krüger, the distinguished German actor playing Rommel, warned me against playing him as a raving madman. He said Hitler was a clever man and couldn't have achieved everything he had if he'd been screaming all the time. But Curtis had done a lot of research and we had evidence from witnesses. I had to play one scene with Rommel where he was accusing Hitler over the concentration camps. I had to go completely bananas. Some people said it was overdone, but there's no doubt it was compelling.

In some ways, I could identify with Hitler. I had managed a company; he had managed an army. I tried to conquer the world with words; he used weapons. I had a short fuse when it came to critics just as he did. I could identify with his energy and belief, though not with his murderous tendencies. I didn't really want to dispose of my critics as he had.

Ken Stott
I played Hitler in the ITV drama Uncle Adolf, about his relationship with his niece Geli Raubal. Most of the action took place before Hitler had become chancellor, and we had the chance to shine a light on a less well-known area of his life. We didn't want to present him as a monster; to do that is to ignore the problem of how he rose to power. He was not a one-off; he was the product of a situation that could recur. Presenting him as a monster also absolves the other people who were to blame for allowing his rise to power, not least the British government.

I saw him as a very insecure figure. He was a jumped-up Austrian, a loner, always excluded from picnics and parties, and to compensate he always felt he had to be on top of his game. British propagandists used to say that Hitler only had one ball; that's probably going too far, but psychologically it's near the mark. His sexual frustration and his feeling that his generation, which had fought so bravely in the first world war, had been stabbed in the back were channelled into extremist politics.

He was a foul character to play, but a terrifying and fascinating one, too. Would I play him again? There is no reason not to. But equally I was as glad to say goodbye to the part as I had been to start work on it.

Udo Schenk
I have played Hitler three times - for an Indian film, an Italian film and a German drama. The Bollywood film, produced in 2003, was called Netaji: The Last Hero and tells the true story of Subhash Chandra Bose, who was on a personal mission to fight the British colonies. He visited Hitler in Berlin. Hitler was sympathetic, gave him a submarine, and advised him to go to Japan for support. Hitler is depicted satirically, in much the same way he was played by Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator.

The Italian film was called Edda Tiano Mussolini, about Mussolini's daughter. It shows two sides to Hitler. When Mussolini was put in prison by his own people, Hitler set him free. Mussolini's daughter visited Hitler, who charmed her by kissing her hand and giving her flowers. But when she tried to convince him to make a pact with the Russians, he went crazy.

I agreed to play the roles because I don't think he should be a taboo subject. If you only portray him as a monster or megalomaniac, he is more likely to be put on a pedestal and followed by idiots. But he was just an arsehole who ate, went to the toilet and ended up going completely bonkers.

[Pubrick]

yeah, kotte should watch this.

[matt35mm]

This movie was pretty excellent.  It was quite long, and I felt its length (it doesn't exactly fly by), and yet it was always gripping, never dull.

My GAWD there were so many suicides.  Seeing the whole machine crumble from the inside DOES effectively give a new perspective that, at least, I haven't seen on screen before.  That's saying something, since there have been SO many WWII movies--it's fascinating to see something that feels different.  In a way, this movie is to the Nazi machine what Boogie Nights was to the 70s porn industry (except that 70s porn wasn't QUITE as bad as the Nazis).  You see it from the inside, see the bizarre relationships/surrogate familes evolve, and then you see it change and fall apart.  Downfall does a good job at humanizing everybody involved, yet it always clearly shows how abso-fuckin-lutely crazy they were.  It is STILL so strange that all this actually happened and existed.  The movie has such a fascinating focus.

I'm just adding another positive review to the movie's deservedly large pile of positive reviews.

[deathnotronic]

I'm going to see this tonight.

I'll report back. (I'm a huge WWII geek so expect me to love this a lot.)

[Ravi]

SPOILERS







Great film.  It was interesting to see the regime crumble in those 10 days, and the emotional states of the people inside the bunker.  These people were absolutely devoted to this man, the zenith (or nadir) of which was Mrs. Goebbels killing her children because she didn't want them to live in a world without National Socialism.  That was one of the most wrenching scenes in the film.  The film humanizes him, which does not mean we like him, of course, but that we see a different side of him than in newsreels and propaganda.  He could turn on the charm in one moment and be absolutely cold-blooded in another.

Hitler must have known they were screwed, but still kept up the facade of hope that his armies, which were largely crushed, would defeat the Russians.

This was the first serious depiction of Hitler I could remember seeing.  The others I know I've seen are all comical (The Simpsons, The Producers, The Great Dictator, etc.)

[Pubrick]

i think kotte might get the wrong idea from this movie.

i went to see this last nite with a friend who knows next to nothing about WW2 and hitler. i was surprised that he liked it so much. i think he liked it even more than me. it's amazing, needless to say. and not just cos it's the first movie i've seen (as ravi also observed) that deals with hitler as a real human being, with human powers. it showed a glimpse of a madness that is so immense, it cannot be anything but human.

it's shocking, and relentless. not in the way u'd expect, tho there are so many suicides that u sorta get numbed to it, what really weighs u down are all the minor details. there's never a scene that has just one thing happening. for example: even the opening which could be summarized as "hitler hires a secretary", introduces a german shepherd (dog) character which ultimately pays off in the last act of the film. loyalty was everything.

i think everyone should see this movie. whether u think u know anything about the war or not. it's enlightening, it's a story that not many ppl hav bothered to look into. it's brought to life in about as complete a manner as can satisfy historians / cinephiles / general folk.

the key to it is its loyalty to its titular theme. the surprise is the ultimate arrival at the core of it, with certain clarity: how much can be learned from such grave human error? as the final line reflects, it is more than a lifetime.

[Gold Trumpet]

This really is a great film. The one thing I'm glad the film did not try to become is a history lesson. When the Hitler Youth were shown in battle and a father was outraged over it, I thought the film was going to take that route. To be a history lesson would really be redudant. How can a film fight facts with one of the most documented periods in history? The film operated at two levels. On one level is was the story of Berlin's inner heart, the struggle for life and acceptance of death every person in the film knew without really ever saying so. For some, it led to unbelievable decadence and others, a blind faith that the only way out was killing themselves. Then there is the story of Hitler. The film never answered the question of why he did what he did or sensationalized the bad secret he had become a drug addict in his later days. The film followed him enough to make you feel like you knew him. His upcoming death sentence made it all the more uncomfortable.

I don't think I've ever seen a movie more unsettling. The obvious comparison is Schindler's List. (at least for the size of the carnage) Downfall is all the more terrifying. The thing with Schindler's List is that its not just a story about the Holocaust, but it is a museum dedicated to it. The scope goes to all corners of the Holocaust while keeping the main stories distinctly away -  with Liam Neeson and Ralph Fienne's story. Downfall, though telling the story of many, keeps the action right at the heart of the tragedy. Every face of dread you see in this film is another face that Speilberg ignored in Schindler's List. Don't get me wrong, I really do think highly of that film, but its concentration on the human face of the Holocaust suvivors never was there.

Then there is the importance of Hitler's final hours being told. My friends see the idea of watching this madman made human for his final hours repugnant. I see it as an important testament in not filling yourself with the sense of hate, or better yet, judgement that Hitler had. Its no secret that as the killings in the concentration camps really started to increase, Hitler never went near them. In his time, it is said he only visited the concentration camps twice, both times at their very beginning. Speculation has it that for as mad as he was, he avvoided them because he wouldn't be able to stand the guilt of seeing the Jews in the condition they were. His distance and endorsement by others around him for what he was doing was his shield. Those who automatically say Hitler should be killed in the worst way, lay a similiar judgement to a man that is all too easy to condemn like it was all too easy for Hitler to condemn the Jews. (of course, considering one accepts the ideology he believed in) Pro Capital Punishment advocates always beg the question if someone in your own family was killed, could you not but desire the same punishment for who killed them? This film asks that even if someone has done the worst of crimes, could you get to know him at their most intimate and still have the heart to kill them when they are defenseless? The shocking feeling while watching this film is that I grieved Hitler's death. No matter who the man is, no one deserves to be broken down to such a condition to see death as the only solution.

When I reviewed Hotel Rwanda originally, I was struck by the tone of the storytelling. It successfully gave me the feeling of desperation in a man who had the weight of the world on his shoulder and really was carrying out minor tasks because he was just a man. A great auto-biography called The Forging of a Rebel literally transpires the feeling it has to be in the desperate situation of involved in the Spanish Civil War, working for a cause but yet feeling like just the victim of a greater evil. Downfall thumps Hotel Rwanda and gives an almost brutal reality where Hotel Rwanda skimmed a lot of edges. Its a scary thing to see people being killed on screen the way were in Downfall. Its scarier feeling you are one of them. Downfall made me feel like I visited another world.

[modage]

completely well done.  just not my bag, baby.

[Pwaybloe]

I just watched this last night, and I thought it was completely mesmerizing.  It's like one of those good books that you can't put down.  

I wish I saw this earlier so I could chime in on everyone else's opinion, but all that was said was correct.  Outstanding movie.

And Goebbels.  Good lord, where did they find this guy?  That actor looks like he was created to play a super villian.