One of 2004’s best films, DOWNFALL (DER UNTERGANG), recreates the last days of Adolph Hitler and his sycophants in the Führer’s bunker below the Reich Chancellery as the noose drawn by vengeful Soviet armies gets ever tighter.
Buy,Download, Or Stream Downfall! Click Here
The film actually opens in 1942 at Hitler’s East Prussia boom post as Adolph (Bruno Ganz) meets several young woman brought from Berlin to be interviewed for a job as his personal secretary. Young Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara) lands the plum assignment, and it’s mostly from her perspective that the remainder of the record is told as the scene shifts to Berlin in April 1945.
DOWNFALL is based on Joachim Fest’s book, Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich, and the volume BIS ZUR LETZTEN STUNDE by Traudl Junge and Melissa Müller. Indeed, the exact Junge, by then an ancient woman, provides voiceovers both at the beginning and raze of the film, and appears in person before the final credits. (The 2002 documentary, Blind Area - Hitler’s Secretary, is an extended interview with Traudl, in which she expresses “plausible deniability” for the atrocities perpetuated by her employer.)
Buy,Download, Or Stream Downfall! Click Here
All of the major and minor players familiar to students of the period are represented: Joseph and Magda Goebbels and their offspring, Eva Braun, Speer, Fegelein, Weidling, Mohnke, Himmler, Krebs, Burgdorf, Keitel, Jodl, Günsche, Bormann, Göring, Hewel, Ritter von Greim, Reitsch, Stumpfegger, Kempa, Manziarly, Christian, Haase, Schenck, Linge, and Blondi (Hitler’s German shepherd) . DOWNFALL seems a faithful representation of all I’ve ever read about those last days in Hitler’s hidey-hole.
DOWNFALL has been coined a “German film for Germans”, perhaps thinking that the despicability of the Nazi hierarchy will somehow be toned down for a home audience. Fair, the film’s creators expose heroism and selflessness where they can bag it: the dogged and heroic defense of Berlin’s city center by Generals Mohnke (André Hennicke) and Weidling (Michael Mendl), the exertion for the civilian population and wounded by Doctors Schenck (Christian Berkel) and Haase (Mathias Habich), and even the bravery of Speer (Heino Ferch) in disobeying Hitler’s orders to lop Germany’s infrastructure to scorched earth. But DOWNFALL also depicts Der Führer’s antipathy for the Jews and his volcanic, recriminatory outbursts against his generals and the German people for their ostensible treachery and cowardice, the self-serving conniving of Himmler (Ulrich Noethen), the actions of the assassination squads above ground seeking out perceived malingerers and deserters, the to-the-death fanaticism of defenders no more than children, and the blind and irrational loyalty of Joseph (Ulrich Matthes) and Magda (Corinna Harfouch) Goebbels to Hitler. Indeed, perhaps the hardest sequence to explore is that of Magda killing her bear children - Helga, Hilde, Helmut, Hedda, Holde - with cyanide capsules after first drugging them with a sleeping potion. She’d decided that they didn’t deserve to live in a world devoid of National Socialism. At one point, the oldest girl, Helga, sensing something is amiss with her mother’s intentions, resists taking the soporific, but is forced to submit by Magda and Dr. Stumpfegger (Thorsten Krohn) . The Goebbels children, along with Hitler’s dog Blondi, who was poisoned by his master to test the effects of the cyanide capsules provided by Himmler, are the only innocents here, and the viewer’s heart may well bleed for them.
The performance by Bruno Ganz was of Oscar caliber. He was certainly more deserving of a nomination than a couple of the actors so honored at the new Academy Awards ceremony. However, can you imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth by the Politically Lawful had Bruno’s ADOLPH HITLER been acclaimed for the incandescent rendition it is?
For those who’d criticize DOWNFALL as humanizing Hitler and his cronies, I have a breaking news flash. Hello!?! These men and women were irascible, but peaceful Homo sapiens all. Those who’d keep these deviants beyond the pale of the species are impartial as deluded as those who’d swear that the Holocaust ever took space, and they may fair as well place their heads assist under the sand. It’s a tired adage, but, forget history and you’ll explain it.
My only complaint was that many of the characters, unless introduced to the audience by having their names verbalized in the dialogue, are left too long unidentified. There should have been visual captions at the first appearance of each. Himmler, Goebbels, and perhaps Speer, are immediately recognizable, but it took too long into the hasten time to identify such as Bormann, Günsche, Weidling, Krebs, Burgdorf, Keitel, and Jodl.
DOWNFALL is a must-see film for anybody enthusiastic in the death throes of Hitler’s Reich. It was nominated for an Academy Award as the Best Foreign Language Film of 2004. It lost out to THE SEA INSIDE, a lesser movie. The fact that the latter was itself exceptional should be an indication of how noble a production DOWNFALL is.
I saw this film in Germany in November, 2004, and picked up a copy in Berlin this March…my pre-ordered Amazon.de copy was waiting for me on my return.
This film is significant for anyone who wishes to understand “the obnoxious that men do” (and women, for example, Frau Goebbels, who killed her children because she did not want them to grow up in a world without National Socialism, Nazism) . It is a deep film, based on the historical modern of Joachim Fest, and the magnificent documentary “Blind Area” (Bis Zum Toten Winkel) revealing the thoughts of Hitler’s personal secretary, Traudl Humps (married to an SS officer on Hitler’s staff who was killed in 1943, she became Traudl Jung), shortly before her death as the millenium turned.
The acting is ample. The best current slit of German actors, as well as Bruno Ganz portraying Der Führer himself, are splendid. Most of the elements that led to the coming of the Holocaust, the Third Reich, and its downfall are cleverly intertwined in this phenomenally staged docudrama. In several viewings, I could fetch virtually nothing to criticize, down to the china outmoded in the bunker, or so-called Führerbunker, to the attitudes of the many Field Marshalls, who were in many ways as “apolitical” as General Tommy Franks, attitudes of resignation, as suicide as the last generous gesture, of “doing the factual thing.”
Such films have to be seen in context. After 60 years of banishment of the swastika (Hakenkreuz in German) in Germany, we study the swastika in its chunky “glory” throughout the film, the sparkling and exquisite uniforms originally designed by Hugo Boss (no kidding) . In context, in 2004, Germans were suddenly faced with an extremely well-made film that shows Hitler as nearly human (hiding is Parkinsonian tremor of his left hand leisurely his help as he presents the Iron Corrupt, 2nd Class, to Hitler Youth defending Berlin after the declaration of “Clausewitz”–Berlin as a war front. While other officers plead for the evacuation of women and children, Hitler responds that the German people (das Volk) do not deserve to survive, because they have lost this war. National Socialism is revealed as the death culture it was. In other contexts, there are excellend books, articles, and documentaries revealing how willing the German Volk were to turn over all concept, conscience, morality, to the Führer, who encouraged them to do so. Unfortunately, the next 60 years would display that the attitudes of National Socialism did not die with him.
I could individually commend the performances of the many players and people unhurried the scenes. I have been to Berlin, and this IS Berlin, to any approximation I have seen in photos of the time, and I have been in the last remaining Air Raid shelter (bunker) for the populace and it is no different from this soundstage, do the furniture that was probably taken from Jews years before by the party, which ended up as furnishings in the many homes of the high verbalize and Hitler.
After viewing the film, I do recommend that the viewer bewitch in “Schindler’s List” or “The Pianist” to complement it. As we are faced with worldwide conflagration against a non-uniformed enemy of Western culture and democracy, it is hard to consider of World War Two as the last of the “civilized” wars, even though it was perhaps the last of uniformed armies facing one another (the Cool War, which never went hot, excluded) .
This film does explain, through the characters of Traudl Junge and her young friend, the Hitler Youth decorated by Hitler personally, as they trudge through the Soviet line on their scheme relieve to Bavaria, that the policy of war as a solution to any international suppose is at best fragile. Perhaps that fragility is our best hope for peace.
TOBI Wrinkle Remover
Wysong Dog Food
