"Some kind of special Oscar needs to be created for Bruno Ganz, who transformation into Adolf Hitler shatters clichés."
Larry Carroll FILMSTEW.COM
"Hitler's final days are brought to horrifying life in a movie that's not a whole lot of fun, but commands one's unflinching attention for 150 straight minutes"
Scott Weinberg EFILMCRITIC.COM
"a spine-chilling experience, a masterpiece of filmmaking and a document which conclusively damns the repetition of its history"
Laura Clifford REELING REVIEWS
"As Hitler, Bruno Ganz ignites the screen with every appearance: his rages against traitors and betrayal are delivered with ugly conviction."
S James Wegg FILM THREAT
"It's appalling stuff, as it should be, a case study in human horror that should be studied and never, ever, forgotten."
Glenn Whipp LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS
"A somber accounting crafted with impressive verisimilitude and anchored by Bruno Ganz's rock-solid performance as the Führer...perhaps the definitive film on its subject."
Peter Canavese GROUCHO REVIEWS
"You feel privy to mysterious secrets and a monumental unraveling... It's impossible to look away."
Carlo Cavagna ABOUTFILM.COM
"Ganz seems to find exactly the right pitch: His Hitler feels real and human, yet there's nothing particularly ingratiating or sentimentalized about him. We never forget who he is."
Stephen Hunter WASHINGTON POST
"Hirschbiegel's gripping account of Adolf Hitler's ignominious end is a historical reenactment that hits like a swift kick to the gut."
Ken Fox TV GUIDE'S MOVIE GUIDE
"It's the well-wrought details that explain, perhaps better than any earlier film, how an entire country bought into Hitler's genocidal madness."
Lou Lumenick NEW YORK POST
The Inside Story
"Harrowingly claustrophobic, and mesmerizing ... It drains your spirit, but you can't look away." Kurt Loder MTV
"Der Untergang" is an emotive film that will touch a raw nerve with many who see it. And speaking of nerve, it must have taken nerves of steel for Director/Producer Oliver Hirschbiegel to take on a project with such a confronting subject at its centre. The same can be said for Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, who, with all respects to the many fine actors who contested the 2005 awards, delivers a performance which truly was worthy of a Best Actor Oscar or at the least, a nomination. This really is a fine performance and one which Ganz said took a lot of thought before he could accept the role. But why a story about the most popular elected politician of all time [that's right, the most popular elected politician] who turns into one of the greatest villians of our time. I mean do we really need to be remined of Adolf Hitler? The answer is simple. Of course we do, because believe it or not, the world still hasn't learnt the lesson that comes from mass genocide, tyranny or dictatorship since the events of 1939 - 1945 transpired. Just look at what has happened under the reign of people like Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Reza Shah Pehlavi, Tito, Pervez Musharraf and Kim Jong Il, to name a few. Add to that list the continued troubles in Africa and their shocking record in the past. Countries like Uganda, Somalia, Rwanda, Angola and now Zimbawe under Robert Mugabe. Despite the best efforts of the somewhat hogtied United Nations and groups like Amnesty International, tyrants are still rearing their ugly heads at an alarming rate. The facts are, the the world needs none of those who rule with a style with which Hitler did. One point about the film I cannot agree with is calls from certain parties that Hirschbiegel has humanized Hitler. Those who gain that opinion didn't see the same "Der Untergand" that I witnessed. Far from humaizing Hitler, Hirschbiegel shows, thanks to Ganz, Hitler was just a bully who like many bullies, when it comes to the crunch, don't have the guts or the conviction to hang around and be judged by their peers. Hitler was no different to those mongrels who go on a shooting spree and when finally cornered turn their weapon on themselves and take the easy way out. Another point raised about the film was that there should have been a reference to the Jews because of the Holocaust. What a load of crap! Terrible as it was, we've spent nearly sixty years sympathizing with the plight of the Jews and what they suffered at the hands of the Nazi's. Just seeing Hitler embodied on the big screen immediately brings those memories back to us. The terrible images of mass graves, piles of naked, starved bodies being moved by manpower and machine at concentration camps. The sight of malnourished walking skeletons receiving their freedom from those despicable labour camps will live in the minds of many of us till the day we die. At least, those who have a shred of decency and compassion towards our fellow human beings. One question many will want answered is how accurate is Hirschbiegel's film version of those last days of Hitler in his bunker in Berlin? You will note in the synopsis under What It's All About" I make mention of Hitler's personal secretary Traudl Junge. Junge survived the war and those final day in the bunker watching the disintegration of Hitler. It's from the books "Inside Hitler's Bunker" by Joachim Fest and "Until The Final Hour" by Traudl Junge and Melissa Müller, that screenwriter Bernd Eichinger based his script on. As for the timing of the film, with April 30th 2005 marking the sixtieth anniversary of Hitler's death, "Der Untergang" could not have come at a better time. Here in Australia, at a time when we celebrate our 'Anzac Day' it's a chilling reminder of why our young men went to war. War, Hitler, tyrany will always shake a nation, but it can also shape a nation, as Australian's appreciate. Our small nation has given so many souls to the struggle for peace and freedom. Not just in wars, but also in peace-keeping assignments at various trouble spots around the world. While we have come to grips with consequences of WW2, the Korean campaing, the disaster of Vietnam, many will question whether it was time for Germans to experience this powerful story from the blackest period of their history. Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw said in "The Guardian" [London] on September 17, 2004: "I had often thought that it was no more than a matter of time before Germany produced a feature film about Hitler. Only a few years ago, this would probably still have seemed too daring. But making such a film is a part of the continuing, gradual, but inexorable process of seeing the Hitler era as history. Even more important, feeling it to be history." The last time a film about Hitler was made in Germany dates back to 1956. It was G W Pabst's 1956 "Der Letste Akt" ["The Last Act"]. In Pabst's film, actor Oskar Werner played a soldier and the film told the story through his eyes. Move nearly fifty years in time, into a new century and we have another view of those last few days. "In terms of German film history, we are breaking new ground here," notes Hirschbiegel, "since there is no cinematic frame of reference. After reading the book, it was clear to me that if I committed myself, then it would have to be a total and complete commitment, meaning that I was going to spend two years of my life in the Third Reich, with all of those characters and that primitive ideology. My hair stood on end. My wife advised me against it. Yet I noticed that it just wouldn't leave me in peace, and in my heart, before accepting the project, I knew that I had already opened myself up to it."
The key to the film came when screenwriter Eichinger read historian Joachim Fest’s book "Der Untergang" ["The Downfall: Inside Hitler’s Bunker, The Last Days of the Third Reich"]. Eichinger recalls, he "knew he had found the dramatic key to a film he had wanted to make for decades, but never thought possible due to its scope. The final days tell us a lot about how the mass fanaticism functioned in the regime's earlier years and how it continued to reign until the bitter end." Then he read Fest's; The memoirs of Traudl Junge, Hitler's private secretary. ["Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary"]. "Fest gave me the time frame," he says. "Traudl Junge gave me the character who could hold it all together." Next, Hirschbiegel sent a copy of Joachim Fest's book and the screenplay to actor Bruno Ganz. Ganz also took the opportunity to watch Pabst's film in which stage actor Albin Skoda played Hitler. Ganz was concinced he could play the much despised Hitler. "Usually you look for discrepancies with the original, but this performance took on a life of its own, and I looked at this Hitler and thought, this isn't a parody, this is acting," recalls Ganz. "It is possible to approach this horrible being that was Hitler through one's fantasy and readings. For me, it was decisive to realize that this was possible." But there were parts of his role that sorely tested the Swiss actor as he reveals. "I clearly remember one scene where I had a child on my lap who sang the song "Kein schöner Land in dieser Zeit" [No Fairer Land in These Times]. You know that this child and her siblings will be killed shortly thereafter by their own parents, the Goebbels. That was horrible. This is a moment where you really want to run away. There were also other difficult, trying scenes and dialogues, such as the massively anti-Semitic rants. But when I decided to take on the role, I was aware of what this meant." And how did Gantz capture Hitler's voice so well? "Not by parroting the ranting of his speeches, but by studying a one of a kind seven minute magnetic tape made of Hitler chatting after a dinner party, secretly recorded by a Finnish diplomat and smuggled out of Germany during the war. The accent was the easy work," he says. Once you see Ganzt in action you'll applaud Hirschbiegel who says, "Gant was his first choice." Next task was to find an actress to play the young Traudl Junge. The role went to Alexandra Maria Lara who does a wonderful job of bringing Junge to life. Lara says she grew to respect Junge. "In her book "Until the Final Hour" Traudl Junge made it clear that youth was no excuse, and that if she knew nothing about the extermination of the Jews, then it was because she didn't want to know about it. She did not try to elude the blame, and after the war, she never felt that she had been innocent. I respect Traudl Junge, who was ready to confront herself and change herself through reflection." How did she prepare herself for the role? "I tried to figure out how this young woman, who had actually wanted to become a dancer, must have felt in those eerie last days of the war. And how it must have been for her to slowly become aware of the appalling nightmare she was part of – she, who admired her boss and revered him almost as a ‘fatherly friend!’ Can I possibly understand Traudl? I have to understand her if I play her. But with such a complex topic, this question is very hard to answer. I found it fascinating to deal with this woman and my role, and to take a new look at this terrible chapter of German history, but now with my own questions and ideas. Such an approach makes you question yourself, which is good." For the curious, the scenes of war torn Berlin were filmed in St Petersburg, Russia. "In St Petersburg we found just the right streets. It's amazing how much it resembles wartime Berlin. Many German architects built there, and it’s immediately apparent. In late 1941 the German army cut off St Petersburg [then Leningrad], from Moscow. During the winter of 1941-'42, the city was totally isolated and there followed one of the most terrible famines in history. More than a million people succumbed to starvation. Leningrad died a slow and horrible death. At the beginning of the war the city had a population of three and a half million. Only six hundred thousand survived." "Der Untergang" certainly will raise questions amongst those cinemagoers who see it. It will also raise a hope that a despot leader will never again plunge us into a world war. Sadly it's just a hope. History has a terrible habit of repeating itself.
Crew Bytes
"DOWNFALL" was .......
directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel [TV'S"Kommissar Rex" and the film "Das Experiment"]; screenplay by Bernd Eichinger ["The Glass Cell", "Never Ending Story", "Nowhere In Africa" and "Resident Evil I & II"]; costume design by Claudia Bobsin ["Mortal Friends", "The Green Desert", "The Experiment" and "The Poet"]; production design by Bernd Lepel ["Letters From The East", "The Trials of Vera B", "Naked" and "Bear's Kiss"]; edited by Hans Funck ["St Pauli Night ", "Epstein's Night", "Anatomy 2" and "The Family Jewels"]; cinematography Rainer Klausmann ["Desporado City", "Cold in Columbia", "The Experiment", "Life Calling" and "Head-On"]; original music by Stephan Zacharias ["Silent Love", "Mrs Rettich, Czerni and I", "The Devil and Ms D" and "The Trials of Vera B"] and produced by Bernd Eichinger ["The Superwife", "The Devil and Ms D", "The Calling" and "Slap Her... She's French"].
Casting About
"DOWNFALL" stars .......
David of Donatello and the Swiss Film Award winner Bruno Ganz ["The American Friend", "The Boys From Brazil", "Bread and Tulips", "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Luther"]; Alexandra Maria Lara ["The Tunnel", "Just Messing About", "Naked" and "Doctor Zhivago"]; Gertrud Eysold Prize, Two German Film Critics Awards, Bavarian Film Prize, Two Golden Lions and the Adolf Grimme Award winner Corinna Harfouch ["Now or Never", "Fandango - Members Only", "Crazy About Paris" and "Hamlet_X"]; Ulrich Matthes ["Rider of the Flames", "Aimee & Jaguar", "The Farewell" and "The Ninth Day"]; Heino Ferch ["Marlene", "The Tunnel", "The Seagull's Laughter" and "A Light In Dark Places"]; Max Ophüls Award winner Thomas Kretschmann ["Der Mitwisser", "Stalingrad", "U-571" and "The Pianist"] Thomas Thieme ["Fat World", "Taking Sides", "The Family Jewels" and "Hamlet_X"]; Ulrich Noethen ["The Trials of Vera B", "The Slurb", "Francisca" and "I'm the Father"] and Juliane Köhler ["Shattenboxer", "Aimee & Jaguar", "Punktchen Und Anton" and "Nowhere In Africa"] as Eva Braun.
What It's All About
"May be the definitive account of Hitler's final days and the collapse of the Third Reich." .... Roger Moore ORLANDO SENTINEL
It is 1942 and Herr Hitler is in need of a new secretary. A group of young women have been selected and from these excited hopefuls, one will be chosen. All feel privileged at the prospect of serving their beloved leader. The position goes to a very nervous 22 year old, Traudl Junge. Three years later and Traudl Junge is still with Hitler but the glorious vision of Germany dominating Europe has diminished dramatically. Berlin is in ruins after waves of allied planes, in a massive bombing campaign, have decimated the once beautiful city . Now the Russians are moving in on the city. Hitler is bunkered down and still trying to rally his Generals in an effort to save the German nation from defeat. As the Russians rapidly advance, Hitler rails against his Generals and lashes out at their inabillity to repel the invaders. Speer, Himmler and Fegelein realize the end is only days away. Not so Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels. It appears Hitler will remain defient to the end. Finally though even he must admit there is little hope and that if he is captured there is no future for him. He will not survive at the hands of the Russians. Hitler will take the only way out left to him. But first he must marry his beloved Eva Braun. When the two suicide, a reluctant Traudl Junge decides that rather than kill herself, she will attempt to escape the inevitable, by leaving the bunker with a group of remaining Officers.
The Verdict
"Powerful! Emotive! Not to be missed. "Downfall" [Der Untergang] far from humanizes Hitler, rather it demonizes him and shows him a manner that will only reinforce to the world that he was a clever, manipulating despot. It's a raw and realistic look at the last days of Hitler that should strike a chord with most cinemagoers. A glorious production that looks at an inglorious period in mankind's history. Put your fears aside and take in "Downfall" if only to see the brilliance of Bruno Ganz as Hitler. Most Highly recommended."
The Cast
Bruno Ganz
Alexandra Maria Lara
Corinna Harfouch
Ulrich Matthes
Juliane Köhler
Heino Ferch
Christian Berkel
Matthias Habich
Thomas Kretschmann
Michael Mendl
André Hennicke
Ulrich Noethen
Birgit Minichmayr
Rolf Kanies
Justus von Dohnanyi
Dieter Mann
Christian Redl
Götz Otto
Thomas Limpinsel
Thomas Thieme
Alexander Held
Donevan Gunia
Bettina Redlich
Heinrich Schmieder
Anna Thalbach
Dietrich Hollinderbäumer
Ulrike Krumbiegel
Karl Kranzkowski
Thorsten Krohn
Jürgen Tonkel
Devid Striesow
Fabian Busch
Christian Hoening
Aleksandr Slastin
Aline Sokar
Amelie Menges
Charlotte Stoiber
Gregory Borlein
Julia Bauer
Laura Borlein
Julia Jentsch
Elisabeth von Koch
Alexander Orlov
Silke Popp
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Adolf Hitler
Traudl Junge
Magda Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Eva Braun
Albert Speer
Prof Dr Ernst-Günter Schenck
Prof Dr Werner Haase
SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein
Gen der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling
SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke
Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler
Gerda Christian
Gen der Infanterie Hans Krebs
Gen der Infanterie Wilhelm Burgdorf
Genfieldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel
Genoberst Alfred Jodl
SS-Hauptsturmführer Otto Günsche
Heinz Linge
Martin Bormann
Walter Hewel
Peter Kranz
Constanze Manziarly
Rochus Misch
Hanna Reitsch
Genfieldmarschall vVon Greim
Dorothee Kranz
Wilhelm Kranz
Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger
SS-Sturmbannführer Erich Kempka
Feldwebel Tornow
Obersturmbannführer Stehr
Dr Ernst-Robert Grawitz
General Wassili I Tschuikow
Helga Goebbels
Heide Goebbels
Hilde Goebbels
Helmut Goebbels
Hedda Goebbels
Holde Goebbels
Hanna Potrowski
Margarete Lorenz
HJ Führer
Ursula Puttkamer
The Crew
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel
Screenplay by Bernd Eichinger
Produced by Bernd Eichinger
Original Music by Stephan Zacharias
Cinematography by Rainer Klausmann
Film Editing by Hans Funck
Casting by An Dorthe Braker
Production Design by Bernd Lepel
Art Direction by Gregor Mager
Set Decoration by Joachim Keppler
Costume Design by Claudia Bobsin
Run Time 155 minutes
Rated MA15+ [AUST]
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