By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.75 cats
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Starring: Alexandra Maria Lara | Bruno Ganz | Corinna Harfouch | Juliane Köhler | Ulrish Matthes
Original language title: Der Untergang
Country: austria, germany, italy
Year: 2005
Running time: 156
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/reference
Bruce says: “For many years Bruno Ganz has given some of the my favorite performances in films such as THE AMERICAN FRIEND, A KNIFE IN THE HEAD, CIRCLE OF DECEIT, WINGS OF DESIRE and ETERNITY AND A DAY. A consistently brilliant an actor, none of his earlier work comes close to matching his Hitler in DOWNFALL. His performance is a tour-de-force.
“DOWNFALL is a grand opus, telling the story of the final few days of the Third Reich. Partly a war drama, somewhat of a melodrama, having touches of docudrama, DOWNFALL is mostly theatre of the absurd. Various vignettes seem certainly more fiction than fact. That is not the case. The film is based on Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary the memoirs Traudl Junge, and Joachim Fest’s book Inside Hitler’s Bunker. Eerily, moments in the film seem to parody the Bush Administration, a frightening coincidence.
“The film begins with several girls auditioning to become Die Fuehrer’s secretary in 1942. As they sit in an anteroom, Hitler walks in. The girls stand and he greets them as though they were at a wedding reception or a state dinner. He makes some small talk like an ordinary person. When he gets to Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara), he finds out she is from Munich. It appears she has the edge over the other girls since Hitler’s rise to power began in the south. She gets the job.
“Traudl Junge and Hitler are the main characters in the drama but almost all of Hitler’s inner circle make an appearance giving the viewer a comprehensive sense of the bigger picture, how the crumbling of the Third Reich in 1945 affected everyone. The camera action beautifully captures both the claustrophobic rat maze of rooms in the bunker and the open air theatre of war above that is reducing Berlin to rubble. The sound of Russian artillery is never ending. The Russians outnumber the Germans 10:1. Berlin is sure to fall. Defying the doomsday scenario, the staff and military personnel in the Bunker begin drinking and smoking; Eva Braun (Juliane Kohler) stages a party where she gets everyone to dance.
“Himmler is concerned over how he should great Eisenhower when they negotiate surrender. Hitler wants him shot for treason. Goring is positioning himself to act as Hitler’s successor. Hitler wants him killed, too. Speer has preserved his architectural plans for the Third Reich, defying Hitler’s orders to destroy all evidence. Goebbels and his wife herd their children into the bunker to be with Uncle Hitler. These are but a few of the many events to which we are exposed. Hirschbiegel magnificently maintains clarity for the viewer amid the chaos he depicts. The film is expertly edited. Many scenes are brief; others linger on to suit the mood.
“As the inevitable approaches, Hitler becomes more and more enraged and delusional. He does not want to believe his troops are incapable of a counterattack. He calls for fantasy maneuvers and wants ‘to shake up the entire air force.’ In spite of his words, it is Hitler’s body language that speaks volumes. Daily his pallor increases. He becomes more stooped as he walks about and he develops tremors and nervous ticks. He seems to shrink in size. Ganz plays Hitler as an everyday person which adds a touch of reality to the surreal circumstances. That is not to say his portrait is sympathetic. It is not. Hitler remains resolute in his hatred of Jews and has no remorse over destroying Germany.
“’I had such big plans for the German people and the world,’ Hitler muses. Yet paradoxically, he does not care about saving the German people or even the three million still alive in Berlin. In his mind, they chose their fate by giving him a mandate. He passes out cyanide capsules to his loyal staff and tests the poison pill on his beloved German shepherd, Blondi. Traudl Junge is summoned for dictation of Hitler’s political and personal testaments. Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide and their bodies are burned.
“In the most somber scene in the film, Frau Goebbels (Corrina Harfouch) poisons each of her six children, stating ‘without National Socialism, they have no future.’ A day or two prior, she proclaimed, ‘You’ve made me the happiest woman in Germany,’ as Hitler pinned a swastika on her lapel.
“A marvelous complement to this film is BLIND SPOT: HITLER’S SECRETARY which is an oral history documentary. Frau Junge is the only talking head in the film and, although she does change her outfits and the camera moves ever so slightly for each filmed session, we are totally focused on this woman who is relating her incredible tale. It is anything but boring. For DOWNFALL, Oliver Hirschbiegel borrows footage from the ending of BLIND SPOT for a post-script of his own following the credits. Be sure to stay through the end. 5 cats”
Barbara says: “Bruno Ganz performance was excellent. He brought out the human side of Hitler but never gave the impression that he was anything but evil. Corinna Harfouch as Frau Giebbels wasl also very good. The scene where she poisons her children is very compelling.
“The film is 2 and a half hours long but never drags since the scenes are all brief and never linger on the gore. 5 Cats”
Chris says: “Don’t say you’re not interested in watching an epic film about Hitler’s final days. Oliver Hirschgbiegel’s dramatization of the documentary BLIND SPOT: HITLER’S SECRETARY is a riveting, intense work whose appeal reaches far beyond World War II history buffs. Much of this is due to the superb cast: Bruno Ganz plays Hitler as the ferocious, maniacal dictator you’d expect, but he’s never a cartoon, and he comes as close to humanizing the man as much as one possibly could. Also great is Corinna Harfouch as Magda Goebbels, a fearless woman who is at the center of the film’s most agonizing, wrenching scene. An epic often set in the most intimate spaces, it both reenacts and tries to understand a harrowing event, with an immediacy that’s usually beyond the reach of historical epics. 5 cats”
Michael says: “This intense telling of Hitler’s final days of World War II in his Berlin bunker is based on a book by Traudl Junge, one of Hitler’s last secretaries, and Melissa Müller (which was also the basis of the documentary BLIND SPOT: HITLER’S SECRETARY). Despite the critical raves it received during its release, I had no strong desire to see it, but recent urgings by various Chlotrudis members finally drove me to give it a try. DOWNFALL paints a picture of what it must have been like to spend those last days in the company of Hitler and his brethren as they lost control of the war and faced the failure of their dream. As the Nazis lose control of Berlin, caught between the allied forces, Hitler refuses to surrender, or even to flee the city. As his sanity clearly starts to slip, his most devoted followers are forced by loyalty or fear to stay by his side. Those who abandon him are branded traitors and sought out for execution. Traudl Junge remains in the bunker and acts as the viewers witness to the desperate measures that Hitler’s generals take as their leader becomes more and more irrational. While the situation tips ever closer to despair, Hitler’s soon-to-be-wife, Eva Braun tries to keep spirits up by throwing parties with dancing and music while artillery shells rain about them in the city. As the end draws near, Hitler, Eva, and those closest to the Nazi dream commit suicide one by one, in scenes which grow more and more surreal as the death toll grows, yet somehow capture the fervor with which they believed in their leader’s vision. The characters of Joseph and Magda Goebbels surely capture this dichotomy most chillingly, as they even take the lives of their four children to spare them the future of a world without the Third Reich.
I must say that while I found the film to be engrossing for the most part, there were moments where my mind wandered and I wished things would move along. I also felt that the film could have been better served by a more central focus. Obstensibly that focus was to be Traudl Junge, and in fact, the final moments of the film are spent on her escape, but too often the point-of-view veered from hers to the detriment of the film. That said, I found myself reflecting back on the film often in the days following, and I realized that Hirschbiegel truly captured the feel of those final days. The performances were very strong, led by Bruno Ganz as the Fuhrer, never portraying Hitler’s lack of sanity with over-the-top lunacy, but rather with a rapidly changing mood that put all those around him on edge. I was pleasantly surprised to see the part of Eva Braun played by Juliane Köhler, who I admired in her previous works, AIMEE AND JAGUAR and NOWHERE IN AFRICA. Her tightly cheerful portrayal of Hitler’s wife was powerful. The afore-mentioned Goebbels were chillingly captured by Corinna Harfouch and Ulrich Matthes. A fiercer (albeit deranged) mother has rarely been so evident. Alexandra Maria Lara did a fine job as Traudl, portraying both the innocence of youth and denial before the dawning realization of her actions spurred her to steely determination. I was surprised to see this film about war led by such strong female characters. 4 cats.”