[Winrew]

Watched this yesterday , ive had it on disc for a few month but never got round to watching it.

Well whats it about ?

Claustrophobic, tense and often riveting, Downfall traps us in Hitler's bunker during the final days of the Third Reich. As the Allies advance on Berlin and the Führer's empire crumbles, lead actor Bruno Ganz gives the great dictator a human face as he struggles with the onset of Parkinson's disease and prepares to take his own life. Controversial in its native Germany, Oliver Hirschbiegel's meticulous film is no sensational shockfest, but a living, breathing historical recreation of Hitler's downfall.

One of the best movies i have ever seen , the lead actor ( Bruno Ganz ) is fantastic in the role of Hitler.
Got some great write ups and reviews in most papers and magazines so i thought it would be over hyped , but it certainly isnt....

[CJ Mars]

Best war movie I’ve ever seen bar none. I saw this the day it came out in the cinema and was absolutely blown away. I wrote a review of it at the time for PP that I’ve cut & pasted below. The UK DVD release is excellent with lots of extras but the German edition (can be bought on Ebay) includes “Blind Spot” the 2002 documentary with Traudl Junge the young secretary to Hitler who is one of the key bunker persons in the film. An extract from this movie appears right at the end of “Downfall”.

Due to time constraints some interesting elements were left out of the movie. One has an interesing Irish connection. There is a scene where SS field police turn up at the apartment of Herman Feiglein (Eva Braun’s brother in law, sometimes Luftwaffe attache and fulltime gambler and womaniser) to find him in bed with a woman. They haul him off back to the bunker and with the woman barely featuring in the movie and you’re left assuming she is some tart he has picked up. She was actually an Irishwoman who was spying for the British. She was passing on bunker secrets directly to British high command in the last few months of the war that she was getting unwittingly from Feiglein. British High Command were in turn waging psychological war on the bunker inhabitants by broadcasting up to date satirical sketches of what was happening in the bunker which did nothing to help lessen Hitler’s paranoia. More than one German general said after the war that the best way to get news of the bunker in the last months was to listen to the
BBC

In reality when the SS turned up realising the danger she was in she went to make the plods coffee while they attempted to wake Feiglein (who was dead drunk). She then jumped out the window of the second floor apartment (in her negligee) as the unfortunate SS men had to report to a furious Hitler before making a dangerous journey across the city where fighting raged to the relative safety of the Irish Embassy. She died only recently in Galway having refused the British offer of a medal post war as she didn’t want awkward questions about what a nice Irish girl did to get it .

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Gentlemen smile. Think how we will appear on colour TV in 100 years time" Joseph Goebbels April 1945

“Downfall” is a German made documentary style film of the final collapse in Berlin of Hitler’s “Thousand Year Reich” in the last two weeks of April 1945.

Handing a director with one experimental film to his name (albeit a well regarded one) to tackle a big budget epic about the collapse of Hitler’s Reich would seem a strange choice until one sees that the director’s previous film was a study of the infamous Stamford Prison Experiment a case study of personalities in extremis. The bloody end in Berlin in 1945 was not only an a defining moment in recent European history but also in respect of events in the bunker a brief snapshot of extreme personalities in the most extreme circumstances. Its to director’s Oliver Hirschbiegel’s credit that he not only manages to convey the collapsing world of Berlin April 1945 but also the essence of the major characters waiting in the underground lair for the end.

The film opens with a brief prologue in November 1942 when 5 nervous young women await an interview with Adolf Hitler to see which one will be confirmed as his new private secretary. The Hitler that emerges to greet the women is a genial avuncular uncle like figure far removed from the spitting and raving monster of history. Selecting the young Munich girl Traudl Junge for a typewriter test he gently informs her that his dog won’t bite and when she nervously fluffs his initial dictation he suggests they try again.

Fast forward to the end of April 1945 and Traudl Junge sits bolt upright in her little bunker bed as the city rumbles to the sound of the first Russian artillery barrage. The Russian armies are poised to encircle Berlin and are less than 15 miles from the bunker which is the centre of the Nazi’s much reduced empire. The Hitler we meet there is the Hitler of the popular imagination. He is clearly in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s with his left hand shaking uncontrollably behind his back and he is a very sick man. The rage and hatred still burn as he berates his generals, his soldiers and the German people whom he feels have deserted him and who should now all suffer for this. Most of the time he is completely delusional to the reality outside. He orders phantom units around the situation map while his stone-faced generals listen mute to his ravings. Above ground the reality is beautifully etched in a few short vignettes where a desperate mixed bag of old men and young children man makeshift barricades and try desperately to hold the ever shrinking perimeter against a vastly superior and better equipped foe. The final time Hitler leaves the bunker is the famous picture where he decorates a platoon of young Hitler youth for their part in the battle. On being told that a 12 year old has destroyed 2 tanks he muses “if only my generals had your courage? Above ground SS Field Police dole out brutal justice by firing squad while the infamous Jack Ketch like figure of the SS hangman walks the streets with a hangman’s noose over his shoulder hanging men, women and children indiscriminately in a final orgy of murder.



Bruno Ganz’s Hitler is a truly astonishing performance by the actor best known previously for playing an angel in Wim Wender’s “Wings of Desire” The physical resemblance is astonishing but the mixture of rage, pity and occasional kindness captures the man in all his terrible contradictions. I don’t hold with the argument in Germany that Ganz humanises Hitler. He did love his dog and the women closest to him always spoke of his kindness but the hatred and violence in the portrayal are never far from the surface in this performance. He rages at the edge of insanity to the bitter end against “international Jewry” and has no hesitation whatsoever about condemning Berlin and its millions of inhabitants and defenders to the funeral pyre he wants for himself. Ganz’s towering performance is but one of many. Corrina Harfouch’s Magda Goebbels is a fine study in barely suppressed madness and obsession as in one of the strongest parts of the movie she sacrifices her 6 children who “cannot live in a world without National Socialism” and then retires to play Solitaire. Himmler lives up to the memorable description of Speer as “half schoolmaster, half crank” as he ponders whether to greet Eisenhower with a Nazi salute or a handshake. Eva Braun emerges from under the malign character of Hitler himself as a person in her own right while her decadent brother in law Hermann Feiglein is the corrupt playboy I always imagined him as.

Amid the madness, the betrayals and the violence there are glimpses of courage and loyalty however deluded. Colonel Schenck an SS Doctor (and it must be said a figure about whom serious war crimes allegations involving medical experimentation on POWs were made but never proved) is one such figure who refuses to join the exodus to the west of Himmler’s SS on 22nd April. Along with Professor Haase (dying in agony of cancer) of the Berlin Medical Centre he runs the medical centre underneath the Reich Chancellery where in appalling medieval conditions they treat thousands of casualties in the last two weeks. His refusal to leave costs him 10 years of brutal treatment in a Soviet Prison of war camp. Hitler’s women secretaries and cooks stay to the bitter end. The genial Foreign Minister Walter Hewel who had saved some prominent Berlin Jews and who would have had little (relatively) to fear from the victors honours Hitler’s final horrible request.

Like everything else about this brilliant movie the final round of bunker suicides and the breakout of the 200 odd people in the aftermath of the suicides are beautifully handled and as close to the reality as it is possible to get. The breakout takes on the appearance of a thriller as the groups stagger through the razed buildings of Berlin as they try to break out of the Russian perimeter and out to the relative safety of the west. The final reckoning for Traudl Junge’s group in the Patzenhofer brewery is a masterpiece in tension. A final poignant real life 2002 interview just before her death with a very old Traudl Junge adds a fine coda.

“Downfall” is an absolutely staggering achievement as both a movie and an historical document. The claustrophobia of the bunker is realised to a tee. The action above ground conveys the futility and the horror while the actors to a person turn in fine performances all anchored around Ganz’s Hitler. In terms of historical realism the only movie that comes close would be “Gods and Generals” the very long and frankly very boring movie of Gettysburg. With a story so epic the characters manage not to be overshadowed by events and the filmmakers decision to play it almost 100% by the book (as it is known) and they’ve crafted a movie that will be a yardstick against which to judge not only war movies but for historical movies for years to come.

There are a few minor historical liberties. The action in the movie stops in the Patzenhofer brewery but in “reality” the night of that scene Tradul Junge who left with Gerda Christian and not the Hitler youth Peter Kranz were both gang raped by a group of Russian soldiers just outside of American lines. Tradul Junge was beaten so badly her skull was fractured and she subsequently spent over a year as “war booty” of the Russian major who rescued her. Also barely mentioned is the real bunker hero - the civilian mechanic Johannes “Hannes” Hentschel who kept the massive bunker generators running thereby providing not only power to the bunker but also to the medical centre in the Reichstag Chancellery. He refused to join the final breakout to keep power and water running for the wounded. His actions saved at least 400 wounded. Last living man in the bunker the Russian police captured him there and despite his civilian status he spent 10 years in a gulag as a “key Nazi” Finally the role of non German’s in the final defence of the Reichstag is not mentioned at all. The reality was that at least 4,000 defenders in the final defensive ring were a mixture of French, Latvians, Swedes and other nations fighting probably not so much against international Bolsehvism as they would have history to believe but against the vengeance of the Allies against whom they turned their backs.

[kompressaur]

Just a quick note from me to say ive been trying to see it for months but my divx player doesnt play subtitles. Looks real good and thats some write up from CJ there on it. I'll have a read of that with my dinner later CJ

[Swooperman]

I've watched this today & must admit that with the reviews above & elsewhere I knew it would be good but thought the claim of it being 'the best war movie ever seen bar none' would turn out to be an exaggeration.
This film is startling in its tension & the way it brings home not so much the terror, as the desperation & futility of the final days of the war in the bunker is breathtaking, & I would certainly agree that it would be on any shortlist of the greatest films i've seen.

[the fox is a pro]

Ive had this for months now, but never really fancied it tbh, untill i looked at the rave reviews some of you have given it, so last night i fired it up, wot a suprise this is a excellent film which i really enjoyed, even the subtiltes didnt put me off.

[Winrew]

Meant to bump this up to the top before i went to work this afternoon

Anyway , it was on C4 tonight , you can catch the last 20 minutes , unless of course you have a Tardis .....Then you can watch it from the start

[acca]

I couldn't understand a word they said.
Did they die in the end?

[slick]

Never heard of it but was looking on mini nova earlier on tonight for a good film to watch.
When was it made? i take it its German and if its anything like Das Boot then it has the makings of a good movie.

Talking of which, i saw 'The Hostel' last night and if enybody enjoyed 'Saw' then this is right up ure street as its made in a similar format but with a different slant on things, well worth a watch.

[CJ Mars]

Talking of which, i saw 'The Hostel' last night and if enybody enjoyed 'Saw' then this is right up ure street as its made in a similar format but with a different slant on things, well worth a watch.

Saw the trailer of this in the cinema yesterday and it looks absoluetly brilliant. Got great reviews in the US. Apparently the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Slovakia (Slovenia???) where it is set has complained about the portrayal of his country's inhabotants as a bunch of tortureing psychos . Great publicity for the movie.

The director's first flick "Cabin fever" is a nice little low budget horror show as well.

[slick]

Cabin fever wasent too bad really for a low budget flick, I can side with the Slovakian minister of foreign affairs as after watching Hostel (and not that i would have visited slovakia anyhow) but theres no fcuking way in the world you would get me there now as all the events in the movie allthough seemingly far fetched are not impossible, and if anything like that in the world is taking place then a little eastern European state is probably where it would occur.

Well worth a watch, i just deleted a few lines too as i didnt want to give to much info on the film away and spoil it for folk who have not seen it.

[Swooperman]

I've seen it as well & I'd recommend it although the quality of mine wasnt.....ahem.....too good which somehow added to the whole thing

[slick]

I think we must have watched the same one Swoops, every dark scene was just a black screen so i missed some of the juicy bits and some bastard going for a piss every 10 or 15 mins was quite distracting.
I'm don't like cam versions but it was all i could find and will probably watch it again when i get my hands on a proper divx version.