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“It’s impossible to turn your eyes away from Oliver Hirschbiegel’s
Downfall,” writes Newsweek’s David Ansen, calling
this taut dramatization of the Third Reich’s final days “meticulous, spellbinding,
provocative.” Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards,
and based on Joachim Fest’s Inside Hitler’s Bunker
as well as the memoirs of Traudl Junge, Hitler’s personal secretary,
Downfall chronicles the last ten days of the tyrant and, while the
Red Army advances on Berlin, weaves a compelling portrait of a totalitarian
regime’s spiritual and emotional collapse. With his electrifying lead performance,
Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire) sets the pace for a remarkable
cast of Germany’s leading actors, including Juliane Köhler (Nowhere
in Africa) as Eva Braun, Heino Furch (The Harmonists)
as Albert Speer, and Ulrich Matthes and Corinna Harfouch
as Joseph and Magda Goebbels. The inner-circle’s collapse is viewed primarily
through the eyes of Traudl Junge, played by rising young actress Alexandra
Maria Lara. This fascinating and ambitious movie provides us with deeper
understanding of those events without offering sympathy for the devil. In
German with English subtitles. Camera: Rainer Klausmann. Music:
Stephan Zacharias. Writer/Producer: Bernd Eichinger. Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel.
(Germany 2004) 150 min.
“Dramatic, accurate and harrowing, effectively photographed and brilliantly
acted” – Mick LaSalle, San
Francisco Chronicle (4 Stars)
"As we regard this broken and pathetic Hitler, we realize that he
did not alone create the Third Reich, but was the focus for a spontaneous uprising
by many of the German people, fueled by racism, xenophobia, grandiosity and
fear." – Roger Ebert, Chicago
Sun Times (4 Stars)
“Downfall shows us the chaos of leadership abandoned…a once-in-a-lifetime
performance from Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire, Bread and Tulips)." –
Mary Pols, Contra
Costa Times (3.5 Stars)
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