Downfall (2004)
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
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What critics compared Downfall to
And it's a nice touch to have German actor Gotz Otto (Downfall, 2004) as moon Nazi Klaus Adler - the famous YouTube spoofs of Downfall are notably referenced on screen here, too.
With hokey references to James Bond, Dr. Strangelove and the Downfall meme of all things, Iron Sky feels more and more like a lost Austin Powers sequel that already feels exceedingly dated in its humor.
Waititi’s Fuhrer is still more Chaplin’s Adenoid Hynkel than, say, Bruno Ganz’s brooding, self-pitying Hitler from Downfall , but even played as a fool he’s a subtly malicious piece of work.
Downfall did that, and so did Come and See , but those films are unsparing in the cruelty they depict.
He wants to make an upbeat “Downfall.”
Hitler has, of course, been played by Swiss actors (Bruno Ganz in Downfall ), Englishmen (Alec Guinness in Hitler: The Last Ten Days ), actual Germans (Martin Wuttke in Inglourious Basterds ) and many others, but he’s never been portrayed by a Maori/Jewish filmmaker before.
Julia Jentsch's portrayal of Sophie is nuanced and, at times, stirring, especially when she spars with Mohr, her Gestapo interrogator, played by Alexander Held (Schindler's List, Downfall), but it is Held who gives the most riveting performance of the film.
Bad enough to hear such things today from, say, the vice president of the United States looking to score some points with a cheap shot, but Scholl (the wonderful Julia Jentsch) heard it from the Gestapo interrogator, Robert Mohr (Alexander Held: Downfall ), who held her life in his hands.
Yet the contorted, shouting face of Freisler is no caricature, but an accurate reflection of the face that the Nazi party unapologetically presented to the world the face so heart-stoppingly brought to life by Bruno Ganz in Downfall.
As for Claire Danes lookalike Jentsch ("Downfall," "The Edukators"), her believable performance as the idealistic Sophie is what makes the film compelling.
…s with Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall , Sophie Scholl: The Final Days�Germany's official selection for the 2005 Academy Awards�partially uses as its guide historical documents and personal accounts to recreate a narrow look at the last earthly activities of a WWII icon, though in this case the figure whose climactic death is sympathetically obscured from view is not Hitler or Goebbels but, rather, freedom fighter Sophie Scholl.
They are still evil, but, as in Downfall, they are recognizably human.
From Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to Oliver Stone’s JFK to Oliver Hirschbiegel’s controversial Hitler flick Downfall (poor Adolf, in that bunker and everything), the sudden exit of an iconic political figure, be they benevolent or tyrannical, offers rich material for storytellers.
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Oliver Hirschbiegel ( Downfall ) is the director of this compelling film inspired by real-life figures.
Hirschbiegel, who made Downfall (about the last days of Hitler), provides a window into each man's psyche, and those portals are what make Five Minutes of Heaven worth a viewer's 90-minute investment.
After drawing criticism for his âsympatheticâ portrayal of Hitler in Der Untergang (Downfall), Hirschbiegel has turned his sights on the Irish Troubles , putting a human face on another âmonsterâ.
Director Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) films the proceedings with a minimum of fuss, and without the leaden tendentiousness that made his tour in the Führerbunker such a slog.
Yet maybe director Oliver Hirschbiegel's ("Downfall") fact-inspired drama, which won directing and world cinema screenwriting prizes at Sundance, can take a more honest look at the emotional aftershocks of politically motivated violence.
“Downfall” director Oliver Hirshbiegel‘s “13 Minutes” is a taut, smart and straightforward bio-drama of this largely forgotten early figure in German resistance to the Hitler regime.
His three-hour-long film Downfall – unforgettably starring Bruno Ganz as Hitler – was something of a modern masterpiece of German cinema.
No doubt producers were attracted to the combo of Hirschbiegel, still best known for the superior “Downfall,” and scripter Fred Breinersdorfer, whose “Sophie Scholl” also centered around a popular Third Reich subject.
German filmmaker Oliver Hirschbiegel ( Diana ) returns to the era of his brutal film Downfall — source of that now meme-fied scene in which an insane Adolf Hitler goes on an extended rant to an audience of terrified underlings — with an intense dramatization of the true story of a failed attempt to assassinate the Führer in 1939.
Titled "Elser" in Germany where its main character is better known, and "13 Minutes" in English, after the amount of time by which Georg Elser failed to kill Hitler, Oliver Hirschbiegel's latest film brings him back to Nazi Germany, the scene of his greatest cinematic triumph, "Downfall."
Apparently chastised by the global raspberry that greeted Diana, Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel returns to home territory with another film about Hitler.
But the stand-out performances in this little chamber piece are Bruno "Hitler" Ganz who ditches his Downfall reputation with one shake of an incense stick as the preachy life coach-cum-healer, Gottfried, and his estranged partner April (a superbly droll Patricia Clarkson), who references their separation and his failings constantly, but gets no satisfactory bite from the cheery bohemian.
April has a way with savage one-liners, which are often directed at her ill-matched romantic partner, Gottfried ( Downfall ’s Bruno Ganz), who uses his vague New Age spirituality to float serenely — or is it slyly?
Bruno Ganz (in a role as far from Downfall ’s Fuhrer as it’s possible to get) is Gottfried, a hippy-dippy spiritual healer on the sharp end of his estranged American partner’s (a hilariously withering Patricia Clarkson) putdowns.
Ganz, perhaps best known for starring as Adolf Hitler in “Downfall,” is a goofy spiritualist named Gottfried.
You’ve seen Ganz as a chillingly credible Hitler in “Downfall;” Murphy as the shell-shocked pilot rescued by Mark Rylance in “Dunkirk;” and Clarkson in “House of Cards,” “Pieces of April” and “The Maze Runner” movies.
April’s estranged new age husband Gottfried (Bruno Ganz) makes one yearn for the actor to resume his comparatively charming yelling Hitler act from Downfall : “It’s just a broken window,” he offers: “not a window into anyone’s soul.”
Vitus lives uneasily with his parents but finds comfort with his eccentric grandfather, played by veteran German actor Bruno Ganz, last seen as Hitler in "Downfall," an excellent 2004 account of the Fueher's final days.
Vitus is especially close to his rascally, noncomformist grandpa (veteran actor Bruno Ganz, most recently seen in a Memphis movie theater as Hitler in "Downfall").
Vitus runs away from his family and, seemingly, his piano career, seeking refuge at the house of his eccentric grandfather (Bruno Ganz, who stole the movie when he played Hitler in Downfall).
And veteran actor Bruno Ganz ("Downfall," "Wings of Desire") is terrific as usual playing the boy's more understanding grandfather.
The Foreign Language Film category is practically a breeding ground for the genre—there’s a clear line back from last year’s champion in the category, Ida, to Poland’s 2011 nominee In Darkness, to Austria’s The Counterfeiters (winner, 2007), to Sophie Scholl–The Final Days (2005), Downfall (2004), Twin Sisters and Želary (2003), Nowhere in Africa (winner, 2002), on and on and on.
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Truth is “The Reader” outdid its Oscar peers that year — a decades-spanning drama that, like “Downfall” before it, went beyond facts into slippery human nature of lust, manipulation, retribution and doubt.
Flashes of the difficult moral quandaries tackled in the book – does acting within the law absolve heinous crimes, should a war criminal be permitted any happiness – are largely provided courtesy of Michael’s law professor (Bruno Ganz, who portrayed the ultimate Nazi piece of work in Downfall).
Basterds‘ coarse, ranting, ridiculously caped Hitler certainly contributes to the war’s vaudevillization, but the notion of Hitler as screaming infant was more eloquently demonstrated several years ago, when a hilarious meme swept the Internet, subtitling a key tantrum from Downfall, the 2005 German drama of Hitler in the bunker: Bruno Ganz’s disheveled führer was made to browbeat his generals about everything from his lost Xbox to the Superbowl upset to Obama’s victory (in the guise of Hillary Clinton).