Downfall (film)
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Downfall
German language poster
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel
Produced by Bernd Eichinger
Written by Joachim Fest
Bernd Eichinger
Traudl Junge
Melissa Müller
Starring Bruno Ganz
Alexandra Maria Lara
Corinna Harfouch
Ulrich Matthes
Juliane Köhler
Music by Stephan Zacharias
Cinematography Rainer Klausmann
Editing by Hans Funck
Distributed by Constantin Film
Newmarket Films (English subtitles)
Release date(s) September 16, 2004 (Germany)
February 18, 2005 (USA)
Running time 156 minutes (original cut)
178 minutes (extended cut)
Country Germany
Italy
Austria
Language German
Russian
Budget €13,500,000[1]
Gross revenue $92,180,910[2]
Downfall (German: Der Untergang) is a 2004 German–Austrian drama film, depicting the final twelve days of Adolf Hitler's life in his Berlin bunker and Nazi Germany in 1945. The film was directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, written by Bernd Eichinger, and based upon the books: Inside Hitler's Bunker, by historian Joachim Fest; Until the Final Hour, the memoirs of Traudl Junge, one of Hitler's secretaries; portions of Albert Speer's memoirs Inside the Third Reich; Hitler's Last Days: An Eye–Witness Account, by Gerhardt Boldt; Das Notlazarett Unter Der Reichskanzlei: Ein Arzt Erlebt Hitlers Ende in Berlin (memoirs) by Doctor Ernst-Günther Schenck; and Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936–1949 (memoirs) by Siegfried Knappe.
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Contents
Plot
Early in the film, the narrative moves to Adolf Hitler's 56th birthday on April 20, 1945. Traudl Junge resides in the Führerbunker. Generals Wilhelm Burgdorf and Karl Koller indicate the Soviet Army is only 12 kilometres from the city center. At his birthday reception Hitler resolves to stay in Berlin and rejects a diplomatic solution. Certain officers agree that the Führer has lost all sense of reality. Later Hitler discusses his new scorched earth policy with Albert Speer, who begs mercy for the German people, saying that Hitler's plans will return them to the Middle Ages. Hitler claims that the German people have shown themselves too weak to win the war and therefore must be exterminated. Later, Eva Braun holds a party for the bunker inhabitants, but Soviet artillery fire ends the party early.
In the bunker, Hitler discusses the situation with the generals, believing that Waffen SS General Felix Steiner will save them. However, Steiner cannot mobilize enough men. Upon learning this, Hitler dismisses all except the four highest-ranking generals. While furiously accusing the Wehrmacht of sabotaging him from day one, he realizes that the war is lost and states that he would prefer suicide over surrender. Later Hitler, Eva, Junge and Gerda discuss various means of suicide. Hitler proposes shooting oneself through the mouth, while Braun mentions taking cyanide. Hitler then gives Gerda and Junge one cyanide capsule each. Eva Braun and Magda Goebbels type goodbye letters, Braun to her sister and Goebbels to her adult son Harald Quandt.
General Wilhelm Keitel is ordered to find Admiral Karl Dönitz, whom Hitler believes is gathering troops in the north, and help him to plan an offensive to recover the Romanian oilfields. Sgt. Rochus Misch, Hitler's radio operator, receives a telegram from Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe. Martin Bormann reads the telegram to Hitler, where Göring asks permission to assume command of the Reich and asks for acknowledgment by 10 PM, at which time he will assume authority in the absence of a response. Considering this treason, Hitler orders Göring's arrest and removal from office.
General Weidling reports that the Russians have broken through everywhere. There are no reserves and air support has ceased. General Mohnke states the Red Army is now only 300 to 400 meters from the Reich Chancellery and that they can hold out for a day or two at most. Before leaving, Hitler reassures the officers that General Walther Wenck will save them all.
On Hitler's wedding day, Traudl takes dictation of the Führer's political testament. Hitler has ordered Joseph Goebbels to leave Berlin, but Goebbels intends to ignore the order. Hitler marries Eva Braun. When Günsche later brings a reply from Keitel that the main armies are encircled or cannot continue their assault, Hitler states that he will never surrender. He also forbids all officers to surrender or face immediate execution.
Eva Braun has her last conversation with Traudl. She gives her one of her best coats and advises her to escape. Hitler has his final meal in silence with Constanze Manziarly and his secretaries. He bids farewell to the bunker staff, gives Magda Goebbels his Golden Party Badge (marking original members of the NSDAP) and retires to his room with Eva Braun. Despite Magda Goebbels' pleas, the pair commit suicide. Rather than live in a world without Nazism, Herr and Frau Goebbels poison their children and commit suicide themselves. All the bodies are burned outside the bunker complex.
Most of the bunker survivors attempt to escape, but die at the hands of Red Army infantrymen. Junge makes her way through the Russian lines. The film ends with Junge escaping Berlin by bicycle. The fates of the film's main surviving characters are told, before the credits roll.
[edit] Cast
Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler
Alexandra Maria Lara as Traudl Junge
Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun
Thomas Kretschmann as SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein
Christian Redl as Generaloberst Alfred Jodl
Corinna Harfouch as Magda Goebbels
Ulrich Matthes as Joseph Goebbels
Heino Ferch as Albert Speer
André Hennicke as SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke
Ulrich Noethen as Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler
Christian Berkel as Ernst-Günther Schenck
Reception
While treatment of the Third Reich is still a sensitive subject among many Germans even 60 years after World War II, the film broke one of the last remaining taboos by its depiction of Adolf Hitler in a central role by a German speaking actor (as opposed to using actual film footage of Hitler). Ganz did four months of research to prepare for the role, studying a recording of Hitler in private conversation with Finnish Field Marshal Mannerheim, in order to properly mimic Hitler's conversational voice, and distinct Austrian accent.[
The film's impending release in 2004 provoked a debate in German film magazines and newspapers. The tabloid Bild asked "Are we allowed to show the monster as a human being?"
Concern about the film's depiction of Hitler led New Yorker film critic David Denby to note:[
“ As a piece of acting, Ganz's work is not just astounding, it's actually rather moving. But I have doubts about the way his virtuosity has been put to use. By emphasizing the painfulness of Hitler's defeat Ganz has [...] made the dictator into a plausible human being. Considered as biography, the achievement (if that's the right word) [...] is to insist that the monster was not invariably monstrous — that he was kind to his cook and his young female secretaries, loved his German shepherd, Blondi, and was surrounded by loyal subordinates. We get the point: Hitler was not a supernatural being; he was common clay raised to power by the desire of his followers. But is this observation a sufficient response to what Hitler actually did? ”
With respect to German uneasiness about "humanizing" Hitler, Denby said:
“ A few journalists in [Germany] wondered aloud whether the "human" treatment of Hitler might not inadvertently aid the neo-Nazi movement. But in his many rants in [the film] Hitler says that the German people do not deserve to survive, that they have failed him by losing the war and must perish — not exactly the sentiments […] that would spark a recruitment drive. This Hitler may be human, but he's as utterly degraded a human being as has ever been shown on the screen, a man whose every impulse leads to annihilation.[4] ”
After previewing the film, Hitler biographer Sir Ian Kershaw wrote in The Guardian:[5]
Knowing what I did of the bunker story, I found it hard to imagine that anyone (other than the usual neo-Nazi fringe) could possibly find Hitler a sympathetic figure during his bizarre last days. And to presume that it might be somehow dangerous to see him as a human being — well, what does that thought imply about the self-confidence of a stable, liberal democracy? Hitler was, after all, a human being, even if an especially obnoxious, detestable specimen. We well know that he could be kind and considerate to his secretaries, and with the next breath show cold ruthlessness, dispassionate brutality, in determining the deaths of millions.
Of all the screen depictions of the Führer, even by famous actors, such as Alec Guinness or Anthony Hopkins, this is the only one which to me is compelling. Part of this is the voice. Ganz has Hitler's voice to near perfection. It is chillingly authentic.
Addressing other critics like Denby, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert wrote:
Admiration I did not feel. Sympathy I felt in the sense that I would feel it for a rabid dog, while accepting that it must be destroyed. I do not feel the film provides 'a sufficient response to what Hitler actually did,' because I feel no film can, and no response would be sufficient. 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. He was skilled in the ways he exploited that feeling, and surrounded himself by gifted strategists and propagandists, but he was not a great man, simply one armed by fate to unleash unimaginable evil. It is useful to reflect that racism, xenophobia, grandiosity and fear are still with us, and the defeat of one of their manifestations does not inoculate us against others."
Hirschbiegel confirmed that the film's makers sought to give Hitler a three-dimensional personality.
We know from all accounts that he was a very charming man — a man who managed to seduce a whole people into barbarism.
The film was nominated for the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in the 77th Academy Awards. The film also won the BBC's 2005 BBC 4 World Cinema.[]
The film is set mostly in and around the Führerbunker. Hirschbiegel made an effort to accurately reconstruct the look and atmosphere of the bunker through eyewitness accounts, survivors' memoirs and other historical sources. According to his commentary on the DVD, Der Untergang was filmed in Berlin, Munich, and in a district of Saint Petersburg, Russia, which, with its many buildings designed by German architects, was said to resemble many parts of 1940s Berlin.
Criticism
The author Giles MacDonogh criticised the film for sympathetic portrayals of Wilhelm Mohnke and Ernst-Günther Schenck. Mohnke was rumoured, but never proven, to have ordered the execution of a group of P.O.W.s in Normandy, while Schenck's experiments with medicinal plants in 1938 allegedly led to the deaths of a number of concentration camp prisoners.[9] In answer to this criticism, the film's director, in the DVD commentary, stated he did his own research and did not find the allegations as to Schenck to be convincing. Furthermore, Mohnke strongly denied the accusations against him, telling author Thomas Fischer, "I issued no orders not to take English prisoners or to execute prisoners."[10]
Wim Wenders called the filmmakers' collaboration with a history professor as "a strategic move to compile cultural capital and move the film beyond the reach of reprehensibility, challenge, or contradiction by writers or critics unwilling to engage the material other than by pointing out historical inaccuracies." He felt that the film said: "Wir wissen, wovon wir reden" ("We know what we're talking about"). Further, Wenders argued that Der Untergang could not be seen as presenting anything other than an uncritical viewpoint toward the barbarism of its subject matter, and accused the filmmakers of Verharmlosung (rendering harmlessness). Wenders supported this observation with close readings of the film's first scene, and of Hitler's final scene, suggesting that in each case a particular set of cinematographic and editorial choices left each scene emotionally charged, resulting in a glorifying effect.[11]
The film's ending has also been the subject of criticism for not revealing what actually happened to several of the women who were present in the bunker. In the film, the women manage to escape or are seemingly left unharmed when the Soviet soldiers arrive, whereas in reality several of the women were raped and brutalized by the Soviet soldiers. Gerda Christian, Traudl Junge, Else Krüger and Constanze Manziarly, together with others, left the bunker on May 1 under SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke's leadership. This group slowly made its way north hoping to link up with a German army holdout on the Prinzenallee. The group, hiding in a cellar, was captured by the Soviets on the morning of May 2. Like thousands of other German women during the fall of Berlin in 1945, Gerda Christian and Else Krüger were raped by soldiers of the Red Army in the woods near Berlin.[12] According to author James O'Donnell of The Bunker, Junge was also raped. However, Junge herself never mentioned this in her autobiography.
While the film states that Manziarly vanished in 45, Junge recounts her being taken into an U-Bahn tunnel by two Soviet soldiers, reassuring the group that "They want to see my papers." She was never seen again.
Downfall as an Internet meme
Throughout 2008 a number of parody clips from Downfall became viral videos.[15] The original German soundtrack remained but the clips were instead anachronistically subtitled (in English or other languages) with content about current events such as politics, sports, video games and television shows, and even the death of Michael Jackson. According to the New York Times, at one point the most widely known of these videos in the United States had Hitler speaking as Hillary Clinton, infuriated by Barack Obama's victories in the Democratic presidential primaries.[16] Another video featured Hitler as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper outraged over the NDP-Liberal Coalition.[17] In February 2009, a Downfall parody video protesting parking issues in Tel Aviv, Israel sparked a heated debate with Holocaust survivors about the legitimacy of jokes involving Hitler and the Nazi regime.[18] British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was also cast as Hitler in parodies of political developments in the United Kingdom, including a by-election in Glasgow East.[17] In late 2008, the meme went meta with Hitler Is A Meme, a Downfall parody featuring Hitler's realization that he has become an Internet meme.[
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