I watched “Der Untergang”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/ (Downfall) last night at Bristol’s Watershed cinema. An astonishing film. Bruno Ganz is fantastic as the increasingly stressed and incoherent Hitler and Corinna Harfouch is chilling as the the unremittingly evil Magda Goebbels. The film works partly through the contrast between above-ground where Berlin crumbles under Soviet bombardment and the bunker where reality impinges on fantasy intermittently and increasingly shockingly. There’s a great scene where Hitler addresses Albert Speer across the model of his planned Berlin-of-the-future whilst the real Berlin is flattened. Hitler is petty and selfish to the end, screaming of betrayal, his hatred of the Jews, and telling all that will hear that the German people deserve to die for letting him down — personally. The only slightly false note was when Traudl Junge (Hitler’s secretary) escapes at the end — one suspects some embellishment.
When the film ended the cinema was perfectly still for a moment or two. Everyone in the audience was, I think, psychologically winded by what they’d seen. Ganz, Harfouch and director Hirschbiegel deserve Oscars for this, no question.
{ 20 comments }
Louis Proyect 04.05.05 at 8:26 am
My own take on Der Untergang:
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/Downfall.htm
praktike 04.05.05 at 9:07 am
Indeed; it was a great film. The sets were pretty fantastic, too. God, that was a horrible scene w/ the murder of the Goebbels kids.
BTW, am I the only one disturbed by the fact that the #1 Google Search for “Albert Speer” is this site?
Cryptic Ned 04.05.05 at 9:45 am
It was nominated for Foreign Film last year; unfortunately not for any of the major awards, since it hadn’t been released in the US and nobody had seen it except those voting on Foreign Film.
I had the same experience seeing it — just unbelievably realistic.
Tomas Lauridsen 04.05.05 at 10:20 am
Great film, the contrast between the madness of the battle for berlin and the activites in the bunker is great. It reminds me of the downward spiral of “Stalingrad” to name a movie with a feel of doom to it.
The best way to describe the nazi regime is properly to see its end.
scott 04.05.05 at 7:22 pm
I think Hitler’s secretary did escape, though I’ve no idea of the circumstances of it.
I’ve been meaning to see it, but will wait for its appearance in Netflix, since I prefer to be unsettled in the comfort of my home, rather than in the company of strangers.
Neil 04.05.05 at 7:43 pm
I haven’t seen the film – it hasn’t been released in Australia. I’m interested in what Chris didn’t mention. All the critical reviews I’ve seen criticise the film for the portrayal, not of Hitler (which they think is appropriate) but of the inner circle and the SS. For a sample, see here:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1450110,00.html
Historians have reacted in exactly the same way. They have argued that film makes Schenck and Mohnke, both war criminals, in positive figures.
I was not reassured by Hirschbiegel’s response to these claims. He says that it “was never proven” that Schenck was involved in experiments in concentration camps. Revisionism, anyone?
fyreflye 04.05.05 at 9:23 pm
Not only did Hitler’s Secretary escape but a few years ago she was the subject of a film of the same name. Look for the video to see a real-life portrait of how ordinary people can come to rationalize their obscene jobs.
Dick Fitzgerald 04.05.05 at 10:17 pm
Yes, Hitler’s secretary did escape somehow through the subway system and ended up behind Allied lines. Cf. Kershaw’s bio. of Hitler, vol. 2.
Chris 04.06.05 at 1:53 am
1. Of course I knew that the secretary escapes. It was the detail of the portrayal of the escape that I found unconvincing.
2. On Neil’s point. It is true that some of the figures are more sympathetic than others, mainly because they are more connected to reality. But the idea conveyed in the Stephen Moss article that you link to, that the film in any way portrays fascism or the SS in a positive or “seductive” light — that it “underlines its appeal” — is just absurd. If you go to see the film, I doubt very much that you will share Moss’s reaction.
Neil 04.06.05 at 2:23 am
Chris,
You didn’t respond the points made in the other Guardian article, including the rather worrying quote from the director.
Article here (one day I’ll learn to do hyperlinks):
http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Guardian/0,4029,1452514,00.html
Chris Bertram 04.06.05 at 3:32 am
Am I supposed to respond to every point??
I’d only say that I don’t think that there’s a requirement on such a film to give a full account of the perfidies of every participant, that when it is claimed that some portrayals are “sympathetic” that is only comparatively so, that Cesarani’s claims about victim culture and that the film “almost capitulated to the Nazi myth of the Germans holding back the eastern hordes” strike me as straightforwardly wrong.
I guess you are talking about the second of the director’s quotes, yes? I don’t find that disturbing, actually. A dramatic reconstruction of such events is bound to show such people exhibiting some virtues in the course of what they do. The same would go for a dramatic reconstuction of the actions of the 9/11 hijackers or, in fiction, in the representation of a monstrous figure like Tony Soprano. To portray such people in a realistic way isn’t exculpatory of their crimes (which the director calls “the worst crime that ever happened in mankind”). Would you prefer such films to be populated by villains from central casting?
For a more positive view of the film, from a distinguished historian, see “Ian Kershaw”:http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1306616,00.html (again from the Guardian).
Doug 04.06.05 at 7:57 am
If “more sympathetic” means “not screaming and raving” or “not giving their own children cyanide”, then, yes, some of the characters are portrayed more sympathetically.
I don’t think that the film portrays fascism “seductively” or anything like that. In a way, that’s too bad, because fascism and Nazism were — as matters of historical fact — terribly seductive. Millions were seduced; and millions went along just to get along. That’s part of the back story to Der Untergang and one of the ongoing challenges to the present from mid-twentieth-century Europe.
A paragraph from Kershaw:
But 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.
david g 04.06.05 at 10:31 am
I have yet to see Der Untergang but am fairly well informed about the history, including the end, of the Third Reich, and have in particular read Traudl Junge (that’s the secretary) and Joachim Fest’s recent book on the final days of Hitler.
It fascinates me that leftists, who otherwise tend not to believe in objective morality, become highly moralistic in discussing Hitler. As in: is it dangerous to see this film if it portrays Nazis as human beings? Is it revisionist not to mention the camps in a film which, actually, is not about the camps but about the last days of Hitler? Etc. etc.
Second, would you be having this anxious discussion about a film about the last days of Stalin? Or of Mao? Wondering whether it was OK to portray them as human, or whether it was OK to portray aides as human when such aides were or may have been mass murderers, etc.
Probably not.
Mrs Tilton 04.06.05 at 11:33 am
David G,
not all that long ago a group of right-wing historians in Germany were fascinated by the same thing. Hang around the Stammtisch in any backwoods Bavarian pub and there’s a good chance you’ll hear the same sort of fascination expressed, albeit (esp. after the second Mass) in rather less academic tones.
I find this fascination fascinating. The Germans have a good term for this sort of thing: Aufrechnung (which as a rule goes hand in hand with Verharmlosung). In my own tradition it would be called whataboutery. In either case, I generally find it a good indication that there is no point in listening to the Aufrechner/whatabouterist.
Matt_C 04.06.05 at 12:45 pm
Pretty much everyone believes in objective reality, whether they know it or not.
Brian 04.06.05 at 4:39 pm
I’d like to see evidence of these hordes of leftists who don’t believe in objective morality. Most people on the left I know are happy enough to say that plenty of things in current government policies in just about any government you care to mention are immoral, and plenty of them will say that’s an objective fact.
And of course it’s possible to not believe in *objective* morality and think that some things are immoral. I don’t believe in objective standards of ice cream taste, but that doesn’t stop me thinking vanilla tastes better than chocolate. But I assume that rightists don’t bother thinking about these things when there’s a cheap shot to be fired.
Neil 04.06.05 at 7:20 pm
Chris,
No, you’re under no obligation to respond to every point. I’d just like you to. The quote from the director that worried me was not the second, but the first. Context: two historians have accused the film of portraying sympathetically two different Nazis who were involved in war crimes. Hirschbiegel says the same thing about both figures (Schenck and Mohnke), one in a direct quotation, the other indirect: ‘it was never proved’ that the figure was responsible for the crime. Now, I don’t know anything about either figure. However, the ‘it was never proved’ tactic is a familiar one to me, from historical revisionism. One of the things that is commonly said, for instance, is that it’s ‘never been proved’ that Hitler personally authorised the Holocaust. Moreover, ‘it has never been proved’ seems to my ears to have an implicature. To say that something has never been proved suggests to me that it is reasonable to believe it, but there is small but significant possibility that it may be false. When one starts assembling lists of people of whom it has never been proved that they were engaged in war crimes, and then portraying them sympathetically, I can’t help but wonder what the agenda is.
antirealist 04.06.05 at 9:27 pm
Cesarani and Longerich expand on their “straightforwardly wrong” position here.
novakant 04.07.05 at 4:53 am
For chrissakes, what is all this blather about “objective morality”, I thought this was Crooked Timber, home of PhDs and other luminaries? Anyone who accidentally might have stepped into any undergraduate ethics class should know that positing the existence of “objective morality” without resorting to some quasi-religious explanations is a pretty tricky and probably not even worthwhile business to say the least, especially if one wants to be taken seriously by fellow academics. Conversely, being skeptical or denying the existence of “objective morality” while simultaneously holding strong moral views is not problematic at all, given the right frame of mind. Y’all go read Rorty or something, cheers.
Chris 04.08.05 at 3:45 pm
I’ve been away for a few days, so haven’t had an opportunity to respond. I read the Cesarani and Longerich piece and remain unimpressed. I also thought I’d google for “Cesarani” and “Sebald” to see if Cesarani had commented on Sebald’s _Natural History of Destruction_ . Indeed he had, suggesting (in a review in the Independent) that Sebald’s book put the destruction of German cities on a level with the Holocaust. Since that isn’t a reasonable reading of Sebald’s text which is entirely free of the German self-pity Cesarani excoriates (though such claims can reasonably be made about some other recent German writing), I’m drawn to the conclusion that _any_ German reflection on the war evokes a stock reaction from Cesarani.
Of course, people should see the movie themselves and make up their own minds.
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