Downfall (2004 film)

Downfall
Original German-language poster
Directed by	Oliver Hirschbiegel
Written by	Joachim Fest Bernd Eichinger Traudl Junge Melissa Müller
Produced by	Bernd Eichinger
Starring	Bruno Ganz Alexandra Maria Lara Juliane Köhler
Distributed by	Constantin Film Newmarket Films (English subtitles)
Release dates	September 16, 2004 February 18, 2005
Running time	156 min. (original cut) 178 min. (extended cut)
Countries	Germany Italy Austria
Languages	German Russian
Budget	€13,500,000
Box office	$92,180,910

Downfall (German: Der Untergang) is an Academy Award–nominated Template:Fy German–Austrian drama film depicting the final twelve days of Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker and Nazi Germany in 1945, 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; Doctor Ernst-Günther Schenck's memoirs; and the memoirs of Siegfried Knappe.

Plot

Early in the film, the narrative moves to Hitler's 56th birthday on April 20, 1945. Traudl Junge resides in the Führerbunker. Generals Wilhelm Burgdorf and Karl Koller indicate the Soviets are only 12 kilometres from the city center. Hitler is visibly aged, shaking and in poor humor. At his birthday reception Hitler resolves to stay in Berlin and reject a diplomatic solution. The officers agree that the Führer has lost his sense of reality. Later Hitler discusses his scorched earth policy with Speer. Speer begs mercy for the German people, but Hitler claims that if they fail this test, they are too weak and must be exterminated. Eva Braun holds a party for the bunker inhabitants, but shelling interrupts and ends the party early.

In the bunker, Hitler discusses the situation with the generals. Traudl believes that General Felix Steiner will save them. However, Steiner cannot mobilize enough men. Upon learning this, Hitler dismisses all except the four highest-ranking generals. He furiously rebukes them and states that he would prefer suicide over surrender. Later Hitler, Eva, Gerda and Traudl discuss various means of suicide. Hitler proposes shooting oneself through the mouth. Eva mentions taking cyanide. Hitler then gives Gerda and Traudl a cyanide capsule each. Eva Braun and Magda Goebbels type goodbye letters, Eva to her sister and Magda to her adult son Harald Quandt.

General Keitel is ordered to find Karl Dönitz, whom Hitler believes is gathering troops in the north, and help him to plan an offensive to recover Romanian oilfields. Rochus Misch, Hitler's radio officer, receives a telegram from Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe. 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. Hitler orders Göring's arrest and removal from office.

Weidling reports that the Russians have broken through everywhere. There are no reserves and air support has ceased. Mohnke says that the Red Army is now 300 to 400 metres from the 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 Goebbels to leave Berlin, but Goebbels intends to ignore the order. Hitler marries Eva Braun. When Günsche later brings a reply from General Keitel that the main armies are encircled or cannot continue their assault Hitler states that he will never surrender. He also forbids everyone else to surrender.

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 the 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 Frau Goebbels' pleas, the pair commit suicide and 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. Traudl makes her way through the Russian lines. The film ends with Traudl escaping Berlin by bicycle.

Cast

• Bruno Ganz (Adolf Hitler)
• Alexandra Maria Lara (Traudl Junge)
• Juliane Köhler (Eva Braun)
• Thomas Kretschmann (SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein)
• Christian Redl (Generaloberst Alfred Jodl)
• Corinna Harfouch (Magda Goebbels)
• Ulrich Matthes (Joseph Goebbels)
• Heino Ferch (Albert Speer)
• André Hennicke (SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke)
• Ulrich Noethen (Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler)
• Christian Berkel (Ernst-Günther Schenck)

Commentary

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 himself did 4 months of research to prepare for the role. Ganz studied a recording of Hitler in private conversation with Finnish Field Marshal Mannerheim in order to properly mimick both Hitler's conversational voice as well as his 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."

After previewing the film, Hitler biographer Sir Ian Kershaw wrote in The Guardian:

"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 movie 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 camps prisoners. 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, Wilhelm Mohnke strongly denied the accusations against him, telling author Thomas Fischer, "I issued no orders not to take English prisoners or to execute prisoners."

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.

The film's ending has also been the subject of criticism for not revealing what actually happened to several of the females 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 subjected to rape and brutality 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. Also, according to the author of The Bunker a 2001 book, Junge was also raped, however, this was never mentioned by Junge herself in her autobiography.

While the film states that Manziarly vanished in 1945, 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. 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. According to the New York Times 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. Another video featured Hitler as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper outraged over the NDP-Liberal Colalition. 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. The 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. Hitler has even been portrayed infuriated by this phenominal. In July 2009, several videos appeared on the Interned showing a Hitler that just find out that Michael Jackson died.

Bibliography

• Fest, Joachim (2004). Inside Hitler's bunker : the last days of the Third Reich. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-13577-5. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Junge, Traudl (2004). Until the final hour: Hitler's last secretary. New York: Arcade Publishing. ISBN 978-1-55970728-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• O'Donnell, James Preston (1978). The Bunker: The History of the Reich Chancellery Group. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-39525719-7. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Vande Winkel, Roel (2007). "Hitler's Downfall, a film from Germany (Der Untergang, 2004)". In Engelen, Leen; Vande Winkel, Roel (eds.). Perspectives on European Film and History. Gent: Academia Press. pp. 182–219. ISBN 978-9-03821082-7. Retrieved 2009-04-18. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
• Willi Bischof, ed. (2005). Filmri:ss; Studien über den Film "Der Untergang". Münster: Unrast Verlag. ISBN 978-3-89771-435-9. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) (studies about the Film)
• Fischer, Thomas. "Soldiers Of the Leibstandarte." J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing, Inc., 2008. ISBN 978-0-921991-91-5.

See also

• Adolf Hitler in popular culture

External links

• Downfall
  (Der Untergang)
• Der Untergang at IMDb
• Der Untergang at AllMovie
• Der Untergang at Box Office Mojo
• Der Untergang at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Downfall - estimation - events - exchange Interviews, background and forum
• Interview with director Oliver Hirschbiegel