Downfall
by Oliver Hirschbiegel
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DVD details
Actor: Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, Corinna Harfouch, Juliane K?hler, Ulrich MatthesDirector: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Brand: Sony
Producer: Bernd Eichinger
Writer: Bernd Eichinger
Producer: Christine Rothe
Producer: Doris J. Heinze
Writer: Joachim Fest
Writer: Melissa M?ller
Writer: Traudl Junge
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: German (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Russian (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 156 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-02
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures
DVD Reviews of Downfall
DVD Review: "The German people have chosen their fate . . ."
Summary: 5 Stars
Das Boot is still my favorite war film, but Downfall is just as great. This film, which deals with the last days of Hitler and the Reich, is something that we aren't really accustomed to these days. Like Das Boot, we get to see the German P.O.V. rather than the American/British/Russian, only here it is a bit more striking because it involves the notorious dictator himself. We get to see his ruthless paranoia and isolation as Russian forces are gaining victory around Berlin. We also get to see the people around him who start to see that Nazi Germany has been greatly defeated. It's a very disturbing experience, and once the end credits roll, we are left with awe and shock.
This is a fantastic foreign film that should've won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film (or at least have a tie with The Sea Inside). Grade: A
DVD Review: A Powerful Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
I first saw this movie in the theater a year or two ago. I was very impressed with it at that time. Then when the DVD came out on Amazon I decided that I needed to by it for my collection. It is the definitive record of the final days of Nazi Germany and Adolph Hitler. Even though Germany was our enemy and a criminal regime there were many people in Germany that were ordanary decent people. This movie really brings home the total tragedy of unrestricted warfare. The movie has great realism and the buildings and bunker make you feel you are in Berlin in April 1945 when the Downfall happened. It is in German but the English Subtitles are enough to make you understand what they say. Acting is supeb with all German actors and actresses. It is all based on the Diary of Hitler's secretary. Amazingly she just died a short time ago. A must for anyone interested in World History. The Special Features are almost as interesting as the movie.DVD Review: agonizingly brilliant
Summary: 5 Stars
This is very full portrait of the end of Hitler's regime. Ganz (who is half-Jewish) is completely convincing as the declining, self-deluding, vicious Hitler. You watch him as he loses touch with reality, first in ignoring reports that are not to his liking, then in placing ridiculous hopes in gambles and deus ex machina scenarios. He seems quite human until he orders meaningless executions of the disloyal, who know the end is coming.
Most interesting, however, are the characters around him. The story is told from the point of view of one of his secretaries, who states, perhaps disingenuously, that she was not a committed Nazi, but came to almost love Hitler the man - he earns her loyalty through kindness. THere are also the Goebbels, whose wife and children come off as rather sympathetic, symbolic in many ways of the self-destructiveness of the German elite. Deep in the bunker, they live in a kind of parallel universe, a mythological kingdom in which everything still seems possible. Eva Brown works hard to keep everyone's spirits up in ironically frivolous dances while the guards are drinking themselves senseless. Meanwhile, the Soviets are pressing closer and closer.
This is excellent historical drama, stimulating the viewer to want to discover more. Warmly recommended.
DVD Review: Everyone should watch this
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent humanization of Adolf Hitler. We all like to think that the brutal and inhuman Nazi regime was all an aberration of history. In reality, great evil can perpetuated by very normal, even ordinary, people.
DVD Review: Fall of the Tyrant
Summary: 4 Stars
This film looks at Hitler during his last days, when his grasp of reality truly began to slip and Third Reich was overrun. German with English subtitles I felt it probably captured the feel of the times more accurately than Hitler, the Last Ten Days, a movie I also liked. As seen from the point of view of Traudl, Hitler's secretary, the scenes leading to the Hitler's last moments run from the banal to the macabre. The immediate aftermath of the suicide, in which many of Hitler's inner circle began their escape and others also took their lives, is presented during the film. Overall, a great production.
Description of Downfall
This takes you into hitlers bunker during the brutal & terrifying last days of the third reich. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 04/24/2007 Starring: Bruno Ganz Julianne Kohler Run time: 155 minutes Rating: RThe riveting subject of Downfall is nothing less than the disintegration of Adolf Hitler in mind, body, and soul. A 2005 Academy Award nominee for best foreign language film, this German historical drama stars Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire) as Hitler, whose psychic meltdown is depicted in sobering detail, suggesting a fallen, pathetic dictator on the verge on insanity, resorting to suicide (along with Eva Braun and Joseph and Magda Goebbels) as his Nazi empire burns amidst chaos in mid-1945. While staging most of the film in the claustrophobic bunker where Hitler spent his final days, director Oliver Hirschbiegel (Das Experiment) dares to show the gentler human side of der Fuehrer, as opposed to the pure embodiment of evil so familiar from many other Nazi-era dramas. This balanced portrayal does not inspire sympathy, however: We simply see the complexity of Hitler's character in the greater context of his inevitable downfall, and a more realistic (and therefore more horrifying) biographical portrait of madness on both epic and intimate scales. By ending with a chilling clip from the 2002 documentary Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, this unforgettable film gains another dimension of sobering authenticity. --Jeff Shannon
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