Downfall
Screening: Monday 19 April 2010
To be introduced by David Gainsborough Roberts
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel.
Starring: Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Corinna Harfouch.
Subtitles.
Certificate: 15. 155 minutes.
Synopsis
IT is April 1945 and Germany stands on the brink of defeat. But Adolf Hitler still insists that victory can be achieved and orders his generals to fight to the last man.With the Russian Army closing in on a beleaguered Berlin, senior German leaders either begin defecting from their beloved Fuhrer in an effort to save their own lives, or pledge to die with him. Hitler’s personal secretary Traudl Junge finds herself in the Fuhrer’s bunker with the Third Reich disintegrating around her. Hiter’s moods range from defiance to suicidal depression. Eva Braun parties while Magda Goebbels kills her children.
Downfall, which was nominated for the best foreign language film Oscar in 2005, portrays the chaotic final days of the Nazi regime with an incomparable degree of realism. The cinematography and the acting are of such high quality that you almost believe you are in the bunker with the senior Nazis as their end approaches. The film does not provide any commentary or judgement, it simply portrays the situation as it was, based on the actual testimony of Traudl Junge. An interview with Junge, filmed in 2001, is shown at the end.
As well as a fine ensemble cast, Downfall boasts a virtuoso performance by Bruno Ganz as Hitler. He shows that beneath the genocidal megalomaniac, Hitler was still the petty, failed artist of his youth.
