FilmDailies.com – A filmmaker’s blog

The movie opens with the real Traudl Junge (since she died in 2002, the footage is taken from an earlier documentary) talking about her experience as Hitler’s secretary.

It matters a great deal how this movie starts for the simple reason we know how it’s all going to end. Since 1955, this is the forth movie that focuses solely on Hitler’s last 10 days.

In that respect, we’re fortunate that the first scene where Hitler chooses his future secretary provides a unique perspective to Hitler – a warm, paternal leader who generously offers 20-year old Traudl a second chance to record his speach. Once this hors d’oeuvre is over, however, we are treated to a main dish (wursts!) that’s been heated again and again in the last 60 years.

Even if you don’t know ANYTHING about the Third Reich, you know that Hitler was a raging lunatic; you know that Goebbels had unconditional faith in the Fuhrer, and so on.

For the first 60 minutes, it’s actually fun to place names to faces because the casting and the acting is so good (I do give credit where credit is due). Goebbels and Himler are an excellent match. I viewed Triumph of the Will (1934) recently and the resemblance is uncanny. Bruno Ganz portrays a broken man whose rages feed on each piece of bad news and in 1945 every news is bad news: the Red Army is inside Berlin, Hitler’s closest aides desert him… The rages don’t last very long and leave a smaller, even more broken Fuhrer.

Arguing that the director wants us to sympathize will be far-fetched. The stated intention was to make Hitler appear more “human.” Hitler’s manic/depressive scenes are balanced with acts of kindness to his cook, his secretaries, and his German shepherd, Blondi. This more “human” Hitler is even more disturbing than the iconic monster. All his impulses are focused on destruction: first, the Russian armies, then the traitors and the German people, and finally himself.

The movie’s most disturbing scene comes after Hitler’s death. Frau Goebbels carries out Hitler’s will of self-destruction by taking the lives of her six children – angels too good to live in a world without National Socialism.

Unfortunately, this is not the only disturbing scene in the movie. Personally, I have a problem with the movie’s depiction of good-hearted SS doctors or SS officers heroically committing suicide not to get into Russian hands. I also have a problem with the fate of the surviving officers. Some of them lived well into their nineties which cannot be said for some 50 million people who died in the war.

My last gripe: talking about Russian hands, why isn’t there any reference to the Red Army’s atrocities in the battle for Berlin and the immediate aftermath? In a real tragic sense, they carried out Hitler’s last will – the humiliation and destruction of the German people. (A new book on the subject, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, is causing an outrage among senior Russian officials with some hard-hitting statistics on the number of rapes and murders.)

Downfall is a good title for a movie that deals with Hitler’s last days. It’s also a good indication of what happened to my expectations as I sat through the movie’s 140 minutes. It was disappointing to see one known fact follow another. Even more disappointing was the focus on just a handful of facts without a broader picture or a moral judgment. Despite it’s budget and high production values, Downfall doesn’t measure up on the epic scale. It’s not good triumphs over evil, it’s evil eats its heart out.