Downfall [Blu-ray]

I had to buy this again after I stupidly lent my original copy and never got it back. A marvellous film with amazing attention to detail, focusing on the collapse of the Third Reich and the gradually, street by street, house by house destruction of Berlin. Hitlers descent into madness is carefully chronicled during those last few hours of his wretched life, as he rants at his generals, deploys divisions that only exist on paper and condemns his people to death.All of the cast members are outstanding and one feels as though one is actually in the doomed bunker with the equally doomed representations of the"master race"Wonderful.

"Downfall" is an electrifying and captivating war drama covering the final ten days of Adolf Hitler's rule in Berlin in 1945. The film begins and ends with a real-life interview from Traudl Junge - a young secretary who fell under the spell of Hitler and the Nazis during the war. She reveals how easy it was for Germans to be swept along by the imagery and rhetoric of Hitler, and states that she now realises that German people should have questioned Hitler more to prevent the horrors which unfolded.Spoken in the German language, this version of "Downfall" has a very clear picture quality and is easy to understand with very accurate English subtitles.Bruno Ganz convincingly portrays the shaking and haggard Hitler, realising that all his dreams of world domination are over. At times he is menacing and frightening, and at other times cuts a lonely and pathetic figure. Ganz's uncanny physical similarity to Hitler makes his performance all the more terrifying. Hitler continually gazes at his pristine white model of a new Berlin as the capital of the world - a dream that never occurred.Alexandra Maria Lara engagingly portrays the young secretary Traudl Junge, showing how she was in awe of Hitler at the start, but quickly realising he had an incredibly dark and sinister side to his nature. Juliane Köhler energetically depicts Eva Braun, illustrating that she was full of life and spirit almost right up to the end. How much of this was a show of loyalty to Hitler or whether she genuinely shared the overflowing hubris of her partner is debatable. And, Christian Berkel wonderfully plays Prof. Ernst-Günther Schenck - a well-meaning doctor who refuses to leave for safety so he can save as many lives of Berlin's civilians as he can.The disintegration of the Nazi war machine is vividly represented, and Hitler realises that most of his leading soldiers are either incompetent or disloyal. Many soldiers and their families choose to commit suicide rather than fall into the hands of the invading Russians. The most harrowing episodes are when Ernst-Robert Grawitz kills his family with grenades and Magda Goebbels murders her six young children with cyanide capsules.After testing his own cyanide capsule on his beloved dog Blondi, Hitler dramatically organises the murder and suicide of himself and Braun, ordering his body to be burnt so the Russians do not capture his corpse.Although the last days of Hitler is a relatively well-known story, "Downfall" brings a terror and immediacy to the end of the Nazis, showing that when soldiers and their families realised Germany had lost the war, they were quick to make the decision to kill themselves, or attempt to completely disconnect themselves from Hitler.

Late April 1945. Under the thunderous pounding of the Soviet artillery,the lights flicker momentarily, inside A.Hitler's bunker.But the power plant is humming efficiently, the uniforms are pressed,and the dinnerware is sparkling. The Third Reich's "Gotterdammerung"is not immersed in the shadows of burning Berlin. It is bathed in the glaringelectric light of the bunker's immaculate corridors, where people stillobey-to the bitter end-the orders of a collapsing regime.It is this image of efficiency that Germany cherishes, obliviousto the devastation and unspeakable horrors visited upon the weak of the"Master Race", and the "inferior races" of subjugated Europe.Director Oliver Hirschbiegel and writer Bernd Eichinger extensivelyresearched archival material, eyewitness accounts, and historical studies.They tried to encapsulate the very essence of the National Socialist regime,in the dramatic account of A.Hitler's last ten days.This is not the domain of Hollywood's fiendish, raving caricature of A.Hitler.This is a regime which received more than 17 million votes in March 1933.And this is a people with such a vast superiority complex, that manyprefer suicide to defeat and subjugation to the "sub-human" Slavic hordes.Traudl Junge, A.Hitler's last secretary, opens and closes the film.Her message is clear: Germans cannot claim ignorance for their actions-not then, not now, not ever.This is a masterpiece of a film, much better in its image quality, comparedto the DVD edition.Watch the other German masterpiece released in the same year: Before The Fall [DVD ]