Downfall (2004 film)

Downfall
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Oliver Hirschbiegel
Produced by	Bernd Eichinger
Screenplay by	Bernd Eichinger
Based on	Inside Hitler's Bunker by Joachim Fest Until the Final Hour by Traudl Junge Melissa Müller
Starring	Bruno Ganz Alexandra Maria Lara Corinna Harfouch Ulrich Matthes Juliane Köhler Heino Ferch Christian Berkel Matthias Habich Thomas Kretschmann
Music by	Stephan Zacharias[1]
Cinematography	Rainer Klausmann[1]
Edited by	Hans Funck[1]
Production company	Constantin Film[1]
Distributed by	Constantin Film (Germany, Austria) 01 Distribution (Italy)
Release date	16 September 2004 (2004-09-16) (Germany) 17 September 2004 (2004-09-17) (Austria) 18 March 2005 (2005-03-18) (Greece) 29 April 2005 (2005-04-29) (Italy)
Running time	155 minutes[2]
Country	Germany Italy Austria[3]
Language	German
Budget	€13.5 million[4]
Box office	$92.2 million[5]

Downfall (German: Der Untergang) is a 2004 German-Italian-Austrian historical war drama film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel from a screenplay by producer Bernd Eichinger. It depicts the final ten days of Adolf Hitler's rule over Nazi Germany in 1945, and is based on several accounts of the period. The film received critical acclaim upon release and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Several scenes from the film have become the basis for a widespread viral video phenomenon.

Plot

In November 1942 during World War II, at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia, Chancellor of Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler selects Traudl Junge as his new secretary. Three years later, in April 1945, the Red Army had pushed back Germany and surrounded Berlin. On Hitler's 56th birthday, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler tries to convince Hitler to leave Berlin, but Hitler refuses. Himmler secretly leaves to negotiate surrender terms with the Western Allies. Himmler's adjutant Hermann Fegelein reiterates Himmler's thoughts, but Hitler says he would either win or die in Berlin.

SS Dr. Ernst-Günther Schenck is ordered to leave Berlin as per Operation Clausewitz. Schenck convinces an SS general to let him stay in Berlin and treat the injured. In the streets, Hitler Youth child soldier Peter Kranz's father approaches Peter's unit and tries to convince him to leave. Peter, who had destroyed two enemy tanks and will soon be awarded a medal by Hitler himself, calls his father a coward and runs away.

At a meeting in the Führerbunker, Hitler disallows the outnumbered 9th Army to retreat, and orders SS commander Felix Steiner's weak units to mount a counterattack. The generals find the orders impossible and irrational. Above ground, Hitler awards Peter his medal, stating that Peter is braver than his generals. In Hitler's office, Hitler discusses with Minister of Armaments Albert Speer about his scorched earth policy. Speer is concerned about the destruction of German infrastructure, but Hitler believes that the German people left behind are the weak and deserve to die. Meanwhile, Hitler's companion Eva Braun holds a party in the Reich Chancellery. Fegelein tries to convince Eva, his sister-in-law, to leave Berlin with Hitler, but Eva dismisses him. Artillery fire breaks up the party.

On the battlefield, General Helmuth Weidling is informed that he will be executed for allegedly ordering a retreat. Weidling comes to the Führerbunker to clear himself. His act impresses Hitler, and he's promoted to oversee all Berlin defenses. At another meeting, Hitler learns that Steiner couldn't enact his orders. Hitler flies into a furious rage, stating that everyone has failed him and denouncing his generals as failures, cowards, and traitors. Hitler eventually acknowledges that the war is lost, but he would rather commit suicide than evacuate.

Schenck witnesses mass civilian casualties and civilians being executed as supposed traitors under martial law. Hitler receives a message from Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring requesting for state leadership. Hitler declares Göring a traitor and orders his execution. Speer admits to Hitler that he had defied Hitler's destructive orders. While upset, Hitler does not punish Speer, and Speer leaves Berlin.

Peter's unit was defeated and Peter runs back to his parents. Hitler imagines more and more fantastical ways for Germany to turn back the tide. At dinner, Hitler learns of Himmler's secret negotiations, and orders his death. Hitler finds that Fegelein had deserted, and had him executed despite Eva's pleas. SS physician Ernst-Robert Grawitz, who had been responsible for Nazi human medical experiments, asks Hitler's permission to evacuate for fear of Allied reprisal. Hitler denies him, and Grawitz kills himself and his family.

The Soviets continue their advance, while Berlin's supplies run low and morale plummets. Hitler hopes that the 12th Army can save Berlin. After midnight, Hitler dictates his last will and testament to Traudl, before marrying Eva. The following morning, Hitler learns that the 12th Army is stuck and cannot save Berlin. Refusing capitulation, Hitler plans for suicide. He administers poison to his dog Blondi, bids farewell to the bunker staff, and commits suicide with Eva. The two are cremated in the Chancellery garden.

Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels assumes Chancellorship. General Hans Krebs meets with Soviet General Vasily Chuikov to negotiate for a conditional surrender, but returns unsuccessful. Goebbels says that they won't surrender as long as he's alive.

Goebbels' wife Magda kills her six children with cyanide, before committing suicide with Goebbels. Weidling announces the unconditional surrender of German forces in Berlin. Returning from the streets, Peter discovers that his parents were executed. More German officers commit suicide after learning of their defeat. Traudl leaves the bunker and tries to flee the city. Peter joins her as she moves through a group of Soviet soldiers. The two find a bicycle and leave Berlin.

Cast

Development

The film was based upon the books Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich (1945), by historian Joachim Fest; Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary (1947), the memoirs of Traudl Junge, one of Hitler's secretaries (co-written with Melissa Müller); Inside the Third Reich (first published in German in 1969), the memoirs of Albert Speer, one of the highest-ranking Nazi officials to survive both the war and the Nuremberg trials; Hitler's Last Days: An Eye–Witness Account (first English translation 1973), by Gerhard Boldt; Das Notlazarett unter der Reichskanzlei: Ein Arzt erlebt Hitlers Ende in Berlin by Doctor Ernst-Günther Schenck; and Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936–1949 (1992), Siegfried Knappe's memoir.

Ganz conducted four months of research to prepare for the role, studying an 11-minute recording of Hitler in private conversation with Finnish Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim in order to properly mimic Hitler's conversational voice and distinct Austrian dialect.^[6]

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 has many buildings designed by German architects, which was said to resemble many parts of 1940s Berlin. Hirschbiegel said that the film's makers sought to give Hitler a three-dimensional personality, telling NBC: "We know from all accounts that he was a very charming man – a man who managed to seduce a whole people into barbarism."^[7]

Its 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?"^[7] On its broadcast in the UK, Channel 4 marketed it with the strapline: "It's a happy ending. He dies".^[8]

At the beginning of the film and at the very end, an excerpt was used from the documentary Im toten Winkel (2002) that featured the real Traudl Junge expressing her guilt and shame for admiring Adolf Hitler in her youth.

Reception

The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives Downfall an approval rating of 91% based on 138 critics (an average rating of 8 out of 10) and the consensus, "Downfall is an illuminating, thoughtful and detailed account of Hitler's last days."^[9] The film has a score of 82 out of 100 on Metacritic (based on 35 critics), indicating "universal acclaim".^[10]

Much praise was directed towards the film's accuracy in showing the acts of Adolf Hitler, and Bruno Ganz's portrayal of him. Critics also lauded the portrayal of the powerful setting the film unveils in the final closing moments of World War II.^[11] The New Yorker film critic David Denby noted with respect to the film's depiction of Hitler:^[12] "By emphasizing the painfulness of Hitler's defeat Ganz has [...] made the dictator into a plausible human being. Considered as biography, the achievement [...] 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. [...] 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."

Hitler biographer Sir Ian Kershaw wrote in The Guardian:^[13] "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."

Addressing other critics like Denby, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert wrote: "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." ^[14]

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 British POWs in the Wormhoudt massacre near Dunkirk in 1940, while Schenck's experiments with medicinal plants in 1938 allegedly led to the deaths of a number of concentration camp prisoners.^[15] In response, the film's director stated he did his own research and did not find the allegations as to Schenck convincing. Mohnke strongly denied the accusations against him, telling historian Thomas Fischer, "I issued no orders not to take English prisoners or to execute prisoners."^[16]

Rochus Misch, who acted as telephonist and bodyguard in the bunker, called Downfall "americanized" in a 2005 interview while comparing what happened in the film to what happened in real life. He stated that although the movie portrayed the important facts accurately, it exaggerated other details for dramatic effect, such as the film's characters screaming and shouting when in his recollection most people in the bunker spoke quietly.^[17]

Accolades

The film was nominated for the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in the 77th Academy Awards. The film also won the 2005 BBC Four World Cinema competition.^[18]

The film was also ranked number 48 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.^[19]

Parodies

The movie is well known as the inspiration for "Downfall parodies", often called "Hitler Rants". One scene in the film, in which Hitler launches into a furious tirade upon finally realizing that the war is lost, has become a staple of internet videos.^[20] In these videos, the original German audio is retained, but new subtitles are added so that Hitler and his subordinates seem to be reacting instead to some setback in present-day politics, sports, entertainment, popular culture, or everyday life. Other scenes from various portions of the film have been parodied in the same manner, including the scenes where Hitler orders Otto Günsche to find SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein, where Hitler discusses a counterattack against advancing Soviet forces with his generals, where Hitler is having dinner and learns of Himmler's betrayal, and where Goebbels vows to his generals that he will never surrender the city of Berlin to the Russians.

By 2010, there were thousands of such parodies, including many in which Hitler is incensed that people keep making Downfall parodies in a case of metaparody.^[21]

The parodies, as well as the film itself, have also gained a cult following, spawning a community of YouTube users who call themselves "Untergangers",^[22][23][24] devoted to the practice of making Downfall-related videos. Some of them have cited their reasons for making the parodies.^[25] Stacy Lee Blackmon, a YouTube user known for maintaining the Hitler Rants Parodies channel,^[26] has over 1,651 videos to his name as of October 2017. In an interview with the Swedish magazine show Kobra, Blackmon denied that parody makers are neo-Nazi sympathizers and stated that the Unterganger community disparages Nazism.^[23]

The film's director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, spoke positively about these parodies in a 2010 interview with New York magazine, saying that many of them were funny and they were a fitting extension of the film's purpose: "The point of the film was to kick these terrible people off the throne that made them demons, making them real and their actions into reality. I think it's only fair if now it's taken as part of our history, and used for whatever purposes people like."^[27] Nevertheless, Constantin Film has taken an "ambivalent" view of the parodies and has asked video sites to remove many of them.^[28] On 21 April 2010, the producers initiated a removal of parody videos from YouTube.^[29] This prompted posting of videos of Hitler complaining about the fact that the parodies were being taken down, and a resurgence of the videos on the site.^[30]

In October 2010, YouTube stopped blocking Downfall-derived parodies.^[31] Corynne McSherry, an attorney specializing in intellectual property and free speech issues^[32] for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said: "All the Downfall parody videos that I've seen are very strong fair use cases and so they're not infringing, and they shouldn't be taken down."^[33] Constantin Film went on to produce and distribute the Hitler-themed comedy Look Who's Back (2015), which includes an extended spoof of the oft-parodied scene from Downfall.^[34]

In January 2012, British Labour MP Tom Harris stepped down from his Internet adviser role following adverse media reaction to his Downfall parody ridiculing Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond.^[35]

In July 2013, Jefferies Group, an American investment firm, was ordered by a Hong Kong court to pay $1.86 million to former equity trading head Grant Williams for firing him for sending out a newsletter that linked to a Hitler parody video, mocking JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon.^[36][37]

See also

• Adolf Hitler in popular culture
• Operation Clausewitz
• Vorbunker

References

Further reading

• Bischof, Willi, ed. (2005). Filmri:ss; Studien über den Film "Der Untergang". Münster: Unrast Verlag. ISBN 978-3-89771-435-9. (studies about the Film)
• 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.
• Fischer, Thomas (2008). Soldiers of the Leibstandarte. J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing, Inc. ISBN 978-0-921991-91-5.
• Junge, Traudl; Müller, Melissa; Bell, Anthea (2004). Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary. New York: Arcade Publishing. ISBN 978-1-55970-728-2.
• O'Donnell, James P (2001) [1978]. The Bunker: The History of the Reich Chancellery Group, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 978-0-395-25719-7.
• Vande Winkel, Roel (2007). "Hitler's Downfall, a film from Germany (Der Untergang, 2004)". In Engelen, Leen; Vande Winkel, Roel. Perspectives on European Film and History. Gent: Academia Press. pp. 182–219. ISBN 978-90-382-1082-7. Retrieved 18 April 2009.
• Richardson, Jay. "Interview with director Oliver Hirschbiegel". Future Movies.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Downfall (film).

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Downfall (2004 film)

• Der Untergang (Downfall) on IMDb
• Der Untergang (Downfall) at AllMovie
• Germania - Vision and Crime - exhibition by Berliner Unterwelten. Archived from the original on 11 July 2015.