The Snowflakes Won't
Know What Hit Them
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propaganda minister, Joseph
Goebbels, described the problem: "As
an actor, you need to let the charac-
ters — even the ones that you have in
your mind as monsters, as evil
demons — you need to be able to
portray them as people. You can't
`play' evil. Goebbels didn't consider
himself to be evil, and that was the
great difficulty for me, to put aside
my moral judgment as an aware
human being and play the role of an
actor."
Alexandra Maria Lara, who played
the 22-year-old Traudl Junge, had an
easier time with her real-life counter-
part, Hitler's private secretary, because
Juliane Kohler as Eva Braun and Bruno
Ganz as Adolf Hitler in "Downfall"
by reading the book Until the Final
Hour, Lara decided that the real-life
Junge "made it clear that youth was
no excuse, and that if she knew noth-
ing about the extermination of the
Jews, then it was because she didn't
want to know about it.
"She did not try to elude the blame,
and after the war, she never felt that
she had been innocent. I respect
Traudl Junge," Lara concluded. "[She]
was ready to confront herself and
change herself through the reflection."
Ganz plays Hitler with less charis-
matic vigor than most of his predeces-
sors. There is a slight droop in his
shoulders, a slight hesitation in his
stride, a slight apprehension in his
expression, as if he had at last begun
to sense that the end was near. The
production notes tell us that "Ganz,
though Swiss, captured Hitler's voice,
not by parroting the ranting of his
speeches, but studying a one-of-a-
kind seven-minute magnetic tape
made of Hitler chatting after a dinner
party, secretly recorded by a Finnish
diplomat and smuggled out of
Germany during the war."
The bunker interiors were shot in a
Munich studio, but for the exterior
scenes representing Berlin in April
1945, the filmmakers scouted loca-
tions across Europe, from Bulgaria to
the Czech Republic and
Romania, before settling
on a few streets in St.
Petersburg, Russia, that
bore a resemblance.
As Eichinger, the writer-
producer, recalls, the
"'deeper dynamic of work-
ing in St. Petersburg" was
the destruction that the
city experienced at the
hands of the Nazis in the
Second World War.
The production notes
amplify this point: "In late
1941, the German army
cut off St. Petersburg, then
Leningrad, from Moscow.
During the winter of
1944-42, the city was
totally isolated and there
followed one of the most
terrible famines in history.
More than a million peo-
ple succumbed to starva-
tion. Leningrad died a
slow and horrible death.
At the beginning of the
war the city had a popula-
tion of 3 1 /2 million. Only
600,000 survived."
Yet even with the human slaughter
of 6 million Jews and more than 2 1 /2
million Russians in Leningrad alone
lurking in the film's background, the
immediate impact of the scene in
which Frau Goebbels systematically
poisons her six small children is undi-
minished. In this minuscule horror
show is a shocking vision of the evil
of political fanaticism. El
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Downfall rated R, is in German
with English subtitles and is cur-
rently playing at the Landmark
Maple Art Theatre in Bloomfield
Township. (248) 263-2111.
.
-HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
STARRING
BRUNO GANZ
APRIL 1945, A NATION AWAITS ITS...
A BERND EICHINGERTRouuctioN
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•
AN OLIVER HIRSCHBIEGEL FILM
•
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EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT
PLAYI
LANDMARK'S
MAPLE ART
4135 W. Maple Road • (248) 263-2111
CHECK THEATRE
DIRECTORIES OR
CALL FOR SHOWTIMES
951620
3/17
2005
53