Author Topic: Downfall. (Read 1194 times)

GtoRA2 · « **Reply #15 on:** April 06, 2006, 12:35:27 PM »

the whole movie is german and you watch it with sub titles. They do have english subtitles.

NattyIced · « **Reply #16 on:** April 06, 2006, 12:36:09 PM »

They don't have english subtitles and you watch it in German? How did you guys know what they were saying?

VOR · « **Reply #17 on:** April 06, 2006, 12:36:31 PM »

It's an excellent film IMO, but not one I'd care to watch very often if ever again. It depressed me, but I like to think that makes me a sane and rational man considering the subject matter.

Incredible performance by Bruno Ganz, and the actors portraying Goebbles and Himmler looked menacingly like their real-life counterparts did.

GtoRA2 · « **Reply #18 on:** April 06, 2006, 12:42:03 PM »

That was a typo, lol, it does have english sub titles.

Sorry about that.

Whats funny is when Hitler rants and raves you can tell whats its about without reading.

Hitler was not always that nutty right? Like outwardly nutty?

GtoRA2 · « **Reply #19 on:** April 06, 2006, 12:43:52 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by VOR
It's an excellent film IMO, but not one I'd care to watch very often if ever again. It depressed me, but I like to think that makes me a sane and rational man considering the subject matter.

Incredible performance by Bruno Ganz, and the actors portraying Goebbles and Himmler looked menacingly like their real-life counterparts did.

The actor that played goebbles kinda weirded me out. What a freaky guy, I wonder if, goebbles was like that as well..... creepy little ****er. Why did he have a uniform like no one elses?

VOR · « **Reply #20 on:** April 06, 2006, 12:50:16 PM »

Yeah me too GTO. He was the poster child for fanaticism and just had a serial murderer look overall.

Dowding · « **Reply #21 on:** April 06, 2006, 12:50:42 PM »

Because he was so very, very special.

He didn't even have the guts to kill his own children... he made his wife do it.

Fundamentally, the Nazis were cowards.

GtoRA2 · « **Reply #22 on:** April 06, 2006, 12:57:49 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Dowding
Because he was so very, very special.

He didn't even have the guts to kill his own children... he made his wife do it.

Fundamentally, the Nazis were cowards.

Yeah, I think the movie portrayed him as the worst of a bad pack of weirdos.

There was a movie a guy played the devil in, and he looked just like Goebbles, in this movie, I wonder if it was the same actor.

Both him and his wife were by far the creepiest chars in the movie, the scene she murders her children was disturbing, but I am glad it made it in. As was the scene she begs at hitlers feet.

Hard to imagine having to deal with that as a German General, watching your country be destroyed with a mad man driving it on. Was the younger SS guy that burned the bodies just a staff guy? I noticed he was not exacuted. What was his story if any?

BlueJ1 · « **Reply #23 on:** April 06, 2006, 02:05:20 PM »

Goebbles eyes freaked me out.

Dowding · « **Reply #24 on:** April 06, 2006, 02:38:07 PM »

Quote

Hard to imagine having to deal with that as a German General, watching your country be destroyed with a mad man driving it on.

Well they had enjoyed years of increased status and power through Hitler's remilitarization. When people like Manstein were signing orders that took away any rights Soviet citizens had and introduced automatic absolution of all crimes perpetrated by German soldiers (including rape, murder and theft), he effectively knitted Nazism and the military together.

The German high command gave up it's influence as a distinct political entity. In my opinion, they betrayed the German people at that juncture - almost as much as the hardcore Nazis themselves.

Ultimately, the German military (the SS aside) has to shoulder some of the responsibility for what happened. They allowed it to happen and actively participated in some cases. Atrocity was a casual affair on the Eastern front, as I'm sure you know.

Quote

Was the younger SS guy that burned the bodies just a staff guy?

I think he classed as an aide-de-campe, and was therefore not a target for execution for war crimes. Jodl and Keitel, however actively participated in the whole running of the war and the treatment of occupied peoples etc. I think that's how it went.

GtoRA2 · « **Reply #25 on:** April 06, 2006, 02:50:44 PM »

I agree with you Dowding, I was not trying to say they were inoccent in any way. I am sure you know more on the subject then I do, I have not read much about the Nazi germany and its politics much.

I can give the common German soldier lots of leeway as long as he acted like soldier should. Even some of the SS guys who fought as soldiers (not the ones cooking jews). But not the officers in the high command. They should have offed hitler earlier.

I felt sorry for some of the people in the movie at times. It made me feel bad thinking about it because most are such repugnant piles of dung... but it shows how good the movie was that you are feeling something for them at all.

It did get me thinking, wondering how such sick ****ers could get where they got there. That sick ****s like that can get to where they did should be a lesson we all look at. We are not that far from them. People have not evolved since the 1930 and 40s people like them are still around and not just in third world countries.

Makarov9 · « **Reply #26 on:** April 06, 2006, 02:54:53 PM »

Also rent "Blind Spot". It's a documentary with Hitler's secretary. She passed away not too long after the interviews were made.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blind_spot_hitlers_secretary/

nirvana · « **Reply #27 on:** April 06, 2006, 04:36:06 PM »

Subtitles works for me, sounds like a good movie. Think i meant to rent it awhile ago but forgot the name.

Bruno · « **Reply #28 on:** April 06, 2006, 05:48:57 PM »

I know this may be an unpopular post but Der Untergang is no more real then The Last Ten Days. Some may assume that any criticism is nitpicking but this is just a movie like all others.

I won't get into to much in depth and point out all the inaccuracies of the film except to say a few things:

First, Rochus Misch was there, he knew all the 'characters' and has given interviews both before, during and after the production of Der Untergang.

Here's two interviews:

Hitler's bodyguard

and an interview German newspaper (text in German):

Die letzten Zeugen

Misch is critical of the film and of how some of the characters are portrayed, including Hitler.

I just want point this out for those of you who may think this movie accurately captured reality. In may offer some insight but it's not a complete picture.

For example Dowding commented on the death of the Goebbels children:

Quote

He didn't even have the guts to kill his own children... he made his wife do it.

The reality is that Frau Goebbels was a true die hard Nazi. The children she had were a gift to the NSDAP state. She would have killed them with or with out Joseph. The impression I got was that Joseph wasn't so much a coward (he was) as that he was going along with Magda's decision no matter how painful.

fyi in Voices from the Bunker Traudl Junge tells of the Goebbels children arriving at the bunker:

Quote

The Goebbels family had just arrived and I went to welcome them. I became responsible for the five little girls and one little boy... We knew that their parents, Magda and Joseph Goebbels, had decided to end the children's lives along with their own. Obviously they hadn't the least idea of what was going to happen and I did all I could not to show them how unhappy I was. The children confided to one of the orderlies that they were all going to have an injection so they didn't get sick.

Other scenes are highly dramatized even contradictory to facts. The scene where Speer informs Hitler that he had been defying his order to destroy what was left of the German infrastructure for example. From reading Speer’s own account, Hitler listened to this admission passively and with indifference. Speer tells of Hitler nodding his head as if he (Hitler) had guessed as much and Speer hints that Hitler may have actually been relieved. In the movie Hitler gets pissed and breaks a pencil.

I can go on but I think you all get the point

It's a fine movie but I am not sure how much is gained from it in terms of an accurate representation of what went on in the Bunker...

Its hard to say 'its just a movie' because of the content but in the end that's basically what it was. However, I highly recommend it...

Dowding · « **Reply #29 on:** April 06, 2006, 05:50:36 PM »

I wasn't accusing you of anything, GtoRA2.

You're right about being not far from them. It seems it doesn't take much for people to start abusing their power and authority. Like you say, you don't have to look that far to find it.

Bruno - The film is an excellent insight into the mindset of that particular group of monsters. It does use dramatic license - but there is also alot of historical fact in there that I've come across elsewhere.