Gateway Cinephiles

Screened: April 11, 2008
Format: DVD - Sony (2005)
Selected By: Curt

Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2004 epic Downfall has emerged as a modern milestone in German cinema, which is exactly what the filmmakers intended. It dramatizes the final days of the Third Reich, principally from within Adolf Hitler’s Führerbunker in Berlin. Drawing from numerous first-hand accounts, particularly those of Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge, the film starkly conveys the desperation and absurdity that settled over the Reich’s highest echelons as the Red Army surrounded them.

During his brief career, German director Hirschbiegel has displayed an interest in the psychology of entrapment and authoritarianism, beginning with his 2001 debut, The Experiment, loosely based on the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment. With Downfall, Hirschbiegel embarked on an ambitious path. He exhibits little affinity for either the stale parameters of Hollywood World War II drama or German film’s preferred elliptical approach to portrayals of the Reich. He takes care to utilize military action sequences primarily to reinforce the film’s sense of spiraling and splintering doom. Working from a dense script by German producer and film mogul Bernd Eichinger, Hirschbiegel probes how an ideology of absolute triumph responds to looming defeat.

The performance by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz as Hitler is key to the film’s achievement and controversy. Ganz is a familiar and beloved screen presence in modern German film, best known in the United States for his roles in Wings of Desire and Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu. It is all the more surprising, then, that Ganz vanishes so completely into the role, delivering what has been lauded as the most compelling and authentic portrayal of the Führer ever filmed. Ganz and the filmmakers have also been subject to criticism for delivering a rending of Hitler that is far too sympathetic. And to be fair, Downfall sidesteps an examination of the Reich’s crimes in favor a rare human assessment of is master. However, what the film evokes could barely be termed sympathy. There are no heroes in Downfall, nor even any tragic anti-heroes. Hirschbiegel presents us with a portrait of a monstrous man’s end, but also highlights that the fear, racism, and lust for glory that propelled him to power were the impulses of a willing German populace.

Screened: April 1, 2008
Format: DVD - MGM (2001)
Selected By: Becky

Norman Jewison’s 1967 crime drama In the Heat of Night is justly regarded as an iconic American cultural touchstone. Appearing near the apex of the Civil Rights Movement, the film shrewdly employs an otherwise conventional detective story to tackle the legacies of bigotry and violence in the Deep South. The filmmakers shun histrionics in favor of an authentic, repulsive vision of Southern small-town social order. Intriguingly, the film’s themes of race manifest not through the murder mystery, but through the relationship of the two protagonists: Philadelphia homicide detective Virgil Tibbs and Mississippi police chief Bill Gillespie. The power of the film is encapsulated in one fact: It beat both Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate for the year’s Best Picture Oscar.

Based on the first of John Ball’s crime novels to feature Virgil Tibbs, In the Heat of the Night is an early landmark in the imposing filmography of Canadian filmmaker Norman Jewison. By 1967, following a spate of studio contract work in romantic comedy, the director had achieved renown with The Cincinnati Kid and The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. His later work would include acclaimed films as diverse as Fiddler on the Roof, Rollerball, and Moonstruck. In the Heat of the Night showcases Jewison’s affinity for a biting, realistic tone in his early dramas, and the renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler promotes this sensibility in the film’s visual style.

When he appeared in Night at Virgil Tibbs, Sidney Poitier was already one of the most celebrated black actors in Hollywood, having reaped a Best Actor Oscar in 1963 for Lilies of the Field. In 1967, he starred in another iconic American film about race—Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?—but Poitier maintains that Night is his favorite among all his films. Opposite Poitier is the ubiquitous Rod Steiger as Chief Gillespie. Steiger had parleyed a breakout role in On the Waterfront into a prolific character acting career and starring roles in high-profile features such The Pawnbroker and Doctor Zhivago. Together, Poitier and Steiger create not only one of the most rancorous black-white confrontations ever portrayed in American film, but also a contemporary assurance of the nascent, uneasy justice swelling in the nation’s cruelest corners.