One of history's most hated monsters has undergone a humanizing makeover in the German motion picture Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des 3. Reiches (Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Third Reich), directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.
Based on historian Joachim Fest's best-selling Adolf Hitler biography and on the memoirs of the dictator's last personal secretary, Traudl Junge, Downfall chronicles the last days of the German Führer, besieged inside his underground bunker while the Soviet Red Army battled Nazi forces on the ground. During that period, Hitler suffers psychotic delusions and goes into mad rages, but also shows courteousness and even warmth toward Junge and his wife-to-be Eva Braun.
Hitler is played by Swiss-born actor Bruno Ganz, last seen in a small role as a scientist in Jonathan Demme's The Manchurian Candidate, and best known internationally for his leads in Wim Wenders' Der Amerikanische Freund / The American Friend and Der Himmel über Berlin / Wings of Desire. Others in the Downfall cast are Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun, Alexandra Maria Lara as Traudl Junge, and Thomas Kretschmann as SS leader Hermann Fegelein.
Joachim Fest, who acted as "historical consultant" during the production, affirms that Bruno Ganz "is really Hitler. When you look at him you feel a chill down your spine." Ganz, who received worldwide acclaim for his humanized angel in Wings of Desire, says the following about his humanized monster: "I'm not ashamed of the fact that I could feel sympathy for [Hitler] during fleeting seconds."
Others, however, have been troubled by this newfound humanness. Some in the German press have complained that the picture will be eagerly embraced by neo-Nazis, though the venerated Der Spiegel, which recently devoted a cover story to the film, has asserted that producer-screenwriter Bernd Eichinger achieved a unique feat in Downfall by "giving the absurd drama in the bunker a real face."
Produced at a cost of €13.5 million (US$16.5 million), the two-and-a-half-hour Downfall is one of the most expensive German films ever made. It opens in Germany on September 16.