ISRAEL: PUBLIC TAKES ON "THE DOWNFALL" A CONTROVERSIAL GERMAN FILM

Record ID: 840741

  • Title: ISRAEL: PUBLIC TAKES ON "THE DOWNFALL" A CONTROVERSIAL GERMAN FILM
  • Date: 20th May 2005
  • Summary: (BN11) TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (MAY 19, 2005) (REUTERS) ISRAELIS LOOKING AT FILM'S POSTERS OUTSIDE CINEMA (SOUNDBITE) (English) DOCTOR MICHAEL ZIDNER WHO JUST WATCHED THE FILM SAYING: "There's been too much humanification of him (Adolf Hitler), but it shouldn't be always a demonisation of the person himself, because after all he was a human being. Although a terrible human being but still a human being. Besides, it was a good movie." ZIDNER AND FEMALE FRIEND LEAVING CINEMA (SOUNDBITE) (English) MIRYAM BERGMAN, ISRAELI HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER SAYING: "Everybody have to see it (the movie) because people expect that Nazi, the leaders of the Nazis like Hitler and Gables were monsters. They made horrible things but they were human beings, human beings that killed other human beings, so I think we have to be very careful." CLOSE OF HITLER'S FACE ON POSTER (SOUNDBITE) (English) MIRYAM BERGMAN SAYING: "But if you say they (Bergman's pupils) are monsters they have no responsibility, a monster has no responsibility." BERGMAN WALKING OUTSIDE CINEMA; MV CINEMA EMPLOYEE CLOSING CINEMA DOOR Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
  • Embargoed: 4th June 2005 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: TEL-AVIV, ISRAEL
  • City:
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics:
  • Reuters ID: LVA7E7KNET7QA3CMR6CGX66F58DM
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  • Story Text: Israeli public takes on "The Downfall", a controversial German film, after a test audience approved it.
    The controversial German film "Downfall" was screened to the public for the first time on Thursday (May 19, 2005) after a test Israeli audience approved it in a referendum last month.
    Based on eyewitness accounts of Hitler's final days in a Berlin bunker, "The Downfall" (Der Untergang), one of Germany's first attempts to characterise the Nazi dictator in film, portrays him as a diabolical leader with a human side.
    The film drew mixed reviews from German film critics and ordinary cinema-goers, but leapt to the top of the country's box-office charts after its opening weekend.
    But while the 2004 movie, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, was nominated for an Oscar in the foreign film category, it took almost a year for it to find distribution in a Jewish state founded on the ashes of the Holocaust and where resentment of Germany still runs deep. The release of "The Downfall" to the Israeli public was approved only after viewers at a test screening in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem cinemas approved it by a majority vote of 91 percent last month.
    Most of the Israelis who were the first to watch the movie in Israel on Thursday morning said that the movie was not so bad, and that the message that Hitler was not a monster but a human being is very important and can teach us the evil can rise everywhere.
    "There's been too much humanification of him (Adolf Hitler), but it shouldn't be always a demonisation of the person himself, because after all he was a human being.
    Although a terrible human being but still a human being.
    Besides, it was a good movie," said Dr. Michael Zidner to Reuters Television after watching the movie.
    Miryam Bergman, high school teacher who also watched the movie, said that she will recommend her pupils to watch it.
    "Everybody has to see it (the movie) because people expect that Nazi, the leaders of the Nazis like Hitler and Gables were monsters. They made horrible things but they were human beings, human beings that killed other human beings, so I think we have to be very careful," she told Reuters Television outside the cinema.
    "But if you say they are monsters they (Bergman's pupils) have no any responsibility, a monster have no responsibility," she added.
    Swiss actor Bruno Ganz offers a chilling portrayal of Adolf Hitler in the Oscar-nominated German film, which captures the fall of Berlin, telling the story of the final days of the Third Reich.
    "Downfall" is the first German film to take on the subject of the Nazi leader since 1956, detailing the country's darkest and most traumatic times.
    Six million Jews were killed in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Bitter memories remain so strong in Israel, a haven for Holocaust survivors, that even performances of music by Hitler's favourite composer, Richard Wagner, spark altercations.
    In the film, Ganz portrays Hitler as a ranting, delusional madman but also as a father figure plagued by Parkinson's disease.
    His aides sip wine and discuss how best to commit suicide while old men and children are ordered into pointless combat against Soviet tanks. Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, but the fighting lasted another week.
    Some critics in Germany savaged the movie, though the U.S. film industry newspaper Variety hailed it as "a powerful Gotterdammerung centred on the last days of the Fuehrer".
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