Product Description

Called dramatic, accurate and harrowing by the San Francisco Chronicle and nominated for the Oscar(r)for Best Foreign Film, Downfall takes you into Hitler's bunker during the brutal and harrowing last days of the Third Reich. Seen through the eyes of Hitler's infamous secretary Traudl Junge, optimism crumbles into grim realization and terror as it becomes clear that Germany's defeat is inevitable. As the Russian army circles the city, the dimly lit halls of the underground refuge become an execution chamber for the Fuhrer and his closest advisors.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2069 in DVD
• Brand: GANZ,BRUNO
• Released on: 2005-08-02
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: German, Russian
• Subtitled in: English
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 156 minutes

From The New Yorker
The great Swiss-German actor Bruno Ganz gives a staggering performance as Adolf Hitler in this full-scale realist German production detailing the last ten days of the Third Reich. As the Red Army rampages through Berlin, Hitler and his staff have retreated to the bunker under the Reich Chancellery. They are all here-Himmler, Goebbels, Speer, the entire fascinating, loathsome crew of commanders, mad visionaries, and toadies (all brilliantly acted)-and, leading them still, a man so physically ill and constricted in movement that he looks like a broken-down puppet from a Bavarian travelling circus. The puppet comes to life, of course, in appalling self-pitying rants that are borderline funny. The entire movie teeters on the edge of sick comedy-in particular such scenes as the death of the Goebbels children, one by one, at the hands of their mother-and at times one longs for a coldly malicious ironist like Brecht or Fassbinder to come in and take over. The attempt to re-create Hitler in realistic terms has always been morally and imaginatively questionable-a compromise with the unspeakable that borders on complicity with it. Produced and written by Bernd Eichinger; directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. In German. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker