Fatherland
Short description
In an alternate 1964 where Nazi Germany won the Second World War and dominates Europe, Berlin is preparing for Adolf Hitler's seventy-fifth birthday and for a state visit by the American president, part of a push toward a peace agreement with the United States. A homicide investigator, SS-Sturmbannführer Xavier March, is assigned to the death of a senior Nazi official. When his superiors pull him off the case, he keeps digging, joined by the American journalist Charlie Maguire. What they uncover points to a secret the regime has kept hidden from the world, and their inquiry turns them into hunted men.
The film is directed by Christopher Menaul and written by Stanley Weiser and Ron Hutchinson, based on Robert Harris's novel. Rutger Hauer plays March, with Miranda Richardson as Maguire, Peter Vaughan as Artur Nebe, Michael Kitchen as Max Jäger, Jean Marsh and John Shrapnel. Made by HBO as a television movie, it runs 106 minutes and sits between Menaul's Punters and Planespotting in his directing credits.
It is an American production released in 1994. On IMDb it holds a critics' rating of 5.4/10 from six reviews, while on TMDB it has a rating of 6.3/10 from 143 votes, indicating modest approval from the smaller sample of critics and a slightly warmer response from the general audience.
What's left behind the scenes
- The grandiose structures of post-war Berlin shown in the film are based on the designs of Albert Speer (1905-1981), Hitler's personal architect and Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. The film depicts the Palace of the People's Assembly, the Triumphal Arch, the Olympic Stadium, and the Reich Chancellery. In reality, only the Olympic Stadium and the Reich Chancellery were built (the latter was severely damaged by bombing and later destroyed by the Red Army). As for the other structures, they were planned to be so massive that experts at the time doubted their feasibility. Only recently has computer analysis shown that Speer's calculations were correct, and that if Hitler had won World War II, Berlin would now look roughly as it is depicted in the film.
- Director, writer, and producer Mike Nichols (1931-2014) purchased the rights to Robert Harris's novel for $1 million hoping to make a film for theatrical release. When it became clear that Hollywood companies were not interested in the project, it was decided to limit it to a television film for HBO.
- The hero portrayed by Rutger Hauer wears a patch of the 4th SS Police Division on his uniform. Patches with the letter "K" (denoting affiliation with the criminal police) did not exist in Nazi Germany.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
