Downfall
Short description
Downfall is set in Berlin in April 1945, as Soviet forces close in on the capital and the remains of the German military face defeat from both east and west. Adolf Hitler, refusing to leave the city, has withdrawn into a bunker beneath the Chancellery gardens with his closest associates, among them his personal secretary Traudl Junge, Eva Braun, Joseph Goebbels and Magda Goebbels. Inside, the regime's leaders cling to the idea that victory is still possible even as the fighting above ground makes the end unavoidable, and the film follows the final days of the Third Reich from within that confined space.
The film is directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, his third feature after Trickser and The Experiment, and was written and produced by Bernd Eichinger. Bruno Ganz plays Hitler, with Alexandra Maria Lara as Junge, Corinna Harfouch and Ulrich Matthes as the Goebbelses, Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun and Heino Ferch as Albert Speer. It runs 155 minutes and was a German, Austrian and Italian co-production made for about 14 million dollars, which it recovered several times over at the worldwide box office.
On IMDb the film holds 8.2 out of 10 from roughly 399,000 votes, and on TMDB it has 7.9 from about 4,500 votes. Its critics' rating stands at 8.2 from 137 reviews, in line with the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The portrait that Hitler gazes at for a long time in one of the scenes belongs to the German Emperor Frederick the Great.
- Bruno Ganz practiced pronouncing Adolf Hitler's unusual accent with the help of a young actor specifically invited from the same region Hitler was born in.
- The film is based on Joachim Fest's book "The Fall: Hitler and the Collapse of the Third Reich" (Der Untergang. Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches, 2002).
- In one of the film's scenes, it can be noticed that Magda Goebbels is writing a letter to her son from her first marriage, Harald Quandt, and a photograph of him is in front of her. He was a Luftwaffe pilot and the only one of Magda Goebbels' children to survive the war. In 1944, he was wounded in Italy and captured by Allied forces; in 1947, he was released, and in 1967, he died in a plane crash at the age of 46.
- The button that Hitler removes from his jacket and gives to Magda Goebbels is a gold badge of the Nazi Party, awarded to its high-ranking members who had been continuously registered in it since 1925. Hitler awarded badge number 1 to himself.
- To better prepare for his role, Bruno Ganz spent some time in a Swiss hospital observing patients with Parkinson's disease.
- The real Traudl Junge, Adolf Hitler's secretary whose memoirs were documented by writer Melissa Müller, participated in the film. Traudl passed away at the age of 81, just hours before the film's premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival.
- Of the 37 historical figures who became characters in the film, only one was still alive at the time of the premiere: Rochus Misch, who served as a courier, bodyguard, and telephone operator for Adolf Hitler from 1940 to 1945. As of September 2008, at the age of 91 (born July 29, 1917), he and courier Armin Lehmann (born May 23, 1928) were among the last two surviving residents of Hitler's bunker.
- Many of Adolf Hitler's phrases in the film are accurate, however, they were spoken during an earlier period.
- Filming took place in St. Petersburg with the participation of Lenfilm studio. This is explained by the fact that filming is cheaper in Russia than in Europe, and there are many houses from the early 20th century remaining.
- Bruno Ganz initially refused the role of Adolf Hitler for quite some time, but changed his mind after watching the 1955 film 'The Last Act', deciding that sufficient depth could be brought to this image as well.
- One of the scenes in the film, in which Hitler launches into a furious tirade about the war being lost, became the basis for many viral videos. In many of these videos, the original lines are preserved, but new subtitles are added to make it appear as if the Führer in the film is reacting to different events in the modern world: in politics, sports, or science. The popularity of these parodies led Constantin Film to attempt to mass-remove the parodies from various video hosting sites in April 2010. Moreover, in 2012, one scene from the science fiction comedy 'Iron Sky' (2012) almost exactly replicates the scene with the Führer, as another parody.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
