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Downfall
In 1942, young Traudl Junge lands her dream job, secretary to Adolf Hitler at the peak of his power. The movie is the story Traudl tells us about the Nazi dictator's final 10 days in his Berlin bunker from his 56th birthday on April 20th, 1945 to his suicide on April 30th.
28 October 1957, Berlin, Germany
20 June 1941, Berlin, Germany
13 May 1970, Halle an der Saale, German Democratic Republic
1956, Simferopol, RSFSR, USSR
8 September 1962, Dessau, German Democratic Republic [now Saxony-Anhalt, Federal Republic of Germany]
21 April 1916
25 March 1941, Ramsen, Kanton Schaffhausen, Switzerland
May 20, 2014
Provocative look at Hitler's last days is extremely violent.September 25, 2010
"Downfall" isn't about commuting history's sentence for the Nazis, but heeding its warning - a gruesome, sustained-tension lesson about informed politics and whether those who left evil to its own devices could arrive at a place of complicit guilt.March 18, 2005
Viewed through a North American lens, the movie itself seems more familiar than fascinating, more innocuous than inflammatory, and, at 21/2 hours, more tedious than anything else.April 18, 2009
As the first German-made film about Hitler's ruination since G.W. Pabst's "Der Letzte Akt" ("The Last Act" - 1956) "Downfall" is a stunning cinematic achievement that illuminates minutiae about the last 10 days of the nefarious German leader who won the hMarch 17, 2005
Hirschbiegel and Ganz are not apologizing for Nazism. They are trying to come to terms with the fact that the evils of Nazism were invented and carried out by human beings.April 01, 2005
With a steely, unblinking resolve, Downfall stares into the abyss, but does not pretend to comprehend it.March 14, 2005
In a remarkable performance, perhaps the most impressive portrait of Hitler ever captured on film, Bruno Ganz plays Hitler as delusional, hateful and cruel man -- but also human.March 18, 2005
For emotional effect it trades less in the spectacle of ebbing power than the tragedy of power's mysterious thrall.June 29, 2013
...an unflinching, hard, relentlessly honest movie that refuses to ask questions that have easy answers. It is also brilliantly acted, written and focused...February 28, 2008
What an act of bravery it was to make Downfall.April 08, 2005
May be the definitive account of Hitler's final days and the collapse of the Third Reich.July 21, 2009
It's reach exceeds its grasp; nonetheless, a compelling study of Hitler's last days.