Hitler’s last days

“Downfall,” German film director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s powerful story

of Adolf Hitler’s final 10 days in his bunker beneath the streets of

Berlin, ranks, in my opinion, as one of the finest World War II films

ever made. Despite claims by some of sympathetic treatment to the

German chancellor, “Downfall” portrays Hitler, marvelously played by

Bruno Ganz, to be the heartless madman that he was.

In one chilling scene, when decisions must be made for the

evacuation of civilians, Hitler denounces the German people as

unworthy to survive a war that they had lost through lack of effort

and commitment.

The film is presented as a reluctant reminiscence of one Traudl

Junge, who spent 2 1/2 years as Hitler’s personal secretary during

the last years of the war. Junge, played cleverly by Alexandra Maria

Lara, is the ubiquitous presence in one scene after another that

reveals the tattered remains of the Third Reich. She is there, off to

the side, dressed primly in buttoned blouses and long skirts as

panic-stricken Nazi bosses argue over the dissolution of a modern

empire and what to do with an obviously insane Fuhrer.

The scene shifts back and forth between the chaotic street

fighting above and in the claustrophobic quarters of the bunker

below. While 12-year-old boys armed with discarded weapons try to

stall the advancing Russian Army in the devastated ruins of Berlin,

the “masterminds” in the subterranean rooms beneath the streets,

shaking with each blast of artillery fire from the coming hordes, try

to bring all of this madness to an orderly conclusion. I found myself

alternately tensing, and then relaxing in my theater seat as the

focus of the film shifted about.

Hirschbiegel doesn’t pull any punches with this film. * JEFF

KLEMZAK of La Crescenta owns a roofing business.