My colleague Jeffrey Wells over at Hollywood-Elsewhere alerted me of the new Bluray for Oliver Hirschbiegel‘s masterful "Downfall," a fictionalized 2004 account of Hitler's final days.
The film is quite clearly Hirschbiegel, Ganz and Eichinger’s greatest film.However, the "Hitler YouTube parody-rant phenomenon" "that was inspired by a single conference-room scene," is what this film will be most famous for, sadly. Wells claims there must be over 2000 parody videos of the famous scene. The parodies have, of course, done a severe disservice to the film, which made my top ten list back in 2005 and is, by all accounts, the best film ever made about Adolf Hitler.
"Downfall" only made $5.5 million in the U.S. but the worldwide gross is $92.2 million is, quite frankly, ASTONISHING. It will no doubt have a lasting impact as a classic.
Hirschbiegel's career started off with a bang as he directed both "Das Experiment" and "Downfall," two incredibly realized and absorbing films. I liked his third film, his first in America,' "The Invasion," but I seem to be in the minority with that assessment. After going back to the German film system with "Five Minutes of Heaven," he threw away any chances at success in Hollywood with 2013's "Diana" starring Naomi Watts as the Princess of Wales, which is known as an infamous bomb.
In 2005 I wrote this about “Downfall” —
"The final days of Hitler. It's as simple as that. How a once mighty man, just like any ill-fated emperor of Rome. filled with grand ambitions and egotistical evil fell flat as he neared certain defeat. Director Hirschbiegel brings us into Hitler's bunker and it's as if you are actually there waiting for the man to have the titular downfall. The attention to detail is incredible. The fact that nothing has been Hollywood-ized, that this was a German movie, made with German actors only brings more authenticity to the film. This will most likely be shown in history classes for years to come."