Downfall Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		3.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

Downfall Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson November 29, 2018

Before Oliver Hirschbiegel's third feature Downfall (Der Untergang, 2004) was met with critical acclaim the world over, I remember reading about a two-part TV miniseries titled Hitler: The Rise of Evil in Entertainment Weekly. Robert Carlyle played the titular Führer and because the Scot is a very fine actor, I was surprised that the EW critic gave the CBS production an "F." Was it due to the way Carlyle portrayed Hitler or weaknesses in the teleplay? A combination of the two seems likely. There are have been so many film and TV incarnations of Hitler that either paint him as a fiendish madman or give a parodic caricature that he's become a mythologized construct. In Downfall, Hirschbiegel envisages him and his collaborators in three-dimensional terms. As played by the Swiss Bruno Ganz, Hitler is a dead-serious despot and tragic figure. There are moments in the film where Hitler erupts with bouts of utter senility. On other occasions, such as when he's dictating a speech to secretarial candidate Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara), he's polite, quiet, and open about his own flaws. In other scenes, the audience sees him gently petting his German Shepherd, holding and interacting with the Goebbels' children, and bequeathing the Hitler Youth with pins or medals for their loyal and brave service. Renowned film critic Michael Wilmington, who gave Downfall four out of four stars, encapsulated a common objection that his colleagues had about the film: "In re-creating the tale so intimately, though, the filmmakers have been charged with unwisely humanizing Hitler and other Nazis and making it too possible to sympathize with them." But this is precisely Hirschbiegel's point: to depict Hitler and his followers as human beings, unmask them, and reveal the monstrous side in all of them.

The Führer is not a happy man.

Downfall takes place primarily over a twelve-day-span in April 1945 within the German Chancellery's underground command bunker. Producer/writer Bernd Eichinger's screenplay is based on the books, Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich by historian Joachim Fest and Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary from the diaries and memoirs of Traudl Junge (edited by Melissa Müller). Junge was the subject of the documentary Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary (2002) and Hirschbiegel bookends his movie with excerpts from one of Junge's last interviews. Alexandra Maria Lara portrays Junge as a naïve and seemingly innocent young woman who doesn't fully grasp the incomprehensible actions of her Führer until after the war. Much of Downfall is set inside this secret bunker. Hirschbiegel, his cinematographer Rainer Klausmann, and Steadicam operator Tilman Büttner (Run Lola Run, Russian Ark) masterfully capture the claustrophobia and trepidation that the Germans must have felt as the Russian bombing raids engulfed them. In an unfavorable review of Downfall, The Baltimore Sun's Michael Sragow grouses: "[W]e never feel that we are there. The movie's patient, plodding naturalism distances the audience, in its own sober way, as much as a political cartoon would." I had the polar opposite reaction. The gliding tracking shots and taut camerawork place the characters and audience in a very tight milieu. There is much uncertainty with what will happen to each Nazi during the raids but the camera fixes its gaze on the brain trust with such perfect clarity that we have no doubt about their ideological stringency and amoral positions. In sum, Downfall is a monumental work and the ultimate chronicle of a fascistic regime's decline.

Downfall Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Downfall first appeared on Blu-ray in the UK during the early years of the high-def format. My colleague Dr. Svet Atanasov reviewed Momentum Pictures' VC-1 encoded BD-50 a decade ago. Shout Select has made this war epic number forty-three in the sub-label's series. The studio has made a new MPEG-4 encode but like Momentum's release, the transfer is struck from a dated master. Similarly, the film is zoomed in and appears in the open-matted aspect ratio of 1.78:1, which deviates from the original theatrical's presentation of 1.85:1. The only DVD and Blu-ray to display Downfall in its OAR is Holland-based A-Film/Benelux and the BD only has Dutch and French subtitles. Fortunately, unlike Momentum, the white English subtitles on the Shout are optional and not embedded into the picture. Shout's transfer is appropriately dark with an olive green tinge (see the screen captures throughout). The image taken from this 2K digital intermediate is very clean but therein lies the problem. It looks too polished.Downfall was shot on 35mm Kodak film, not DV. I only noticed approximately three scenes where the grain truly sticks out. Other BD distributors have applied DNR but probably not as much as Shout has here. Viewers overly sensitive to the grain removal here may want to grab Alliance's Blu-ray/DVD combo, which carries English and French subs. Shout has encoded the main feature with an average video bitrate of 26999 kbps.

The 155-minute international theatrical cut comes with twenty scene selections.

Downfall Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout supplies a German DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround mix (2056 kbps, 24-bit) and a downsampled DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo track (1602 kbps, 24-bit). While the primary sound track is spoken in German, there's also some Russian and Hungarian dialogue. Spoken words are enunciated clearly and crisply. The 5.1 track is rousing and robust with thunderous bass emanating from LFE and the surrounds. The vrooms from the Daimler cars produce nice horizontal acoustics from speaker to speaker as vehicles whisk by on the street. Explosions hit the earth with thunderous roars. Composer Stephan Zacharias contributes a lugubrious and moving score that demonstrates good range on the rear channels. Additionally, there are four period/classical pieces.

The optional English subs are not too thick or large in shape or style. They're legible and easy to read.

Downfall Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Shout has ported over all of the extra features that Momentum Pictures includes on its edition ten years earlier. They are all presented in German with burned-in English subtitles (which use the British spelling). Unfortunately, Shout hasn't produced any new bonus materials.

• Audio Commentary by Director Oliver Hirschbiegel - Hirschbiegel speaks in English and is very articulate. Even though he didn't prepare any scripted notes, this is more like a historical essay. He doesn't ramble at all. He clearly did a ton of research before making the film. This track isn't subtitled.

• The Making of Downfall (56:48, 480i) - a making-of doc that features interviews with cast and crew members. They discuss their characters' historical personages and explain how they interpreted their roles. Vintage photographs of the real-life figures are also shown.

• Cast and Filmmaker Interviews (46:31, 480i) - a compilation of interviews with Bruno Ganz (6:18), Alexandra Maria Lara (1:42), Corinna Harfouch (4:31), Juliane Köhler (2:27), Heino Ferch (2:34), Ulrich Noethen (1:49), Thomas Kretschmann (1:13), Thomas Thieme (1:55), Bernd Eichinger (4:19), Joachim Fest (13:38), and Oliver Hirschbiegel (4:04).

• Behind the Scenes – Shooting B Roll (30:01, 480i) - this B-roll footage is narrated with picture-in-picture commentary by Hirschbiegel. The director addresses the shooting conditions and some scenes that got cut from the US theatrical version.

• Behind the Scenes – Shooting in Russia (17:57, 480i) - Two of the art directors speak about the harmonious relationship forged between the Germans and Russians while making this film. There is B-roll of filming in St. Petersburg.

• Biographer Melissa Müller on Traudl Junge (8:12, 480i) - Müller talks about meeting with Junge and transferring her memoirs into a book.

• Image Gallery (5:04, 1080p) - the first eight images are of vertical and horizontal posters displayed during Downfall's theatrical run. The color pictures taken on set are blown up and in high-res. There are over sixty images in this slide show.

Downfall Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are two important components that preclude this "Collector's Edition" of Downfall from being the definitive package. First, the additional grain that was scrubbed from the source used for this transfer is a hindrance. Second, the 178-minute "Extended TV Version" that German-based Highlight Video put on a two-disc Premium Edition isn't included here. I remember when HV first made the DVD announcement and how much I wanted to get it. That transfer, however, looked blurry with video noise. It also only has German SDH for the EV. Hopefully, another label will pick it up and release both cuts. Despite Shout's degraining, the uncompressed 5.1 mix sounds fantastic and I don't think Downfall has sounded any better than this on home video. The movie gets my HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION and the CE receives a MODERATE ENDORSEMENT mainly due to the optional subs and dynamically presented lossless sound track. If you were to own another BD of Downfall, I'd lean towards the Canadian release.