jotaemesg
With utmost respect to other reviewers who seem to have enjoyed this film, I keep failing to get the point of the whole thing. Certainly, most actors are doing their best, especially the ones given fewer lines, but you have to avow that Maximilian Schell's performance, however sincere, is overdone and dated. Perhaps he was not the smartest choice for the title role. As to the main plot, if the filmmakers intent was to keep us misled throughout the movie till the very end, congratulations! you did it! I think it's ridiculously twisted and entangled altogether. It is nice to see some good production values of the seventies at their best, as well as some funny hair styles and well conceived props, but this doesn't make up for the lack of sense. I think it's a mistake to overwhelm the audiences with lots of information and tons of strong feelings, just to be unable to come to a well contrived conclusion. Good films need original ideas well developed and well solved. If you launch the great question you have to propose an answer based on sound consideration or, as it should be the case in a film, on a consistent outline for your story. Not a good contribution to understanding the crimes against mankind, and namely the Jewish people, during WWII.
michael h siegel
I have viewed this movie many times in a poor quality VHS and now finally on DVD. It's difficult to explain the impact this movie can have and one viewing will not do it. It takes several viewings to really get the plot line. Millionaire Jewish entrepreneur Arthur Goldman rules his financial empire from a penthouse apartment overlooking Manhattan. Seemingly at the edge of sanity, Goldman holds forth on everyting from Papal edicts to ex-wives, from baseball to his family's massacre in a Nazi concentration camp. When Goldman remarks on a blue Mercedes continuously parked outside his building, Goldman's captive audience of assistant and chauffeur dismiss their boss' anxiety as encroaching paranoia. But each of Goldman's passionate, seemingly capricious ravings are transformed into a shocking, inadvertent deposition when Israeli agents capture Goldman and put him on trial as Adolph Dorf, the commandant of the concentration camp where Goldman's family was supposedly exterminated. In a trial scene of unrelenting intensity, crafts what the Detroit Free Press called "a white-hot lead performance," mutating from eccentric Goldman to sociopath Dorf and beyond. The riddle of Dorf's true identity becomes wrapped in an enigma of cunning self-treachery and single-minded obsession.
stevo-33
Although I have not seen this film for years it sticks in my mind as one of the best, particularly for its type, ie a courtroom dram, with few different scenes, (the other similar movie I liked was Twelve Angry Men.The acting is superb, particularly Max Schell as the Nazi and the twists keep the viewer alert.It is the type of movie that should be shown on TV much more often. It does have a message as well.
Aqualung-2
Maximilian Schell defines acting in this superlative effort which I have used in my classes when discussing the Holocaust. When you watch it, keep an open mind and don't be put off by sayings such as "What is a Christian but a Jew with an insurance policy? Rent it and watch it...I guarantee you will be impressed and troubled by the implications of the subject matter.
AD
