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Downfall
Universal acclaim
Based on 35 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 74 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign | War
Written by:
Bernd Eichinger
Joachim Fest (book Inside Hitler's Bunker)
Traudl Junge and Melissa Müller (book Bis zur letzten Stunde)
Directed by: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Release Date:
Theatrical: February 18, 2005
DVD: August 2, 2005
Running Time: 150 minutes, Color
Origin: Germany / Italy
Summary
RATING: R for strong violence, disturbing images and some nudity
Starring Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Matthes, Juliane Köhler, Heino Ferch, Christian Berkel, and Matthias Habich
A portrait of Hitler's final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Das Experiment The Invasion
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site Film Forum Profile
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Film Threat James Wegg
As Hitler, Bruno Ganz ignites the screen with every appearance.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Eric Hansen
One of the best war movies ever made, Downfall is a powerful and artistically masterful re-creation of the last days of the Third Reich.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
A meticulous, spellbinding, provocative depiction of the final days of the Third Reich.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
A riveting re-creation of three world-changing collapses: those of the Nazi party, of militarized Germany as a whole, and of the Führer who guided them into self-destructive ruin.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Hirschbiegel and Eichinger, along with their large, brave and talented cast, have done something extraordinary for their generation of Germans, and for the world. They have willfully entered their grandparents' dirtiest, clammiest chamber of secrets.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Downfall, whatever its shortcomings, bears strong witness to great evil. That is its triumph as a film.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Against the overarching facts of his personal magnetism and the blind loyalty of his lieutenants, the movie observes the workings of the world within the bunker. All power flowed from Hitler. He was evil, mad, ill, but long after Hitler's war was lost he continued to wage it in fantasy.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
It's a bracing reminder that before Hitler took power, it was handed to him. The lesson resonates long after the credits roll.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
From the very first seconds a viewer believes totally in Downfall.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
As a piece of filmmaking, it's stunningly effective.
The New Yorker David Denby
As a piece of acting, Ganz’s work is not just astounding, it’s actually rather moving. But I have doubts about the way his virtuosity has been put to use.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
Not so much a Hitler movie as a portrait of a totalitarian machine's spiritual and emotional collapse, Downfall is a cumulatively powerful Goetterdammerung centered on the last 10 days of the bunkered Fuehrer and those around him.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Much has been made about the film's "humanizing" of Hitler, but he's only human here in the most prosaic of terms.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Downfall and Bruno Ganz are deserving of Oscars they will not get.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
It's the well-wrought details that explain, perhaps better than any earlier film, how an entire country bought into Hitler's genocidal madness.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Credit the great Bruno Ganz with creating a vivid Hitler: furious, unsteady, crushed and frankly cracking up.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
The reality it confronts is so gripping, we cannot turn away. This may not be the most sophisticated retelling of what happened while Berlin burned, but what a story it is.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Indeed, Hirschbiegel himself seems reluctant to single out a protagonist, and finally settles on Junge.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Downfall's overstuffed melodrama juggles countless subplots and a small army of characters who manage to make an impression in spite of limited screen time.
Read Full Review >Empire Kim Newman
Solid history, fine cinema. Downfall is gripping, moving, and, in the end, profoundly horrifying.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
Under the harsh lights of the meticulously re-created, claustrophobic bunker, that scrutiny is relentless.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
With a steely, unblinking resolve, Downfall stares into the abyss, but does not pretend to comprehend it.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
If I respect Downfall more than I was enthralled by it, that's because its portayal stops short of revelation. Once you witness Hitler's denial, the film has little more to say about him.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
It is fascinating without being especially illuminating, and it holds your attention for its very long running time without delivering much dramatic or emotional satisfaction in the end.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Bill Gallo
This is a grim and sometimes guilt-ridden examination of the Third Reich in collapse. But it's also weirdly sympathetic, and not just to the peripheral figures in Hitler's twisted world.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The very thought of humanizing Hitler makes me queasy. If he had a good side, I don't want to know about it.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
That's the problem of Downfall in a nutshell: It provokes insufficient emotional and intellectual responses to a grotesque and atrocious dictatorship. Instead of the banality of evil, it gives us the banality of banality.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Has the arc of a Shakespearean tragedy, and all the essential components therein: loyalty and betrayal, conspiracy and delusion, self-destruction.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
The movie itself seems more familiar than fascinating, more innocuous than inflammatory, and, at 2½ hours, more tedious than anything else.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Downfall may be grimly self-important and inescapably trivializing. But we should be grateful that German cinema is more inclined to normalize the nation's history than rewrite it.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 74 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
James T. gave it a10:
Everything about this film is great. From cinematography and score to everyone's acting. It shows that even though Hitler did what he did, he still was after all a human. It also emphasizes Hitler's ideological mindset that made him insensitive to the killings of his own German soldiers and citizens. The acting of each and every person is most convincing and satisfying as is the sense of realism which pervades this film. It is truly a masterpiece. A work of art.
Allison S. gave it a10:
Absolutely fantastic portrayal of WWII from German side, being in hiters inner circle and the final days of his reign. Wonderful.
Dan H. gave it a10:
This film is a vital, contempary step towards denazisification. It depicted a delusional society being handed it's reality by force. However, it provides contemporary Germans with a way out. Now that the majority of eye witnesses to the third reich are dead, many german people can say, " It wasn't my grandfather, He tried to save the children. " Even Eva Braun's distant relatives can speak up. She wanted desperately to dance to swing music, in a sense of defiance. The riff would have clearly been banded in Nazis Germany (for being negroid.) It's possible this scene was included to poke a hypocritical finger at the allies, for having segregated races in combat. In an interesting way the movie concluded with Hitler as a man who made the most sane choice under the circumstances, poison yourself prior to shooting yourself, before the Russians pull your limbs off your body . In that sense he was facing reality which is a form of mental health, while those around him loomed in a circus atmosphere, which would define the rest of the society as crazy.
Andy H. gave it a10:
Film-making doesn't get much better than this. The decision to portray the main protagonists as ordinary human beings makes the crimes perpetrated by the Third Reich even more horrific and incomprehensible than would have been the case if they had been portrayed as two dimensional monsters. The feeling of claustrophobia and impending disaster in Hitler's bunker is palpable, and the scene in which the Goebbels children are murdered by their mother is truly one of the most appallingly horrific and uncomfortable sequences you are ever likely to see, but it is used to underline just how much the Nazi philosophy had perverted the mindset of diehard fanatics, to such an extent that they were willing to kill their own children rather than have them live in a world without National Socialism. A classic of modern cinema.
Myles #13 gave it a10:
Outstanding film on the final days of Hitler and the Third Reich! Fantastic acting (Hitler, Goebbels, Magda Goebbels and Prof. Schenk stand out) goes hand in hand with accuracy in the events... the film is simply breath-taking to view, whether you're familiar with the story (which helps a bit) or not. It gives you the shivers... not only is Hitler acted to perfection, but you actually feel sorry for the tired, withered old man whose terrible world is falling down around him. If you've never watched a foreign film before, watch this one... it will change the way you think.
Soldier B. gave it a10:
Fantastic. Superb acting on all parties. Chris S. couldn't have said it better.
Rob R gave it a1:
An extremely tame and sanitised portrayal of Hitler's madness. Boring, absurd dialog, no passion, no intensity, not a hint of grit. Oh wait, it has subtitles so it must be masterpiece!
