The Good German [DVD]

The Good German takes place amidst the rubble and ruin of Berlin, in the summer of 1945. It's a murder mystery, but there is a personal back story and an international angle all tied in with the murder too.The acting is good and it's filmed in artistic black and white, like one of those late 1940s movies. Cate Blanchett is excellent as the German lady around which the murder, love interest, and international angle revolves.What knocks this movie out of the five-star category is that the plot gets too convoluted and hard to follow. It just becomes a mess of ulterior motives and lies all tangled together. Characters suddenly know some hidden fact, or suddenly know that someone's lying, and this movie doesn't explain how they know it. Characters get assaulted and killed, and it's not clear what for. No one is held accountable for anything.Oh, and George Clooney's journalist character is pretty unlikely... he's sent by a magazine to cover the Potsdam Conference but he never works one single minute. He gets beaten up and hit in the face about four or five times, yet his face never bruises or swells. And his final scene with Cate Blanchett is a flat-out rip off of the final scene in the movie Casablanca.But despite its flaws, The Good German is a good movie that pretty accurately portrays the misery, ruin, corruption, violence, and international scheming in post-war Berlin right after the war. Definitely worth a watch.

OK, the book, or in my case the audiobook, is better. But you won't noticed the dropped or combined characters in the film if you have not read it. A tense murder mystery placed at a very, very tense time when Berlin was in ruin, a pack of cigarettes could get you almost anything, and the Russians and Yanks were scrambling to grab Nazi rocket scientists. There are many sub-plots, not the least being the ability of all sides to "look the other way" and set up scientists with comfortable jobs and lives when they should have been tried and hung.Clooney is great as a lovesick reporter hoping to find the woman he knew before the war, refusing to see how much had changed.This is not a chick flick. It is in glorious black and white, using vintage lenses to evoke the look of 1940's films (and to work well with old footage.)Not sure how much relatively young viewers will appreciate the book or the movie, but it is really something. Watch it along with "The Monument Men!"

Viewers should not expect a movie which follows the plot of Joseph Kanon's excellent book. The movie, shot in stark b/w, has some good historical footage and provides a glimpse into Berlin just after WWII. For the sake of length some characters are combined into one, some vital characters are missing and the plot is truncated. The director effectively shows us some of the effects of the bombing on the city's people and prompts us to ask why we did this. He vividly shows us the destruction but touches only superficially on the effects of that destruction. This film, compared to the book, over-simplifies everything. I'm glad I watched this because it provides some visual background for the story Joseph Kanon told, but its no substitute for the depth of Mr. Kanon's novel.

I'll never forgive the Hollywood script writers for mangling a perfectly good story. Joseph Kanon's book as it was would have made an excellent script. Kanon is an excellent writer (critics compare him with John LeCarre)and his plots are complex but very believeable. He chooses historical themes, in this case, Germany in the immediate post-war period, when the occupying armies are still getting organized, the black market is roaring, and the first intimations of the Cold War are appearing as America and the Soviet Union each try to capture as many of Germany's top scientists as possible. Emil Brandt is one of these. His wife Lena was having an affair with an American journalist before the war, and the journalist returns to Berlin to find her, the great love of his life. What the movie makes of poor Lena is atrocious; but I guess it's Hollywood's view of post-war Berlin, a city of rubble and exhausted, conquered people. In the book, Lena is something else entirely than the prostitute in the film. But, the film noir aspects of the movie are done quite well, and the scenes of a bombed-out, ruined Berlin are real, photographed in May 1945 and woven skillfully into the movie. One problem is that the actors are far too well-fed to be believeable. Germans in Berlin were literally starving in the months after the surrender. Try though they might, Hollywood makeup artists and cameramen just did not manage to reproduce the look of people who have been couple years without real meat, butter, eggs, or animal fats in general. I'd give the movie a B, despite the high-powered stars-- who did their best with the weak script, so credit where credit is due.

This is my first ever negative review of anything.I hate to leave negative reviews.This screenplay is so terrible and insults an excellent book.I watched it twice as someone who has read the book (I couldn't believe what I saw the first time).Then I watched it with someone who had not read this particular Kanon volume, to if they even liked it as a movie.She and I were so disappointed with the acting - especially by the three stars.How these three ever got involved with this project is beyond me, and tells me they never read the book.Hated it three times.

I love love love this movie! Have watched in a gazillion times. The story is compelling and the noir-ish atmosphere perfect. Eveything about the film draws you in; setting, costumes all great. Cate Blanchett is sensational in the role of Lena, the mystery woman with a past. Clooney is good too if you can forget for a moment that you're looking at the famous George Clooney. I wish there were more movies made like this.

Grand malentendu autour de ce film à sa sortie, surtout aux Etats-Unis mais aussi en France. On a reproché à Soderbergh de ne pas être à la hauteur de ses modèles (films de studios hollywoodiens de la grande époque, type  Casablanca  ou  La Scandaleuse de Berlin ) et de ne pas les transformer assez. Certes, l'esthétique choisie par Soderbergh, qui retrouve les canons et les techniques de l'époque (texture du noir et blanc, transparences, décors de studio...), et qui met l'artifice au premier plan, invite à faire la comparaison. Mais c'est justement la grande réussite du film que de revisiter ce passé sans chercher à le pasticher entièrement ou à le détruire.Le film installe peu à peu un univers de relativisme moral propre au film noir, et fait de son héros le type de l'Américain qui se croit malin et ne comprend en fait pas grand-chose à ce qui se passe, d'autant qu'il a retrouvé la femme fatale de ses rêves. Ce faisant, "The Good German" dévoile une autre forme de relativisme moral, géopolitique cette fois, et montre l'opacité des événements et des êtres. Alors oui, "The Good German" ne révolutionne rien, et pour cause, puisqu'il retrouve l'esthétique de l'âge d'or hollywoodien et la retravaille, voire fait des variations sur les scènes-clés des films susnommés ou du  Troisième homme  de Carol Reed. Il ne révèle pas non plus de secret majeur sur le début de la Guerre Froide, ni ne revisite l'histoire en montrant comment la vérité historique est l'inverse de ce qu'on avait préalablement montré aux spectateurs. En revanche, derrière l'exercice de style, se met en place une ambiance assez vénéneuse et prenante pour qui veut jouer le jeu. La photographie et les cadres sont souvent magnifiques, les acteurs bien meilleurs qu'on a pu parfois le dire (mais cela ne sert bien entendu à rien de les comparer à Humphrey Bogart ou Marlene Dietrich!). Un exercice de style très réussi parce qu'il va au-delà du pastiche et retrouve un pouvoir de fascination qui était celui de l'âge d'or hollywoodien avec des moyens actuels autant qu'avec ceux de l'époque.Le N&B relativement contrasté est assez bien restitué dans un master de qualité très honnête. VF et VOSTF. Aucun supplément.NB Pour une tout autre vision de la présence américaine en Europe à la fin de la guerre, ne surtout pas rater l'exceptionnelle Trilogie  Welcome in Vienna  d'Axel Corti, et en particulier son dernier volet. Là où The Good German est ouvertement artificiel, considéré essentiellement du point de vue de l'Américain assez largué par ce qui se passe autour de lui, et passablement cynique, Welcome in Vienna présente une vision de l'intérieur, authentique et humaniste. Le choc culturel entre les deux oeuvres sera assez passionnant, même si The Good German pâtira assez évidemment de son manque d'ampleur et d'à-propos par rapport à Welcome in Vienna. CasablancaLa Scandaleuse de BerlinTroisième hommeWelcome in Vienna

Azione suspense. Finale inaspettato.Inutile sottolineare la magnifica interpretazione di Cate Blanchett. Bravo George Clooney

Très bon film noir (filmé d'ailleurs en noir et blanc) sur le thème d'une enquête et d'une manipulation dans le Berlin en ruine de juillet 1945.Sur fond de conférence de Postdam et d'images d'époques (fondues dans le film, sans que cela soit réellement perceptible) un officier américain (G. Clooney) ayant travaillé comme journaliste avant guerre à Berlin retrouve une ville métamorphosé et prises dans les rivalités naissantes entre Russes et Alliés (pour s'accaparer les ingénieurs allemands capable de fabriquer des V2 et autres fusées). Il retrouve aussi son ancienne maîtresse, - une juive devenue l'épouse d'un SS - qui a survécu à la guerre au prix de secrets qu'il va chercher à découvrir.Le film est esthétiquement parfait et son scénario est également très convaincant. Bon moment de cinéma avec une merveilleuse Cate Blanchett.