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 enlarge | Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Actors: Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Matthes, Juliane Köhler
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
Buy Used: $6.55
You Save: $8.39 (56%)
New (52) Used (29) from $6.55
Avg. Customer Rating:  363 reviews
Sales Rank: 1370
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: English (Subtitled), German (Original Language), Russian (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 155
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: D11545D
ISBN: 1404987606
UPC: 043396115453
EAN: 9781404987609
ASIN: B0009RCPUC
Theatrical Release Date: 2004
Release Date: August 2, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 All too human... May 20, 2008
Untergang(Downfall) is an excellent movie. It shows all the human aspects that tend to be forgotten or glossed over by people (whether the frailty and madness of Hitler, delusions of victory and "normalcy" in the bunker, etc)...seen through the eyes of Traudl Junge and a Hitler Youth, it is a descent into darkness during the final days of the war. While the ending was pretty solid artistic license, it played out better as an ending than the gang-rapes of the women....which actually happened. In German with English subtitles.
Amazing Film May 19, 2008
This film deserved the Oscar for foreign film in 2005. Amazing performance by Bruno Ganz. Whether you are a WW2 buff or not you will find this movie well worth adding to your collection.
 It is a "Downfall" that this movie is in German! May 11, 2008
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
Good movie - but it's all in German with english sub-titles!
Amazon should have noted this under the product discription.
Other than that the film gives a good account of Hitler's last days
in his bunker, surrounded by his army chiefs, and unwilling to
believe that he was losing the war. There is nothing about the
concentration camps as the story is told through the eyes of
Hitlers young secretary Trudi.
 A good film. Know German. April 22, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Der Untergang (Downfall) is an excellent German film on the final days in Hitler's bunker. Films have been made of this subject before but this German version is unusual for its realism. Rather than portray Hitler as a cartoon nemesis type, he is portrayed as a real, if not very human, person whose life has been brought to this insane end by his own idiocies.
But the film is much more about the nuttiness of his peewit followers and admirers who fawn over him and maintain their belief in him even as their world is going to hell all around them. The film concentrates on one of the less offensive of these: Gertrude "Traudl" Junge, one of his secretaries. Pretty and personable, she tries to maintain her faith despite the surrealism of the bunker.
This film is hard to watch. The worst of Hitler's underground menagerie is Dr Goebbels and his handsome but lunatic wife. Goebbels, in one of his rare diversions into humor, once said that it was fortunate that his children
took after himself for brains and his wife for looks. It was true. The Dr was a foul looking little creep of a man, but his children (I have seen pictures of them) were beautiful. Goebbels and his wife poisoned their children in the bunker shortly after Hitler committed suicide so that they would not grow up in Germany without Nazism. This
act of infanticide is brutally shown in the film. It is a painful scene.
The film is well made. A warning: it is entirely in German with English subtitles, no dubbing.
Human Evil April 20, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I'm bemused by the criticism of this film based on the fact that it depicts the Nazi leadership as human beings. To me, that renders the horror more acutely and forces us to address, squarely, the question of how individuals can depersonalize others to the extent that they can rejoice at the concept of mass murder & extermination? In fact, I found that this film helped me comprehend a small part of that by portraying the culture of death that surrounded Hitler, Goebbels and the inside elite. The beliefs and actions they accepted as a normal part of human life -- and the fact that they did accept these as normal and even desireable -- is far more damning than a more conventional Holocaust drama. (After all, didn't serial killer Ted Bundy appear on the outside to be a polite, charming guy? The true horror lies in the idea that someone can commit horrific murders and calmly go grocery shopping -- it forces us to recognize that evil does not always look like the bogeyman.) The scene in which Magda Goebbels kills her children -- forcing her eldest daughter to bite down on the cyanide capsule -- demonstrates more powerfully than any other single filmed scene exactly how evil these individuals were. This is not a film for those who want easy answers about human nature. It challenges the viewer to ponder the apparent ease with events can snowball and lead to horrific evil, as well as force us to question how individuals could do this. It doesn't need an emphasis on anti-Semitism to deliver a powerful wallop. Rather, the film triumphs because it shows how Hitler's political philosophy negated humanity itself, a vast and horrifying concept. I watched this film when it first appeared on DVD and have yet to forget it. For those of us aware of the war and the Holocaust only through the stories of our elders, the acting, script, cinematography etc. brings the full horror to life. If you're looking for a comparable book, I'd suggest Gitta Sereny's examination of Albert Speer. Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth
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