Lee Liberman's Sunday Corner for September: HITLER'S CIRCLE OF EVIL via Netflix

We are looking and looking harder at the most violent, amoral dictatorship in the modern era and there are many new WWII movies to satisfy. Are we all preoccupied with the totalitarian state at the same time for the same reason? Despite much difference between the era of Hitler and our own, some similar strains are worrying today. Hitler’s Reich was a cult of trumped up magic and messianic ideology; 2018 is a personality cult of Trump. Cults are not recipes for governance. The 10-part British-made documentary/docudrama, HITLER'S CIRCLE OF EVIL, now streaming on Netflix, depicts the Hitler saga from the point of view of the players in his inner circle — his cabinet of sycophants. The series has generally been lauded for accuracy; it features interviews with assorted historians and docudrama’d visuals. In the period following WWI, moderate politics wasn’t working; the extremes veered further left and right than our own left and right. In the 1920’s-30’s it was communist/socialist versus heroic/messianic. The democratic Weimar Republic had emerged to replace the Kaiser; it struggled to govern during the depression that followed the 1929 Wall Street crash and the dire reparations the Allies imposed on Germany after WWI. Poverty and misery were gifts to the messianic Hitler movement.

Hitler’s story started with Dietrich Eckart, a playwright and poet of the far right and believer in the occult Thule society, which held that Aryans had become weakened by inferior races and sought a messiah, a “genius superman”. Eckart was a founder of the National Socialist Party, which became the Nazi Party. When Hitler spoke at a meeting, Eckart was amazed; here was ‘THE ONE’. Nazi fervor sprang from a theory of mythic Aryan superiority. Eckart’s famous play (making him rich) based on Henrik Ibsen’s ‘Peer Gynt’ is the story of Germanic superhero, Gynt, struggling against trolls/Jews. (Note that Anti-Semitism had been part of the world landscape almost from the creation of Christianity, long before the Nazi rise. The Reich weaponized Jews, Communists, Allies using propaganda.) Eckart finds in Hitler the rough stone he can polish, who can take the message to the people. (Roger Ailes, Steve Bannon, and Roger Stone chose Trump to do the same.) Eckart and Hitler bonded as teacher-pupil, father-son. Near death in 1923, Eckart is said to have written a friend: “Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who will have called the tune…. Do not mourn for me; I shall have influenced history more than any other German.” Hitler called Eckart the spiritual father of Nazism and dedicated Mein Kampf to him.

Next up is Rudolf Hess, a military man, pilot, loyalist to the Thule Society. Hess met Hitler at early party meetings and was besotted. In prison together after the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Hitler’s first and futile attempt to gain power, Hess counseled Hitler to shun violence and win at the ballot box. Uncredited, he helped Hitler write Mein Kampf in prison and supported him head, heart, and soul (an unrelated source reports they were lovers). Following prison, they suppressed the street thuggery of party member and military colleague, Ernst Röhm, and reshaped the Nazi party to win power through elections, losing cycles before they began to win. (Below, Hess with Hitler.)

Hess’s title was deputy Fuhrer but he wasn’t Machiavellian enough to survive the power machinations of the inner circle. In 1941, to regain his Fuhrer’s love, he flew alone, in secret to Britain to offer a peace deal; his British captors found him paranoid and mentally unstable. He was never again free; his colleagues were condemned to death at Nuremberg. Hess aged in Spandau Prison where he hung himself in 1987 at 93.

 After the Nazi’s had won a governing majority in the Reichstag in 1933, a one-party state began to consolidate and Hitler’s inner circle became like cats in a bag, asserts historian Guy Walters. Backstabbing and jockeying for favor and reward were encouraged. Manipulative Martin Bormann, for instance, morphed from drone to queen bee. Hess’s subordinate, Bormann seized on the seemingly mundane job of renovating Hitler’s Bavarian Alps chalet, wooing Hitler with the creation of what would become a grand second house of state. At the new mountain court, the inner circle, ‘the Berghof set’, would be feted and forced to ‘suck up’ to the boss. Bormann, the ’Brown Eminence’, gained control over Hitler’s finances and the party coffers, becoming gatekeeper and requiring servility by the others; Hess was completely marginalized. Bormann and Goring became mortal enemies; Himmler and Goebbels hated each other and both hated Goring. The ‘morality’ of the party became sophistication on one hand and depravity on the other, as Hitler’s chintz sofas were where they made plans to invade Poland and Russia and ‘purify’ Germany. (Below the renovated Berghof “mountain home”, bombed in 1945, now in ruins.)

Heinrich Himmler was thought weird even by Hitler, though both believed in the occult and ‘blood and soil’ mythology. Racial Germanic myths and symbols became Himmler’s religion. Too young for service in WWI, he craved militarism and soon gained a full portfolio of all internal and external police and security, his efficiency amplified by ruthless subordinate Reinhard Heydrich. They oversaw the extermination camps in which 11-14 million mostly Polish and Soviet citizens were killed. But pursuing his fetish, Himmler used camp slave labor to restore and embellish Wewelsburg Castle, dating from the early 1600’s, which he had acquired as an indoctrination center. It became a Nazi Camelot and the spiritual home of the SS where Himmler reenacted his fantasy of being a pre-Christian Saxon king. He took the forked cross (the swastika), a symbol of the sun throughout antiquity, coopting its beauty and humanity, likely forever. Wewelsburg, dubbed Nazi-land, is said to be an excursion for present day Germans as an object lesson of civil society run amok.

Joseph Goebbels: If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. 

Dubbed the ‘Poison Dwarf’, Goebbels was a writer, womanizer, and ground-breaking propagandist. As minister, he controlled the press, including the ‘new media’ of radio and film, and applied commercial advertising to politics, employing slogans and subliminal cues to shape morale and public opinion. Propaganda became the art form under Goebbels that is now practiced cheerfully by our right wing (Stone, Hannity, Carlson, Limbaugh, etc). The external enemies were the Allies who subjugated Germany with reparations; the internal enemies were Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Bolsheviks, and ‘degenerate’ social trends. Below, a poster in the U.S. Holocaust Museum reads: “Behind the enemy powers: the Jew”.

“The fat man ate, drank, and made riotously merry…..” wrote James Holland in World War II Magazine, 2016, about Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe: “Göring’s dandy image made him a persistent figure of ridicule. But Hermann Göring was a colossus in every way: a wily Machiavellian with an outsize IQ, skilled at combining charm, guile, and ruthlessness to get what he wanted…..” Hitler called him “man of steel”. (Cartoon below)

Göring became president of the Reichstag and muscled Hitler’s path to a one-party state. He accumulated oligarchic power and extravagant wealth, but his eye was off the ball — the Luftwaffe was heading into war with capable bombers but ill thought-out, sometimes inhumane deployment of assets. Goring boasted that his fliers would wipe out the Allied retreat from Dunkirk. But the Royal Air Force defended strategically and 338,000 Allied troops escaped. Hubris also misled expectations about the Battle of Britain. British radar and (the first) strategic, coordinated air defense kept the carelessly deployed Luftwaffe at bay (below the Spitfire and Hurricane, British mainstays). That loss led to fighting on two-fronts (European and Soviet) and the Luftwaffe’s slow demise. New jet-powered planes enabled Göring to persuade Hitler that the Luftwaffe could rebound, making him Hitler’s chosen successor to the last few days. But Bormann loathed Göring and convinced Hitler he was a turncoat. Göring was arrested, but soon after, Hitler, Bormann, and the Reich were dead anyway. Himmler took poison after his British capture and Goring took cyanide moments before he was to be hung at Nuremberg.

As defeat closed in on Hitler, he gave the ‘Nero’ order to destroy Germany’s infrastructure. It wasn’t followed, and the rats began to scurry off the ship. A lack of knowledge, rigor, and humanity doomed the Nazi’s; the Allies were in possession of these virtues. In the last year, Hitler deteriorated physically and mentally, swinging from irrational euphoria to out-of-control rage, often hallucinating and delusional. Of all likely disease possibilities put forward by physicians (including tertiary syphilis and Parkinson’s), I like schizoaffective: brief reactive psychoses in a narcissistic personality unable to withstand reality.

The above post is written by our 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman

How dark and deadly can WWII Germany get? Discover Robert Schwentke's THE CAPTAIN

Antiheroes don't come much more non-heroic than the young German army deserter who goes by the  name of Willi Herold, and who -- thanks to the discovery of a abandoned jeep, a uniform and some food --  is soon impersonating a German Captain and getting up to some really awful stuff.

Herr Herold actually existed, and even if the movie made about him -- entitled THE CAPTAIN and just having its U.S. theatrical debut -- is fictionalized, this young man's short but shocking military career should astound and depress you, big-time.

The film's writer/director, Robert Schwentke (shown at left) has had a varied career, including both German and American films (from Flight Plan and RED to the Insurgent/Allegiant duo), but nothing he's done that I've seen would have prepared us for the bleak and nasty ugliness of this intimate little World War II epic. What young Herold does and how he manages it might defy credibility were the history of WWII not already so crammed with shock and unbelievable horror. As played by Max Hubacher (shown below), a young actor whose career seems to have been set in major


motion by this role and film, Herold remains as fascinating and mystifying as he is a cipher. We know nothing about him prior to his desertion (except a couple of platitudes his daddy told him). Though he initially seems like someone we might root for as he runs away from the German military police whose aim is clearly to kill him, once his escape is made and his disguise in place, he slowly becomes more and more horrific. All of which makes this young man's single scene of what seems like "feeling" (shown in the penultimate photo below) all the more bizarre.

Yet it takes much more than a single man -- even a high-level military officer -- to achieve what  is accomplished here. How Herold is helped along, and by whom, is what makes the movie even darker and more disgusting.

The apex/nadir is reached in a lengthy celebratory dinner honoring this "officer" and his work, with food and alcohol aplenty and even a pair of Jewish comedians to entertain the troops with ugly jokes. How those whom one might call "good" Germans are coerced into helping the horror is effectively demonstrated, and this landmark scene ends by offering up the single way out, when one is forced to enable this kind of evil.

As effective as is young Hubacher, the excellent supporting cast proves even better, with Milan Peschel (above and below, left) the standout, as the infantryman who initially helps Herold, only to grow increasingly aghast at (and a reluctant party to) his actions.

During the films final half hour, it grows nearly (and rightly) surreal, as this war must have seems for so many people. As director, Schwentke gets much not merely "right" but on-the-nose, though I wish he had done away with a few unnecessary artsy/fartsy overhead shots and that single moment when the excellent black-and-white cinematography (by the excellent Florian Ballhaus) must change to color in order to make a point that has already been made via the script.

Otherwise, The Captain is strong, hideous stuff. Gird up your loins and prepare. The movie will make you glad all over again that Germany and Hitler lost their war and should have you hopeful that Donald Trump and the Republican Party will lose theirs against America. We shall see.

Meanwhile, this Music Box Films release, running just under two hours and spoken in German with English subtitles, opens tomorrow, Friday, July 27, in New York City at the Quad Cinema, in Chicago at the Music Box Theater on August 3, and in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt on August 10 -- before expanding to another dozen or so theaters over the weeks/months to come. To view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and then scroll down to click on THEATERS.

Two new series come to Netflix streaming: ALTERED CARBON and BABYLON BERLIN

The future (a little-too Blade Runner-ish in style: see below) and the past (Germany shortly before its pre-WWII fascist takeover) are the subjects of two new continuing series via Netflix streaming. ALTERED CARBON imagines our world (along with some off-worlds) a very long time time from now, when the very wealthy -- gheesh, them again! -- can live forever, while the rest of us are mostly slave labor who work, work, work and then die. The big difference here is that everyone's "life force" is now embedded in a small item called a "stack,"  which gets implanted somewhere behind one's neck. So, no matter what happens to your body, if your stack remains OK, you simply change into a new "sleeve" -- the term for whatever body is currently available (at a price, of course) for use by someone whose old one is damaged beyond repair.

This odd new kind of body-hopping makes for some very amusing fun at times -- the best of all being a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of an Hispanic family whose grandmother has recently departed. But the family -- most of them, anyway -- want their abuela back for the holiday and so her stack is implanted into the only available sleeve, that of a recently departed criminal who is bald, portly and mustachioed. The ensuing conversation is one of the most amusing things I've seen all year, and when the subject turns to religion, faith, and this whole idea of "eternal life," the series suddenly also becomes quite intelligent and insightful.

The main plot has to do with a murder mystery involving one of those very rich (James Purefoy, above -- and, yes, he's full-frontal again and as big and beautiful as you'll have remembered from Rome) -- which needs to be solved by the series' hero (a very sexy and buffed Joel Kinnaman, below).

Unfortunately this main plot keeps getting derailed far too often and quite unnecessarily via violent action scenes that become tiresome almost immediately.  These, of course, are why most of our younger and increasingly stupid crowd tunes into a shows like this, but eventually the action/violence has more of a numbing effect than anything else because it keeps detracting from rather than adding to the interest of the plot.

One subsidiary character that proves his worth is the Edgar Allen Poe-like artificial intelligence creation (played by Chris Conner, shown below) who is both the hotelier and the hotel (called The Raven) which he manages. (AI, it seems, has come a very long way over the ensuing eons). Mr. Connor proves lots of witty fun, and the series perks a bit whenever he appears.

Altered Carbon is the creation of a writer/producer named Laeta Kalogridis, and she has hit a number of ever-current hot buttons with her new series -- mostly those that push the sex and violence envelopes. I've reached the middle of episode seven at this point (there are ten nearly hour-long ones in the first season), but I don't think I'll continue. Another two and a half hours is more than I want to spend in a supposedly brand new world that turns out to be too much of the same-old same-old, even as it keeps losing rather than gaining interest because of those endless action sequences, as well as from simply tossing too many characters at us, both from the past and the present (even if they turn out to be incarnations of the same people). Tighter would be better, Ms Kaolgridis. But then, of course, we might not have enough episodes to fill up an entire series.

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BABYLON BERLIN proves that the past can be every bit as fascinating as some imagined future -- if you rely on interesting characters and depth of characterization rather than a bunch of tiresome action scenes. Created by a trio of smart German filmmakers -- Henk Handloegten, Achim von Borries and Tom Tykwer (that last name best-known over here for Run Lola Run, Perfume, Cloud Atlas, 3 as well as the late and somewhat lamented Netflix series Sense8) -- this German cable presentation was co-directed by all three men and co-adapted (from the novel by Volker Kutscher) by them, too.

Set in the late 1920s in Germany's new Weimar Republic, which was already in major trouble, what with severe inflation and unemployment adding to the post-WWI problems of the state. With the right wing already railing against the rise of Communism, and various divisions of it -- Stalinists, Trotskyites and Leninsts -- jockeying for power, the term "hot bed" doesn't begin to describe the Berlin of this time.

Into all this comes our maybe hero Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch, above), a police commissioner from Cologne, ostensibly to help with a local investigation but with an agenda of his own, of which we will eventually learn. Our heroine Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries, below) is doing all she can to keep her family out of complete poverty, which includes a new day job helping the police department and night work as a prostitute.

There's a high-jacked freight train, a printing press run by the Trotsky faction, a massacre by the Stalinists, an underground pornography ring, and a femme fatale blond who dons a number of disguises along the way. How these plots and characters broaden, deepen and coalesce provide Babylon Berlin's engine, which runs surprisingly smoothly and quickly towards its who-knows-what destination.

Performances are first-rate, from leads down to the very small roles, and the look of the series is simply terrific. Every scene proves an absolute pleasure to view and it all looks real, too -- alternately ritzy and outhouse-dirty. I've never been to Germany, let alone the Germany of the 1920s, but all this sure strikes me as real, enticing and revolting

Part noir, part would-be history, part adventure, love story, and lots more, the series is a surprise in so many ways. Tykwer and his cohorts should be very, very proud. As of now TrustMovies is only into part seven of the 13 episodes in season one. But unlike Altered Carbon, this is one series I plan to finish. Both are available now in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere, too) via Netflix streaming.

Andres Veiel's BEUYS explores an oddly famous-yet-far-too-unknown post-WWII German artist

Joseph Beuys (pronounced boys, but with an "s" sound at the end, rather than a "z"), who lived from 1921 through 1986, was a kind of contemporary of Andy Warhol. Both men expanded culture's idea of what art could be, though Warhol -- in TrustMovies' estimation -- did this mostly for purposes of marketing, wealth and fame, while Beuys, whose vast interests and deep understanding ranged from politics, economics and history to the environment, culture, and education (he was, among all else, a very popular teacher), worked more from his desire to better humanity. And just maybe from a certain sense of guilt and reparation: Our boy flew planes for the Nazis during World War II.

In BEUYS, his new documentary about this artist/ philosopher/even (sort of) statesman, filmmaker Andres Veiel, shown at left, doesn't connect all the dots or hammer home a lot of theories. He simply lays out many of the facts of this unusual man's life and work and lets us do the connecting ourselves. It is a fascinating, strange and sometimes sad and moving journey Veiel takes us on, but it will, I think, make Joseph Beuys an art figure you will not easily forget.

Unlike Warhol, who usually said the least he could get away about almost everything (he knew enough to shut up and thus be "mysterious"), Beuys -- much more intellectual -- was not merely willing to but usually insistent upon talking about his work, along with politics, society and just about all else. ("What's the point of art if nothing comes of it?" we hear him ask.)

I don't know that the two artists ever actually met, but at one point rather late in the documentary, we're at some art event/party, at which Beuys (shown above and below) is supposed to appear, and we're told that Warhol was there, too, and was in fact looking to meet his German contemporary.

Making fine use of much archival footage, Veiel shows us Beuys as artist, teacher, leader and even idol, though he does not appear to have wanted much of that last one. He -- and his art -- were also challenging, in a manner that Warhol's never was. Beuys never produced room decor for modern sensibilites, and so was not marketable in the way that Warhol was, which is why he was never, then nor now, embraced by the ludicrous/sleazy art establishment so that his works might finally fetch millions.

And while Beuys was quite funny, always smart, and often charming, he also lacked that smug layer of irony and bad-boy persona possessed by someone like Maurizio Cattelan. Veiel gives us some of the artist's history and his estrangement from his parents, who wanted him to work in a local margarine factory. Still it comes a shock to suddenly see him in Nazi Youth uniform, and then flying for Germany in WWII. (A plane crash ended that segment of his life.)

We're with Beuys during his very depressed period post-art school, when he lived with and was cared for by his mentors, and then at his kind of rebirth as a performance artist, garnering fame and even an American tour. (The coyote moment here is a keeper.) Our boy even ran for election via The Green Party, and when you hear about the bizarre diversity of that party during its initial days and just whom it allowed into it, you will better understand its continuing dysfunction and uselessness.

The film ends with a reminder of what is probably -- no, certainly -- Beuys' greatest and most lasting work of environmental art. This is something that must have seemed then, for it does even now, way ahead of its time. After finishing this fine documentary, I felt a deep sense of gratitude to Herr Veiel and his crew. I'm very happy to have seen and learned so much about Joseph Beuys, and I suspect that -- unless you already knew it all -- you will be, too.

From Kino Lorber, in German with English subtitles (along with some English spoken occasionally) and running 111 minutes, Beuys opens in its U.S. theatrical premiere this Wednesday, January 17, at Film Forum in New York City. As of now there are only a few more playdates scheduled around the country (click here then scroll down to view cities and venues), but since the film is coming via Kino Lorber, there will certainly and eventually be a DVD release.

Blu-ray debut for Luchino Visconti's less-than-masterful but still worthwhile biopic, LUDWIG

TrustMovies has now seen LUDWIG -- Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti's telling of the history, from his crowing through to his death, of the ruler known as "Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria" -- three times. The first was in 1973 during its original theatrical release, the second maybe ten years ago on DVD, and the third with the film's current Blu-ray release to home video via Arrow Academy. On initial viewing, I found the film pretty awful, despite my love for much of Visconti's work. On second viewing it seemed a bit better, and this time it appears, perhaps due to the increased length (nearly four-and-one-half-hours) richer and fuller than any previous incarnation.

One of the highlights of this new Blu-ray disc release is the hour-long documentary about Signore Visconti, shown at right, during which the late actor Vittorio Gassman talks about the director and notes that he was a master of melodrama. Indeed he was, and one of the problems with his telling of the tale of Ludwig is that Visconti foregoes most of that melodrama, which perhaps makes his feature a bit more rigorous but in the end much less compelling.

The filmmaker has, however, coaxed from Helmut Berger what is undoubtedly the finest performance this pretty-boy actor ever gave. Herr Berger is surprisingly good: His road from eccentric to full-out nut-case to sad specimen of abused royalty is played with genuine feeling and an acute sense of the specifics of aging and deterioration.

In this longer, four-and-one-half-hour version, we get some of the detail and precision that was missing from the shorter versions. These include more of the history and politics of the time and of the various relationships between characters. This current and fully restored Ludwig is a fuller, richer version of what came before.

In the supporting cast, Trevor Howard and Silvana Mangano still shine darkly as as the scheming Richard and Cosima Wagner, while Romy Schneider (above) makes princess Elizabeth as difficult and coquettish as ever. As Ludwig’s best and most trusted friend, Helmut Griem (shown at right in final photo) provides the film’s moral ballast, while John Moulder-Brown (below) makes the sweet, boyish and very sad character of Prince Otto come to fine life. 

Among the scenes you’re most likely to remember – from all the versions – will be Ludwig’s wooing of the young actor Kainz in that glorious underground grotto with the swans and that charming little love boat, and Elizabeth’s visit to Ludwig’s most famous castle in the room with all those mirrors. Visually the film is a near-constant treat, with sets and costumes as gloriously garish and/or stunning as you’ll have seen. And then there’s that hunting lodge scene with all the young men perched atop and around the limbs of the giant tree that grows in the middle of the lodge.

There are memorable moments aplenty to make the 257 minutes worthwhile, and if the film must take its place among Visconti’s lesser works, well, it is still a Visconti. From Arrow Academy/Arrow Video and released here in the USA via MVD Entertainment Group, Ludwig arrives on high-definition Blu-ray -- the 4K restoration is from the original film negative -- and standard def DVD in a four-disc set this coming Tuesday, April 11.

Special features include that hour-long doc on the director, a half-hour portrait of actress Silvana Mangano, an interview with screenwriter Suso Cecchi D’Amico, a brand new interview with Helmut Berger (the contrast between then and now is simply staggering), and the film's theatrical trailer. There are several viewing options, as well: in the full theatrical cut or as five individual parts as shown on Italian television, with an English soundtrack with optional English subtitles, and in the original Italian soundtrack with English subtitles.

German history made surprising and palpable in Lars Kraume's THE PEOPLE vs FRITZ BAUER

If you've see as many foreign films and documentaries as I, then you've most likely encountered a lot of movies about or centering around Adolf Eichmann. Not to worry: you'll never have seen one quite like THE PEOPLE vs FRITZ BAUER (Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer), the 2015 film from Lars Kraume just now reaching our shores. Eichmann -- that nasty Nazi nut who helped plan and execute the Holocaust that killed millions of Europeans Jews -- is greatly subsidiary here to the fellow who's front-and-center, the titular Fritz Bauer.

Herr Bauer, (as portrayed with steely fire and intelligence by Burghart Klaußner, above) became a prominent judge and prosecutor in post- WWII Germany, and was actually sent to a concentration camp early in his career for his political views and his fight against the Nazis. Although Bauer was a Jew, he was released from the camp (for reasons we learn toward the movie's end), which no doubt spared him the ovens. Emigrating to Scandinavia, he only returned to Germany after the Allies won the war.

This riveting and very surprising movie takes place in 1957, at a time when Germany was attempting, haltingly and not happily, to come to terms with its Nazi past (recently seen in another, more conventional German film, Labyrinth of Lies), as Bauer dedicates himself to rounding up as many Nazi war criminals as possible, both at home and abroad. He is blocked at every avenue by the powers-that-be (including, of course, Germany, but also the USA) and cannot even trust his own staff -- with, it seems, the exception of one justice-prone helper named Karl Angermann (played by the wonderfully versatile and compelling actor Ronald Zehrfeld (the sleazy Johnny in Phoenix and the kindly André in Barbara), shown above.

As directed and co-written (with Olivier Guez) by Lars Kraume, shown at right, the film is consistently intelligent, very well paced and given just enough style to make our journey an enjoyable and thought-provoking one. A kind of combination judicial procedural and mystery, the tale takes in the Holocaust, Jews, and civil rights of a sort not given much thought or care back in the 1950s -- an era in which everything from left-leaning politics to sexuality was hugely repressed.

TrustMovies cannot vouch for the veracity of the details of the tale told here: Is the character of Angermann created out of whole cloth? I suspect so, yet so convincing and moving is Zehrfeld's portrayal of the man, and so pivotal is Angermann to the idea of justice and sacrifice that the film pushes, that I suspect most audiences will gladly accept the tale as told, as we become engulfed in both the search and capture of Eichmann, as well as the repressed sexuality that finally must burst its seams.

The supporting cast (that's Lilith Strangenberg as an unusual cabaret performer, above) is used mostly for plot purposes, but the actors are all good enough to capture their characters with a few fine stokes. And for all of the time and energy devoted to uncovering that sexuality, what remains at the close of the film is a very strong sense of Herr Bauer as a man committed above all to fighting first the hiding and then the suppression of Germany's Nazi past. He was a hero, and this excellent film -- together with Herr Klaußner's memorable performance -- makes a fine and moving "movie" remembrance.

Beyond those two lead performances, the film lacks the depth for greatness, yet thanks to everything from its production design (Cora Pratz) to its cinematography (Jens Harant), it proves to be an extremely well-made and entertaining look back at an era in which growth and change were slow to begin but inevitable all the same. (Above, left, is Sebastian Blomberg, as one of Bauer's more devious adversaries.)

From Cohen Media Group and running a just-about-perfect 105 minutes, The People vs Fritz Bauer (in German with English subtitles) opens this Friday, September 16, in South Florida at Miami's Tower Theater and the O Cinema in Miami Beach; in Boca Raton at the Regal Shadowood 16, and at the Movies of Delray and Movies of Lake Worth. Simultaneously, the movie will open in another dozen locations. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates with cities and theaters listed.

Note: If you missed its theatrical run, 

the film will be released on Blu-ray and DVD 

come January 10, 2017.