The Good German
Encyclopedia
The Good German is a 2006
feature film adaptation of the novel by Joseph Kanon
. It was directed by Steven Soderbergh
, and stars George Clooney
, Cate Blanchett
, and Tobey Maguire
. Set in Berlin
following the Allied
victory over the Nazis, it begins as a murder mystery, but weaves in elements involving the American postwar employment of Nazi
rocket scientists
in Operation Paperclip
.
The film was shot in black-and-white
and is designed to imitate the appearance of film noir
from the 1940s, although it also includes material – such as sex scenes and swearing – that would have been prohibited by the Production Code. Its poster
is a homage
to the poster for the classic film Casablanca
(also a Warner Bros.
film), as is the closing scene at an airport. The DVD release presents the film in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio
which declined in use from about 1953, though the theatrical release used the slightly more modern but still unusual 1.66:1 ratio.
), an American war correspondent
for Stars And Stripes
, returns to Berlin
during the Potsdam negotiations
between the Allied powers
after World War II was over in Europe
(May 1945) but before hostilities ended in Asia
(August 1945). Jacob witnesses his murdered driver, a black-marketeering American soldier named Tully (Tobey Maguire
), being fished from a river eddy, suspiciously adjacent to the Potsdam conference grounds. The corpse is discovered to be in possession of 50,000 German reichsmark
s — which are later revealed to have been printed by the U.S occupying forces.
Geismar becomes entwined in both the mystery of his murdered driver and the clandestine search by both Soviet and American
forces for the missing German Emil Brandt (the title character, played by Christian Oliver
). He becomes more involved in both mysteries as his investigation intersects with his search for Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett
), a German Jew — and Emil's wife — with whom Geismar had been in a relationship prior to the war. Lena has survived the Holocaust by doing "what she had to" to stay alive — early in the film this is assumed to be prostitution
, but Lena, in reality, holds a darker secret of complicity and guilt.
In the film, Emil Brandt is a former SS officer who had been the secretary of Franz Bettmann, Chief Production Engineer of the V-2 rocket
at concentration camp
Mittelbau-Dora
/Mittelwerk
. (Bettmann is only a minor character in the film; he appears to be based on the real Arthur Rudolph
.) The Soviets, the Americans, and the British
all try to get hold of Emil Brandt, for different reasons. The Americans have already detained Bettmann in a safehouse and intend to transport him to the U.S. as part of their Operation Overcast/Paperclip
to have him work on their own rocket program (cf. Wernher von Braun
). In the film, they are fully aware of Bettmann's role at Camp Dora and know about the slave labor used in the V-2 program, but want to cover up his involvement (because they could not lawfully employ a known war criminal), which includes eliminating Emil Brandt, whose testimony or written notes would prevent their whitewashing of Bettmann.
Geismar, in his attempts to get his former lover, Lena, out of Berlin, gets more and more involved in the search for Emil Brandt. At one point, Lena gives Emil's notes on Camp Dora to Geismar. When Lena and Geismar try to hand Emil Brandt over to the American prosecutor charged with handling war crimes cases, they are intercepted by the American authorities who want to protect Bettmann, and Brandt is murdered. But Geismar still has Brandt's notebooks, which he now trades in to the war crimes investigators of the U.S. Army (who have turned out to be in league with the other American authorities - the ones who want to keep that evidence confidential to whitewash Bettmann) in exchange for a (a denazification
document) and a visa
for Lena, such that she can leave Germany.
Through a minor character of a Jewish owner of a pawn shop who survived the Holocaust with his legs amputated, the film refers to the Nazi human experimentation
, in particular to bone transplantation experiments as they were done at the Ravensbrück concentration camp
.
The plot of the film differs significantly from that of the book, though the murder mystery and the themes of guilt and survival are the same.
The film imitates the appearance of films from Classical Hollywood studio-era
. Most of the scenes were shot on soundstages and on Universal Studios
' backlot
, and were then edited with archival Russian footage and archived film from Corbis
. Although the finished film is in black and white, it was shot in color because this allowed the use of faster film than available black-and-white film stocks, and afforded the ability to use 'green screen'
techniques. The color was then reduced in post-production through the use of a digital intermediate
to a grainier black and white, in order to blend with the carefully restored archival material.
Unlike modern films that are shot with significant "coverage"
and mostly with close-up
s or two shot
s, The Good German was shot with 1940s era wide angle lenses, such as a 32 mm, with deep focus
, "strongly accented camera angles" and entire scenes staged. Director Steven Soderbergh
says:
The set lighting was entirely incandescent
and the audio was recorded on a boom mike instead of the more modern body mike
s or ADR. These decisions, combined with the limited coverage, allowed the rough cut to be produced in two days after wrapping up filming.
, 32 percent of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 139 reviews. On Metacritic
, the film had an average score of 49 out of 100, based on 34 reviews.
While Peter Travers
of Rolling Stone
greatly appreciated the film, the film received generally mixed reviews, with many critics complaining the film was too reliant on style and did not concentrate on the building of characters.
2006 in film
- Highest-grossing films :Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top-grossing films that were first released in the United States in 2006...
feature film adaptation of the novel by Joseph Kanon
Joseph Kanon
Joseph Kanon is an American author, best known for thriller and spy novels set in the period immediately after World War II.-Biography:...
. It was directed by Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
, and stars George Clooney
George Clooney
George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award...
, Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett
Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett is an Australian actress. She came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 biopic film Elizabeth, for which she won British Academy of Film and Television Arts and Golden Globe Awards, and earned her first Academy Award...
, and Tobey Maguire
Tobey Maguire
Tobias Vincent "Tobey" Maguire is an American actor and producer. He began his career in the 1980s, and has achieved his greatest fame for his role as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films.-Early life:...
. Set in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
following the Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
victory over the Nazis, it begins as a murder mystery, but weaves in elements involving the American postwar employment of Nazi
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
rocket scientists
Aerospace engineering
Aerospace engineering is the primary branch of engineering concerned with the design, construction and science of aircraft and spacecraft. It is divided into two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering...
in Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II...
.
The film was shot in black-and-white
Black-and-white
Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
and is designed to imitate the appearance of film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
from the 1940s, although it also includes material – such as sex scenes and swearing – that would have been prohibited by the Production Code. Its poster
Movie poster
A movie poster is a poster used to advertise a film. Studios often print several posters that vary in size and content for various domestic and international markets. They normally contain an image with text. Today's posters often feature photographs of the main actors. Prior to the 1990s,...
is a homage
Homage
Homage is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic....
to the poster for the classic film Casablanca
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...
(also a Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
film), as is the closing scene at an airport. The DVD release presents the film in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio
Aspect ratio (image)
The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of the width of the image to its height, expressed as two numbers separated by a colon. That is, for an x:y aspect ratio, no matter how big or small the image is, if the width is divided into x units of equal length and the height is measured using this...
which declined in use from about 1953, though the theatrical release used the slightly more modern but still unusual 1.66:1 ratio.
Title and theme
The film's title alludes to the notion of "a good German", one who ostensibly was not to blame for allowing Hitler to persecute the Jews and others, and who did not see the Holocaust as it occurred before his eyes. Thematically, the film centers on guilt, and whether it is possible to survive the atrocities while being unaware of and not complicit in them.Plot
Jacob "Jake" Geismar (George ClooneyGeorge Clooney
George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award...
), an American war correspondent
War correspondent
A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. In the 19th century they were also called Special Correspondents.-Methods:...
for Stars And Stripes
Stars and Stripes (newspaper)
Stars and Stripes is a news source that operates from inside the United States Department of Defense but is editorially separate from it. The First Amendment protection which Stars and Stripes enjoys is safeguarded by Congress to whom an independent ombudsman, who serves the readers' interests,...
, returns to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
during the Potsdam negotiations
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States...
between the Allied powers
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
after World War II was over in Europe
Victory in Europe Day
Victory in Europe Day commemorates 8 May 1945 , the date when the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The formal surrender of the occupying German forces in the Channel Islands was not...
(May 1945) but before hostilities ended in Asia
Victory over Japan Day
Victory over Japan Day is a name chosen for the day on which the Surrender of Japan occurred, effectively ending World War II, and subsequent anniversaries of that event...
(August 1945). Jacob witnesses his murdered driver, a black-marketeering American soldier named Tully (Tobey Maguire
Tobey Maguire
Tobias Vincent "Tobey" Maguire is an American actor and producer. He began his career in the 1980s, and has achieved his greatest fame for his role as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films.-Early life:...
), being fished from a river eddy, suspiciously adjacent to the Potsdam conference grounds. The corpse is discovered to be in possession of 50,000 German reichsmark
German reichsmark
The Reichsmark was the currency in Germany from 1924 until June 20, 1948. The Reichsmark was subdivided into 100 Reichspfennig.-History:...
s — which are later revealed to have been printed by the U.S occupying forces.
Geismar becomes entwined in both the mystery of his murdered driver and the clandestine search by both Soviet and American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
forces for the missing German Emil Brandt (the title character, played by Christian Oliver
Christian Oliver
Christian Oliver is a German actor.Oliver was born in Celle and grew up in Frankfurt am Main. He relocated to the US to work as a model and subsequently take acting lessons in New York and Los Angeles. In 2003 and 2004, Christian Oliver co-starred in 28 episodes of the German action TV series...
). He becomes more involved in both mysteries as his investigation intersects with his search for Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett
Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett is an Australian actress. She came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 biopic film Elizabeth, for which she won British Academy of Film and Television Arts and Golden Globe Awards, and earned her first Academy Award...
), a German Jew — and Emil's wife — with whom Geismar had been in a relationship prior to the war. Lena has survived the Holocaust by doing "what she had to" to stay alive — early in the film this is assumed to be prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, but Lena, in reality, holds a darker secret of complicity and guilt.
In the film, Emil Brandt is a former SS officer who had been the secretary of Franz Bettmann, Chief Production Engineer of the V-2 rocket
V-2 rocket
The V-2 rocket , technical name Aggregat-4 , was a ballistic missile that was developed at the beginning of the Second World War in Germany, specifically targeted at London and later Antwerp. The liquid-propellant rocket was the world's first long-range combat-ballistic missile and first known...
at concentration camp
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
Mittelbau-Dora
Mittelbau-Dora
Mittelbau-Dora was a Nazi Germany labour camp that provided workers for the Mittelwerk V-2 rocket factory in the Kohnstein, situated near Nordhausen, Germany....
/Mittelwerk
Mittelwerk
Central Works was a World War II factory that used Mittelbau-Dora forced labor in 2 main tunnels in the Kohnstein. The underground facility produced V-2 rockets, V-1 flying bombs, and other Nazi weapons.-Mittelwerk GmbH:...
. (Bettmann is only a minor character in the film; he appears to be based on the real Arthur Rudolph
Arthur Rudolph
Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph was a German rocket engineer and member of the Nazi party who played a key role in the development of the V-2 rocket. After World War II he was brought to the United States, subsequently becoming a pioneer of the United States space program. He worked for the U.S...
.) The Soviets, the Americans, and the British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
all try to get hold of Emil Brandt, for different reasons. The Americans have already detained Bettmann in a safehouse and intend to transport him to the U.S. as part of their Operation Overcast/Paperclip
Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II...
to have him work on their own rocket program (cf. Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun was a German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and in the United States after that.A former member of the Nazi party,...
). In the film, they are fully aware of Bettmann's role at Camp Dora and know about the slave labor used in the V-2 program, but want to cover up his involvement (because they could not lawfully employ a known war criminal), which includes eliminating Emil Brandt, whose testimony or written notes would prevent their whitewashing of Bettmann.
Geismar, in his attempts to get his former lover, Lena, out of Berlin, gets more and more involved in the search for Emil Brandt. At one point, Lena gives Emil's notes on Camp Dora to Geismar. When Lena and Geismar try to hand Emil Brandt over to the American prosecutor charged with handling war crimes cases, they are intercepted by the American authorities who want to protect Bettmann, and Brandt is murdered. But Geismar still has Brandt's notebooks, which he now trades in to the war crimes investigators of the U.S. Army (who have turned out to be in league with the other American authorities - the ones who want to keep that evidence confidential to whitewash Bettmann) in exchange for a (a denazification
Denazification
Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of the National Socialist ideology. It was carried out specifically by removing those involved from positions of influence and by disbanding or rendering...
document) and a visa
Visa (document)
A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...
for Lena, such that she can leave Germany.
Through a minor character of a Jewish owner of a pawn shop who survived the Holocaust with his legs amputated, the film refers to the Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners by the Nazi German regime in its concentration camps mainly in the early 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Prisoners were coerced into participating: they did not willingly volunteer and there...
, in particular to bone transplantation experiments as they were done at the Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück was a notorious women's concentration camp during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück ....
.
The plot of the film differs significantly from that of the book, though the murder mystery and the themes of guilt and survival are the same.
Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| George Clooney George Clooney George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award... |
Captain Jacob "Jake" Geismar |
| Cate Blanchett Cate Blanchett Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett is an Australian actress. She came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 biopic film Elizabeth, for which she won British Academy of Film and Television Arts and Golden Globe Awards, and earned her first Academy Award... |
Lena Brandt |
| Tobey Maguire Tobey Maguire Tobias Vincent "Tobey" Maguire is an American actor and producer. He began his career in the 1980s, and has achieved his greatest fame for his role as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films.-Early life:... |
Corporal Patrick Tully |
| Beau Bridges Beau Bridges Lloyd Vernet "Beau" Bridges III is an American actor and director.- Early life :Bridges was born in Los Angeles, the son of actor Lloyd Bridges and his college sweetheart, Dorothy Bridges . He was nicknamed "Beau" by his mother and father after Ashley Wilkes's son in Gone with the Wind, the book... |
Colonel Muller |
| Tony Curran Tony Curran Anthony "Tony" Curran is a Scottish actor.Curran was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He is an alumnus of Holyrood Secondary School and is a graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.... |
Danny |
| Leland Orser Leland Orser Leland Jones Orser is an American film and television actor. Orser is a character actor, whose career has included playing a number of deranged, psychotic, and degenerate characters. Orser has appeared in small roles in a wide variety of films and television shows, including Chief of Surgery Dr... |
Captain Bernie Teitel |
| Jack Thompson Jack Thompson (actor) Jack Thompson, AM is an Australian actor and one of the major figures of Australian cinema. He was educated at University of Queensland, before embarking on his acting career. In 2002, he was made an honorary member of the Australian Cinematographers Society... |
Congressman Breimer |
| Robin Weigert Robin Weigert Robin Weigert is an American television and film actress.Weigert was born in Washington, D.C. of Jewish heritage. After graduating from Brandeis University in 1991, Weigert attended New York University, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in the acting program at the Tisch School of the Arts... |
Hannelore |
| Ravil Isyanov | General Sikorsky |
| Dave Power | Lieutenant Hasso Schaeffer |
| Christian Oliver Christian Oliver Christian Oliver is a German actor.Oliver was born in Celle and grew up in Frankfurt am Main. He relocated to the US to work as a model and subsequently take acting lessons in New York and Los Angeles. In 2003 and 2004, Christian Oliver co-starred in 28 episodes of the German action TV series... |
Emil Brandt |
Production
Studio system
The studio system was a means of film production and distribution dominant in Hollywood from the early 1920s through the early 1960s. The term studio system refers to the practice of large motion picture studios producing movies primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under...
. Most of the scenes were shot on soundstages and on Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
' backlot
Backlot
A backlot is an area behind or adjoining a movie studio, containing permanent exterior buildings for outdoor scenes in filmmaking or television productions, or space for temporary set construction....
, and were then edited with archival Russian footage and archived film from Corbis
Corbis
Corbis Corporation is an American company, based in Seattle, Washington, that licenses the rights to photographs, footage and other visual media...
. Although the finished film is in black and white, it was shot in color because this allowed the use of faster film than available black-and-white film stocks, and afforded the ability to use 'green screen'
Chroma key
Chroma key compositing is a technique for compositing two images together. A color range in the top layer is made transparent, revealing another image behind. The chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production...
techniques. The color was then reduced in post-production through the use of a digital intermediate
Digital intermediate
Digital intermediate is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics. It often replaces or augments the photochemical timing process and is usually the final creative adjustment to a movie...
to a grainier black and white, in order to blend with the carefully restored archival material.
Unlike modern films that are shot with significant "coverage"
Camera coverage
Camera coverage, in filmmaking and video production, is the amount of footage shot and different camera angles used to capture a scene. When in the post-production process, the more camera coverage means that there is more footage for the film editor to work with in assembling the final cut.-See...
and mostly with close-up
Close-up
In filmmaking, television production, still photography and the comic strip medium a close-up tightly frames a person or an object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots . Close-ups display the most detail, but they do not include the broader scene...
s or two shot
Two shot
A Two shot is a type of shot employed in the film industry in which the frame encompasses a view of two people . The subjects do not have to be next to each other, and there are many common two-shots which have one subject in the foreground and the other subject in the background.The shots are also...
s, The Good German was shot with 1940s era wide angle lenses, such as a 32 mm, with deep focus
Deep focus
Deep focus is a photographic and cinematographic technique using a large depth of field. Depth of field is the front-to-back range of focus in an image — that is, how much of it appears sharp and clear. Consequently, in deep focus the foreground, middle-ground and background are all in focus...
, "strongly accented camera angles" and entire scenes staged. Director Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
says:
that kind of staging is a lost art, which is too bad. The reason they no longer work that way is because it means making choices, real choices, and sticking to them. (...) That's not what people do now. They want all the options they can get in the editing room.
The set lighting was entirely incandescent
Incandescent light bulb
The incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe makes light by heating a metal filament wire to a high temperature until it glows. The hot filament is protected from air by a glass bulb that is filled with inert gas or evacuated. In a halogen lamp, a chemical process...
and the audio was recorded on a boom mike instead of the more modern body mike
Lavalier microphone
A lavalier microphone or lavalier is a small electret or dynamic microphone used for television, theatre, and public speaking applications, in order to allow hands-free operation. They are most commonly provided with small clips for attaching to collars, ties, or other clothing...
s or ADR. These decisions, combined with the limited coverage, allowed the rough cut to be produced in two days after wrapping up filming.
Critical reception
On Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, 32 percent of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 139 reviews. On Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, the film had an average score of 49 out of 100, based on 34 reviews.
While Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Peter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
greatly appreciated the film, the film received generally mixed reviews, with many critics complaining the film was too reliant on style and did not concentrate on the building of characters.
Box office
The film made $US76,817 on its opening weekend in only 5 US theaters. It grossed $US5,914,908, of which $US1,308,696 was from the USA and so making it a box office disappointment due to its $US32 million dollar budget.Nominations
- Academy Award for Best Original ScoreAcademy Award for Original Music ScoreThe Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
(Thomas NewmanThomas NewmanThomas Montgomery Newman is an American composer and conductor, best known for his many film scores. He is one of the more respected and recognized composers for modern film and has scored over fifty feature films in a career which spans nearly three decades.Newman has received a total of ten...
) - Berlin International Film FestivalBerlin International Film FestivalThe Berlin International Film Festival , also called the Berlinale, is one of the world's leading film festivals and most reputable media events. It is held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in West Berlin in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978...
: Golden BearGolden BearAccording to legend, the Golden Bear was a large golden Ursus arctos. Members of the Ursus arctos species can reach masses of . The Grizzly Bear and the Kodiak Bear are North American subspecies of the Brown Bear....
(Steven SoderberghSteven SoderberghSteven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
) - Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards: Best Composer (Thomas NewmanThomas NewmanThomas Montgomery Newman is an American composer and conductor, best known for his many film scores. He is one of the more respected and recognized composers for modern film and has scored over fifty feature films in a career which spans nearly three decades.Newman has received a total of ten...
)
External links
- Official website
- Filmscholar David BordwellDavid BordwellDavid Bordwell is an American film theorist and film historian. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1974, he has written more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including Narration in the Fiction Film , Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema , Making Meaning , and On the...
on studio films and what they might mean for The Good German: Not Back to the Future, but Ahead to the Past & Cutting remarks: On THE GOOD GERMAN, Classical Style, and the Police Tactical Unit