Der Bunker

This film could have been a masterpiece as the cast was great and the story was moving.Peter Sellers gives an excellent performance, in one of his most dramatic roles, but the film was hampered by the bad sound (mostly).What's more, its direction didn't help much and it is sad that great performances of most of the actors, remained, for many years,lost and forgotten.

I guess its grade should be 3 stars.

We're told in the opening credits that this is a true story and only two out of seven survive. We then move into a superb opening sequence of Allied bombing, which takes us neatly into the central story of trapped men.

The cast is excellent and the dark, gloomy and claustrophobic atmosphere is well done but, for me, the characters are insufficiently well-drawn. We are told very little about their background and how they arrived at this place. The sound recording leaves something to be desired and the dialogue is often unclear.

Having said that, this is a film which will stay with you, if you make the substantial effort required to watch it. As Sellers has said. "It's a film for connoisseurs of cinema. A very heavy movie, which could easily put you on a downer". My advice though is to make that effort.

One point of fact: the true story was actually one of seven German soldiers trapped in a food depot in Poland, blocked in, unknowingly, by their retreating comrades who dynamite the entrance.

I consider myself as big a Peter Sellers fan as there is in the world, but this one film had eluded me for years until now...It is one of my favorite of Sellers' performances, and is a very powerful film overall. Highly recommended!

All the actors in this film do a fine job. But honestly, I can't see why other reviewers are going ape over Peter Sellers - are they just surprised that he could be serious? The man was a good actor, not just a clown. But in this film, we don't really know his character - he's just one of seven sorry souls trapped underground in a large storeroom after an Allied raid on the camp where they were held prisoner.

The film has an interesting premise, but trying to cram six years of action into 90 minutes is beyond the ability of the director and writers. It becomes very episodic, starting with a decent amount of set-up, followed by what more or less amounts to a series of death scenes. The story is certainly tragic, but it feels like Cliff's Notes on celluloid. I'm going to try to find the book.

This was probably Stanley Myers's easiest film to score, since it only called for an opening and closing bit with only a couple of instruments. The lack of music throughout underscores the claustrophobic atmosphere of the "dungeon." The sound and picture quality of the DVD available from Netflix (in 2010) leave much to be desired. If you enjoy dark, depressing, hopeless stories, this should be in your top ten.

Clive Rees has made a wonderful "dark" film based on Jean-Paul Clebert's book which describes a WWII story that one can hardly believe, yet true! The film was ahead of its time and the production suffered from financial problems and lack of faith in the film. This caused in cutting down scenes, and finally in never releasing the film, despite the great stars involved in it (Peter Sellers, Jeremy Kemp, Peter Vaughan, Charles Aznavour and others)! Since then, the film has appeared a handful of times in festivals & retrospectives and was released as a VHS in USA (1984). Yet, the VHS version is a vulgarly abridged one where entire scenes are missing... I was happy to help the film be part of a Peter Sellers retrospective in the annual Athens International Film festival (September 2000), held by Sinema magazine. Clive Rees attended the screenings and brought with him the directors' cut version of the film, which runs about 15 more minutes. The result is a totally different film, a poetic creation, a really great drama, with wonderful performances of the participating actors! The audience gave 95,3% positive votes for the film and gave a long, spontaneous applause, which I think was, at last some reward to Clive Rees' unlucky film. If only had the film been released nowadays, I am pretty sure it would have had a completely different chance. Now, at least it deserves a great DVD version and I hope it soon will (but of course it would have to be the director's cut and hopefully a making of documentary). Does anyone listen???