Eichmann Show

An obviously monumental time in TV and more importantly for the stories of those subjected to the war crimes The Eichmann Show displays, this film presents the documentary production as interesting if not entirely compelling. The investigation into someone's humanity is well studied, yet it doesn't allow the film to particularly go anyway, although it's opportunity to do so is limited.

The use of real footage from the time is well spliced into dramatic reenactments, and many scenes of concentration camps are incredibly difficult to watch adding to the importance of certain scenes. Overall it is a good representation of the case, however probably doesn't fully do the enormity of the context justice, camera angles just don't feel important given the context.

This is a brilliant BBC production about the trial of Otto Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi who escaped to Argentina after the Second World War, and who was responsible for facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in German-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II.

The film is superbly cast, and tells the story from the perspective of the production crew responsible for televising the trial in Jerusalem in 1961. We get to see the logistics involved in bringing the trial to TV screens around the world, and the problems the production team face along the way.

Of course the biggest story in a production like this is the horror of the holocaust, and how a man can be responsible for such evil. The Eichmann Show is yet another reminder of this horror, and is well worth a couple of hours of anyones time.

8/10

Leo Hurwitz dialogue was horrendous, he constantly complained or found fault with everything. I had to stop watching after a while.Pity its a great movie and subject matter.

One of my earliest memories is the Eichmann trial. Watching the film I now realise that it started on my sixth birthday. We talked about it in the playground built up an image of a monster. In London at the time we were surrounded by bomb sites and so his capture and trial was big news.

I remember vividly seeing the filmed news reports the film depicts and the shock of how ordinary this monster looked.

A good film and worth watching.

The Eichmann Show is a documentary drama about the televising of Adolf Eichmann's 1961 trial in Israel after he was captured in Argentina. Eichmann was regarded as one of the architect's of the final reckoning which led to the deaths of countless Jews and others.

Anthony LaPaglia is the television director Leo Hurwitz and Martin Freeman is the producer Milton Fruchtman who set about televising what became known at the time as the 'trial of the century' as it was broadcast in 37 countries over four months. It was maybe the first time witnesses described the horrors of the concentration camp to a wider public. As the hotelier, Mrs Landau (Rebecca Front) informs her guest, many people simply could not believe such events had occurred during the second world war.

Although Fruchtman had been given permission to film the trial by the authorities the Judges were uneasy as they felt the television cameras and the noise they made would be a distraction and they set about to hide the cameras or disguise them so they would be intrusive.

The film inter-cuts the black and white real trial footage. The historic documentary footage of the victims of concentration camps is rather distressing. Eichmann is impassive throughout the trial as the footage is shown and witnesses testimony is given.

Its a worthy piece but the drama was rather bland. Of course the historic footage is shocking and sickening, the dramatised parts in contrast failed to enthral me. I felt a better constructed documentary would had told the story better with the historical footage.