The Bunker

What went on in the last days of the Third Reich in Adolf Hitler's bunker? This tv film dares to answer that question. It is a first class work that should be shown more often. Anthony Hopkins is one of our acting icons like Olivier. He brings the same chilling conviction to the role of Adolf Hitler that he brought to Hannibal Lecter in Silence Of The Lambs. He portrays Hitler as a drug addicted shell of a man who was once invincible and he captures him at the end when all was lost. The most frightning scene in the film is where he explodes in rage at Albert Speer when he tells him that the war is lost. Hopkins captures all of the rage and madness that was Adolf Hitler, a demon in human form. It is at this point that I wanted to tip my hat to another fine thespian, Susan Blakely, she plays Eva Braun. She gives a wonderful performance as well. She is a first class actress who has never given a bad performance in anything that she has done and who has never been given the credit due her. They talk in this film about how Albert Speer tried to assassinate Hitler in the final days of the Third Reich. This is a blatant whitewash. Speer was lucky to escape with his life at the Nuremburg trial, he got off with twenty years. People called him "the Nazi who said he was sorry". That is all BS!!!!Speer willingly served Hitler for years! He knew of the concentration camps and approved of it. He was in on it from the very beginning and the son of a bitch should have ended his life with a hangman's noose around his neck! There was a writer who wrote a book about Speer called Albert Speer The Whole Story and I highly recommend it.

A truly good performance here for Anthony Hopkins. I would say as good as the Bruno Ganz's one, back in 2004 for THE FALL. I won't add anything more to the other comments. A real great TV movie.

But just little thing, about characterizations of Adolf Hitler all over the years.

I you closely Watch footage film showing the dictator, the real one, you'll notice that his hair - at least in the last years of his life - did not fall on his forehead, the left side. It was ONLY in the early years, during his rise to power. And curiously, in all films - I must admit although that I don't exactly remember the Bruno Ganz portray - Hitler is shown with his hair falling on the left side of his forehead. I have always wondered why... And I guess I found out. It's only a way to hide the lack of resemblance between the actor playing Hitler and the Führer himself. Because in all memories Hitler had his hair falling on the left side of his forehead. But that just remains a little detail, that DOESN'T NOT point out any flaws in the performances and the quality of this little TV gem.

This is the true story of the infamous Nazi dictator with his historic downfall. The story of Hitler's last days in an underground bunker gives insight to his madness. Here in the midst of his lackeys the dictator played out the final act of his life . It's well played by Anthony Hopkins who won an Emmy prize for his excellent acting. Atmospheric cinematography and gloomy musical score by Brad Fievel. This television movie is finely written by prestigious scriptwriter John Gay and stunningly directed by George Schaeffer. Other adaptation about this historical character are : ¨Hitler(1962)¨ by Stuart Heisler with Richard Basehart, ¨Hitler : The last days(1973)¨ by Ennio De Concini with Alec Guinness and the best is ¨The Downfall¨ by Oliver Hischbiegel with Bruno Ganz.

The picture is correctly based on real events, adding more details , the deeds happened of the following manner : ¨Fuehererbunker¨(Leader's Bunker)is the subterranean headquarter below the Chancellery and its garden in Berlin where Hitler (Anthony Hopkins) spent his last days, from April 20 to 30, 1945. It was constructed during WW2 some 50 feet below the ground. It could be reached through the New Chancellery by descending a stairway from the butler's pantry. There were two levels, On the upper level was a dining passage separating six rooms on each side. At the end of the central passage a curved stair led down to Hitler's own deeper bunker. This area had seventeen rooms , all small, cramped , and uncomfortable : Hitler's suite of three rooms, a map room used for conferences, the dressing room and bedroom of Eva Braun(Susan Blakely), the bedroom of Dr Paul Joseph Goebbles(Cliff Gorman) and wife(Piper Laurie),the rooms of Dr Ludwig, lavatories and bathrooms, an emergency telephone exchange, a drawing room, guardroom, cloakroom and a dog bunker for Hitler's Alsatian bitch named Blondi, with her four puppies. Hitler spent hours before giant war maps, shifting colored pins about to locate units that no longer existed. By this time he was in a state of extreme nervous exhaustion : although only fifty-six, he moved as if he were prematurely senile. His health grew even worse the ministrations of his doctors(Frank Gatliff, Morris Perry). With the exception of Goebbles and Martin Bormann(Michael Londsdale), his secretaries and several others, his lieutenants began to desert him. He denounced Herrmann Goering(David King)for trying to usurp his leadership and Heimrich Himmler (Michael Sheard) for seeking to negotiate with the count Bernadotte and Allied. Albert Speer (Richard Jordan) his minister of Armaments and War Production , refused to carry out his orders for a scorched-earth policy. At last acknowledge defeat, the Fuehrer decided to leave the world in a gesture of Wagnerian self-immolation. In the early hours of April 29, 1945, he married Eva and immediately afterward dictated his last will and political testament, in which he justified his life and work. The next day he retreated into his suite and shot himself while Eva took poison to end her life. In accordance with his instructions, the bodies were dumped into a trough in the Chencellery garden,doused with gasoline and burned. From April 22 to May 1, 1945 , the following were present in the Bunker: Gen Keitel(John Paul), Gen. Hans Guderian(Brain Villa) , Col.Von Below(Julian fellows), Gen. Alfred Jodl(Steedman) , Major Gen. Rattenhuber(David Swift), Lieutenant Genen Fegelein (Terrence Hardiman), Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger , among others.

As far I know there are at least four movies over Hitler at bunker nearby closing of WWII, firstly Alec Guinness's HITLER THE LAST DAYS made in 1973, Anthony Hopkins's THE BUNKER finished in 1981, then came up Derek Jacobi's INSIDE THE THIRD REICH shot in 1983, and the lasted hors-concours Bruno Ganz's DOWNFALL, this low budge TV-movie in question is almost unknown by a large majority of cinephiles, aired in Brazil in 1986 I watched this fine picture wondering myself if some happenings down there were really true, as the mad dog Hitler demanding to Albert Speer a total destruction of Germany, aiming for didn't let stone unturned to allied forces, even it will cost millions of Germans lives, at my point of view very questionable in fact that Paris was took by Germans and when they lost the power of city it didn't happened there, even some sources said otherwise.

Also in the beginning of the movie the American Soldier James O'Donnell entering in Bunker complex trying figures out what's happened there on those 105 days underneath of surface, he already exposes to the audience the follow line "I can't guarantee that what you're about to see is historical truth", so start this statement all coming next should be understood as simple conjecture, instead accurate facts, even though it has many witnesses whom survived that surely could vouch for those facts here and there to assembly the whole overview in order to reach more closest of the truth.

Anthony Hopkins made a reliable Hitler aside some criticism from some, mainly because Mr. Bruno Ganz becomes unbeaten after his remarkable performance in DOWNFALL, thus stayed so hard for other Hitler's contenders, anyway a hard-to-find picture, I'd to appeal to our last hope Youtube which I've found a fine print with English subtitles only, I went back to 1986 briefly on those narrow facilities that was Hitler's shelter.

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 1986 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-Youtube / Rating: 7.5.

As a military historian, I've probably seen every film depicting Hitler and the last days of the Third Reich there is. Some stand out. "Inside the Third Reich" with Derek Jacobi, and "Hitler: The Last Ten Days," with Alec Guinness, to name a few. But as slow and downright melodramatic as this film is, I think that Anthony Hopkins' Hitler is right on the money, A superb acting job with a difficult role. He brings the image of an old man, difficult, palsied, volatile, confused, distant and changeable as a chameleon on an acid trip to life for the screen. It's not hard to play the classic Hitler with fits of rages and dour looks, but there is a lot more to it, and Hopkins pulls it off magnificently. He literally ages before your eyes and the gray pallor of the Bunker's stone walls seems to seep into his skin with every scene. Jordan as Speer is believable, and the somber, dirgelike music pulls out the hopelessness of the last gasp of the Nazi rat pack's future. Accurately done, but Hopkins is the real star here. But as one other user commented, is it really so hard for a Brit or an American to manage a German accent? Do all civilized Germans sound as if they had been raised in coventry? Ach du Lieber!