The Eichmann Show - Il processo del secolo

Watching this and hearing eye witness accounts from all those people that endured all of those pure evil acts.

You can't help but shed of a tear for all of those survivors and for the victims of these pure evil acts.

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.

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.

This BBC film was based on the actual event that took place in the early 60s, Jerusalem. About televising the trial from a courtroom, which was the first ever documentary series to broadcast. One of a top Nazi officer, Adolf Eichmann, who fled during the end of world war two and settled down in the South America, but brought back with the help of Mossad to Israel to face the war crime charges. The movie won't demonstrate all those in the picture, but it begins with the television production house preparing to shoot the important television event in the history. So the show begins, but a boring first half and the next half is where all the interesting stuffs happen.

In my prediction this movie with the powerful contents would have easily beaten the 'The Imitation Game', if it was produced grandly and commercialised a bit of narration for the worldwide market. The real video clips of the trial were merged into the movie and that gave a strong effect which allows to realise how those actual occurrences has taken place. Actually, there are some uncensored cuts, which were shocking and disturbing. So pretty much like a semi-documentary, but due to the majority of movie clips that shot with actors and in the sets, it feels like a TV movie as it should be.

"While he watches the footage, we'll be watching him. Only then will we see the real Eichmann."

The performances were ordinary, because the screenplay preferred the main event to display, not the characters and their lifestyle. That makes it is not a biographical picture, though both the lead men were pretty impressive. We had seen many world war 2 and related to it movies, but this one was a different. Because of the story was set 15 years after the end of war. Simple movie, no twists, no developments, but reveals the facts from a different dimension. Because of this show, people around the world and filmmakers understood the cruelty of the Nazi prison camp. The movies those came afterwards about this war were inspired by the events that discussed in the courtroom. So if you are planning for this, expect it to be as what the title says, not a bit more or less.

8/10

What to make of THE EICHMANN SHOW? It is necessary to detach fiction from fact. Paul Andrew Williams's production includes large slices of archive footage of the trial, showing the impassive features of Adolf Eichmann as he listened to the testimonies of several witnesses (victims?) of the atrocities he condoned. There are also newsreel records of the concentration camps and their victims, who if they were not already piled up into heaps of dead naked bodies, were left emaciated, mere shadows of what was once live humanity. These sequences are difficult to stomach, even at seventy years' remove; we still wonder how people could behave in such a bestial manner.

The dramatized parts are less effective, to be honest. The action is structured around a conflict between television producer Milton Fruchtman (Martin Freeman) and his director Leo Hurwitz (Anthony LaPaglia). Fruchtman has rescued Hurwitz from a ten-year exile on the Un-American Activities Committee blacklist, but finds him difficult to work with, as Hurwitz seems obsessed with focusing his cameras on Eichmann's face, to the detriment of other events during the lengthy trial. At one point Hurwitz misses a dramatic moment when one witness faints as he tries to recall his harrowing experiences in the death camps. Yet sometimes the conflict between producer and director distracts our attention away from the events at hand, almost as if director Williams were trying in some way to soften the dramatic impact of his piece. Matters are not helped by the regular use of reaction shots on Freeman's and LaPaglia's faces as they respond to one another.

On the other hand Williams does question Fruchtman's morality, as he seems more obsessed with maintaining global ratings rather than broadcasting the material. We are into areas explored in Sidney Lumet's NETWORK (1976) here: are television companies really undertaking public service responsibilities, or are they simply trying to render all events as entertainment to attract high viewing figures? Hurwitz understands the significance of what he directs, but Fruchtman appears not to.

THE EICHMANN SHOW is certainly a powerful piece that needs to be watched, but perhaps the reconstructed material could have been more slickly handled.