The House on Garibaldi Street

I've seen a couple of films from Israel like this-they seem to be so fearful of overstating their case that anything other than straight-ahead recording of given reality will detract from authenticity, or believability, or...authoritative presentation of the FACTS. Would it kill them to make a film that's well-written and slickly produced? This looks like a real low-budget job, like something from the History channel, but with unusually good acting. When Isser Harel goes to Ben-Gurion to get the Go-ahead for pulling off the Eichmann snatch, it's shot with one camera, and the script makes sure Harel identifies the prime minister twice for the benefit of the audience(All right all ready, some of us out here know who Ben-Gurion was!). Fortunately, there was enough suspense built in to the actual operation so that the filmmakers couldn't squander ALL of it. In the film's favor, there are enough solid details, decent performances, and convincing location sequences(Heck, all of it seems to have been shot on location in Argentina!) to give it the look, at least, of a documentary, so it could be worse. Five years after this film came out, we got The Little Drummer Girl. I suspect that some sections of this film were models for the later one, so maybe I'm not considering some of the elements that were shown first in Garibaldi Street,and have influenced later films. OK, taking that into consideration, It's worth seeing, but it could have been done better.

A few years ago they made another film for TNT called The Man Who Captured Eichmann where Robert Duvall played the man who said "I will leap into my grave laughing with the knowledge that I sent six million people to their deaths". This version is good as well. Martin Balsam gives a great performance as the head of the team, determined to bring this monster to justice. Topol gives another great performance as an agent who saw his little brother murdered at Auschwitz before his eyes. The best scene is the scene where he interrogates Eichmann and asks him if he ever tried to save anyone. The actor who played Eichmann also did a great job. He is so nerdy and unassuming that you can't believe the monsterous things he did. It shows evil can come in all forms.

The fact that this movie is based on real life events makes it that much more interesting and riveting. I read the book by Isser Harel and the movie does it justice. Some things were changed to speed things up, but the spirit is there. The book is a methodical retelling of the events with a lot of emphasis on the day to day details. I find the movie captured that aspect well. Topol is very intense in his role, but I especially liked Nick Mancuso as an agent who is having a hard time justifying this operation when things are more pressing back in Israel. A great scene takes place when they finally spot Eichmann's house from a distance and both men overcome with emotion, embrace. The long search has finally paid off. The really underrated Martin Balsam plays Harel as a man who appears rather ordinary, but is very much on top of the situation and is determined to succeed in bringing Eichmann back to Israel to stand trial. On the whole a good viewing experience and far superior to the 1996 film THE MAN WHO CAPTURED EICHMANN, which was much too slow and drawn out, and light years ahead of the 1962 OPERATION EICHMANN, which was just plain insulting.