Eichmann, Assassino Número 1

This little known movie deserves to be seen by a wider audience. Werner Klemperer chills the viewer to the bone with his absolutely convincing performance as the architect of the Final Solution.

Made on a low budget, the movie manages to look and feel very authentic in its recreation of the Third Reich, particularly the dreadful sequence at Auschwitz. The fear that that part of the movie made me feel was palpable. Though fairly restrained for its time, the death camp sequence was the stuff of nightmares.

The film is less successful during the last two parts of the story, but Klemperer never lets up in his complete immersion in his role. Highly recommended.

1961's "Operation Eichmann" served as an Allied Artists quickie to cash in on the upcoming trial of Adolf Eichmann (beating Stanley Kramer's big budget "Judgment at Nuremberg" to theaters by 9 months), who was the man in charge of the 'Jewish problem' that eventually led to over 6 million Jews being exterminated at Auschwitz, captured in Argentina in May 1960 (Dr. Josef Mengele was also targeted but proved more elusive). Perhaps his still being fairly unknown accounted for the screenplay's lack of real factual information, the first half most effective in showing Eichmann's ruthless efficiency in conducting mass murder while also punishing prisoners and bribed officials who cause dissention in the ranks. The second half falls down in its lackluster pursuit of the exiled Nazi on the run, moving from Germany to Madrid, Kuwait, and finally Argentina, his own comrades only too eager to be rid of him one way or another. The narrator is a former Auschwitz prisoner who remains a distant outline to the audience, never a fleshed out character they can identify with, unable to compete with Werner Klemperer's dynamic Eichmann, a fully committed performance that produces the surely unintended, lopsided effect of rooting for a brilliant tactician who eluded capture for 15 years (convicted and hanged for his crimes in June 1962). Joining Klemperer in the Nazi ranks is John Banner, both future veterans of HOGAN'S HEROES, a comic depiction of the war that could only have been possible during a decade climaxed by Mel Brooks and his "Springtime for Hitler" number in 1968's "The Producers." The director was outdoor action specialist R.G. Springsteen, whose only qualification for this touchy subject had to be shooting fast on the cheapest sets to strike while the iron was hot. Making his film debut in the unbilled part of Klaus is Eric Braeden, whose best known movie roles in "Colossus: The Forbin Project" and "Escape from the Planet of the Apes" preceded his longtime tenure on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS, which commenced in 1980.

Werner Klemperer plays Adolf Eichman in an Allied Artists production covering his implementation of the "Final Solution", his escape from Allied forces, through his capture by Israeli in Argentina.

Werner Klemperer gives a fine performance in the title role. Someone like me, used to his comic performance in HOGAN'S HEROES -- John Banner, who played "Sergeant Schultz" in that show, plays Rudof Hess -- will be surprised at his performance: fanatic, intelligent, assured of his position and approaching each problem, whether it's how to kill more Jews or how to get to safety, as an intellectual puzzle to be solved: in a word, chilling. It's a portrait of a real-life villain that at first seems too stereotyped to be interesting. Yet Klemperer plays the role with such intelligence that he is fascinating in his portrayal.

Director R.G Springsteen spent most of his career as a solid director of B Westerns. Given a solid cast and a tough subject, he handles the subject well. He is brilliantly aided by the camera of Joseph Biroc, who lights the scenes set in Nazi Germany with a flat, low light that reduces everything to grey. There are no whites or black in Germany, just a greyness that reduces all morality to nullity. Only the later sequences show any light. Yet every scene is shot with a clarity that becomes frightening.

It's a tough movie to watch for an American Jew who grew up in the Post-War era, in a millieu of older relatives and and their friends who had blue numbers tattooed on their arms. It must have been a tough movie to convince the producers to make and to cast; Joseph Schildkraut reportedly turned down $300,000 to take the lead. It's clearly a movie that everyone involved thought had to be made, and made as well as they could.

They succeeded. I don't need to see it again.

This is a brutal, compelling, fascinating study of Nazi Adolf Eichmann (played brilliantly by Werner Klemperer) who had the reprehensible idea of killing Jews in gas chambers and later burning them in ovens. It's done so matter-of-factly that it's more horrifying than if the emotions had been punched home (as most filmmakers would do). Some scenes do pack a wallop: like the Jewish singing over the newsreel footage of the camps being liberated. I like this a heck of a lot more than some of the famous anti-Nazi movies out there. What makes it even more interesting is that they don't feel the need (till the end) to put in a 'nice' character to offset Eichmann's (and the other Nazi's) evil. That makes it more powerful than ever. Sure, there are a few flubs (actors blow lines, etc.) but who cares? It's a great film and deserves to be on DVD.

The most chilling scene is to see the SS characters of Werner Klemperer and John Banner (Four years before "Hogan's Heroes") matter of factly greeting the Jewish arrivals to the death camp. The contrast between the high comedy of their work together later on belied how easy a shift of perspective of the Third Reich could be achieved. I recommend this film just for this extremely chilling scene alone.