Hôtel Terminus

Along with "The Sorrow and the Pity" (from same director), this is definitely one of the most gripping and informative documentaries you will ever get to see. Focusing of the life of the Klaus Barbie, a ruthless SS interrogator later labeled "The Butcher of Lyons", implicated in over 4000 deaths and the deportation of over 7000 Jews in occupied France, this documentary not only paints a relentless picture of the German occupation in France, but also of the 40-year manhunt of a Nazi war criminal. Employed by the American government after the war for his contacts, and later protected by several other governments eager to use his "talents", Marcel Ophuls exposes a complex web of political intrigue and deceit that spans over decades.

While some spectators seemed to get a bit lost having absolutely no prior knowledge about European war history not involving an American elite team saving the world, just knowing that France was occupied by Germans during WWII and that legendary French Resistance Leader Jean Moulin was one of Barbie's many victims should be enough to follow and understand this must-see documentary just fine!

Although this movie is quite disturbing at times, due to its subject matter, I would go as far as saying I enjoyed watching it. It has left me quite shaken up and I know I will be thinking about this film for a long time. As a lover of languages, I appreciated the jumping back and forth between French, German, and English. Overall, it is very well done. For such a serious topic, it is done with appropriate humor and pauses for reflection. It's intense, but not unbearably so. Because it made me want to learn more, to do research even, I have given Hotel Terminus a 10.

This is a riveting film from start to finish. Marcel Ophuls very personal and wry take on the unfolding horror of Nazi Klaus Barbie's long and unimpeded criminal career exerts a powerful hold. The movie exudes a weird, creepy humor throughout, beginning with its title, the actual name of the French hotel which was the location of Barbie's headquarters in Lyons. "Hotel Terminus" is filled with unforgettably bizarre, real life characters. The voices of Barbie's torture victims and pursuers are given equal time alongside those of his collaborators and defenders. This is an important movie. It stands as one of the best documentaries of the twentieth century and of all time. The film is as much or more about French history as well as American and German. The United States ugly,collaborative role in Barbie's eluding of justice for so many years is revealed in terms like "ratline". The ratline was a transportation corridor set up by the CIA to funnel Nazi war criminals safely out of Europe to South America. This operation functioned with the help of the Vatican.It was fueled by the turn of the political tide after World War Two when fear of Communist takeover took hold over Europe and the West, and the Nazis were seen as specialists in their ability to ferret out Communists. There are numerous subtitles throughout, especially in Part one, but these do not detract from the film's unstoppable momentum. Parts of this true story seem almost unbelievable. Hannah Arendt's observation and comment on the banality of evil is again and again underscored in Ophuls extraordinary film.

Marcel Ophuls' mammoth four-and-one-half hour-long portrait of Gestapo commandant Klaus Barbie, the notorious Butcher of Lyon, is more than just a biography of another Nazi mass murderer. The film also provides a meticulous study of the forces which allowed him to survive for so long, from wartime anti-Semitism to post-war Communist paranoia to a prevailing what's-done-is-done attitude of retroactive amnesia. Ophuls is not so complacent, and makes no apologies for his sometimes confrontational approach to the subject. In his mind those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and the sheer volume of verbal testimony, from enemies and friends alike, is only the director's way of ensuring we neither forgive nor forget. The scope of the film is vast, covering over forty years and spanning several continents, but the scale is intimate: one voice, one detail at a time, making it an exhaustive but hardly exhausting account of one monstrous but admittedly small cog in an evil machine, pieces of which are still well-oiled and operating even today.

Marcel Ophuls's Academy Award-winning "Hôtel Terminus" is primarily a look at Nazi official Klaus Barbie, aka the Butcher of Lyon. But in focusing on Barbie's life - his plain childhood, his torturing of prisoners in France, his escape to South America, and his eventual capture - the movie addresses some points. One is the French authorities' complicity in the Nazis' deeds; much like how the police in Paris were responsible for the Vel d'Hiv roundup, the police in Lyon helped turn over Jews and resistance members to Barbie. Another is how the US helped Barbie avoid justice; his anti-communist views made him a natural ally to the US-backed juntas in Bolivia.

The point is that, much like how the Nazis' actions didn't come solely out of Hitler's evil little mind, Barbie's deeds and escape didn't happen in a vacuum. This was a carefully planned out scheme. All in all, it's a fine documentary, exactly the sort of thing that everyone should get required to see (especially since so many people have suddenly decided to defend Nazis).