Seems like people enjoy it overall as it has that historical significance. But as a doc it has some very serious issues with the storytelling that you can't just plaster over with "it's interesting history".
The Tunnel follows some Italian students in West Berlin who dig a tunnel to East Berlin to rescue their friend from communism. Their friend has a wife, daughter, mother there too, but as he is not German he doesn't want to stay there. Is this really the best and easiest way to rescue a family? What about in the back of a truck? Seems way easier. Well, the doc doesn't really go into that and it seems like there is a good reason for it: they wanted a tunnel on camera and paid for a tunnel. We just see these guys dig the tunnel. Buy 20 ton of wood for it. Try to be quiet. Empty it for water. Seems like such a cool experience. They also made quite a lot of money from NBC being allowed to film them down there so it's basically a job too.
Unfortunately the idea is cool, but it's a bit dry. Everything is black and white only and we have a lot of weird shots. Like coffee breaks and videos of small things. Instead they should have focused on the streets and the depiction of the tunnel on a map. The main issue is that there are zero interviews. No dialogue from anyone besides the narrator who often just says stuff like "digging the tunnel is hard" and "they work tirelessly". You'd figure that because only the narrator is speaking they would have added a ton of details and made it a historical and factual overview. But instead it's pretty basic stuff you may as well have asked the diggers about.
Obviously if you want to see a specific rescue of people from East Berlin this is the doc for that. Alongside all the docs that reused this footage and told the same story. I figure the modern docs that had interviews with the people and added info on their lives are considerably more fun and interesting. This one had dry storytelling.
I think there is enough story here for like 40 min of doc. With no interviews you are bound to be forced to stretch out a ton of random shots of small events which is exactly what is happening here. There is 1 minute just used on playing a few tunnel sounds like footsteps. Why is this there for that long? But of course in 1962 this would have been quite a spectacle anyhow. Today even history podcasts have way more background info let alone huge expensive docs. They also know how to focus on storytelling. Here about 30 min of the doc is just music. At the end of the doc they show us that other people were rescued too. Why was none of this explained? The narrator had 80 min to tell us who they wanted to rescue and why.
