by franzjaeger » Fri Sep 05, 2014 11:13 am, Post My first reaction was I was interested immediately because, as actors say, it’s a challenge. I feel close to them and I have no problem to be a German. A little over two years after the film’s release, the scene, its video and audio intact, began to appear with fresh subtitles—because, yes, it is funny to see the Führer working himself into a lather over an iPod Touch without a camera or the results of a Glasgow East by-election. "Our army is not a winter army. Ganz has Hitler’s voice to near perfection. Decorating his kids. Because a politician was not supposed to be the one who does what he announces to do. Glad it was done in German with subtitles - it lended a sense of authenticity to the setting and, somehow, underlined the moments of rage and madness. I think I am not allowed to say that. When the interview appeared in (Pré)-publications 146 (December 1994), pp. You are out of the human community with that. He is able to... [Ganz mimes pulling up the top of his head]. His anger he had when two of his own friends (who were never really friends) - Himmler and Goering - when they left him, he felt betrayed, because they started with him very early on the streets of Munich. The dying man scene is one of the scenes I find most touching. Once they wanted me to play Einstein and I was deep in preparation but then I stopped, I couldn’t do it. No doubt. Nobody can even explain. However I regret that Wim was treated very harshly at the Cannes Film Festival. You wanted to rule the world with your race, and now you’ve destroyed the bourgeoisie as a class, it went even home to Germany, you destroyed your own people. He must have his own way of working, and I know that with Wings of Desire, for example, there was no final script... BG: Well, even with The American Friend, we didn't really have a script. It's a very well-known image, since German comedians, whenever they don't know what else to do, always end up throwing pies at one another. Did he understand that Nazism was theatre? Soft manners and kissing hands. He was a failure because he had no talent but he was an artist. RR: Especially since he named the circus "Alekan". This is close to being an actor, I got a letter saying, 'Don’t fall into the trap of chewing the carpet. But Marion was not an angel, she was a human being, and I didn't like her monologue. Bad people do not walk around with claws like vicious monsters, even though it might be comforting to think so. Delivering one of his most subtly moving performances in Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire (1987), Ganz plays Damiel, one in a flock of angels who wander the still-divided city of Berlin, listening in on the innermost thoughts of people unaware of their presence. All this arms traffic and weapons smuggling, this Russian mafia story, and then back to Hitler, Heinz Rühmann for 20 minutes, I didn't like that. I imagine that working with Wim Wenders isn't quite the same as working with the others. I did it for myself because I felt really somehow ashamed. I met a lot of them in the region of Los Angeles. How did you get an impersonation of a tremor? But later on, Marion's monologue didn't strike me as very good. Schygulla turned out to be a trooper, calming Ganz’s nerves as sharpshooters carried out their “macabre target practice” on innocent civilians simply trying to cross a street. “In all these roles, Ganz was excellent as the morally literate, cultured man gazing into an abyss of evil or sadness.”. We talked about Rilke, and Paul Klee, and images, and Wim had read a book - a Who's Who of angels, which was an Anglo-Saxon invention, it was amazing in that it showed a great sense of humor and knowledge about the history of the Church and how they treated their angels. You can try to walk as though you could fly, and otherwise, you are yourself, because you can't do anything. And I thought it made a strong contrast with the library space that was so celestial. Sometimes at the end I thought, you are such a stupid guy. So I was glad to shoot this in a studio. . He said it looked too much like some kind of "boxer," that it was excessive. But I don’t accept that. The way Wim works is far away from industrial film. I thought I might discover that Hitler was not really a big man… but the difficulty is to deal with that image, that icon, that kind of myth that Hitler still is for everybody. Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday! The first version of the script would have been a film of about seven hours, and so we had to cut it down. But with me it’s more technical. And here [in London, with the BBC], there is a storyboard, there is a studio, and the work is executed. I don’t know how long - at least the last two or three months. But what does that mean? I accept that from Jewish survivors. His behaviour towards women was not bad. Just ridiculous things. And everyone is going to see that. That’s the one left (pictured left). I had to shoot there for three days. RR: I imagine that an actor can be more or less attached to a particular role. The private conversation was actually with Mannerheim, the Commander of Finnish Forces during World War II. Some sort of humiliation. They are very fair. Why this was is completely hidden. Those ladies are in effect us. That’s not bad. But one day, I brought in from home one of my own hats, and then I said: "Wim, listen. I remember really liking Peter Handke's lines, which wasn't always the case. “We still want to understand not just the historical background of German National Socialism, but also the psychological and temperamental forces that shaped its leader. So the real source was what the witnesses said and a lot of them wrote books later. BG: No, I very much like Henri Alekan just as Wim does. And, when he said that he was not ashamed to arouse pity for Hitler "for fractions of seconds", his cautious confession sent shock waves rippling through the nation. He wrote me a letter saying, "Don’t fall into the trap of chewing the carpet. They did. There is even a German expression: Die Tortenschlacht - the pie-throwing battle. But in the scene with the dying man, I liked the lines. Maybe. Two weeks later, it was over. I was amazed. That was his quality. Simply enter your email address in the box below, 'I was scared just for two or three seconds. Where did you find that? RR: One final question. Oh, what a mess!" “How they come up with these ideas!”, The meme tends to overshadow the daring brilliance of Ganz’s performance. I have a tremendous respect for him, because he is a personal friend and a great writer. As very often he is quite stupid. "Next to the Goebbelses and to Hitler, many of the others don't look too bad," objected a typical review in The New York Times. So I started to become like them. And that was the first time I said, "Jesus Christ, you look like Hitler." “Having played him, I cannot claim to understand Hitler,” he told the Guardian in 2005. The film is not about this though. Downfall film director said that "evil comes with a smiling face" as Bruno Ganz talks about the problems of playing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his final days, On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler shot himself dead in his underground bunker beneath the Chancellery in Berlin. But he is not shouting there. For her part, Schygulla couldn’t relate to the methods Ganz had developed during his Schaubühne days. If they say, "Oh, you are an angel," it's like a miracle. I liked the pizza business and my role, which is funny in the film, but I'm not really happy with the film as a whole. Because that means much more than people saying, "You are a very good actor," or "I love your work." I don’t know what evil itself is. We were about 20. And do you recall your initial reaction? It strikes me as a stupid thing to say. Ultimately, I could not get to the heart of Hitler because there was none.”. And people in planes said: "Ah, no need to be afraid, because with you here, nothing can happen. I was very ashamed and I felt terrible. I was lucky or my producer was smart. But neither Ganz nor Schygulla wanted to give up a role in Circle of Deceit. He really got very upset and I could understand that. He is convincing enough there with his irony as he thinks and so he keeps his voice on a level you are not scared of. Cambodia Expats Online: Forum | News | Information | Blog, Cambodia's Most Popular Expat Community Forums: Breaking News | Blogs | Nightlife | Khmer Culture | Information | Living, Working & Moving to Cambodia, Post Just the term is funny. That’s not nothing. He was an artist. With that slightly weird checked jacket. It is, however, doubtful whether audiences will whoop and whistle at the sight of it. No wonder the country’s most expensive film since Das Boot plunged the nation into an orgy of Teutonic agonising over the propriety of putting the human face of Hitler on the big screen.