Dresden
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Movie Reviews of Dresden
Movie Review: a look back
Summary: 5 Stars
enjoyed this movie had a chance to see what my wife went through as she was in Dresden during this raid and got out with out a scratch. Thanks BigjackMovie Review: Dresden
Summary: 5 Stars
Sad but exellent. I was in Dresden and can still feel the present of so much wasted lives.
Exellent history movie.
Movie Review: Riveting Movie; Historically Interesting
Summary: 4 Stars
This two-cd set gives you the made for teleivision mini-series. It chronicles the forbidden love between a British bomber pilot and the daughter of a Hospital Director, who is also a nurse and aspiring doctor. It also gives a realistic picture of the bombing of Dresden in World War II, which serves as the context for the story.
Overall, I thought this was a qualtiy movie. The lead actress, Felicitas Woll is very good in her role, and believable in most spots. I thought the movie showed a side of Germany most don't see -- the relative comfort of Aryans in Germany during the War, before the Allies decimated Hitler's Regime, contrasted with the destruction imposed after the bombings.
There are hints at the harsh socialism that Hitler brought to Germany, such as summary executions, public humiliation for race crimes, and anti-Semitism, but it's presented as passing vignettes through the eyes of decent German citizens who turn a blind-eye to it, and are still living their lives relatively normally, in spite of the war.
The bombing scenes are very realistic and believable, and provided good action and drama. They also showed how the people of Germany suffered under the hand of Hitler's ambitions -- a side of the the War you don't often see.
I do have a couple criticisms, however. First, I thought Anna, the main character played by Felicitas Woll did a couple things that were very out of character, and hurt her believability. One was a "skinless" but definitely fully intimate scene between her and the bomber pilot. It happens in an open hospital ward while other patients are sleeping. I thought this was very unprofessional and inconsistent with the hopes and aspirations of the Anna, the main character, to become a doctor like her father and then fiancee.
I also thought Michael Light, the bomber named Robert, gave a very unemotional, and sometimes uncaring-to-the-point-of-stupidty personna. For example, he leaves a hospital at one point and walks straight into the street, past German Officers who ask for ID, and doesn't even bother running until Anna comes after him and starts running too. I don't think he shows much character in the movie -- not the inspiring hero you would want to see, but simply a character caught in some tense circumstances. He also places himself in dangerous situations that no one in their right mind would contemplate, such as appearing at the engagement party of Anna dressed as a German soldier, with the place crawling with high brass from the German military. I found this side of the movie unbelievable.
Also, I thought there wasn't any justification for the apprently passionate love the two shared. There was no real dialogue between them to creating the bonding, no shared experiences that built the relationship, and no conflict in getting to that point. It was as if the relationship was purely superficial.
The movie also explores the ethical side of bombing Dresden. Apparently, there was talk of the bombing being considered a war crime because it targeted apparently civilian areas and didn't hit military and manufacturing installations. It also killed many 10's of thousands of innocent people.
This controversy is alluded to by highlighting the cultural beauty of the city, as well as some conscientious objections from British airmen who were to carry out the bombing order.
Also interesting was a Jewish character who I think was named Simone Goldberg. I think the writers were alluding to Victor Klemperer, author of I Will Bear Witness -- a compendium of his diary as a Jew married to an Aryan woman during the War. He kept a copious journal of his experiences as a Jew and lived in Dresden -- he was also at risk of being sent to a concentration camp -- the story focuses slightly on his experience as well, providing another interesting historical reference.
Overall, a good movie, with a couple character-consistency and plot snafus, but well worth the watch.
Movie Review: Strikingly Similar to Titanic but Better
Summary: 4 Stars
I found myself watching this because I read a very good history of the disaster that befell Dresden at the end of World War II. Titled, Dresden, Tuesday, February 13, 1945, it a deeply moving and very balanced account of the terrible fate that befell that city.
Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945
Anyway, the Dresden miniseries is not a dramatization of the true story of the city. It is more akin to the movie "Titanic" in that it is a love story set against an incredible event. Only the setting is not just the sinking of a ship with huge loss of life, but the fiery destruction of an entire city.
Like "Titanic," there are a lot of unlikely events. It is not too hard to believe that a British bomber pilot might be able to stay on the loose in Nazi Germany for several days (particularly since this one speaks German). Nor is it so unlikely that a German nurse might help him. It's a lot less likely I think that she'd jump into the sack and decide she loved him despite the fact that he was the enemy (and not just a member of another social class like DiCaprio's character in Titanic was). It's even more unlikely that he'd come to her engagement party and the pair would seek to escape but be caught up in the destruction of Dresden.
It seems even more unlikely that this would happen since the nurse and the pilot barely speak to each other throughout all of it.
This being said, I find myself enjoying it far more than Titanic. The acting is better and while the special effects and settings aren't quite as good as Titanic with its huge budget, they are pretty good. And while a schmalzy love story is the focus of the miniseries, you see a lot of things that are historical accurate...like the slaughter of soldiers unlucky enough to be branded deserters by German military police or the carnage Germany suffered as the Third Reich went down to bloody defeat.
I guess I would just say that it's eminently watchable and enjoyable. It's just not good "history" or even historical drama. It's just an occasion to watch two appealing characters (the beautiful nurse and the dashing British pilot) carry out a doomed romance silhouetted against the fires that consumed Dresden.
One final note: if you want to see a movie that Titanic very much so overshadows, but which is far more historically accurate, buy or get from Netflix, "A Night to Remember." Unlike Titanic, that movie is about the doomed ship, the tragedy of the Titanic is the story and not just setting for another.
A Night to Remember - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: "Titanic" on land
Summary: 4 Stars
As a previous reviewer has noted, the plot of this German made-for-television movie is almost identical to the plot of "Titanic": An unlikely romance between two attractive young people is used to add more urgent human interest to a catastrophe of inhuman proportions.
Here, the young people are a German nurse, Anna, and a downed British pilot, Robert. Robert has been shot, and takes shelter in a hospital basement where Anna finds him and nurses him back to health. Anna is engaged to be married to a young doctor who works at the hospital, a match approved of and encouraged by Anna's parents. Anna, however, finds herself repulsed by the increasing barbarity of the Nazi regime, and this repulsion expresses itself as an attraction to the regime's enemy, the handsome British flyer, whom, since he speaks fluent German, Anna wrongly assumes to be a spy.
Anna's father is the chief doctor at the hospital, but he has a dark secret: he is selling a large portion of the hospital's alotment of morphine to the adjutant (assistant) to the Gauleiter, Dresden's top Nazi official. With his huge cache of drug money, Anna's father plans to take the family to Switzerland and purchase a clinic there at which he and Anna's fiance can practice medicine.
As we all know, however, everyone's plans are about to be demolished by the Royal Air Force, along with Dresden itself, on February 13, 1945. The last hour of the movie is taken up depicting the horrific mass bombing and resulting firestorm that killed 25,000 people (almost all civilians) and destroyed most of the historic, old quarter of Dresden.
The bombing of Dresden was one of the most controversial acts of WWII, with some historians deeming it a war crime. Dresden was considered by many as the most beautiful city in Germany, a German Florence. The allies accomplished nothing of military significance comensurate with the loss of life and destruction of cultural landmarks. Churchill later distanced himself from the bombing, writing that, "the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. . . . the destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of allied bombing."