The Gleiwitz Case
by Gerhard Klein
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Georg Leopold, Hannjo Hasse, Herwart Grosse, Hilmar Thate, Wolfgang KalweitDirector: Gerhard Klein
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: German (Original Language), Unknown; English (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 70 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-04-18
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Movie Reviews of The Gleiwitz Case
Movie Review: A brilliant Riefenstahl parody
Summary: 5 Stars
The historical inspiration for "The Gleiwitz Case" is the phony Polish raid on a German radio station staged by the Nazis to justify the invasion of Poland. I don't know how accurate to the actual events the film is, and to be honest I don't much care. Because the genuine value of "Gleiwitz" is its success in brilliantly satirizing the nonsensical Volk und Vaterland cinematic glorification of Nazism directed by Leni Riefenstahl.
Produced by East Germany's state-controlled DEFA, "Gleiwitz" is presented in a documentary-style format. The theme music is tinny, carnivalesque, almost cartoonish, letting the viewer know right away that a parody is going on. The images of goose-stepping, fencing, saluting, perfectly uniformed Nazis gives the impression of a huge, impersonally precise machine: the sort of thing that Riefenstahl valorized comes across here as both chilling and slightly comical.
The cinematography is really quite clever: a sense of frenetic build-up to war is expressed in a train scene in which Germans gobble food as the German army will soon gobble up Poland. A bar scene of men crooning a drinking song blends into the rhymic clanging of military transport railway cars. There's a wonderful scene in which rifles are held by soldiers in such a way as to make them look like erect phalluses--subtle, not overdone, but definitely noticeable to the quick eye. And the flashback scenes of the protagonist Alfred Naujocks' earlier years give us the life history of a murderer that, again, effectively combines the chilling with the comical.
"The Gleiwitz Case" is as effective an anti-war film as I've ever seen. Heartily recommended.
Summary of The Gleiwitz Case
Considered one of the most modern and experimental films in DEFA's history, the eccentric THE GLEIWITZ CASE (DER FALL GLEIWITZ) is the blunt, confrontational, minutely detailed fictional recreation of the infamous Gleiwitz event at the beginning of World War II, told in a highly stylized visual manner that recalls Leni Riefenstahl's 'The Triumph of the Will'.THE GLEIWITZ CASE offers an almost documentary account of the events surrounding the Nazi's staged attack on a radio transmitter near Gleiwitz on the German-Polish border on August 31st, 1939. Under the command of SS officer Helmut Naujocks, six ethnic Germans living in Poland are selected and prepared for the secret operation--to take over the station and create the appearance of an assault, complete with radio message by the alleged Polish insurgents. One dead concentration camp inmate in Polish uniform is left behind as proof of the attack. This little-known "incident" gave the Third Reich a reason for invading Poland and, in so doing, starting World War II.
THE GLEIWITZ CASE accomplishes the reconstruction of an event as well as the deconstruction of fascist film imagery by using a style that recalls the convergence of aesthetics and politics under fascism. The chilling beauty of the images and the compulsively linear narrative offer disturbing insights into the collective mentality of the protagonists. The carefully composed shots of ordinary settings and locations, the hard lighting and low camera angles, and geometrical configurations are deliberate references to the techniques used by Leni Riefenstahl in 'Triumph of the Will'.
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