The Eichmann Show (2015)

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Apart from the flagrantly bad acting of Martin Freeman, whom I have never seen before and hope never to see again, this is an enormously impressive film which tackles a difficult subject well. Excellently done was the blending of the real 1961 trial footage with modern reconstruction, something that frequently goes awry. Here the back-&-forth switching seems odd at first but grows on the viewer, involving us even more closely in the events on screen. Also very clever was the use of English voice-over to all the trial footage, an authentic-sounding simultaneous interpreter, flubs and all, echoing over earphones. Good idea! One did wish, however, that the original languages were occasionally allowed to leak through in voice-over pauses, to give more authenticity to the speakers: atrocity witnesses, prosecutors, judges and also the defendant himself. (In this film it is hard to tell that the trial was conducted almost entirely in German, which is a fact worth knowing; with some witnesses speaking in French, a language utterly unsuited to such descriptions and all the more harrowing for that reason.) Most eyes should be turned away from the camp archive footage, but thankfully there is not too much of it and one is always forewarned. The same cannot be said about watching the defendant himself, which is upsetting. But the Eichmann footage used here was also a choice by the film-makers, to render him less than the "human" Hurwitz starts out by assuming he is.The twisted, vicious face we see continually on display was not, however, the only face available. I had the privilege many years ago of seeing a documentary of the trial, at an art cinema in Tokyo, with English subs. It was very long and composed entirely of trial footage deftly edited: no narration, no music, no inter-titles. (I have tried in vain to locate it on this site; does anyone know the film I mean? I saw it in 97? 98? but it may have been made earlier,in Canada? US? UK?) What I remember about Eichmann was his many faces in the dock. Often a very nervous, ratty man with huge stacks of paper and notepads, which he shuffled through constantly, taking notes and looking for all the world like a perfectly sane accountant on trial for fiddling the books. This aspect was not shown to us in "The Eichmann Show", which is a pity. Not for any kind of sympathy, God knows, but to scare the living daylights out of us by what Arendt called the "banality of evil." In many ways this banal accountant type was more horrible than the leering, sneering, unchanging Satanic face we constantly see in this film... because it did not seem to occur to the accountant that he had done anything seriously wrong. But the film-makers here were wedded to a certain view, and did not want to complicate it.One understands that such an overwhelming event needs simplifying for the movie-going masses, and this film has done a fine job overall. But as I watched it myself, I had the longer documentary in mind to help me come to grips with it. If "help" is the right word.

The movie was completely riveting. As one previous review stated 'you would have to be dead' not to be moved by this subject. I have been watching the Eichmann trail and all I see is a man in a glass booth day after day with no emotion. How is this possible? He looks like a quiet mild mannered man without a mean bone in his body. The movie shows the frustration involved as the cameras constantly move back to Eichmann's face- and there is no reaction. the twitch, the smirk, but really no emotion. The most horrific footage possible of innocent people starved,killed naked, tortured- and yet there is no reaction on Eichmanns faceHow can someone look so normal, be so organized,act so sane and intelligent, and yet be a monster? I had no idea that the camera's were actually holes in the walls so as not to disturb or disrupt the proceedings. The movie tackles some of the deepest issues of the holocaust- it gave a voice to the survivors to finally tell their stories to the whole world. hopefully we won't repeat this ever again. If I were God, I might be tempted to find another Noah, build a new ark, and start all over

This BBC film was based on the actual event that took place in the early 60s, Jerusalem. About televising the trial from a courtroom, which was the first ever documentary series to broadcast. One of a top Nazi officer, Adolf Eichmann, who fled during the end of world war two and settled down in the South America, but brought back with the help of Mossad to Israel to face the war crime charges. The movie won't demonstrate all those in the picture, but it begins with the television production house preparing to shoot the important television event in the history. So the show begins, but a boring first half and the next half is where all the interesting stuffs happen.In my prediction this movie with the powerful contents would have easily beaten the 'The Imitation Game', if it was produced grandly and commercialised a bit of narration for the worldwide market. The real video clips of the trial were merged into the movie and that gave a strong effect which allows to realise how those actual occurrences has taken place. Actually, there are some uncensored cuts, which were shocking and disturbing. So pretty much like a semi-documentary, but due to the majority of movie clips that shot with actors and in the sets, it feels like a TV movie as it should be."While he watches the footage, we'll be watching him. Only then will we see the real Eichmann."The performances were ordinary, because the screenplay preferred the main event to display, not the characters and their lifestyle. That makes it is not a biographical picture, though both the lead men were pretty impressive. We had seen many world war 2 and related to it movies, but this one was a different. Because of the story was set 15 years after the end of war. Simple movie, no twists, no developments, but reveals the facts from a different dimension. Because of this show, people around the world and filmmakers understood the cruelty of the Nazi prison camp. The movies those came afterwards about this war were inspired by the events that discussed in the courtroom. So if you are planning for this, expect it to be as what the title says, not a bit more or less.8/10

In the 1960s the Israeli intelligence service tracked down and captured the former number one Nazi SS officer Adolph Eichmann from his hiding in Argentina. He was responsible for the 'final solution' on the Jewish question, that is the systematic killings of Jews. In Jerusalem the Israeli government is holding a trial for Eichmann and they intend to televise the whole process. They had contracted New York based producer Milton Fruchtman to produce the TV program. Milton then hired Leo Hurwitz, a renowned documentary movie director to direct the show. Their first obstacle to face is the judges are having objections to the presence of cameras in the room, which they deem intimidating. So the production team staged the court room's walls with holes to accommodate the cameras. As the trial begins Leo immediately dances through the camera positions and zooms and pans and getting the additional dramatic effects the program needed. But Milton gets frustrated over the fact that they are losing audience over other world politics issues such as the Cuban missile crisis and Russia's Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. The audience soon returns as the trial enters the witness testimonies, which stories touched the world deeply. Meanwhile Leo gets more and more obsessed in finding any little hint of humanity left within Eichmann, making him to focus the cameras on Eichmann frequently, to Milton's frustration. Milton barely escapes an assassination attempt and warns the team about their own personal safety. At last comes the moment in the trial where they show Eichmann the footage of the actual things happened in the concentration camps, to which Eichmann didn't flinch. Leo then gives up trying to proof his point about Eichmann as Eichmann is then sentenced to death.The story proves to be quite a hard to judge in overall. As the movie focuses most on the production team, it has distanced itself from the Eichmann character entirely that Adolf Eichmann only existed as the background for this movie. So it's safe to say that the movie is not like what we would find in 1961's Judgment in Nuremberg. In fact in this movie there's no real interaction between Eichmann and the main characters at all. Yet if we see it from the production team's perspective, the movie had done it's obligations in retelling all the things that matter about the trial's video production. But I personally feel that beside that main focus on the trial, the rest of the story felt pretty much flat. This is quite lame because the movie actually brought up a few potential sub stories, such as the ones with Milton and Leo's families, the ones about Yaakov, and the ones about Mrs. Landau.Those being said, I have to say also that the movie reached it's aim in revisiting memories about the Holocaust by the use of the archival footage, not just the footage of the concentration camps, but also the footage of the actual witnesses and of Eichmann himself in the court room in the trial process. The movie's use of reenactments at times on the Eichmann side is to a good purpose. But I think that it's quite unwise to mingle those reenactments with the actual Eichmann archival footage.The acting overall is quite a decent job in my view. Martin Freeman managed to retain his usual character of looking carefree and able to hide even threats to him in order to maintain his team's working spirit. He was also successful in projecting the wider spectrum of Milton Fruchtman's supposedly frustrated condition. Anthony LaPaglia also did well enough in portraying the cool handed and professional director. The extra mission about finding any hint of Eichmann's humanity is also depicted quite nicely by LaPaglia, even to the confrontations with Fruchtman.My say is that The Eichmann Show (2015) deserves a 6 out of 10 score. I would've scored it more if only the rest of the story didn't feel so flat. A recommendation is only for those of you who really like history. Despite being able to be emotional at times, the movie is more informational than it is entertaining.