Review of The Good German (2006) by Edith N — 20 Oct 2010

Not Actually Post-War, Whatever Netflix Says.

When I first put this in, I was sullen at it. The DVD informs you that it's been altered to fit your screen. Now, Netflix doesn't much go in for the pan-and-scan, which made me wonder what the deal was here. I'm not sure they offer the option, even when the studio offers you the option. (They do this, from what I can work out, because there are people who think widescreen is the one which cuts off part of the picture, leaving the question of how, all things considered, anyone can actually think that.) So what was the deal here? Why were they violating the artistic vision of Steven Soderbergh? Except it turns out they didn't. The artistic vision of Steven Soderbergh was in so-called Academy ratio. The shorthand is that it isn't a widescreen movie. However, by 2006, theatres were no longer equipped for Academy ratio, since widescreen had been the standard for so long. It was distributed with black bars on the sides to make it wide enough. Reverse letterboxing!

1945. Berlin. The Germans have surrendered, but the Japanese have not. (Hence not actually post-war.) American journalist Jake Geismer (George Clooney) comes to the city to cover the Potsdam conference. His driver is Corporal Patrick Tully (Tobey Maguire), who gives the impression of being too all-American and wholesome to be believed. And, indeed, you shouldn't. He's a black marketeer who can't imagine wanting to leave Berlin and go back to the States. There are so many opportunities in Berlin. He has a German girlfriend, Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett). She is one of the women who has turned to prostitution to support herself because there is no other way left to her. Her husband, Emil, was killed, and Berlin in 1945 was not exactly brimming with job opportunities. Tully finds out that various governments are interested in Emil, and he makes arrangements to sell him to the Russians. Never mind that Emil is dead. Except then Tully turns up dead.

Soderbergh is deliberately cultivating a mood here. The poster calls to mind [i]Casablanca[/i]. The movie itself calls to mind [i]The Third Man[/i]. I would even suggest that there is something of the Hitchcock to it, an innocent man brought into a situation more dangerous than he could have possibly anticipated. The primary complaint leveled against it is that it's more mood than characterization, but I'm not sure that's actually unreasonable in this instance. Yes, it's a pretty cookie-cutter plot, but do you really expect more? I've watched a lot of noir lately, which this is supposed to emulate, and most of it is more about mood and situation than character. Hardly in-depth stuff. Yes, we've seen our three stars do more complicated work, but we saw Humphrey Bogart do more and less complicated work depending on the film. Sometimes, successfully establishing a mood is sufficiently challenging.

Another common complaint is that both George Clooney and Tobey Maguire speak terrible German in the movie. Cate Blanchett's is supposed to be quite good, but Cate Blanchett is also the only one of the three who is actually playing a German. It would actually be out-of-character for Tully to speak proper German. He's only been in the country for months at most and more likely weeks. He probably spoke some pidgin French when he was there, before they got into Germany. He's a mover and a dealer, but he's not a planner. This is pretty obvious when you look at his idea of selling Emil. He goes about it so obviously that the only reason I was surprised when his character is washed up dead was that he was a major name. Attempting to con the Soviet army was perhaps not the wisest maneuver. Now, yes, the summer of 1945 was so early in the Cold War that few people thought about its possibility. He couldn't know that an American would not be popular in post-war Moscow. But still.

Style does, however, triumph in this movie. Soderbergh went out of his way to make it a period piece. It isn't just how the characters look and talk and dress. It isn't just Academy ratio. It's what Academy ratio suggests. It takes a lot of work to produce a proper '40s-style movie. Soderbergh used period lighting, camera work, sound work. No, the film would never have passed the Code. I can point to several scenes, and the idea that Geismer had an affair with Lena while Emil was still alive would all by itself have violated the Code. However, Soderbergh used studio shooting and Los Angeles locations, incandescent light and boom mikes. Some of the shots are more artificial than others, indeed to the point of not looking anything like most of the rest of the movie. However, while the illusion of Old Hollywood may not be entirely preserved, it's put together well enough. And let's face it, George Clooney is the sort of star who, in the real 1940s, would have appeared on the cover of fan magazines all the time. As he does on [i]People[/i], its successor.