Review of The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) by Jahvre F — 13 Dec 2009

Written by famous actor/playwright Robert Shaw THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH centers around Arthur Goldman (Maximilian Schell), a rich, eccentric man obesessed with his Jewish heritage and frantically going into rants about various subjects. Most ignore the paranoid Goldman's claims about a blue mercedes stalking him one day but his fears come true when he is abducted and taken to Israel to stand for war crimes. Goldman, at the time, is revealed to be Adolf Dorf, the very man Goldman claimed murdered his parents in a concentration camp in World War II.

Most screen adaptations of plays make the mistake of expanding the settings and loosing focus of the actors, but not here. The settings are limited and Maximilian Schell's delightfully bombastic preformance as Goldman takes center stage. Schell's preformance is at it's peak during the war crimes trial but you are left the dark. Even after the major revelation, you can't be sure of what Goldman is saying and where is passion lies. He justifies the mass murder he is being accused of like a defendant but never has any sign of reveling in his own crapulence. He is openly disgusted when the prosecutor asks if he is indeed Jewish after one of Goldman's friends claims that he is. However his digust comes from the fact of the nature of his crimes and not because he would be accused of being a Jew. It's really left up to the viewer to determine if Goldman is Dorf. He may have been Dorf consumed with guilt or infact Goldman who escaped into the indentity of his tormentor, becoming obessed to the point of madness and wanting to kill himself. Like I said, it's the viewer who has decide.