PopSyndicate.com

Part II of the feature 20 Most Significant Nazi Films of All Time. The top ten are revealed.

If you haven’t read part one, check it out first.

10. Come and See (1985)

If you’ve seen this film, you’re probably grimacing at its title. Elim Klimov’s Come and See, considered by most to be either a platinum gem of world drama or a disgusting exploitation piece, is one thing without uncertainty: a finalist for “Most Psychologically Terrorizing Film Ever Made”. It presents war and encampment in Nazi Germany like it had never been seen before outside of the Holocaust’s camps; and as it’s never been seen since. For that, you can thank Klimov, because whether Come and See was a masterstroke or eye-singing trash, it was what it was good or bad enough to keep the globe’s most aggressive filmmakers away from making anything quite like it.

9. Rome, Open City (1945)

An essential Rossellini classic, Rome, Open City is also a primary example of war melodrama and a pristine, nearly unprecedented article from the Neorealism subgenre. It’s uncanny beauty, rendered in stark B&W, has been matched over the past six decades as many times or fewer than the typical American has acknowledged it as a hallmark in both cinema and art in general. It takes place just one year prior to its release, during the Nazi occupation in Rome, but it feels as though the gap between its setting and its opening could fit in the span of mere hours.

8. Life Is Beautiful (1997)

Yes, there have been a few truly touching dramadies based during the Nazi’s reign, but only two have reached a level of transcendental poignancy. One would be Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful, winner of Best Foreign Language Film and two other categories at the 71st Oscars (1998). The picture’s title alone should give you an idea of its naïve optimism, one endearing and heartbreaking enough to embed itself into one’s memory for a lifetime. But even then, the title permits only an idea. To watch the movie is something entirely more elegant, something miraculous.

7. Victory of Faith (1933)

This film documents a Nuremberg rally, the 1933 version of the Nazi party’s annual shindigs spanning from 1923 to 1938, and it includes heavy footage of Hitler’s second-in-command, Ernst Röhm, who was ordered for execution the following year for his homosexuality. If any more convincing is necessary, consider this: Victory of Faith is the inaugural documentary feature from director Leni Riefenstahl, who would go on to direct the Nazi party’s most coveted—and one of cinema’s most infamous—propaganda works, ’35’s Triumph of the Will. Oh, yeah!—and Leni was a woman (the Nazis weren’t too cozy to the idea of a woman with any form of responsibility, but you probably knew that).

6. The Pianist (2002)

French-born, Polish-raised director Roman Polanski created perhaps his most meaningful—and certainly his most personal—work with 2002’s incredibly meticulous, equally moving The Pianist, which follows the distressing true story of Polish-Jewish pianist sensation Władysław Szpliman (as played by Adrien Brody), whose middle-class life is turned on its head after the invasion of Poland. Unlike other epics of the genre—and particularly about the Holocaust—The Pianist is beautiful to watch while being necessarily draining. Through Szpilman’s story, and finally through his musical talent, the horrible circumstances of his life and the time in which the film takes place is slowly washed away by an overwhelming sensation of hope, love, and passion. The Pianist is one of the most significant films ever made, let alone about war or Nazis.

5. Army of Shadows (1969)

This heralded French title from New Wave practitioner Jean-Pierre Melville is a mammoth craft of startling power and enthralling storytelling, both qualities featured—but arguably not detailed as well—in the Joseph Kessel novel version, shelved 26 years prior to its release in ’69. And to think it didn’t get its due until its American release in 2006 (it was initially rejected and failed economically). About the French Resistance (including a mixture of true and fictionalized events and characters) against the Nazis, watching this epic could readily be a transformative experience if allowed.

4. Schindler’s List (1993)

Good, evil. Grey, red. Evocative, elevating. Trust me, you haven’t seen them like this. Not unless you’ve seen Schindler’s List. And not unless you’ve seen Ralph Fiennes’ performance as SS Hauptsturmführer Amon Göth, senior officer of Kraków-Płaszów camp, which is among the very best in acting history.

3. The Great Dictator (1940)

Remember what I noted of Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful (#8)? This is the other one. Chaplin. Nod your head, curl your lips.

2. Downfall (2004)

Depicting the last twelve days of Hitler’s life through the perspective of one of his secretaries, Tradl Junge (whose memoirs, along with a number of other historical books—one such by famed German historian Joachim Fest—and additional autobiographies, including that of Third Reich architect Alber Speer, provide the story its meticulously accurate retelling), Downfall works as well as—if not better than—a video document. But it’s not a documentary. It’s a motion picture feature of the highest quality, and under the care of young director Oliver Hirschbiegel, it’s not only one of cinema’s most monumental dramatic excursions, it’s an undeniable item of ageless importance.

1. Triumph of the Will (1935)

This world-infamous propaganda film, which journals the Nazi party Congress at Nuremberg in 1934, used every imaginable technique for its own profitable exploitation. Female director Leni Riefenstahl (whose ’33 release Victory of Faith, # 7, gained her enough credibility in the Nazi regime for this assignment) displays tremendous, arguably revolutionary execution of filming methodologies such as lens distortion, aerial photographing, musical scoring, and the use of long-focus cinematography. Triumph was so immaculate in its visual conception that its awards began flourishing (even in America) at an equal pace as its subjects’ notoriety.

Brace yourself for The List’s next feature this coming Monday. And be very afraid, but courageous enough to tell me what films I left off and which ones I got right.