HOTEL TERMINUS
A film review by Jeff Meyer
Copyright 1989 Jeff Meyer
First of all, whatever you think of Marcel Ophuls's work on HOTEL TERMINUS, a five-hour documentary on the life and career of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, credit should be given to the man for a priceless piece of historical evidence. Ophuls has interviewed hundreds of people who came into contact with Barbie, and when future historians work on papers dealing with the Holocaust, and particularly the way the French and Americans dealt with war criminals, this film will be an invaluable resource. Historically, this is a gold mine.
As a documentary for the general public, however, it may be a bit tedious at five hours long. Ophuls carefully follows Barbie's escape from Germany (working as a mole/spy for the U.S. against the Soviets), his escape to South America, his involvement in murder and fascism while living under a variety of dictators, and his eventual expulsion back to France to be placed under trial are followed carefully and with attention to minute detail. It's fascinating stuff, but there's a lot of it; if I had it to do over again, I would have preferred getting it on videotape and taking a few extended intermissions between stages.
To be frank, Ophuls's documentary style is often annoying. Some of his interview styles seem to be based on the worst aspects of Mike Wallace and "Sixty Minutes," where he spends more time showing himself being hassled than concentrating on the subject he's interviewing. (He also has some far-too-cute scenes as he works on tracking down some ex-Nazis, acting as if he's looking for them under greenhouse sheeting.) However, one can't knock the results, and Ophuls has some amazing interviews on film. One who particularly stands out in my mind is an ex-stormtrooper who talks about his days with Barbie with nostalgia; the man is hardly the stereotype of evil or ignorance one expects to be watching -- he's one of the most jovial people interviewed -- but this makes what he believes, and what he is saying, so incredibly horrible in retrospect. The man is so familiar in his general attitude and character -- and then he begins talking about the process of sending people to death camps like it was a production problem. Or when several of Barbie's business associates speak of him, the way that greed has blocked off all their ability to judge... it is awful, and at the same time it is very, very authentic.
If you are at all a student of history, or crime, or some rather ugly truths about the world, I recommend this film highly, though I might put a slight recommendation for picking it up when it makes it on videotape. Rarely do students of history have such a trove of evidence that is so extensive, and at the same time, so vivid. This is the kind of film that could justify the invention of celluloid by itself.
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM
Manual UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, hplsla, thebes, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews