The Man in the Glass Booth (1975)
Arthur Goldman is a rich Jewish industrialist, living in luxury in a Manhattan high-rise. He banters with his assistant Charlie, often shocking Charlie with his outrageousness and irreverence about aspects of Jewish life. Nonetheless, Charlie is astonished when, one day, Israeli secret agents burst in and arrest Goldman for being not a Jewish businessman but a Nazi war criminal. Whisked to Israel for trial, Goldman forces his accusers to face not only his presumed guilt--but their own.
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A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
I am amazed that none of the reviews of this movie on IMDb mention that this film as written by Robert Shaw is a ro·man à clef (look it up if you do not know) for the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was arrested in 1960 by the Masada and taken to Israel for trial. He was in fact was the "Man in the Glass Booth".Yes Maximillian Schell was off the charts in this performance but the greatest facet to the film is that it replays Eichmann's trial. Eichmann was amazing in his conviction that all of the Final Solution was logical and justified and pedestrian and we should all see this for what it is worth.Yes I was totally annoyed by the Arthur Goldman character in the first half of the film but I was mesmerized by the way this film played out. Schell should have beat Nicholson for the academy award! He is a massively underrated actor (see him in Judgement in Nuremberg and you will agree).
Long unavailable, it is now obtainable in DVD and holds up rivitingly well 30 years later. My wife and I first saw it in the theatre when a few of the American Film Theatre movies were produced and released--and were absolutely blown away. The movie IS Maximilian Schell. The range, nuance, and dramatic mood shifts he brings to this part, which demands polar opposite emotions, are astonishing. How he was not nominated for an Academy Award (to my knowledge) is unbelievable. His performance is what animates this complicated set of twists and turns and brings enrichment of plot turns to a well crafted story with authentic psychological resonance at the climaxe of the film. Well worth your time! It is fascinating, by the way, to pair this movie with a viewing of "Judgment at Nuremburg" in which Schell plays the defense attorney of Nazi war criminals.
Saw this for the first time recently at a International Jewish Film Festival screening at which both the director (the oft overrated and stylistically lacking Arthur Hiller...the Roger Donaldson of his generation) and star (Maximillian Schell) attended and spoke at. My expectations were high, but the film was quite a letdown. Hiller's direction was dull and generic and had the look and feel of a bad 70's television episode, while Schell brings new meaning to the term overacting (his Oscar nomination makes more sense in light of Al Pacino's Oscar win for his incessant mugging in "Scent of Woman").The producer of the film mentioned that writer Robert Shaw (from which the source material came and a famous actor in his own right) asked to have his name taken off the film upon reading the screenplay (and then apparently asked to have it put back on later). Not having read his play, I found much of the dialogue awkward and stilted, although many of the statements and speeches in the film give an introspective view of not just the tragedy of the Holocaust, but also the logical if deluded mindset of those Germans that perpetrated such atrocities. Given the intriguing premise, it would have been interesting to see what the film would have been like in the hands of a better director and with the lead character played a bit more understated and nuanced (a great example would be Ian McKellan's brilliant performance in the otherwise flawed "Apt Pupil"). To be fair, the predominantly older Jewish audience I saw it with enjoyed it, although I would guess more out of obligation to the subject matter then to it's artistic merit. All in all, a fairly mediocre film for its' time with a over-the-top performance by Schell, neither of which have aged well. 5/10
It's too bad this great film has never been issued as a video or aDVD. I remember seeing it at a special showing in 1975.Maximillian Schell's performance is brilliant., one of his very best, Although Eichmann is presented as a great catch, "the worst Naziof all" (more important than Hitler, Goering, or Himmler)? Inretrospect his role in the Holocaust was mainly an administrativeone (organizing the train schedules for deportation). He was not involved in the actual killing of Jews but was the mostimportant figure the Israeli's could come up with.