Construit à partir du roman de Joseph Kanon, le scénario de THE GOOD GERMAN rend assez efficacement compte de l'atmosphère trouble qui régnait sur Berlin au lendemain de la capitulation des nazis. Le récit en forme de casse-tête paraît a priori facile à assembler, mais révèle progressivement un degré de complexité inattendu. Soderbergh prend plaisir à entretenir le flou, flou qui devient ensuite brouillard, brouillard qui se dissipe enfin, dans une résolution satisfaisante. Gut.

• Accès à la publication

The director's latest endeavor, THE GOOD GERMAN, is another experiment. Set in the shadow-strafed palimpsest of postwar Berlin, it's a tale of deceit and doomed romance that wants to live and breathe the 1940s. Mr. Soderbergh interprets the term "period movie" to include the filmmaking itself, using black-andwhite, a single camera for each shot instead of several, and even a constrained selection of vintage lenses. (...) THE GOOD GERMAN emerges as a technical accomplishment more than anything else, a fond but brittle nostalgia piece.

• Accès à la publication

Clooney underplays in laconic fashion as he tries to round out a man whose seen-it-all attitude cloaks a romantic heart. But both he and Soderbergh seem afraid or unable to reveal the conviction for melodrama necessary to put across a story like this. For actor and director, the project seems like trying on a new coat, and it doesn't fit either of them. Final scene reps the film's one explicit homage to CASABLANCA, an ill-advised move in that it forces the inevitable negative comparison.

• Accès à la publication

Copping Dietrich's purr without her volcanic sexual undercurrent, Blanchett is supremely poised, but she's like a mannequin arranged in a shop window, with nothing to animate her but a vague stench of tragedy. That's more, at least, than one can say for Clooney, who hasn't been this dull since THE PEACEMAKER (...). As a stylistic exercise, THE GOOD GERMAN is at least slightly more intriguing, filmed in black and white with vintage lenses and framed in the ahistorical 1.66 aspect ratio (...). But while Attanasio's script provides toothsome dialogue for the supporting players (...), the leads are stuck in limbo, striking heroic poses in a movie that doesn't believe in heroes.

• Accès à la publication

Using vintage lenses, black-and-white film (high-contrast color stock with the color pulled out, but close enough), Hollywood back lots, rear-projection, expressionistic angles, an old-fashioned score, a morally compromised hero, an alluring femme fatale and a very bleak view of the world, Soderbergh has made a movie set in 1945 that looks as if it were made in 1945. Some of it was, even. The director has included footage of Berlin after the war shot by Billy Wilder and William Wyler, for verisimilitude and (why not?) good luck.

• Accès à la publication