Nordling has a letter from a French general about arranging for the Germans’ peaceable surrender of the city. Von Choltitz tears it up without opening it. His father and grandfather were soldiers, he has destroyed several other cities and liquidated the Jewish populations of some, and he’s fiercely loyal to the Nazi cause. There’s nothing that will keep him from following Hitler’s barbaric orders.
The elaborate colloquy that follows hinges more on personalities and occupations than ideologies. Von Choltitz is the consummate military man, erect, disciplined and obedient to the hierarchy that contains him. Yet he also seems an intelligent and somewhat cultured man, not immune to arguments about the beauty and importance of Paris. For his part, Nordling is tactful and discerning, firm when it will benefit him yet also yielding when it’s strategically advantageous. He appeals first to the General’s pity and sense of wrong.
When this doesn’t get him far, he says then don’t spare the city for the French, do it for your own grandchildren, so that their relations with the world aren’t poisoned for generations to come. Both men know the war will be over soon and nothing of its outcome would be changed by Paris’ destruction, so both see reasons to look to the future and try to lessen the calamities that lie between now and an armistice.
It’s a good argument, but von Choltitz has a devastating comeback. Just recently, he says, Hitler has issued a decree that he thinks may be primarily aimed at him. It orders that the families of any soldier who disobeys orders can be punished for their crimes. Thus he fears that if he doesn’t proceed with the city’s destruction, his wife and three children will be arrested and executed. “What would you do if you were in my place?” he asks. Nordling is stunned into silence.
Essentially a two-hander even though it contains a number of minor characters, the film proves consistently absorbing thanks in large part to the adept, expertly calibrated work of its leads. As von Choltitz, Arestrup exhibits a powerful physical presence while also showing himself vulnerable in ways both physical (his asthma is an important plot point) and emotional. And Dussollier’s Nordling suggests the mercurial mental agility of a man who, like a chess master, is obliged to make quick, complex calculations.
Schlondorff brings an elegant precision to the film’s direction. He and cinematographer Michel Amathieu used two hand-held cameras in shooting the scenes between the two leads, which helps preserve the freshness and immediacy of the performances. And the film never feels place-bound, as some stage adaptations do, since we frequently glimpse (or the story jumps to) the story’s most important character: Paris itself.ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46doKmkn6KupMWMa2dqbA%3D%3D