Der 20. Juli (1955)

Director:

Falk Harnack

Writers:

Falk Harnack (writer)
Werner Jörg Lüddecke (writer)

Release Date:

21 June 1955 (West Germany)

Plot Keywords:

German | WWII | Adolf Hitler | Date In Title | Plot To Kill Hitler

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Wolfgang Preiss	...	Oberst Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
Annemarie Düringer	...	Hildegard Klee - Sekretärin im OKW
Robert Freitag	...	Hauptmann Lindner
Fritz Tillmann	...	General Henning von Tresckow
Werner Hinz	...	Generaloberst a.D. Ludwig Beck
Paul Esser	...	Generalfeldmarschall Erwin von Witzleben
Wolfgang Büttner	...	Gen. Friedrich Olbricht
Hans Zesch-Ballot	...	Generlleutnant Erich Hoepner
Karl Klüsner	...	General der Nachrichtentruppen Erich Fellgiebel
Herbert Wilk	...	Oberst Albrecht Ritter Merz von Quirnheim
Ernst Lothar	...	Oberleutnant Werner von Haeften, Stauffenbers Adjutant
Heinz Giese	...	Oberleutnant - Ordonnanz bei von Tresckow
Paul Bildt	...	Oberbürgermeister a.D. Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
Maximilian Schell	...	Mitglied des Kreisauer Kreises
Erich Schellow	...	Evangelischer Pfarrer

Also Known As:

The Plot to Assassinate Hitler (USA)

Runtime:

Germany:97 min

Country:

West Germany

Language:

German | French

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | West Germany:12 (w) | Sweden:15

Company:

Central Cinema Company Film (CCC)

Goofs:

Factual errors: Wounded in action previously, Stauffenberg lost his left eye. In the film, the actor playing Stauffenberg, wears an eye-patch covering the right eye.

Movie Connections:

Version of Die Stunde der Offiziere (2004) (TV)

Impressive portrayal of the events around the most famous attempt to assassinate Hitler

(Version reviewed is the 95-minute showing on ARD on July 24, 2001. There seems to be a scene excluded with Hildegard and Cpt. Lindner telling the story as a flashback. Film has no credits at all.)

Dr. Harnack, once a resistance member himself, shot a fabulous, never boring picture, eleven years after the attempted assassination of German "Führer" Adolf Hitler. Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg (Wolfgang Preiss in an appropriate rôle), a leading member of the secret regime resistance group around Goerdeler and Beck (played by veteran actors Paul Bildt and Werner Hinz), decides to kill Hitler soon after his installment as chief of staff of Eastern replacement troops. After a first try has failed - General von Tresckow says: "That guy (Hitler) has even chance on his side" - , Stauffenberg himself places a time bomb in Hitler's headquarters in Eastern Prussia. Then follows a minute description of the main events of the rest of the day, July 20, 1944.

Authors Weisenborn, Lüddecke and Harnack extended the depiction of events to a preacher and a civilian resistance group in Berlin. The frequent change of perspectives, though, was an unfortunate choice.

Another plot is about two fictitious characters, Hildegard Klee (Annemarie Düringer) and Captain Lindner (Robert Freytag), who is a dedicated Nazi officer. When both watch how an innocent Jewish doctor is brutally arrested, the officer states: "These are excesses only. But the front isn't part of it. The front is clean!" - "But you're fighting for it!" Hildegard answers. - It's supposed to make clear why German resistance consisted of (aristocratic) officers to a large extent. - Lindner is finally convinced when he reports about witnessing the killing of women and children when he is back at war again.

Although there have been controversies among historians about the (would-be) assassins' motives, and research has been done for over forty years since, the film is still a fine history lesson. There is an indication of the different aims in one scene when socialists and monarchists quarrel at a secret meeting until a philosophical Maximilian Schell settles the conflict. The narrator later declares that the July 20 action was "about the destruction of illegitimate tyranny and about the honor of the German name."

In consequence, when Stauffenberg ponders over what he is resolved to do, Harnack lets him view scenes of bomb attacks, tanks approaching and soldiers wounded before his mind's eye (all archive material), but there is only a very short take of what might be a KZ barbed wire fence: the fate of millions of Jews appears not to have been a motive.

Although very well done, "Der 20. Juli" is not a stand-out cinematographically. It was produced in competition with G. W. Pabst's "Es geschah am 20. Juli", which premiered a trifle earlier. Of the actors, Ernst Schröder is very efficient as the relentless hunter of resistant fighters, credible and far away from the caricatures in some American and British war movies. Likewise, Düringer, Freytag and Preiss do fine jobs.