Friedrich's boxing skills gets him in an elite Nazi high school in a castle in 1942. He enrolls against his dad's wish as it promises a brighter future. It's not what he expected.Friedrich's boxing skills gets him in an elite Nazi high school in a castle in 1942. He enrolls against his dad's wish as it promises a brighter future. It's not what he expected.Friedrich's boxing skills gets him in an elite Nazi high school in a castle in 1942. He enrolls against his dad's wish as it promises a brighter future. It's not what he expected.
- Awards
- 8 wins & 6 nominations total
- Tjaden
- (as Leon Alexander Kersten)
- Gauleiter Heinrich Stein
- (as Justus von Dohnàny and Justus von Dohnányi)
- Katharina
- (as Julie Marie Engelbrecht)
- Hans Weimer
- (as Max Dombrowka)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Featured reviews
This a superbly produced, directed film. The young actors' performances are believable and affecting. And for people who care about such things, Max Riemelt as Friedrich, the young, virile, gorgeous protagonist is a very easy guy to look at. Jim Smith
In case you're interested in more underrated gems, here's some of my favorites:
imdb.com/list/ls070242495
Set during World War II, this movie is about the dilemma and choices of some German teenagers who attend a napola - a special institution for gifted boys to turn them into the Nazi elite. Their days consist of military training and indoctrination; they are forced to lose all pity and become ruthless servants of the Fuhrer.
The story follows the entrance of Friedrich into a napola, the changes that he undergoes and the choices that he makes. Admitted because of his boxing skills, he seizes it as an opportunity to escape his poor working class situation. His best friend at the napola is the Governor's son - sensitive, caring, humane and opposed to Nazi dogma, he is obviously in the wrong place but has no choice but to fulfill his dad's wishes. As their friendship develops, Friedrich struggles between the ideology that the napola is forcing upon him and his friend's pacific beliefs.
This powerful film with excellent acting culminates on the boxing ring as Friedrich fights against the champion from another napola. The scene of the morning practice on the frozen lake left me breathless, while the ending of the grenade throwing session shook me with its passion, despair, and horror.
Another reason why I liked this movie so much is that it is made by Germans; indeed one would expect Hollywood to come up with such a story and that the outcome would be a highly emotional melodrama. I could feel the director disagreeing strongly with the Nazis, but rather than feeling shameful for what his countrymen did 60 years ago, he denounced it. Indeed, Friedrich's ultimate choice should be the choice of the new Germany.
My rating: 9/10
Based on the recollections of his grandfather, Dennis Gansel's Before the Fall (Napola Elite für den Führer) is a riveting coming of age story about the training of one such Nazi elite in the Germany of 1942. The work transcends its limitations as a genre film to tackle a more universal theme - the struggle between external ideals and matters of inner conscience. Like Igor, the idealistic teenager in Dardenne's La Promesse, Friedrich Weimer (Max Riemelt), a Nordic-looking, working class boxer must deal with issues of conscience in an environment that is anathema to the assertion of human values. Friedrich is only seventeen when he is approached after an amateur boxing match by a Nazi instructor at a Napola school. Seeking to salvage the athletic reputation of the school, he sees in Freidrich not only a boxing champion, but a blank slate that can be molded to fit the Nazi ideal.
Friedrich, destined to follow his father as a factory laborer, sees the chance to both serve the fatherland and advance his own career and signs his own registration papers when his father refuses to agree. The boy is still very innocent but genuinely idealistic and possesses genuine warmth as shown in the scene in which he reassures his younger brother. Friederich's mind is open to the Nazi indoctrination not because he is without conscience but because he simply hasn't seen any reason to question the prevailing zeitgeist.
Freiderich's limited world experience suddenly expands, however, when he meets two other classmates: Siegfried Gladen (Martin Goeres), a boy who has a bed-wetting problem ruthlessly exploited as weakness by his fellow cadets and their sadistic teachers, and Albrecht Stein (Tom Schilling), the son of Heinrich Stein (Justus Vob Dohnanyi), a hateful Nazi governor. Albrecht who has the dangerous idea that people should consult their own conscience before blindly following orders is a boy of sensitivity and poetry, the embodiment perhaps of the true German spirit of Goethe and Heine. His father is revolted, however, by the boy's perceived weakness and humiliates him by insisting that he and Freidrich engage in a very uneven boxing match when he invites his friend to his home.
Albrecht begins to question the merciless Nazi training after he sees Freidrich deliver a blow to the head of a fighter when he is already down. He also recoils in horror and speaks out publicly after the cadets are marched out into the forest to track down and murder allegedly escaped Russian POWs, in reality unarmed children. This incident results in a break in the relationship of the two boys and a sudden but predictable tragedy.
Before the Fall is more than an accounting of the Nazi's disregard for human values, a fact already well-established. It is a more profound statement of how people need to be educated to think for themselves and take a stand for what they believe to be right. Impeccably directed and beautifully performed, Before the Fall is one of the most powerful and disturbing films of recent memory.
Did you know
- TriviaParts of the story are based on incident's in the life of Dennis Gansel's grandfather.
- GoofsAt least one of the Napola boxers and one of the training officers have pierced ears. Very unlikely, this being set in Nazi Germany.
- Quotes
Albrecht Stein: [reading from his essay] "As childish as it sounds, the winter time and the sight of freshly fallen snow always fill us with inexplicable joy. Perhaps because as children, we associated it with Christmas. I always imagine myself the hero who killed dragons, rescued virgins, and freed the world from evil. As we went out yesterday to find the prisoners, I felt like that little boy who wanted to save the world."
Vogler: Albrecht, stop.
Albrecht Stein: But as we returned, I understood that I am part of the evil that I wanted to save us from.
Vogler: Albrecht, stop.
Albrecht Stein: Shooting prisoners is wrong. They were not armed, as Governor Stein told us, to incite us. We didn't shoot men, only children.
Vogler: Out!
- ConnectionsFeatured in Videotagebuch von Dennis Gansel (2005)
- SoundtracksUns're Fahne flattert uns voran
(Vorwärts! Vorwärts! schmettern die hellen Fanfaren)
Music by Hans-Otto Borgmann (as Hans Otto Borgmann)
Lyrics by Baldur von Schirach
Performed by chorus featuring Max Riemelt
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Details
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $144,254
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $8,036
- Oct 9, 2005
- Gross worldwide
- $3,764,219
- Runtime1 hour 50 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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