The Good German

Never one to turn down a free screening (hell I'd see Norbit if it was for free) when Rialto offered their Film Club the chance to see The Good German a day early I wasn't going to turn it down! For those of you who have been wondering just what the hell Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brockovich, Oceans 11) has been up to lately The Good German is the answer. In a true homage to classical 1940's Hollywood Soderbergh's latest outing is a noir murder mystery in the spirit of films like Casablanca and The Third Man. In a remarkable move Soderbergh elected to film his homage using only techniques available to 1940's filmmakers. Some people will call this arrogance. I call it a filmlovers wet dream.

If you like your movies action packed with frenetic editing and gravity defying stunts you're in the wrong place. If however you recognise names such as Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Marlene Dietrich and know Casablanca for reasons other than it being at the top of Africa then I have a feeling you will dig the movie as much as I did.

Set in Berlin at the end of World War II we meet Jake Geismer (George Clooney, having no problems with looking like a 40's movie star) who is here to cover the Pottsdam Peace Conference. His driver Tully (Tobey Maguire - not so successful) is a typical product of the war, making the best of his situation by playing both enemies against each other and making money at every opportunity. We soon meet Tully's girlfriend Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett - another amazing performance) who as the wife to an SS secretary is highly desired by both sides. When Tully claims he can bring the Russians her husband and ends up in the river with 100 grand on him and a bullet in the chest the film launches headfirst into a noir murder mystery of the highest order. Both sides want the whole thing to be forgotten but Jake is determined to get to the bottom of it, regardless of the cost.

The movie is, for the most part, a great homage to the 1940's noir and romance stories that characterised the golden age of Hollywood. The performances are solid - especially Blanchett as Lena Brandt, backing up an equally impressive performance in Notes on a Scandal. She is one of the few working actresses who have that classical beauty of the 40's and would have been right at home with the likes of Bergman and Dietrich. Soderbergh also uses Blanchett to remind us just how alluring black and white film can be. Clooney is very good too although his star status does make it a bit harder to maintain the illusion that we are watching a typical 40's film. Maguire was adequate but in my opinion it was a bad bit of casting, especially given the timing - Spiderman 3 comes out in May, making his spidey persona even harder to ignore.

The script doesn't help either - swear words which screenwriters of the time wouldn't have even dreamt of getting past the production code pop up far too often. This incessant swearing forced me out of the period illusion. Along with the swearing, the other major problem I had with the film was the sexual explicitness - which for most audiences probably won't matter as it is no worse than your typical Hollywood movie. However this is NOT your standard Hollywood movie and if you are trying to maintain the illusion of a 40's noir it would have helped to stick to the production code. Half of what made these films so great was the innuendo that you were bombarded with. With a far worse form of censorship than today, the Hays Production Code meant that screenwriters had to be increasingly cheeky and clever in getting across the same message without actually showing it on screen. When we see Tully straight out doggystyling Lena somehow the film loses just a bit of it's magic.

The Good German is not everyones cup of tea and if your film appreciation has a timespan that ends in the mid 80's you will find the pacing dull, the effects unrealistic, some of the acting melodramatic and the story increasingly hard to follow. For the rest of you - give it a chance, you might just discover the beauty of golden age Hollywood - believe me it gets much better than this one. And for the true filmlovers, you owe it to yourself to see this. Afterall unless you're very lucky it's the closest you will ever get to seeing Casablanca on the silver screen.

A tentative 4 stars.

Showing now at Rialto.