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The Good German

1 disc
Region 1 USA/CA (info)

One of mainstream cinema's most tirelessly inventive directors, Steven Soderbergh delivers another big-budget stylistic experiment with THE GOOD GERMAN. This time around, Soderbergh's target is 1940s film noir. Set in postwar Berlin, the atmospheric thriller is based on the acclaimed novel by Joseph Kanon. Frequent Soderbergh collaborator George Clooney plays Jake Geismer, an American military journalist who has returned to Berlin for the Potsdam Peace Conference. Jake's driver, Tully (Tobey Maguire), appears innocent upon first glance, but is in fact a major player in the corrupt Berlin underworld. He's also dating Jake's former flame, Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett), whose beauty continues to torment Jake. When Tully's cadaver washes ashore one day, Jake is shocked to discover that nobody wants to go public with the news. As much as he'd like to forget about Lena, he can't. Pretty soon, he's risking his life to help her flee the country.

In shooting THE GOOD GERMAN, Soderbergh employed many of the actual filmmaking techniques that were used in the 1940s: black-and-white cinematography, elaborately constructed sets, wide master shots, and a sweeping score (compliments of Thomas Newman). The result is a film that looks and feels like it was made in a much earlier era, yet which contains the graphic language and content of an R-rated early 21st-century production.
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Credits

George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Beau Bridges, Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Tony Curran, Tobey Maguire, Toby Maguire
Critic Reviews

4 stars out of 5 -- "Steven Soderbergh continues his genre-cruising career with this stylised b/w tribute to '40s noir..."
Uncut
"Soderbergh has re-created not only the kind of story told in the 1940s, but the kind of technical production Hollywood gloried in more than half a century ago, too." -- Grade: B
Entertainment Weekly
3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he movie works on its own, with a gleam of seductive corruption....The actors all come up with aces....It's pure moviegoing bliss."
Rolling Stone
"It vividly recreates the soundstage artifice of Warner Bros' wartime noirs -- replete with melodramatic dynamics but minus the restrictive gentility of 1940s Hollywood."
Sight and Sound
4 stars out of 5 -- "[W]ith Blanchett channelling Marlene Dietrich in an extraordinary performance....Clooney reins it in, playing it with suitably blunt bemusement..."
Total Film