The first must-see film of the year.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Perhaps because I saw this film dubbed in Italian with English subtitles and missed the familiar voices of Fredric March, Maximilian Schell, and Robert Wagner I was put off somewhat. But The Condemned Of Altona just did not rise to what I was expecting. Or maybe it was Jean-Paul Sartre's view of the world.Whatever it was his ideas just did not translate well to the big screen. Meet the family Gerlach, father Fredric March big German industrial tycoon and his children Maximilian Schell, Robert Wagner, and Francoise Prevost. Germany may have lost the war, but her natural resources and the need for an anti-Communist bulwark in the Cold War have made her richer than ever, if de-Nazified. March has been told he's terminally ill and has six months tops. He's troubled about his choices. The younger son Robert Wagner is not fit material for a tycoon and in the patriarchal society Francoise Prevost is out of the question.Then there's Maximilian Schell who has self secluded and deluded. He's a wanted war criminal from World War II and he's imposed an exile on himself. He believes because he knows no better that Germany is a vast rubble.Bringing him out of his exile is Wagner's new wife Sophia Loren who's been wondering about that locked section of that Gothic manor the Gerlachs have for themselves.As for the rest all I can say is Schell's guilt is the engine that drives the rest of the film. The best part of the film is something that could not be done on stage. Schell finally lose and seeing with his own eyes, the prosperity and the bustling night life that was Hamburg. Wonder if he went to the clubs and found some musicians from Liverpool who would shake the world soon?I did see this on stage at Lincoln Center a couple of years after the film had been made of Jean-Paul Sartre's play with George Coulouris heading the cast as the family patriarch. As he is often on screen, Coulouris was mesmerizing in self absorption and monomania about seeing his industrial complex carrying on. By contrast March seemed dull and lifeless and this has to rank as one of his lesser films. But not to single him out alone, the whole cast was the same way with the exception of Schell. But he's got the best part of a man who had to enlist in the army after his father got him off from protecting a Rabbi to a man who committed war atrocities on the Russian front.Sartre was saying that war itself can make people do evil things. And that the true guilty parties never saw any punishment, on the contrary like March they triumphed in defeat.In other words, what a world.

This is a darkly disturbing film of a Nazi war criminal, still wearing his German army uniform, who is hidden in his father's house, and led to believe that World War II is still going on. The ending of the movie is a bizarre mix of Fellini and Capote. Schell escapes his "prison" and walks around the streets only to be "shocked" that there is no destruction or war raging. He ends up in a local theater and salutes an actor playing Hitler. I won't give the ending away, but it's a shocking surprise ala Play Dirty or To Live and Die in LA. The acting is great, the black and white film make the movie realistic and it captures a time in history which hopefully is gone for ever. An excellent film.

It was very long ago, but this film touched me deeply. A became obsessed with Shostakovich's 11th Symphony, and remember vividly some scenes. When Maximillian Schell is finally "released" and goes out into the city (Hamburg?) to see what Germany has become, he is repulsed. When Frederich March is told he will die, he is solemn. The plot, that they have hidden their son because he is a wanted war criminal. That they collaborated willingly with the Nazis, as an industrial power. Perhaps I have forgotten important details. But the movie resonates with me.

While this film was not entirely successful, there are scenes that will stay in your mind forever! If you liked Von Trier's "Zentropa", you will like this film on a similar theme.