Steven Soderbergh's fifth pairing with George Clooney locates our director/male lead combo in post-war Berlin as Stalin, Churchill and Truman descend upon Potsdam to divvy up the spoils of WWII. Clooney is Jake Geismer, a high ranking war correspondent in town to cover the big story - but there's more to Geismer than meets the eye. He's been in Berlin before. He knows people. Specifically, he knows Lena Brant (a Garbo-esque turn from the ever-reliable Cate Blanchett), the wife of a former SS man now busy turning tricks in order to make enough money to get out of Germany. Geismer's driver, Tully (Tobey Maguire playing well outside his comfort zone) is in love with Brant and up to his eyes in the post-war black market economy. Before you know it, bullets are flying, Clooney is getting his ass kicked and all manner of intrigue and chicanery is underway!
The Good German is one of those films that become more interesting the more films you have seen. Just as the Coen Brothers did noir in The Man Who Knew Too Much and Todd Haynes' did 50s melodrama in Far From Heaven, so here Soderbergh does post-war European realpolitik couched within a framework of the films that were made at the time. Clooney makes many studied nods to both Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart in the character of Jake Geismer - and the relationship between Geismer and Lena Brant couldn't be more Casablanca if it tried. As the plot twists and turns, you'll be reminded of The Third Man, you'll be reminded of Maltese Falcon, you may even be reminded of Chinatown. If you're an aficionado, it may be that you'll spot nods and winks to the likes of Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair, Robert Aldrich's Ten Seconds to Hell and Jacques Tourneur's Berlin Express alongside more obvious lifts from the likes of Hitchcock's 56 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much.
All told, The Good German is one of those films seemingly designed for MovieMail customers, the - as I'm sure you'll agree - creme de la creme of movie watchers everywhere!
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 post-war 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. 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 early 21st-century production.
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The Good German
