Hôtel Terminus [DVD]

Marcel Ophuls controversially uncovered the grisly truth about the response of some French citizens to German occupation in his masterpiece The Sorrow and the Pity. Almost ten years later came his equally engrossing Oscar winning documentary Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie.Barbie was the Head of the Gestapo in Lyon and is best remembered there for his brutal treatment of French resisters and his round up and deportation to the extermination camps of the city's Jewish population.Using interviews with survivors from the war Ophuls pieces together the story of this dreadful man who died in prison in 1991 while serving a life sentence for war crimes. After the war Barbie escaped to South America and the director takes his camera there and speaks to folk there who remember him before he was deported to France.The first third of the film, which runs for almost four and a half hours, deals with Barbie's early life and his time as head of the Lyon Gestapo with many first hand recollections of his brutal treatment of prisoners. The middle section covers his escape, possibly aided by the CIA, to South America and the last forty minutes of so takes the viewer into the court room where Barbie faced his accusers. The final footage includes some amazing dialogue with Barbie's lawyer.This is a compelling and truly great Holocaust documentary without any footage of the extermination camps whatsoever but this in no way lessens the impact of Hotel Terminus, one of the finest documentary films ever made.

This long documentary is the work of Marcel Ophuls who won wide acclaim for his The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) which reported on how ordinary people of Clermont-Ferrand, farmers, collaborators, government officials, artists and resistants, behaved, reacted under Nazi occupation.Hotel Terminus (255 minutes duration) was the Gestapo headquarters in Lyon, the city where the subject of the film, SS man Klaus Barbie, worked tirelessly to justify his sobriquet - The Butcher of Lyon. After he was extradited from Bolivia to France in 1983 he was charged with crimes against humanity, torture, murder and deporting Jews to the death camps. The film is composed of many interviews, film covering decades of Barbie's life and how he was protected by those who should have condemned him. Ophuls is not to be deterred as he exposes the moral corruption of Barbie's world - and ours. The film is demanding, compelling, challenging and more than deserved its Academy Award, Documentary Feature.

There are not enough first hand / eye-witness documentaries about but this important classic really captures Barbies origins, his treatment of others in the context of urban war and his own subsequent treatment when brought back to reflect on the scene of his own crimes.

While the subject of this long documentary (of two DVDs and over 4 hours duration at 255 minutes) is fascinating, sadly it is not up to the standard of Marcel Ophuls' prior documentary "The Sorrow & The Pity".The tracking of the life of Klaus Barbie is done meticulously and chronologically from his German childhood onwards. However, after about 30 minutes the aspects of the documentary which grated more and more with me as the film continues were already becoming obvious. While they were used in Ophuls' prior film, they do not seem to work as well here. The film features numerous interviews (allegedly over 120 hours of interview was filmed) but given both the time span and the geographical coverage of the subject, there are no indicators (either on screen sub titles or spoken) to explain who is being interviewed and their relevance to the story e.g. historical title or position. So you need to be alert in continually picking up from the surrounding interviews intercut the names and events being covered, especially as some early appearances recur again towards the end. Secondly while the sub titling is good throughout, certain scenes (mainly where Spanish spoken) have the live translation for Ophuls also recorded on the soundtrack which gets irritating especially with the story moving to South America.The life story of Barbie is labyrinthine and maybe Ophuls felt that the above approach would help underline that element. However where after World War II has finished and we track Barbie selling his services for money and protection between the different Allies intelligence services (USA and German especially) lack of knowledge of the history and events can make for hard going as to the key points being covered and arguments being made. This is accentuated by at numerous times the film continually intercutting interviews of people who are diametrically opposed on the facts being covered - it works effectively sometimes but many times I found myself just being irritated.By the end one is left in no doubt that Barbie's luck to remain free after the War for so long was because he had powerful protectors, whether amongst the USA intelligence services & the Catholic Church given their hatred of post WWII communism plus French antipathy to not reopen the wounds of deportation of Jews, and the conflicts of communism and the resistance in Vichy France. Unlike Eichmann, Barbie's downfall was his high profile position reached in Bolivia where a regime change led to his then being quickly sent back to France for trial and then imprisonment. The story's final twist is the defence at his trial being led by the controversial French advocate Jacques Verges which provoked even more outrage than might have been the case. After seeing this video you may want to check out and watch Barbet Schroeder's documentary "Terror's Advocate" about this controversial lawyer .

Essential Marcel Ophuls. Worth a fortune.

Superb.

Great dvd prompt service. Recommended

Can't get DVD to work , will only work on region 1. Uk & Europe region 2