Some years ago I saw "Conspiracy", an HBO-BBC TV movie about the Wannsee Conference, the secret conference in January 1942 where Hitler henchman Reinhard Heydrich laid out to a bunch of top German bureaucrats the Nazi genocidal plans toward the Jews in Europe. That film, which I liked quite a lot, has Kenneth Branagh as Heydrich, as well as other fine actors (Stanley Tucci was Adolf Eichmann, and Colin Firth has also a role there as a top Nazi lawyer, among others). It turns out Conspiracy was a remake of a previous German TV movie from 1984, called Die Wanseekonferenz. Both films are very similar, the conceit of the movie being the same (stagey setting with all the movie shot indoors, the conference is played in real time of about 85 minutes). Both movies shock the audience by having the characters talk dispassionately and matter of factly of killing the Jews in various manners. Whereas Conspiracy has a lineup of relatively famous thespians, the German movie is served by a little known but fine cast of German actors. Conspiracy has obviously a larger budget and is a bit more showy, yet I think Wannseekonferenz is probably more true to life. For instance, Branagh plays Heydrich as a master manipulator, a larger than life character, while Dietrich Mattausch, the German actor who played him in the earlier film in a more subdued form probably has him right. This is punctuated by small talk and several banal episodes, so as to point the banality of evil (for instance, Heydrich repeatedly joking about the barking dog of an officer, or some soldiers flirting with the secretaries).
Review of Die Wannseekonferenz
Die Wannseekonferenz
(1984 TV Movie)
Important film, was later remade as "Conspiracy"
6 February 2013