The Good German
| The Good German | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Steven Soderbergh |
| Produced by | Ben Cosgrove Gregory Jacobs |
| Screenplay by | Paul Attanasio |
| Based on |
The Good German by Joseph Kanon |
| Starring |
George Clooney Cate Blanchett Tobey Maguire |
| Music by | Thomas Newman |
| Cinematography | Steven Soderbergh (as Peter Andrews) |
| Edited by | Steven Soderbergh (as Mary Ann Bernard) |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
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Release date
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December 15, 2006 |
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Running time
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105 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $32 million (estimated) |
| Box office | $5,914,908 |
The Good German is a 2006 film adaptation of Joseph Kanon's eponymous 2001 novel. It was directed by Steven Soderbergh, and stars George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, and Tobey Maguire. Set in Berlin following the Allied victory over the Nazis, it begins as a murder mystery but weaves in elements involving the American postwar employment of Nazi rocket scientists in Operation Paperclip.
The film was shot in black-and-white and is designed to imitate the appearance of film noir from the 1940s, although it also includes material – such as sex scenes and swearing – that would have been prohibited by the Production Code. Its poster is an homage to the poster for the classic film Casablanca (1942, also a Warner Bros. film), as is the closing scene at an airport. The DVD release presents the film in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio which declined in use from about 1953, though the theatrical release used the slightly more modern but still unusual 1.66:1 ratio.
The film received mixed reviews and grossed $5.9 million worldwide against a budget of $32 million.
Jacob "Jake" Geismer (George Clooney), an American war correspondent for The New Republic, returns to Berlin during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers after World War II was over in Europe (May 1945) but before hostilities ended in Asia (August 1945). Jacob witnesses his murdered driver, a black-marketeering American soldier named Tully (Tobey Maguire), being fished from a river eddy, suspiciously adjacent to the Potsdam conference grounds. The corpse is discovered to be in possession of 50,000 German reichsmarks — which are later revealed to have been printed by the U.S occupying forces.
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Wikipedia