The Man in the Glass Booth

Rating:
Summary: Robert Shaw will turn in his grave
Review: If one has ever read the original play of "The Man in the Glass Booth" or at least the novel of the same name by the gifted writer and actor Robert Shaw, the film version by Arthur Hiller can only be regarded as a total disaster. Every ambivalent or critical aspect of Shaw's play has been cut out or made far too obvious, so that everybody gets the message- no thinking required. The film takes no risks. Hiller, in an interview of this DVD says (in nearly every second sentence) that he wanted to make the film "more emotional" than the play. A big mistake. And he is not honest to Shaw as he insists. However, he claims that Shaw, who had (understandably) removed his name from the credits called Hiller after the films release and loved it. One should doubt that. Shaw's two biographers, French and Carmean, tell a different story, namely that Shaw had never seen the film version. They also both reported that Shaw argued with Maximilian Schell, whom he disliked, on the set of "Der Richter und sein Henker" ("End of the Game"), where Schell was, of course, defeating the film version. Schell, in "Glass Booth", gives a performance that can only be described as total overacting, why does someone nominate this for an Oscar? He is as good as in "John Carpenter`s Vampires"- they should have cast Donald Pleasence, who was in the original stage production directed by Harold pinter. Do yourself a favour and get the book!

Rating:
Summary: A Captivating And Stunning Performance!!
Review: Maximillian Schell stars in an Oscar nominated role about a Jewish Industrialist being whisked away to Israel to be tried as a Nazi War Criminal.It's a captivating and stunning performance!!

Rating:
Summary: Robbed
Review: OK, Jack Nicholson did a nice little job in Cuckoo's Nest---his usual scenery munching, overdone performance. However, if fairness truly prevailed in 1975 and Max Schell was a cozy denizen of mainstream Hollywood, he would have taken the Oscar hands down for this remarkable and powerful tour de force of acting brilliance. Arthur Hiller crafts a minimalist piece of cinematography that features acting---not moviemaking gimmickry. This film is a true sleeper which seems to finally and deservedly be waking up 28 years after its creation.

Rating:
Summary: Robert Shaw will turn in his grave
Review: Thirty years ago, under the aegis of the ambitious "American Film Theatre," Arthur Hiller directed a movie based on a novel by writer, director and actor Robert Shaw. (Yes the same salty seaman who was eaten by a "great white" shark in the movie "Jaws"). Whatever one thinks about the plausibility of an enormously successful wealthy entrepreneur, who is also a schizophrenic personality, torn between the morally opposite identities of a sadistic concentration camp commandant, and a Jewish holocaust survivor, Maximilian Schell as "The Man In the Glass Booth," gives an explosive performance, so extreme and so riviting, that it is suigeneris. I can't imagine another actor, with the possible exception of Klaus Kinski, successfully realizing this incredible role. It is almost unfair to the other fine actors who inhabit this film, that they can be little more than foils in what is for all practical purposes a one man show. The story is divided into two acts, the first half taking place in Arthur Goldman's luxurious Manhattan penthouse apartment, and the second half in an Israeli courtroom. Even if you do figure out his true identity before the climactic courtroom scene, it won't take away from your astonishment, I promise.

Rating:
Summary: Maximilian Schell should have won the Oscar for this in 1975
Review: Thirty years ago, under the aegis of the ambitious "American Film Theatre," Arthur Hiller directed a movie based on a novel by writer, director and actor Robert Shaw. (Yes the same salty seaman who was eaten by a "great white" shark in the movie "Jaws"). Whatever one thinks about the plausibility of an enormously successful wealthy entrepreneur, who is also a schizophrenic personality, torn between the morally opposite identities of a sadistic concentration camp commandant, and a Jewish holocaust survivor, Maximilian Schell as "The Man In the Glass Booth," gives an explosive performance, so extreme and so riviting, that it is suigeneris. I can't imagine another actor, with the possible exception of Klaus Kinski, successfully realizing this incredible role. It is almost unfair to the other fine actors who inhabit this film, that they can be little more than foils in what is for all practical purposes a one man show. The story is divided into two acts, the first half taking place in Arthur Goldman's luxurious Manhattan penthouse apartment, and the second half in an Israeli courtroom. Even if you do figure out his true identity before the climactic courtroom scene, it won't take away from your astonishment, I promise.

Rating:
Summary: The ultimate guilt trip
Review: While watching the 2001 release THE BELIEVER, it recalled to mind THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH. Though I haven't viewed the latter movie in over a decade, the power of Maximilian Schell's performance puts it on my list of "Most Memorable Films", though perhaps my memory of the details is fuzzy.

Schell is Arthur Goldman, a wealthy Jewish industrialist living in a Manhattan highrise apartment. Goldman is apparently a recluse, who deals with the world through his personal assistant, Charlie (Lawrence Pressman). At first, Arthur seems like a regular guy, albeit expressing outrageous views on Jews and Judaism, but it becomes apparent to the audience that the man has serious issues when he's seen burning the skin under his upper arm with a candle flame. Then, the audience and Charlie are dumbfounded when an Israeli hit team breaks in, kidnaps Goldman, and carries him off to trial in Israel as a war criminal - a former Nazi concentration camp commandant, Adolph Dorf. Goldman insists pretrial that he be allowed to wear a full SS uniform. For his own protection, then, he faces his accusers as THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH. Bullet-proof glass, that is, considering the emotional volatility of the charges to camp survivors that are present.

Schell received Oscar and Golden Globe Best Actor nominations for his depiction of a man so tortured by guilt that he would go to extremes to exorcise it. Personal guilt for having survived the Holocaust; collective Jewish guilt for not having fought back. Taking on the persona of Dorf, Goldman gleefully mocks the Jews for their meekness as they went to slaughter. The sad end to the trial is one of the most emotionally compelling scenes I've ever watched.

THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH was one of the first VHS tapes I purchased back in 1979 when I bought my first video recorder. (Both the tape and the recorder were MUCH more expensive back then!) Do yourself a favor and rent this film (along with THE BELIEVER) for a thought-provoking double feature on the psyche-twisting nature of guilt.

Rating:
Summary: A psycho-fable of the highest merit
Review: Yes, yes I know all the fulminations comparing this film to the play. I haven't seen the play nor read the novel, so I'm judging purely by the film, which I rate at the very highest. OF COURSE the movie is "contrived" as Leonard Maltin's movie guide has it, that's what fables do (talking wolves, trees that sing, clouds that weep and preach a moral), they present contrived situations in order to elucidate. This psycho-fable unearths the ghoulish byplay of fire and ice in all of us, Jew or Bosch, whichever side of the barbed wire of things you stand. Schell's acting is superlative, and the LANGUAGE is English at its nightmare-wittiest. To summarize: you can't like "Doctor Strangelove" and scorn this film: they're two sides of the same rifle butt.

Dr. Theodore Voelkel
Winchester Mass.