The following quintet of short paragraphs are my review for this film from 2015:
"Nacht über Berlin" is a two-year-old television film about the Nazi era starring Jan Josef Liefers. The director is Friedemann Fromm and you may have seen his film "Schlaraffenland". He also wrote the script together with Rainer Berg. All in all, I found this film very generic. It tries to be emotionally involving, but I just did not feel a lot for any of the central characters. There have been so many Nazi-related movies from Germany in the last decades and there is nothing in here that makes this one stand out.
Also, I was a bit shocked how little chemistry Liefers and Anna Loos had given the fact that they are also a real-life couple. The whole film seems to have basically only one purpose. Create as many baity scenes for Liefers as possible how his character goes up against the National Socialists and gives it his all as he is a politician as well. The problem was that making Liefers look so significant and include him in every scene of the film, the story became really one-dimensional quickly and also lacked credibility at some point starting already with the very first scene where we see the main character being questioned and tortured by Nazi officials. Style over substance in my opinion.
I myself am a bit surprised that Liefers is so highly regarded as one of the best German actors. He is talented, no doubt about it, but he also has a tendency to play similar characters in all his works (arrogant, intelligent, flawed). This criticism is often handed to the likes of Til Schweiger, but you never really hear it about Liefers. Anyway, back to the film, I found Anna Loos a disappointment too. It did not look to me that she could carry a film in a lead role. I guess the reference in the title refers to the Night of Broken Glass, which is referenced near the end of the film a bit randomly for my taste, probably to create historic relevance all of a sudden.
All in all, I would not recommend this film unless you are a huge Jan Josef Liefers fan. The script is never great, sometimes weak (Liefers' character predicting the Nazis coming into power by blaming their political opponents was very far-fetched) and there is nothing particularly memorable here. The only two things I really liked are that they did not go for a forced happy ending and that some of the 1930's German music included was really great and interesting. But these two factors cannot save almost two hours of mediocrity.
I decided to give this film a rewatch in 2023 now that it is a decade old and I will add a few more thoughts to it:
Overall, I stand with my general perception that this is not a film worth seeing and there is also no reason to change my rating of 2/5 or 4/10. However, I would not go too harsh on Liefers this time as I felt that Anna Loos was the far worse lead actor in here from the duo. She is in general not a gifted actress by any means and never managed to lend this film the significance it deserved, the significance it would have needed to receive a positive recommendation overall. She just does not bring it in so many scenes and her different face expressions stayed comfortably in single-digit territory. Not even the scene in the end with her tears or a little earlier with the male protagonist dead and her seeing his corpse stayed remotely memorable. If anything stayed a bit memorable from the emotional scenes, it was Liefers' character losing his brother there in the streets. But this scene was not as effective either as it could have been. The film does have its lengths. It could or rather should have stayed around the 90-minute mark instead of being pushed closer to two hours. Maybe the movie is at its worst with the romantic scenes between the protagonist, all about how they get to know each other and get closer to one another. There is so much cringe to them. I mean the screenplay is also really poor there, like with the scene on the ship, but the actors, especially Loos once again, are not making it any better. She is really just Regina Ziegler movie level. Maybe her relationship with Liefers helped her to stay above these levels and keep having a career for decades. But she brings absolutely none of the dramatic range that she and ARD etc. Want us to believe she has. The easily-influenced maybe don't see it. What I would also like to add here about the cast is that it is a bit of a pity Claudia Eisinger was wasted for what is almost a nothing character. I mean she is also not super-talented, but with the right role she can make an impact, but of course they never wanted anybody to steal any spotlight from the at-best mediocre Loos, so they kept her character as stereotypical as it gets.
I stand with my original thoughts that Liefers and Loos are usually typecast and rarely out of their comfort zone, probably because they would not deliver that way. It is cringeworthy to watch and almost turns this weak film into a horrible one how they are both such goodness personified. Just too many scenes as examples there, especially for Liefers. I cannot mention them all. Everybody else has their flaws, even those who also stand up against Hitler's party as we see when they tricked Liefers' character into bringing something he had no intention to bring or when they beat up Loos' character and threatened her family. And Liefers' character's family too. Tough to say what the most cringeworthy moment of them all was. Maybe it was the one when Liefer's character takes the weapons from the Nazis beating up an innocent man and easily beats up two of them as well. He is of course also not just a renowned politician, but also a successful doctor. This entire background is a joke and not a good one. Or maybe another contender for most cringeworthy moment is also when he tells everybody to get into his practice. But it was also those small moments like when early on he tells his employees that he will work an additional hour although it was not by any means his fault that he was late and that all his employees can get home when they usually do. Of course, the film also, as always with Loos in a role, had to make sure to show us what a desirable character she is through one character drooling over her and screaming early on when she will finally go out with him on a date. Embarrassing stuff there. It was all about the actors. Not about the characters. Those were the scenes that ruined the movie. Admittedly, this character I just mentioned was maybe the closest to having shades from them all you could say. Like how he tells Loos' character to make sure Liefers' leaves the country, but he has his own motivations and we also see during a dinner scene what he really thinks and during one occasion when somebody tells him that he is a businessman and not a politician.
What maybe also hurts the film a little bit is that the characters you see in here are not based on real people, at least not with those names. Or maybe it is a good thing because had there been a real Dallgow and Goldmann, the way they were pictured in here was nothing they should be remembered as. Here and there the film also acts pretty clumsy when elaborating on historic events and people, for example how Göring was thrown in here or Hitler is seen briefly as well or also how we hear people mention dates or years to make a reference to previous historic events. Happened in an early interrogation scene. They would not have talked like this in real. It was only for the audience and hurt the film even further because of the lack of subtlety. As for the two aspects that I mentioned liking at the end of my original review, I cannot say I still think the music was great. On the contrary, I love some of the music from (Germany) back then, but if you look at how stereotypical Tarrach's character ended up in here for example, it's nothing to be proud of. Max Raabe had a solid little cameo and was still the best inclusion if we talk about the music. But seeing Loos allegedly as an equal with him there on the stage was a poor joke too. More make-believe hoe great she is when she really isn't. Finally, I am from Berlin myself, have lived almost my entire life here, and I must say the film was also disappointing from this perspective. It is by no means a tribute to the city or successfully using any of Berlin's historic significance they way they could have. One of many reasons why this film is not worth seeing. I have to dig deep for positive aspects. Maybe the sets and costumes were alright, but what is even worse than the film itself is people giving awards or only nominations to it. What a travesty. You should probably see a triple-digit number of other films dealing with the 3rd Reich subject first before you decide to give this one a go. I cannot recommend it.
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