The Man in the Glass Booth

Starring:Maximilian Schell, Lois Nettleton, Lawrence Pressman, Luther Adler, Lloyd Bochner, Robert H. Harris, Henry Brown, Norbert Schiller, Berry Kroeger, Leonardo Cimino, Connie Sawyer, Leonidas Ossetynski, David Nash, Martin Berman, Richard Rasof, Sy Kramer, Allyson Ames, Laura Campbell, Jennifer Lee, Jackie Stoloff
Director: Arthur Hiller
Studio: Kino Video
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

Deserving of an oscar
I have been searching for this film for 32 years!
Images of the Holocaust rekindled
A psycho-fable of the highest merit
The film version is always overrated

The Man in the Glass Booth
Starring: Maximilian Schell , Lois Nettleton , Lawrence Pressman , Luther Adler , and Lloyd Bochner
Director: Arthur Hiller
Manufacturer: Kino Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00009MEJA
Release Date: 2003-07-22

Customer Reviews:

Deserving of an oscar.......2007-06-03

An absolutely riveting performance by Maximillian Schell. By the time this movie ended I was emotionally spent. A movie not to be missed!

I have been searching for this film for 32 years!.......2007-01-01

I had no idea that this film is finally available, and I'm delighted. I'll buy it at once. I saw it in its debut showing -- where i was living at that time (1975) while I was in college, and found it extraordinarily moving. I'm an appreciator of Maxillian Schell and found him at the top of his form in this film. In fact, I've searched for this film (call me crazy) every 3 or 4 years for the last 32 years in video rental stores, stores selling videos, and then where DVDs are sold. So I'm stunned it is finally out. That year (1975) the other standout film in the American Film Theatre production series (to which I had a subscription) was an avant guarde film that became a bit of a cult classic, and couldn't be more different, "The Maids."

Images of the Holocaust rekindled.......2006-11-24

That Maximilian Schell's outstanding acting performance in "The Man in the Glass Booth" did not garner a deserved Oscar is only made understandable by the fact that Jack Nicholson was honored for his portrayal of McMurphy in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Schell was mesmerizing in his portrayal of bombastically eccentic and fabulously wealthy Jewish architect Arthur Goldman. Ensconsed in a palatial and luxuriously appointed penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park, Schell is served by his dutiful adminstrative assistant Charlie Cohn played by Lawrence Pressman.

An astute businessman, Schell is plagued by images from his past which included internment in a concentration camp. With Schell's flaky personality firmly established, the plot takes an unforseen twist. Schell is abducted by Israeli agents who spirit him back to Israel to stand trial as a notorious Nazi war criminal. Alleged to be Colonel Dorff, a monster responsible for murderous, heinous crimes against humanity, Schell plead his case acting in his own defense.

Based on a successful play written by talented and tempestuous actor Robert Shaw, "The Man in the Glass Booth" forces us to confront the reality of the lives permanently altered by the horrors of the Holocaust.

A psycho-fable of the highest merit.......2004-05-08

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.

The film version is always overrated.......2004-01-16

Robert Shaw's "The Man in the Glass Booth" was a successful play when it came out in 1967 and ran in London and on Broadway. Harold Pinter, who directed for the first time of his career a stage play, was a friend of Shaw and helped him to transform the novel into two acts of controversial content in which the rich Jew Arthur Goldman is supposed to be the former SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Adolf Karl Dorff. He is finally arrested by Israelis lead by a woman named Rosy Rosen. But the trial in Jerusalem (parallels to Eichmann)is ending in a way no one would have ever expected...

Donald Pleasence played Goldman in the original stage production in 1967/68 and his performance was regarded as one of the finest in his whole career. Pinter's direction did also receive excellent reviews while Shaw's play remained ambivalent. It is still controversial to this day, without question, but it is also written brilliantly. Although it is very tough it is not anti-semitic as some critics called it. Pinter is Jewish (and not known as being anti-semitic) and Shaw was a left-wing man who also wasn't anti-semitic (if I believe the two biographers of his, Jon French and Karen Carmean).
It's a shame that the play isn't published anymore, for me it is a timeless classic. It is very rarely played now. In Germany for example, the play was never published but it was staged there in 2004 (nearly 40 years after its original release!) and was very well, although controversially, reviewed.

However, when it comes to a movie version you can't transform the book 1:1 into film. Some adaptations come close ("Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"), some are very different but are unique themselves ("Naked Lunch") and some can also be quite disastrous- like this one. Producers unwisely chose the director of "Love Story", Arthur Hiller, for their way of "The Man in the Glass Booth". In an interview on the DVD he says that the play was an 'intellectual game-play'- that's right, it was. He also says (more than one time) that HE wanted to make the film 'more emotional'- that's, please read the play, a very big mistake. This is not "Love Story"!! Of course, there are a lot of emotions at the end of the second act which I agree should be felt by the audience as well. But the direction of Hiller is so boring and non-dramatical that I had to ask myself where the emotions were. When I finally saw something like them, they were misplaced, full of not welcomed pathos or even unwillingly funny. This is mainly the fault of Mr. Schell. He is not a bad actor. But he was definitely the wrong choice for "Glass Booth". Or at least, with this director. I can only imagine how Hiller shouted at him "Yes yes, Maxi- more emotional!" And what came out was a performance which might have worked on stage but in the film it is simply overacting. Of course, Goldman/Dorff is a strangely extrovert and sometimes cynically funny man but he is not grimacing in the silliest way all the time. Just remember Donald Pleasence. Think of his performance in "The Caretaker" (directed by Clive Donner) and you will surely agree that he would have been the better choice for the part. Schell is in my point of view as 'good' as in Carpenter's "Vampires". The actress of Rosy Rosen is also badly miscast (in the play she is a very tough, revengeful person but in the film she is only soft-spoken with tears in her eyes). Lawrence Pressman as Charly (who was in the stage production as well) and Luther Adler as The Judge on the contrary, are fine.

As Hiller and Schell are maybe a question of taste, the script is not at all.
I can't tell in this reduced space how many important and ambivalent moments they cut out from Shaw's masterpiece. I think producers were a bit afraid of the content and made every aspect far too obvious so they couldn't hurt anyone. But this work does hurt and it should make people think and not stop them. Somehow, Mr. Shaw was of the same opinion. His name does (understandably) not appear on the credits of the film. Now that he's dead, they could press it on the DVD-cover. But it's not "Robert Shaw's Man in the Glass Booth" as they have written it. It is "Arthur Hiller's/Edward Anhalt's/Maximilian Schell's version" of it!
I think the author will turn in his grave. I can only ask myself why nobody asked Shaw himself to write a script. Shaw was a very talented man. He was a gifted writer and actor. He wrote e.g. the screenplay for Losey's "Figures in a Landscape" in which he also starred and is supposed to have written the 'Indianapolis Speech' which he gives in "Jaws". Shaw was very unhappy with the script and wisely chose to remove his name from this film. Hiller, however, claims that Shaw had seen the finished film- loved it and called the producer to put his name back on the credits. I don't believe him. Shaw's biographers tell that he never saw the film because he hated the script so much. After the film version of "Glass Booth", Shaw also worked with Maximilian Schell on "Der Richter und sein Henker" ("End of the Game"/ "Deception") which Schell directed. They had an argument on the script of the film version of "Glass Booth" which Schell defended (of course: he got an Academy Award nomination for over-acting). Shaw later said about Schell: "My least favourite director."

I rate this film 2/5 for its original REALLY COMPELLING material.

Average customer rating:

Deserving of an oscar
I have been searching for this film for 32 years!
Images of the Holocaust rekindled
A psycho-fable of the highest merit
The film version is always overrated

The Man in the Glass Booth
Starring: Maximilian Schell , Lois Nettleton , Lawrence Pressman , Luther Adler , and Lloyd Bochner
Director: Arthur Hiller
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video