The Good German (2006)

Cate Blanchett as: Lena Brandt

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Selected Cast: George Clooney, Tobey Maguire, Jack Thompson
Written by: Paul Attanasio (Based on the novel of the same name by Joseph Kanon)
Release Year: 2006
Genre: Drama / Mystery / Thriller
MPAA Rating: R

IMDb | Photos | Videos

Berlin, July, 1945. Journalist Jake Geismer arrives to cover the Potsdam conference, issued a captain’s uniform for easier passage. He also wants to find Lena, an old flame who’s now a prostitute desperate to get out of Berlin. He discovers that the driver he’s assigned, a cheerful down-home sadist named Corporal Tully, is Lena’s keeper. When the body of a murdered man washes up in Potsdam (within the Russian sector), Jake may be the only person who wants to solve the crime: U.S. personnel are busy finding Nazis to bring to trial, the Russians and the Americans are looking for German rocket scientists, and Lena has her own secrets.

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Behind the scene; StillRelated Videos

Quotes from Cate Blanchett

“I think the model was more the European actresses who we were embraced by Hollywood of that period. Fortunately, when it’s released in Germany, it’ll be dubbed. But what the difference is I suppose is that if it was a film of the ‘40s, then I wouldn’t be speaking German. Steven [Soderbergh] decided at the 11th hour basically when I arrived that in fact he wanted me to speak German, so there’s a bit of a mild internal panic there, but there was a fantastic German advisor on the set who helped me, and obviously Christian [Oliver] who’s playing Lena’s husband was fantastic and great to have an actor saying, ‘If you give it this cadence it’ll have this meaning.’” (Cinemablend, December 2006)
On her character, Lena Brandt: “She is a survivor, but with enormous cost. I don’t think you survive something like that without there being some psychological, emotional spiritual cost to yourself and to other people, which she would absolutely acknowledge.” (Blackfilm, December 2006)
“I came off Notes on a Scandal on a Friday and started shooting The Good German on the Monday. I had to pick up a German accent – I’m not a mimic, so I was panicking a bit. The film has a heightened style, and it’s in black and white. But it’s a modern film. It’s almost like Steven Soderbergh has created something unique – because the violence in the film is real, it’s not stylised, the sex, the language, the expletives are not stylised. So we feel like we understand, but then we’re distanced from the action at the same time.
There’s the epic quality to the story of a love that can never be – it’s been decimated by the realities of war in the way that Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart became estranged [in Casablanca]. And the political backdrop that’s behind Casablanca is also behind The Good German. It’s quite Brechtian, and the emotions are handled in that Forties way. There’s no introspection in Forties films unless it’s expressed externally, and that was really challenging. It’s not melodramatic, it’s what people do. Often, George [Clooney] and I would say, ‘Whoa, that felt eggy’ – it felt like you’ve got egg on your face – and Steven said, ‘If it doesn’t feel eggy, you’re not there.’ We just had to go for it.
It was one of the great experiences, near perfect, because Steven is unbelievably clear and the vision he had for this film was so complete. There was one day, at midday, when he goes, ‘We’ve shot everything we’ve got to shoot and we can’t move over to the next stage, so we’ll all go home.’ And it’s not because anyone wants to go off and play golf. He knows exactly what he wants and there’s no mucking around. I could pick up the kids from school and have a life while I was shooting.” (The Guardian, December 2006)

Quotes from Others

Steven Soderbergh:
— “The emotions of the time are external and very big, and it’s not at all what modern actors are used to doing. So I was a little nervous when we started. That ended after the first take of Cate’s [Blanchett] first scene. I pulled my head up from the eyepiece and just stared at my assistant director. There was nothing we could say; what she had done was perfect.”

Trivia & Facts

Filmed in USA.
The film is part of the In Competition line-up at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival and screened on 9 February 2007.
Cate Blanchett and Steven Soderbergh would reunite 19 years later on the spy-thriller Black Bag (2025).
The movie poster is an homage to a poster of Casablanca (1942), as is the closing scene at the airport.
Steven Soderbergh, wishing to shoot this film the old Hollywood way, banned the use of sophisticated zoom lenses used by today’s cinematographers, returning to the fixed focal-length lenses used in the past. Furthermore, only incandescent lights were used which provided harsh, unnatural lighting. There were also no wireless body microphones, which would allow the faintest whispers to be heard, on set. Sound was recorded the old-fashioned way, with a hand-operated boom mike held above the actors head, which consequently forced the actors to speak in loud, crisp English.
George Clooney directed Cate Blanchett and starred with her in The Monuments Men (2014).
The film was shot as if it had been made in 1945. Only studio back lots, sets and local Los Angeles locations were used. No radio microphones were used, the film was lit with only incandescent lights and period lenses were used on the cameras. The actors were directed to perform in a presentational, stage style. The only allowance was the inclusion of nudity, violence and cursing which would have been forbidden by the Production Code.
Cate Blanchett finished filming Notes on a Scandal (2006) on a Friday then on the Monday she was on set of The Good German (2006).