Reviews

This movie is so visually beautiful, to me, it is the whole point. What a ravishing cinematic recreation of early to late medieval design,a perfect surface! Watching it is like being transported inside a Ravenna mosaic,or into a painting by Sassetta come to life. If you love all eras of Medieval art you will love this film. In the beginning when Francesco returns home ill, there are wonderfully evocative sick room scenes where a white delicate cloth is being draped and pressed into the young man's face and head, giving a Shroud of Turin like reference.In the later scenes in Rome the hairstyles of some of the Pope's clerical retinue appear to have been lifted directly from a late antique/Early Christian manuscript.This seemingly superficial detail is eerily authentic and reveals the mixture of the ancient and modern existing within the medieval Christian culture of Francesco's time.

I am not surprised to see some of the negative reviews when this film first came out, since the hippie movement was so on the wane and had all but disappeared, save for a few burnt out flower children. Critics probably wanted to quickly bury any and all references to them, finally and for good. Nobody likes to be vulnerable and innocent it seems, for long.

This is a riveting film from start to finish. Marcel Ophuls very personal and wry take on the unfolding horror of Nazi Klaus Barbie's long and unimpeded criminal career exerts a powerful hold. The movie exudes a weird, creepy humor throughout, beginning with its title, the actual name of the French hotel which was the location of Barbie's headquarters in Lyons. "Hotel Terminus" is filled with unforgettably bizarre, real life characters. The voices of Barbie's torture victims and pursuers are given equal time alongside those of his collaborators and defenders. This is an important movie. It stands as one of the best documentaries of the twentieth century and of all time. The film is as much or more about French history as well as American and German. The United States ugly,collaborative role in Barbie's eluding of justice for so many years is revealed in terms like "ratline". The ratline was a transportation corridor set up by the CIA to funnel Nazi war criminals safely out of Europe to South America. This operation functioned with the help of the Vatican.It was fueled by the turn of the political tide after World War Two when fear of Communist takeover took hold over Europe and the West, and the Nazis were seen as specialists in their ability to ferret out Communists. There are numerous subtitles throughout, especially in Part one, but these do not detract from the film's unstoppable momentum. Parts of this true story seem almost unbelievable. Hannah Arendt's observation and comment on the banality of evil is again and again underscored in Ophuls extraordinary film.