Operation Valkyrie   Starring: Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur, and Hardy Krüger, Jr. High Fliers Films RRP: £9.99 HFR0117 Certificate: 15 Available 28 March 2011

In the dying days of World War II members of the German High Command, determining that the war was lost and that Hitler’s continued existence could no longer be tolerated, created Operation Valkyrie - a plot to kill Hitler and to stage a coup d’état. One of the leaders of the conspiracy was Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, whose job it was to plant the bomb which would start the new revolution...

Operation Valkyrie (2004 - 1 hr, 32 min) is a made for television drama written and directed by Jo Baier, who is known for a series of television films in Germany. Based on witness testimony and surviving documents it is an attempt to show the plot with the highest degree of historical accuracy.

The film stars Sebastian Koch as Stauffenberg, following him from his ideological naiveties at the beginning of the war, through his growing resolution for change and finally to his active part in the attempt to assassinate Hitler.

Unfortunately, for the film it pretty much glosses over the first two parts of the process to concentrate on the plot and its aftermath. It will not be giving away any spoiler to say here that they fail quite spectacularly. Party because they waited hours before trying to take over, a fatal flaw which allowed the surviving Hitler a chance to grasp the reins of power, but also because, as a group, they underestimated the strength of feeling for Hitler, which still remained. Arguably, even having only hurt Hitler, if they had acted sooner they may still have stood a chance.

By skipping over the preliminary set up, presumably because Baier thought that the story was so well known, and that given whom they were trying to kill, that the audience’s sympathies would naturally be with the rebels, leaves us with an incomplete picture of Stauffenberg - certainly not one which we can sympathise with. After all, he served his country well for many years before deciding that Hitler should go and only doing something about it when it was evident the war was over. Without the appropriate set up, the portrayal here could just as well be taken as that of an opportunist afraid of the allies retribution, which is a whole lot less noble.

Sebastian Koch is very good in the role. Even without a convincing basis for revolution, his portrayal is for the most part of an idealist. He even gets to have a last speech, about a free and democratic Germany free from war, which is a bit melodramatic and not in keeping with most of the film. The film's other weakness is its concentration on Stauffenberg as the main instigator of the plot, which itself is historically inaccurate.

So this is not exactly the historical re-enactment which was promised, but rather a character piece about the ideals of Stauffenberg himself, though given the amounts of asides that the film takes, it does not fulfil its given desire here either.

The disc as provided was a DVD-R with only the film. Quality was okay, but not great, it didn’t help that I had to try five machines before I found one it would play on.

The acting is fine, especially Koch, though it was difficult to sympathise with any of the conspirators. For a non-German audience, the general lack of identification for everyone else involved tended to leave you caring little for any of them, possibly the writer presumed that we had all seen the Tom Cruise film and so would be familiar with the characters.

Taken on its merits, as a made for television film, it does possess a scope of vision and high production values which are a pleasant surprise. The acting is good, it’s just a shame that the director didn’t spend more time setting up his central character.

6

Charles Packer