At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, senior Nazi officials meet to determine the manner in which the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" can be best implemented.At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, senior Nazi officials meet to determine the manner in which the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" can be best implemented.At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, senior Nazi officials meet to determine the manner in which the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" can be best implemented.
- Won 2 Primetime Emmys
- 7 wins & 21 nominations total
- Maid
- (as Claire Bullus)
- Adjutant 1
- (as Ross O'Hennessey)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis production used an almost theatrical performance style during shooting. The performers stayed in costume and character from the start to the end of each day of filming. A set was used with solid (non-moving) walls and ceilings, to reinforce the reality of the setting, and eliminate any delays for changing camera or lighting set-ups. The action was filmed in extremely long sequences, sometimes twenty pages or more of script at a stretch, which is unusual in this type of production. However, many of the actors had a Shakespearean background, and having to memorize this amount of dialogue was not a new experience for them. The production style required the use of the Super 16 film format. This was needed, because of the longer film magazines available for those cameras, and also the smaller size, allowing the cameras to get in very close to the performers sitting around a conference table, the setting used for the bulk of the story.
- GoofsAll of the characters in the movie who wear wedding rings wear them on their left hand, as is the custom in England and the U.S., where the actors are from. Germans and Austrians wear their wedding rings on their right hands.
- Quotes
Müller: Perhaps the judge has a special love for them?
Klopfer: [mutters appreciatively] Yes, yes a special love for them... very good...
Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart: For whom? For Jews? Wonderful, you don't have my credentials. Forgive me, from your uniform I can infer that you're shallow, ignorant and naive about the Jews. Your line, what the party rants on about is how inferior they are, some-some-some sub-species, and I keep saying how wrong that is! They are sublimely clever. And they are intelligent as well. My indictments to that race are stronger and heavier because they are real, not uneducated ideology. They are arrogant and self-obsessed and calculating and reject the Christ and I will not have them pollute German blood!
General Reinhard Heydrich: [tries to calm Stuckart down] Please, Doctor...
Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart: He doesn't understand! And neither do his people. Deal with the reality of the Jew and the world will applaud us. Treat them as imaginary phantoms, evil in human fantasies, and the world would have justified contempt for us! To kill them casually without regard for the law martyrs them, which will be their victory! Sterilization recognizes them as a part of our species but prevents them from being a part of our race. They'll disappear soon enough. And we will have acted in defense of our race and of our species and by the law! This fellow mentioned the law for the protection of German blood, *I wrote that law*! When you have my credentials then we'll talk about who loves the Jews and who hates them. Pigs don't know how to hate. I know, too, that when it comes to the half-mixed, that to kill them abandons that half of their blood which is German.
Klopfer: I'll remember you.
Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart: You should. I'm very well known.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The 53rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards (2001)
- SoundtracksString Quintet in C Major', D.956: Adagio
Written by Franz Schubert
Performed by Ensemble Villa Musica
courtesy of Naxos of America
by arrangement with Source Q
The film documents a meeting held during WW2, when SS second-in-command, Reinhard Heydrich, assembles a group of Nazi bureaucrats and functionaries to 'discuss the final solution of the Jewish question'. In the sublime surroundings of a German country house, the assembled mingle for drinks, enjoy a first class buffet lunch and debate whether execution or sterilisation is the most efficient option of eliminating an entire race of people.
Subject matter aside, Conspiracy is all the more devastating, and precious, from its excellent script and incredible ensemble performances. There is no attempt or need to manipulate the viewer - the enormity of the truth is compelling, and appalling enough. The are no cartoon Nazis here, the depiction of Heydrich is fascinating and complex: the man is urbane, witty, impeccably mannered and utterly devoid of morality.
Credit must be given to Kenneth Branagh who propels the entire piece with one of the best portrayals on screen in memory. He is utterly convincing in the role of a man who epitomises the classic definition of evil: not just the doing of wrong, but the perversion of the human spirit so that it no longer has any perception of the good.
Where Heydrich is conviction, as the narrative develops, almost exclusively as table-talk, others are less sure. The range of attendees symbolises the various strains of Nazi culture, which developed over the course of the third reich. For the idealistic of these - the philosopher/technocrat Kritzinger; the legalistic Wilhelm Stuckart and the young soldier Major Lange, there is the dawning realisation of the human catastrophe in which they are complicit.
Technical objections are raised - Stuckhart expounds a ludicrous web of of objections on how the plan breaks the vile race laws he himself architected, and will be an 'administrative nightmare', but they soon realise this is a done deal - most of the mechanisms are already in place. The politically sharp Heydrich only needs to extract expressions of support in order to bind all the orders of Nazi society into equal guilt. During breaks in the proceedings he discreetly buttonholes the wobblers and silences their doubts: by naked threats, or in the case of Lange by invoking the fantasy that what they do is all part of a plan for a better tomorrow. Succumbing to Heydrich's magnetism and realising the dream is pretty much all that is left, Lange allows himself to be persuaded.
The eloquent script captures the delusional, the grotesque and the desparate qualities of the German position at that moment in the war: the calculation that defeat is inevitable, but unthinkable - despite the repeated whimsy of Heydrich that he will return here for a quiet country life once the war is over. He knows that he, and all others present, is headed only into the dark. And it's a one-way journey.
- gus120970
- Jan 25, 2002
Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- Konspirationen
- Filming locations
- Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, Am Grossen Wannsee 56-58, Zehlendorf, Berlin, Germany(Conference Building)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 36 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1