Reviews and notes

Istvan Szabo's third "Brandauer" film which in period and mood forms a trilogy with Mephisto and Colonel Redl, contains some scintillating passages. If it fails by the skin of its teeth to equal Mephisto, the reason may be that the photogrnphy and production design smack too eagerly of the theatre. Brandauer plunges headlong as usual into his role, that of a wounded sergeant in the Great War who hones to perfection a talent for clairvoyancy. He starts by predicting where things are hidden (or not hidden) in theatres, and ends by foretelling the burning of the Reichstag...

Here stands a man uncertain of his own powers, convinced in his heart that he's a charlatan and yet held by a woman and even ministers to be a seer or saviour in Mitteleuropa's turbulent 1920's. A comrade in arms from the battlefield proceeds to package Hanussen like some valuable racehorse, a property that earns both money and influence in high places. Brandauer flicks into effortless overdrive in the public scenes, mesmerising us, the audience, as much as those on screen as he persuades a deranged soldier to give up a primed grenade, or from behind his blindfold identifies a revolver in a lady's handbag...

The Third Reich fascinates Szabo, with its violent colours, its love of fire, and the guileful scheming that somehow co-ordinated the whole diabolical house of cards. Even a flawed film by this Hungarian maestro carries a higher voltage than anything else on the horizon in 1988.
- Peter Cowie, International Film Guide, l989.

Weblink: Review by Andrew Leavold, Senses of Cinema

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