Peter Viney's Blog

Directed by Christian Schwochow
Screenplay by Ben Power
Based on the novel ‘Munich’ by Robert Harris
Music by Isobel Waller-Bridge

NETFLIX from 21st January 2022

George MacKay- Hugh Legat
Jannis Niewöhmer – Paul von Hartman
Jeremy Irons – Neville Chamberlain
Jessica Brown Findlay- Pamela Legat
Liv Lisa Fries – Lenya
Alex Jennings- Sir Horace Wilson
Nicholas Farrell – Sir Alexander Cadogan
Mark Lewis Jones – Sir Osmund Cleverly
August Diehl – Franz Sauer – SS Man
Anjili Mohindra – Joan Menzies
Abigail Cruttenden – Anne Chamberlain
Sandra Hüller – Helen Winter, von Hartman’s girlfriend
Ulrich Mathes- Adolf Hitler
Domenic Fortunato-Mussolini
Martin Kiefer- Heinrich Himmler

I’ve always taken issue with those who have a kneejerk reaction that the “film isn’t as good as the book.” It is true that you’re more likely to rate the film as better if you haven’t read the book first. Sometimes both book and film have their own virtues, which complement each other.

Robert Harris? It’s fair to say that I’m both a fan and a collector. I have every book in hardback, mostly first editions bought in the week of release and read immediately. With Munich, I’ve not only read the book, but listened to the unabridged audio book in the car – Karen hadn’t read it, and Robert Harris books really work well in holding in-car attention.

So the premise of the book. It’s 1938. We’re into carefully researched historical accuracy, over which Harris has overlaid a fictional story so as to reflect on the real events through new eyes. In 1938, Hitler was threatening to annexe The Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia. The English and French were negotiating in Munich (via Mussolini) to stop him going further, and they sold Czechoslovakia right down the river, while the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, returned to Britain waving the signed accord and proclaiming ‘Peace in our time!’

That was Chamberlain’s third flying visit to Hitler on the issue and was dramatically set up by the British Ambassador phoning the offer of a meeting which had to be conveyed to Chamberlain while he was mid-speech in the House of Commons. History suggests that it was already settled, and the actual Munich meeting was a face-saving exercise.

Six months later, Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, then went onto Poland. History has decided that Chamberlain was a dupe, an appeaser, a weakling.

Harris takes a new angle. It was known that Chamberlain expounded at length on the horrors of The Great War and was intent on avoiding another World War. He apparently trusted Hitler, which was dumb. However, that “Peace in our time” agreement may have saved us. At the time of Munich, Britain was not sufficently prepared for war. Germany was, and a sub-theme in the book is that Hitler wanted to provoke a war right away, which he would probably have won. Chamberlain’s apparent idiocy bought us a year, in which we re-armed and built Spitfires and Hurricanes as fast as we could. The question is, was that a happy chance, or was Chamberlain cleverer than we thought?

The story that Harris weaves around the events involve Hugh Legat (George MacKay), a British aide to 10 Downing Street (which was short of bring your own booze parties at the time) and Paul von Hartman (Jannis Niewöhmer), a German translator and interpreter. They were at Oxford together in 1932, firm friends and went hiking together in Bavaria just before Hitler’s full rise to power in 1933. They fell out over Paul’s fervent nationalism. The third member of their group at Oxford and in Germany, was Lenya, a German Jewish woman. I am not convinced that starting the film in Oxford in 1932 was better than a flashback later.

I’m not going to spoil the plot (entirely) but in the novel, Paul von Hartman is a member of a group pf patriotic German senior officers who want to arrest Hitler. He has had access to documents revealing Hitler’s long term aims of conquering Europe. The world needs to know, and specifically Neville Chamberlain needs to be aware. The British Secret Service are contacted, and decide to add Legat to the PM’s party travelling to Munich, so that he can meet up with Paul and get the papers … this is all behind Chamberlain’s back.

You will find the film engaging and the storyline gripping. The Germany sections are in German with English subtitles. I thought that worked to give the mood.

It pictures 1938 London with preparations for barrage balloons, expecting imminent war and gas masks on children. It shows Germany in 1938. We have seen scenes from 1932 with Brownshirts and anti-semitic slogans on shops. You shift to 1938 and it is astonishing how the vast and bizarre paraphernalia of Fascism has spread. It always amazes me – those giant doors and windows on buildings in Munich, totally out of any human scale, as if for a race of Teutonic giants. Add the elaborate and silly uniforms, and a whole population who in just five years have adopted the Hitler salute as a normal everyday greeting. How did all that happen in just five years?

Jeremy Irons is great casting as Neville Chamberlain a gentle, distinguished older Conservative politician of the 1930s. I didn’t take to Ulrich Matthes as Hitler … he looked more worn-out Hitler 1945 than Hitler 1938. I suspect the problem is all those wonderful Hitler parodies from Downfall with Bruno Granz defining our image of Hitler. Incidentally, Ulrich Matthes was Goebbels in that film. Granz had the mad eyes, and somehow you have to convey that this little man with a daft moustache and bad breath had the charisma to hypnotize an entire nation.

We’re back to the book v film question. It’s not a long book, but the audio book is 9 CDs and takes 9.5 hours to read. The film is 2 hours 10 minutes. That’s normally about right … as they say a picture replaces a thousand words.F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates this in The Last Tycoon where the writer produces several pages of script, which the director replaces with a lift door opening and an exchange of glances.

Somehow it isn’t right for this story. I’m convinced it would have worked better as a four episode TV series running to at least four hours. Too much is missed, and a lot of tension is lost.

Right at the start Harris paints a picture of the stress and tension in a London expecting war any day. Legat is having problems with his wife (that’s shown in the film) and he wants her to evacuate to the country with their son. The shots of barrage balloons in the film aren’t as strong as the description in the book.

More, in the film, Legat arrives after Chamberlain’s meeting with Chiefs of the General Staff (army, navy, air force). In the book I’m sure he’s at the meeting, where they explain that the Navy is under-manned, and the building of aircraft programme is not at speed yet. That’s crucial to the conclusion that Chamberlain as buying time.

The train journey from Berlin to Munich is exciting (and much longer in the novel) and introduces the S.S. man Franz Sauer who has his suspicions about van Hartman.They are sharing a compartment after von Hartman has managed to get himself assigned as an interpreter to the party travelling with Hitler.

In the book, the Czechs are in the ante-rooms at the hotel, but are not admitted to the negotiations. I think that was important and sorely missed, as were a lot of heart-stopping moments in and around the hotel corridors, and getting around the buildings in Munich.

One of the most striking scenes in the novel is where Paul and Legat drive far into the country to see what has happened to Lenya. In the film it appears a few seconds away.

If I’m sniping, then the Lockheed plane taking off (SFX) to carry Chamberlain to Munich looks like a video game.

Never under-estimate Robert Harris. This is from the article SLOPPY FICTION (linked) on this site:

I have previous experience of fact checking Robert Harris, and the result has always been Harris- RIGHT / Me – WRONG. An example was Munich where Neville Chamberlain flies to Munich on British Airways in 1938. No! I thought, British Airways was formed in 1974 by combining BEA and BOAC. So I checked. There was a different airline, British Airways Ltd from 1935-1939 (a merger of Spartan Air Lines, United Airways and Hillman’s Airways). And yes, Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich on British Airways (Ltd).

In the end, the film is well worth watching. If you haven’t read the book, I strongly advise you to see the film first, THEN do get the book which will greatly enrich the story.