Dresden: The Inferno
Dresden: The Inferno
| 05 March 2006 (USA)
Dresden: The Inferno Trailers

A romance between a British pilot hiding in Germany and a German nurse is shown on the background of massive allied bombing of Dresden towards the end of World War 2.

Reviews
Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?
Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.
Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.
Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Dresden" is a German film from 2006, so it has its 10th anniversary this year. The director is Roland Suso Richter and if you know the name, you also know what to expect: He is a trademark director for opulent historically-themed movies for the small screen. And this is exactly what this is. It consists of two 90-minute episodes and deals with life in the city of Dresden at the end of World War II. People with an interest in history will immediately make the connection that Dresden is possibly the one city in Germany that was destroyed the most by the allied attacks. And a part of this movie is exactly about this. Another reviewer wrote about the historical importance of the film, but I cannot agree with this at all. While the war (action) scenes are probably still one of the better aspects of the film, it never makes an impact from a documentary perspective and it basically just sets a forgettable background for the bland stories of the main characters.The biggest character is portrayed by Felicitas Woll. I personally see her as a charismatic actress that is really beautiful (which saved the film a bit) but has no range. But you can't really blame her either for the generic way the character was written. Male main characters are played by John Light, Benjamin Sadler and Heiner Lauterbach and these last two are the perfect example of actors that shine through recognition value instead of range. I cannot say anything about Light as I have not seen him in other works. Sadly, Jürgen Heinrich, who I liked, has not a lot of screen time at all. Marie Bäumer also fits the description I gave earlier. Charismatic. recognition value. But not particularly talented.The story is the film's biggest problem. In the end, nothing stays memorable about this film at all, not from a historic perspective and certainly not about the characters. There are several cringeworthy scenes though when it comes to drama like Lauterbach's character's farewell (suddenly a good guy out of nowhere???) or Sadler's shooting scene at the very end almost that could have been so much better (again, Sadler is not to blame, but the blatancy of the filmmakers in their unsuccessful attempt to create something relevant). The worst part of the film is probably the romance though. Again, it is not the actors' fault, but it already starts in the way Woll's and Light's characters meet when he saves a boy from committing suicide after Sadler's character was very cold towards the grieving boy before. These are the scenes where the film is nothing more than a schmaltzy romantic drama and even if the filmmakers' intention to turn this into something more is visibly throughout the entire film, it is really almost never successful. Another painful moment was the ending when they went for a semi-happy ending (the birth, but the death) and tried to convince the audience that a non-gooey ending is something that prevents the film from being forgettable romantic schmaltz. It does not. I don't recommend the watch as it offers very little of quality and instead drags on so many occasions because of characters that were written in an uninspired fashion and without shades.
roger-simmons1942 I was hoping this would be of the calibre of Das Boot and echo the stark realism created by acclaimed German Director Leni RiefenStahl in her documentaries, sadly I was monumentally disappointed. The story line is implausible and defies credulity. An RAF airman is shot down and somehow finds his way to a hospital in Dresden. Anna a nurse whose father runs the hospital and is about to become engaged to a doctor she works with falls in love with the airman and they make love. The next evening at a lavish engagement party the airman turns up disguised as a German officer and dances with Anna. Although well directed and acted, to me it is soap opera of the lowest order.
anca_romania I saw this movie just by chance, but i was very glad at the end that i had this luck...I have nothing against the fact that the film included Anna and Robert's love story, even though some may say it was a mere cliché and a pretext for the unfolding of the war background... I liked the idea that two persons can get to fall in love so profoundly and faithfully, and all of a sudden...What i have to reproach, though, is the fact that the characters were somehow just the pretext for the movie's target, that was to show a realistic picture of the war and the bombings... The characters and their relationships (the relationship between Anna and Robert,for example) lacked complexity, there was not a substantial personal and inner experience to mingle with and mould itself to the experience of war and make the characters pass through a dramatic process of their life. The plot involving the love story was kind of simplistic... Of course, the film showed the pure reality, which was good- an example of common people's lives as they were, simple, and of course the trauma that marked each and every one of them, even if not in a highly personal way as i would have liked... My opinion may not be totally correct, but this is what i felt... Where I found some substantial complexity, though, was in Anna's father experience, for he did learn at the end, when he died, how vain all his intentions were in the context of all the suffering around him, he understood that his efforts to dodge the war were vain if everything- family and peace- was being destroyed by the war just under his eyes...But, on the whole the movie really marked me, and i learned how such an experience as war somehow takes the charm of love and anything else that we hold so dear and that our soul really needs to be alive and content… war makes all these in those horrible moments seem petty...less valuable, appealing to us than they were before… maybe that was why the movie centered especially on the collective suffering... and not on a highly personal experience... because presenting the particular experience of Anna and Robert was just in order to perceive the war through their eyes (that is from a realistic, authentic and not an objective perspective, an effect that a documentary would not have had), but not through their soul too, that is from a personal inner view and experience… Despite this or maybe because of this, i think the movie does deserve acclaim!
elcilorien This is an excellent miniseries that does a wonderful job at portraying the ambivalence of war. Because we follow characters in both England and Germany, we see that neither side is completely to blame for the horrors of WWII, however, neither is completely innocent either. Apart from that, this movie should not be seen as a documentary of the bombing of Dresden. Although the movie is titled "Dresden," it follows characters more than history, though one does learn a little of that as well. Highly recommended for warm characters and a touching drama. This is the kind of movie that you can't stop thinking about days after you've seen it.