Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

kijii The Man in the Glass Booth is a challenging movie. One finds it difficult to understand completely. First—Some observations: ---The original novel and play of this story were written by actor Robert Shaw, whose inspiration seemed to come from the 1960 abduction of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was captured in Argentina by Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, transferred to Israel, tried there, found guilty of war crimes, and hanged in 1962. ---For some unknown reason, Shaw did not want to have his name credited in the movie. ---Maximilian Schell was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for this movie, filmed by The American Film Theatre. ---It seems to have been hard to find this movie for some time, either on VHS or DVD, but is now available through Amazon Prime streaming (with no extra cost). Personally, I am happy for this since, in my opinion, its dialogue is rich and dense, and several viewings may be necessary-- for me at least--to understand it. Due to another user's comment, I am not alone: ..this film deserves, even demands repeated viewing due to its complex and difficult to understand plot.---Schell presents an over-the-top performance, here, in which he completely dominates all the other actors. ---The play seems to touch on many topics: Religion, Ethics, Morality, and Law (both national and international), ---Finally, the very issue of what sanity and insanity is is explored if it is measured in terms of one's relationship to ones' culture and surroundings. ========================================= Arthur Goldman (Maximilian Schell) is a VERY rich Jewish industrialist who lives in a Manhattan high-rise overlooking his "children"—the many buildings of his empire. His young assistant is Charlie Cohn (Lawrence Pressman) who carries out his orders and listens to his endless ramblings about Christianity, Judaism, sports, and his life in general. While Charlie is looking through Goldman's papers, he is shocked to see a newspaper from November 20, 1964 that is enfolding 2 million dollars in baggies. Why so much cash on hand?!! The "why" of the cash is not as interesting to Goldman as what the old New York Herald Tribune had reported: The Pope had just forgiven the Jews for Christ's killing and should be held absolved of any such crimes. Charlie puts up with a lot of Goldman's ramblings, which often seem to verge on paranoid schizophrenia. Goldman sees people in the street that are not there and imagines that a Mercedes is following his every move. He sees his father in the street pushing a pretzel cart (even though his father had been killed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1943 at the age of 70). Through his top-floor telescope, Goldman also sees, men in Nazi uniforms which sends him into a fit—"Why do I live," he says. However, when Goldman receives a phone call from a wrong number, he goes into action as if he were in danger and needed to prepare for it. He prepares for it as if his own passion play were about to begin. He burns the under surface of his left arm with a candle of his menorah and prepares for the abduction he knows is to come, but why does he do that? His abduction does come when several men--Israeli secret agents (Mossad)--break into his apartment. They search him from head to toe and even throughout his body cavities. Then they take him to Israel for trial on charges of being a Nazi war criminal—Col Dorff. During the trial, he demands the right to argue in his own defense and wear his German uniform. He is placed in a bulletproof glass booth so that no one can harm him during the trial. During the trial, he takes on the personality and arguments as if he were Dorff. He asks probing questions of his accusers as they present experiences of their time in the concentration camp of Dorff. But, what gives them the right to judge him guilty anymore than Christ was judged guilty by a system without any clear-cut legal authority? Where did THEY get their authority? In the end, how can they even prove that he is Dorff? Note: There are many interpretations of this play. If you don't believe me, read the user reviews. I have my theory. What's yours?

sol- A fairly fascinating film, with a thought-provoking, albeit rather contrived, twist at the end, the material is helped a great deal by Maximilian Schell's Oscar nominated performance as the title person. Schell is startlingly good, considering what he has to do, balancing out two different eccentric personalities that are part of his one character. The character he plays is the most intriguing element throughout, but it does have a tendency to dominate, and therefore overshadow the things that film has to say. It also takes a while to get where its going, however the second half is highly intense stuff, and the film is merited by interesting ideas the whole time through.

michael (sartrejp) Saw Man in the Glass Booth eons ago, on Hershey, PA, public TV. I'd heard of it, knew Robert (Quint in Jaws) Shaw had something to do with it.But according to imdb, Shaw gets no credit here. Booth is a metaphorical rendering of the Trial of Adolf Eichmann, most-wanted Nazi war criminal. Point of play I think was to dramatize Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil." Schell is the wacked-out war crimes defendant who seems more than eager to resume his ghastly activity from the dock; he is utterly at a loss to understand why you shouldn't be able to wipe out entire races of people. Lois Nettleton's his appointed attorney, who may be seduced by Schell's grotesque charms.I'd reckon this play's a bit dated now, & even the 2002 war crimes tribunal in the Hague provides no real I.D. After all, getting there, as they say, is half the fun, & well before Eichmann went on trial, Israel had apologized to the world community & promised never to sneak into another country & kidnap one of its citizens.

bazdol It's too bad this great film has never been issued as a video or aDVD. I remember seeing it at a special showing in 1975.Maximillian Schell's performance is brilliant., one of his very best, Although Eichmann is presented as a great catch, "the worst Naziof all" (more important than Hitler, Goering, or Himmler)? Inretrospect his role in the Holocaust was mainly an administrativeone (organizing the train schedules for deportation). He was not involved in the actual killing of Jews but was the mostimportant figure the Israeli's could come up with.