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For 'Diplomacy,' The Art Is A Conversation To Save Paris

Jérome Prébois
/
Zeitgeist Films
Niels Arestrup as General Dietrich von Choltitz (left) and André Dussollier as Consul Raoul Nordling in 'Diplomacy.'"

For the most part, Volker Schlondorff's Diplomacy puts two characters in a room and watches them talk. The talk is loaded with anxiety and complications, and Schlondorff keeps the two actors moving so abruptly that the tension shudders through the entire movie. There's also plenty at stake.

The film takes place near the end of World War II. The allies are about to enter Paris and the orders from Hitler are to destroy the city, completely. This happened. A Swedish diplomat, Raoul Nordling (André Dussollier) barges into the quarters of the Nazi commander Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz (Niels Arestrup) and argues with the general to save the city.

A quick trip via Google Earth should assure people that Paris is still there, along with all the monuments the Germans planned to blow up – the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre and the bridges over the Seine. No one knows exactly who said what to whom, but the characters name areas of the city like the Marais and Bastille that shake up people now who know and love the city. So the film sets some powerful hooks for us.

The Germans say that in 20 minutes the city will be unrecognizable. Just to make sure you know how that will look, the movie opens with documentary shots of the ruins of Warsaw.

Even though everyone knows the outcome of this night-long conversation, Diplomacy gets to you partly because the argument is elegant and current. It's not just a question of save the city or destroy the city. Like all Nazi movie villains, this German general starts with the cliché that he has to follow orders. He's also made preparations – explosives are set all over the city. Then Diplomacy goes to new territory for a movie – this general believes in the strategy. If France falls, the Allies will be in Berlin in a flash, and if he can't prevent the German defeat, he can at least delay it.

Sweden was neutral during both World War I and World War II. Ambassador Nordling makes the moral argument, that to destroy Paris will do in both the beloved landmarks and a lot of people. He's also a tricky guy, and General von Choltitz is probably right to distrust Nordling, who tries all sort of rhetorical tricks. He asks would von Choltitz obey an absurd order.

As the two men do their dance around the room – with its gorgeous French blue walls – Nordling talks of innocent people and children. Von Choltitz counters with the stories of Allied firebombing of Hamburg – weren't those women and children also innocent?

Then the issue goes deeper into von Choltitz's personal life. He'll be executed for failing to obey orders – and his wife and children back in Germany will also be killed. That's the real meat of it. This man so loves his family that he will destroy an entire city to save them. How does Nordling argue with that?

Besides the nervous dance he choreographs with the two men, director Schlondorff has two actors who are just as experienced and imaginative as their characters. Niels Arestrup has so far been in about 79 movies, and André Dussollier 145. Arestrup mostly underplays. He's soft-spoken, but with a cold authoritarian logic, and when he raises his voice and shows Nordling his power, the anxiety shoots up a couple of notches. Dussollier is jumpier, but still the unruffled diplomat who looks constantly for an opening to shift the terms of the conversation – and you know he's hiding something.

Meanwhile, just to keep things on edge, the film goes outside the room once in a while – to where a German explosives team has discovered that wiring has been sabotaged, and where, in a tiny cramped underground hideout, the Nazis execute French resistance fighters.

Although Paris survived, this conversation still matters – we are still destroying great cities.

Howie Movshovitz came to Colorado in 1966 as a VISTA Volunteer and never wanted to leave. After three years in VISTA, he went to graduate school at CU-Boulder and got a PhD in English, focusing on the literature of the Middle Ages. In the middle of that process, though (and he still loves that literature) he got sidetracked into movies, made three shorts, started writing film criticism and wound up teaching film at the University of Colorado-Denver. He continues to teach in UCD’s College of Arts & Media.
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