Diplomatie (2014)
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff

Film Review

It's a sobering thought that Paris, or rather its unrivalled accumulation of historic monuments, came within an inch of being obliterated one fateful day in August 1944.  Imagine that - the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arc de triomphe, the Elysée Palace and numerous other cultural gems from across the centuries destroyed in a single day in a final act of defiance from the most evil regime in history.  And that it should fall to one man, General Von Choltitz, Hitler's man in Paris, to accomplish this staggering act of cultural barbarism.  Had Von Choltitz acted differently, had he been a little more loyal to his Nazi superiors and less willing to consider the implications of his actions, Paris as we now know it would have been wiped from the face of the Earth in the dying days of WWII.  It is scarcely imaginable.

To this day, it is not known just why Von Choltitz, a dedicated senior officer in the German army, defied a direct order from the Führer to destroy Paris.  In their 1964 book Paris brûle-t-il? (later made into a film of the same title by René Clément), Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins posited the view that Von Choltitz acted out of self-interest, gambling that the Allies would show him leniency once they had taken the French capital in their push to liberate France.  In his 2011 stage play Diplomatie, Cyril Gély offers a more interesting and perhaps more plausible alternative, suggesting that Von Choltitz was dissuaded from carrying out his orders by a Swedish consul, Raoul Nordling.

In his film adaptation of Gély's two-handed play, director Volker Schlöndorff opts for a theatrical approach which retains the structure of the original play and focuses on the moral and intellectual contest between the main protagonists, Von Choltitz and Nordling.  The play is set on the evening preceding the planned destruction of Paris and has the mood and intensity of a game of chess, in which two skilful players make their moves with cautious deliberation and cunning.  Although Von Choltitz and Nordling did have several conversations prior to the former's decision to disobey his orders, the meeting depicted in the film never actually took place.  Critics have been quick to point out this historical inaccuracy in Gély's play but dramatically it hardly matters.  The two men may not have met physically in the way the film describes, but who's to say that, as he sat contemplating his options, Von Choltitz did not conjure up Nordling in his mind so that he could meditate on the implications of his terrible assignment?

A prominent figure in New German Cinema of the 1960s and 70s, Volker Schlöndorff is best known for Die Blechtrommel (a.k.a. The Tin Drum) (1979), which won him both the Palme d'Or at Cannes and an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.  For anyone familiar with his work, Diplomatie is an unusually understated and focussed film - essentially no more than a piece of filmed theatre spiced up with some archive footage and a few occasional (mostly superfluous) digressions from the main narrative.  The film's power lies not in its mise-en-scène (which is perhaps too subservient to Gély's play for its own good) but in the totally enthralling central performances from André Dussollier and Niels Arestrup, reprising the roles they had already played to great acclaim on the French stage.

Dussollier's Nordling is a fascinating character, as devious and manipulative a diplomat as you can imagine, but ultimately it is Arestrup's wonderfully ambiguous Von Choltitz who monopolises our attention and our sympathies.  Through a performance of remarkable quality, Arestrup gives us more than a glimpse of the mental anguish experienced by his character, a man visibly torn between his duty to his superiors and his duty to mankind and posterity.  Diplomatie is not only a compelling piece of drama that offers a sombre reflection on one of the great "What If" scenarios of the 20th century, it also serves as a pointed allegory for many of our present day concerns, those where our immediate needs and aspirations have to be weighed up against those of future generations.  Paris was saved from destruction in 1944 by a quirk of conscience.  How confident are we that our world can be steered away from a comparable or even greater catastrophe by today's Nordlings and Von Choltitzs?

Film Synopsis

It is the night of the 24th-25th August 1944.  The fate of Paris is in the hands of one man, General Von Choltitz, who has just received orders from the Fuhrer to blow up the capital.  Descended from a long line of military Prussians, Von Choltitz has never yet hesitated when it comes to obeying orders.  The bridges over the Seine and the most important historical monuments - the Louvre, Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower - are all mined and ready to be destroyed.  With diplomacy the only arms available to him, the Swedish consul Nordling must try to persuade Von Choltitz not to carry out his orders...