Hôtel Terminus

This is a riveting film from start to finish. Marcel Ophuls very personal and wry take on the unfolding horror of Nazi Klaus Barbie's long and unimpeded criminal career exerts a powerful hold. The movie exudes a weird, creepy humor throughout, beginning with its title, the actual name of the French hotel which was the location of Barbie's headquarters in Lyons. "Hotel Terminus" is filled with unforgettably bizarre, real life characters. The voices of Barbie's torture victims and pursuers are given equal time alongside those of his collaborators and defenders. This is an important movie. It stands as one of the best documentaries of the twentieth century and of all time. The film is as much or more about French history as well as American and German. The United States ugly,collaborative role in Barbie's eluding of justice for so many years is revealed in terms like "ratline". The ratline was a transportation corridor set up by the CIA to funnel Nazi war criminals safely out of Europe to South America. This operation functioned with the help of the Vatican.It was fueled by the turn of the political tide after World War Two when fear of Communist takeover took hold over Europe and the West, and the Nazis were seen as specialists in their ability to ferret out Communists. There are numerous subtitles throughout, especially in Part one, but these do not detract from the film's unstoppable momentum. Parts of this true story seem almost unbelievable. Hannah Arendt's observation and comment on the banality of evil is again and again underscored in Ophuls extraordinary film.

I have always been fascinated by history as a subject and just cannot understand why so few people show any interest in it. I have no illusions, Marcel Ophüls' long documentary about the life and times of Klaus Barbie, a brutally efficient German police chief in occupied France in World War Two, will hardly convert anyone into an avid historian. But I think it is a collective testimony that will outlive the present and could be used in history classes in a number of countries all over the world. Today and tomorrow.

The director, who throughout the movie appears as an interviewer, is an angry man. He acts accordingly and knows what he wants from the faces he encounters during the making of Hôtel Terminus. And he has an almost uncanny talent to get from the interviewed what he wants. But it feels real and I am positive that Hôtel Terminus is a frank and biased documentary. Its main aim is to convey information about facts and human nature. No one will ever be able to use it for any kind of indoctrination.

Basically, the movie is a biography of Barbie, from the beginnings in provincial Germany up to his trial in the late eighties in Lyon. Ophüls visits – apparently within a very short stretch of time - the places where Barbie lived: in Germany, France and Bolivia. He talks to people there. Some have to say something about Barbie and what he did, some have not – or do not want to. A wide range of statements and non-statements is artfully woven into a tissue that shows how concerned respectively unconcerned humanity as a whole can be about past events, however terrible they are. Shots of landscapes, short sequences of documentary footage and excerpts of local folkloric or popular tunes are cleverly inserted into that texture and give the statements additional emotional weight.

The movie is very concerned about two particular incidents. This maybe constitutes a weakness because the attention is directed away from Barbie. It probes deeply into the arrest and the disappearance of legendary French resistance leader Jean Moulin and into the abduction of the «enfants d'Isieux», Jewish children who found shelter in an isolated boarding school and were betrayed to the German forces of occupation. The point here is, that Barbie as the man held responsible for the two incidents had to count on French collaborators. There were suspicions that the French authorities were for a long time not very anxious to bring Barbie to trial as he had inside knowledge that would tarnish the official history of France during World War Two. The two «sub chapters» feel as if they were made specifically for a French audience, especially in the intricate Moulin affair it is difficult for an outsider to follow.

The most striking result of Hôtel Terminus is that it shows the brutal banality of terror in a totalitarian regime. Barbie, basically a public servant with a sadistic streak who executes orders he was given, does not really become alive as a character. Somehow he gradually vanishes further and further into the background. He does not play the chief villain in this movie but is used as an example of one of many ruthless henchmen of a tyranny. The message of Hôtel Terminus is, as I see it, that only the complicity or the indifference of the "general public" made Barbie's career and the atrocities he was capable of possible.

Along with "The Sorrow and the Pity" (from same director), this is definitely one of the most gripping and informative documentaries you will ever get to see. Focusing of the life of the Klaus Barbie, a ruthless SS interrogator later labeled "The Butcher of Lyons", implicated in over 4000 deaths and the deportation of over 7000 Jews in occupied France, this documentary not only paints a relentless picture of the German occupation in France, but also of the 40-year manhunt of a Nazi war criminal. Employed by the American government after the war for his contacts, and later protected by several other governments eager to use his "talents", Marcel Ophuls exposes a complex web of political intrigue and deceit that spans over decades.

While some spectators seemed to get a bit lost having absolutely no prior knowledge about European war history not involving an American elite team saving the world, just knowing that France was occupied by Germans during WWII and that legendary French Resistance Leader Jean Moulin was one of Barbie's many victims should be enough to follow and understand this must-see documentary just fine!

Marcel Ophuls's Academy Award-winning "Hôtel Terminus" is primarily a look at Nazi official Klaus Barbie, aka the Butcher of Lyon. But in focusing on Barbie's life - his plain childhood, his torturing of prisoners in France, his escape to South America, and his eventual capture - the movie addresses some points. One is the French authorities' complicity in the Nazis' deeds; much like how the police in Paris were responsible for the Vel d'Hiv roundup, the police in Lyon helped turn over Jews and resistance members to Barbie. Another is how the US helped Barbie avoid justice; his anti-communist views made him a natural ally to the US-backed juntas in Bolivia.

The point is that, much like how the Nazis' actions didn't come solely out of Hitler's evil little mind, Barbie's deeds and escape didn't happen in a vacuum. This was a carefully planned out scheme. All in all, it's a fine documentary, exactly the sort of thing that everyone should get required to see (especially since so many people have suddenly decided to defend Nazis).

I found this on Hulu, and I am obsessed with movies about WWII (the Holocaust in particular). Armed with my smartphone, I dove in. Initially, I was confused because the director/interviewer jumps into the French Revolution shortly after having some associates of Klaus Barbie describe his childhood. Then these leaders of the Revolution start talking about the betrayal of Jean Moulin. I had to hit pause and check it out on the web. After getting a bit more background, I moved on. I was disgusted when I heard back pedaling from Rene Hardy and Francoise Hemmerle. Ultimately learning that Hardy was framed, and seeing an interview with him towards the end of his life, I did start to pity him. However this Hemmerle woman would chuckle when talking about atrocities of torture then say "oh, I helped I the resistance, then proceeds to refer to the film 'Night & Fog' as "propaganda". This is where the running theme of "oh it was so long ago." This seems to be a running theme with the people who helped this butcher later on. The narrator really doesn't talk much about the Holocaust too much during the film, but focuses on the CIC (American intelligence) utilized Barbie as an informant. Woah, stop the bus! Then what really foxed me was if you Google any of these Americans, not a whisper. The person who drove me insane with his non-answers was a certain Eugene Kolb, who was Barbie's handler. He states that based on his relationship with Barbie, he doesn't believe he needed to use torture to get information out of people. I think that is similar to saying the Holocaust didn't happen. Every word out of his mouth is a contradiction or a back pedal. I knew that the US wanted nothing to do with the Jews until the very end of the war. This disgusts me as a human being. The film moves along with more people who "were just doing their jobs" (much like those who dropped Zyklon B into gas chambers) in the hunt and capture of Klaus Barbie. Turns out, that Barbie was involved in the capture of Che Guevara. The film alludes to this, but that was another topic of my own research. One person who is actually more candid than you would think is Barbie's former bodyguard. He was apprehensive at first, but through his story he tells of how he has to get people to go shopping for him as he was persona non grata in Bolivia. I think he realizes as he is speaking with Maurice that if he tells the truth, it may benefit him. It's a bit of a buildup, but watching him break is rather interesting. Well, as most know, there comes a point Barbie needs a lawyer at his trial. This lawyer is Jaques Verges, a well known defender of terrorists from Palestine and Algeria, and also a cohort of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge (this I learned more about from another film, Terror's Advocate). He did what he did more because he wanted France to acknowledge what they did to the French in Lyon and in Algeria. This is touched on, but never fully explained. The jury to me is still out on him, only because there is logic behind his intentions, even though I don't agree with him politically, or on a level of humanity. I won't ruin the end, but this four hour documentary is well worth the watch. I will say that it would be wise to get caught up on the French Resistance a little beforehand. Because I was so interested, I purchased The Sorrow and the Pity, so stay tuned for that review!