User Reviews

And what you need even more is a definite interest in football (and history). "Das Wunder von Bern" or "The Miracle of Bern" is a German film from over 10 years ago that runs for almost 120 minutes and was really a big thing back then if I remember correctly. Director and writer Sönke Wortmann is still a name today to everybody with an interest in German movies. However, with regard to the film's popularity, the cast is relatively unknown. Peter Lohmeyer is the only actor who is above-average in terms of how famous they are, maybe Wackernagel as well. Anyway, this was already the second or third time I watched this film and it is still a pretty solid watch. You can probably categorize this film into 3 sequences. The first would be everything about the family, the second would be the football teams and games and the third would be the reporter and his wife.

The latter is easily the weakest. Wackernagel and Gregorowicz were sometimes embarrassingly bad and this story also added nothing of value in terms of the entire movie. No idea why they included it. The runtime also was in a dimension where they could have done completely without it I believe. The story with the boy who admired one of the players was decent, the father who returned from war added a nice historic impact to the film, even if they certainly could have elaborated more on him. No idea why Johanna Gastdorf received a German Film award nomination, she really wasn't that convincing. The other son's comments about the GDR were actually comedy gold looking at how that country turned out. The best part, however, was the football reference. Bern 1954 is still a special event for every German who knows a bit about football. Of course, the significance of the triumph has also to do with what happened in the 20 years before that.

I don't think this was a particularly convincing film in terms of writing and acting. There were a couple very bad scenes unfortunately, for example when Wackernagel's character starts screaming in the audience. That was definitely embarrassing. Overall, I remembered liking this film more the last time I saw it. Still, it's a pretty decent watch thanks to the references to this great day in German history and it's also a decent summary overall of the World Cup 1954 from German perspective. Thumbs up.

This is a gem of a film, in no way undermined by sub titles. It had a similar effect on me to that which Billy Elliott allegedly had on our Deputy Prime Minister, J. Prescott Esq! The plot is centred around the David and Goliath struggle between mighty Hungary and little West Germany in the World Cup final hosted by Berne in the summer of 1954. Even though this was over 50 years ago, it is still generally known that the Hungarian team spearheaded by the incomparable Puskas was invincible in those days. Shortly before I was born in April that year, my father took my mother to see them play England and they thrashed us 6 - 3! Drawn in the same group in the early stages of the competition, Hungary thrashed W. Germany 8 - 3, but both teams went on to meet in the final and W. Gernamy came from behind to win 3 - 2. However that is background only.

The film is about much more than a simple triumph in a football competition. The sense of period is superb. The attention to detail to ensure that the audience really does travel 50 years back in time is to my mind almost without parallel. Aided by computer graphics which perhaps fall a little short of the quality achieved in Titanic, the film vividly portrays the atmosphere in a depressed working class community on the West side of a divided Germany, still very much demoralised by the aftermath of the second world war. Their hero is a young man nicknamed the boss who plays football for the national team. The boss is friendly with and idolised by the real hero of the film, Matthias, a little boy of about 10 who has never known his own father, Richard, a prisoner of the Russians since 1943 and like many German POWs, not repatriated until the Soviets relax their stance only after Stalin's death 10 years later. We then get a valuable insight into the difficulty that this eminently decent, but badly desensitised man has readjusting to life with his family who have moved forward in his absence. There is a problem with each of his children, but inevitably the film focuses on his relationship with little Matthias, a football mad child of whose existence Richard was actually unaware. Helped by a strong wife, a sensible priest, but above all by the child himself, the father learns to confront his demons. It turns out to be much more than the success of the national team that enables the family to recover its mutual love and self respect. Thereafter father and son make up for lost time! The film is not short on light relief. There are brilliant performances by Katherina Wackernagel and Lucas Gregorowicz playing a young newly wed couple (husband a sports reporter) whose honeymoon plans are frustrated by the World Cup fever. Bear in mind that this is only 12 years before England's own 1966 victory – remember how Sir Alf Ramsey treated the journalists and interviewers of the day? Perhaps he was taking a leaf out of the book of his 1954 German counterpart! Likewise the match commentary has gone down in German folklore. In the Marriage of Maria Braun, we heard part of the original recording while something quite unconnected with football was going on! It is powerful stuff, but in this film, the commentary is rightly played to some extent for laughs. However the strongest performances come from the family members themselves and inevitably from Peter Lohmeyer and Louis Klamroth who apparently really are father and son! If Mary Poppins and Billy Elliott raised that lump in your throat, be ready to go with the flow, but have a few Kleenex to hand!

It is largely misleading to think of "Das Wunder von Bern" as a film about football history. Although the film is set in 1954, during the World Cup in Switzerland, there is essentially no World Cup football shown until the last half an hour, which features the final game of the tournament. The film is really about life in Germany in the early 1950s and the resurrection of the country from the ashes of the Second World War. The world title of the German team, totally unexpected for the World Cup first-timers before the championship, serves as a metaphor for this resurrection, and the fact is that it did spurt a resurgence of national pride and determination. Yet most of the football in the film is played by kids with rag balls, in the muddy back streets of the Ruhr region. A middle class German family living in this area is the encapsulation of German joys, trials and tribulations from the period – working day and night to make ends meet, welcoming back the surviving prisoners of war, struggling to readjust them in society, the clashes between former Nazi soldier fathers and their "new-born" communist sons, the East-West Germany divide, the advent of television, rock'n'roll dancing balls (or was that just a few months ahead of time?), and of course football as the game of the working and middle classes. In my view, all this is introduced naturally and in good taste, without unneeded pathos, exaggerated martyrdom or heroism – one thing that sets it apart from the typical Hollywood production. The acting is anything but flashy, but so was life there and then. I would say that the cast manages to hit just the right tone and the performances of Louis Klamroth and Peter Lohmeyer as father and son Lubanski are remarkable.

Another difference between this film and a major studio blockbuster is that when it does come to football, the realism is uncompromising. The casting team spent some time on choosing actors who resemble the actual players as nearly as possible (the similarity in appearance and manner between Péter Franke and coach Sepp Herberger is almost uncanny). Moreover, these people know how to pass the ball, so that the need for special effects and stand-ins is minimal (also the exact opposite of Hollywood standards). The recreation of the final game itself is pedantic to the smallest detail, with not only the goals, but even trivial situations in midfield and radio commentary being reproduced with startling faithfulness. OK, the filmmakers forget to mention that Hungary had a goal disallowed for offside in the last minute, but apparently this decision was never in doubt. In the final scene of the film the hyped-up statements about how this sporting exploit launched a whole nation in the orbit of greatness that we have come to expect from Hollywood, are nowhere to be seen; they are replaced by a matter-of-fact reminder of the ephemeral nature of sporting successes. But don't get me wrong, this is a good (and not just a "feel-good") film on its own merits, not just because it's a Hollywood antidote.