Fatherland (1994) on Netflix
NR19941h 46mDramaFantasyRomance
Hitler's Germany rules Europe in 1964 and plans a peace summit with President Joseph Kennedy. SS detective Xavier March and journalist Charlie Maguire investigate a body in a Berlin lake.
- Watch on NetflixThis title is not on Netflix right now. Please check back later for updates.
- Watch on Prime
- Watch on NordVPN
- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb6.4/106,734 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes50%
Trailer
Plot summary
The Normandy landings failed, the United States pulled out of the European war, and by 1964 Adolf Hitler's Reich, Germania, covers most of Europe while its war against the Soviet Union continues. President Joseph Kennedy is flying to Berlin for a summit as Hitler approaches his seventy-fifth birthday. Near the city, a body is pulled from a lake: Josef Bühler, a retired party official who once ran the wartime resettlement of Jews in the east. SS detective Xavier March catches the case, and the Gestapo quickly claims it for reasons of state security, with his own superior, Arthur Nebe, warning him off. Charlie Maguire, a reporter traveling with the American press corps, is handed a photograph of senior Nazis outside a villa, and the two inquiries meet.
Cast
- Bob Masonas Coroner Eisler
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Fatherland (1994)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Author Robert Harris disowned the adaptation of his own novel, saying "my first novel, Fatherland, was made into a very bad film". By the time it was shot there had been so many artistic compromises, in particular two fundamental changes in the story, that it ceased to have the feel of the novel.
- Director Mike Nichols bought the film rights to Fatherland even before the novel was published in the United States, but when a theatrical release proved unworkable, the project moved to HBO and was made on a $7 million budget filmed entirely in Prague.
- Prague stood in for Nazi-ruled Berlin: the headquarters of Radio Free Europe served as the Berlin Police headquarters where March works, the newly opened Praha Penta Hotel doubled for Berlin's Hotel Adlon, and the Nazi rally in the finale was filmed at Letna Park, including at the former Stalin Monument.
SPOILER
Richard Scheib of Moira Reviews noted that the film's upbeat ending differs substantially from the novel and "ends up exonerating Kennedy", the opposite of what Robert Harris had done in the book, where he pointed to Kennedy's anti-Semitism and hinted about his possible complicity in the Holocaust.- Miranda Richardson won the 1995 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or TV Movie for her performance in Fatherland.
