Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

MARIO GAUCI The late Austrian actor Maximilian Schell first came to prominence in Hollywood in a supporting role as Nazi Marlon Brando's superior officer in the WWII epic THE YOUNG LIONS (1958); eventually, he became an international film star upon winning the Best Actor Oscar for Stanley Kramer's star-studded indictment of Nazi war crimes, JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG (1961) which, despite the sheer brilliance of his performance, was a somewhat surprising accolade given that he was competing against Paul Newman's iconic characterization of Fast Eddie Felson in THE HUSTLER! Interestingly enough, two of Schell's future Oscar nominations also dealt with Nazism, namely THE PEDESTRIAN (1973; which Schell also directed) and the film under review which garnered him his second Best Actor nod. Once again, he came against an iconic performance – Jack Nicholson's Randle P. McMurphy in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST – but lost out to it this time around; for the record, I have just came across the obscure GIVE'EM HELL HARRY which was the only Best Actor (James Whitmore) nominee from that same year which was still eluding me...THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH is the fourth of 14 productions from The American Film Theater that I have watched – following Lindsay Anderson's IN CELEBRATION (1975), Guy Green's LUTHER (1974) and Joseph Losey's GALILEO (1975) which more than anything sought to record and preserve renowned pieces of theatre that often featured notable actors. In this case, Arthur Hiller transposes Robert Shaw's play about a Jewish industrialist afflicted by the delusion of being a notorious Nazi officer; this controversial ruse undeniably elicits comparisons with THE RULING CLASS (1971) where Peter O'Toole's mad aristocrat first thinks he is Jesus Christ but then morphs into Jack The Ripper by the end of the film! Curiously enough, Shaw initially objected to Edward Anhalt's s adaptation of his material and asked to have his name removed from the film's opening credits; after watching it, however, he relented and agreed to put it back on but by then it was too late and, indeed, his name does not appear anywhere in the film's opening credits, In any case, there seems to have been no animosity between the two multi-talented actors as Schell eventually directed Shaw in END OF THE GAME (1975) and they co-starred in Shaw's untimely swan song AVALANCHE EXPRESS (1979).Given the film's title, source of origin and subject matter, I was under the impression that the film would be entirely taken up by the trial which, when it actually comes on in the second half Is indeed riveting – with concentration camp survivors brought face to face with their tormentor; members of the aggrieved public rising from their seats to beat him up following his latest animated diatribe; Schell's own doctors 'confirming' his identity until one of them (Leonard Cimino) breaks down and admits that the evidence was planted by Schell himself! In this part of the film, the presence of passionate prosecutor Lois Nettleton and sensible Magistrate Luther Adler also makes itself felt. While the film's central conceit – a wealthy Jew exposed publicly as a notorious Nazi but ultimately emerging as a delusional Jew - is a fascinating one, it is quite contrived; in fact, the surprisingly fanciful first half, set atop paranoid Schell's NYC apartment, is somewhat heavy-going and even hard-to-take at times. That the film ends up being a worthy one regardless is mostly due to bald-headed, bearded and bespectacled Schell's tour-de-force performance; interestingly, despite the actor's Germanic heritage, he would again impersonate Jews in THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (1980; TV) and THE CHOSEN (1981). For the record, the copy I acquired suffers from lip-sync issues that can prove distracting at first but one grows accustomed to that fault before long.

austral_athletico "Booth," is Schell. Nominated for an Academy Award, he came up against Jack Nicholson in "One flew over the cuckoo's nest." Watch each film, then gauge each actor's performance. Then do it again. As fine as Nicholson is, he is a couple of classes behind Schell. Schell spent years specialising in this type of role, and absolutely perfected it in "booth". Olivier and Brando must take a secondary role to Schell, and I say that fully remembering Olivier's monologue in Rebecca, which was absolutely riveting.I have many favourite films, Cinema Paradiso, Schindler's List, The Train, Wake in Fright, The Producers, Casablanca, to name a few. My choice is fairly orthodox, you would have to agree! But Schell makes "booth" my number one choice as greatest film ever. And Max is the greatest practitioner of the craft of acting I have ever seen.As for the controversy associated with this film, I can fully understand it. No one comes out smelling to good in this movie, but in the end, it is humanity on trial, and human failings are, or should be forgiven.

gme262w The main character of the film is Arthur Goldman played by Maximilian Schell, a survivor of the Holocaust and the natural guilt of surviving such an ordeal. He is also, very proud of his accomplishments, in becoming a millionaire in the United States, but with a streak of sarcasm where the Jewish belief and that of the Christian belief of the control of human destiny through these institutions is complete in its endeavors to fulfill the reason for what man does to man and the imminent conflict that arises form this question. His question is how can this be, how could it happen and most important: Why it did happen?This film gives one much to think about, especially in our times, in the late nineteenth, and twentieth century, there was a great anti-Semitist feeling that through the Nazi regime was taken to the "Final Solution" and the Holocaust of the Jews. They were singled out as the problem of the state. The state is the problem, not a group of people, this film portrays the Nazi reasoning and the Jews' incomprehension of that reason, and the hate that can be vented onto anyone. All this just to create a national feeling and then: Does not that same feeling create and maintain Israel. ("Exodus" the movie)

thepetshopboy Saw this for the first time recently at a International Jewish Film Festival screening at which both the director (the oft overrated and stylistically lacking Arthur Hiller...the Roger Donaldson of his generation) and star (Maximillian Schell) attended and spoke at. My expectations were high, but the film was quite a letdown. Hiller's direction was dull and generic and had the look and feel of a bad 70's television episode, while Schell brings new meaning to the term overacting (his Oscar nomination makes more sense in light of Al Pacino's Oscar win for his incessant mugging in "Scent of Woman").The producer of the film mentioned that writer Robert Shaw (from which the source material came and a famous actor in his own right) asked to have his name taken off the film upon reading the screenplay (and then apparently asked to have it put back on later). Not having read his play, I found much of the dialogue awkward and stilted, although many of the statements and speeches in the film give an introspective view of not just the tragedy of the Holocaust, but also the logical if deluded mindset of those Germans that perpetrated such atrocities. Given the intriguing premise, it would have been interesting to see what the film would have been like in the hands of a better director and with the lead character played a bit more understated and nuanced (a great example would be Ian McKellan's brilliant performance in the otherwise flawed "Apt Pupil"). To be fair, the predominantly older Jewish audience I saw it with enjoyed it, although I would guess more out of obligation to the subject matter then to it's artistic merit. All in all, a fairly mediocre film for its' time with a over-the-top performance by Schell, neither of which have aged well. 5/10