Synopsis:
Details of the surprise attack by a Nazi unit on the radio station at Gleiwitz on the Polish border in 1939. This attack, which was blamed on Polish forces, served as Hitler's reason for marching into Poland, starting the Second World War. Cool and impartial, the film reflects on the possibilities and techniques of provocation. It shows how facts and opinions can be manipulated and how people are made to accept lies, murder and war. Gerhard Klein and his Czech cameraman Jan Curik found an impressive visual language with which to describe fascism: Groups of people were assembled into ornaments, in which the individual is suppressed by the masses. This enlightening perspective on the fundamentals of totalitarian power and violence met with resistance among the cultural politicians in the German Democratic Republic. The film was accused of glorifying fascism. A leading cultural functionary actually commented that a Nazi director couldn't have made the film better himself. The Gleiwitz narrowly escaped censorship, but quickly disappeared after only a few weeks in theaters. Today, the film is considered one of the most modern and experimental films in DEFA's history.

Press Comments:
"a smartly constructed, almost cubist rendering of the hours leading up to the Nazi invasion of Poland, recounting ... the Germans' secret plan to fake a Polish incursion into German territory, thereby giving Hitler a pretext for the long-planned invasion ... meticulously detailed to great effect." -- The Jewish Week

"the most Brechtian of GDR movies ... Back in the day, Gleiwitz's deadpan satire of Riefenstahlian aestheticism was mistaken for Nazi nostalgia -- now its icy experimentalism might inspire Ostalgie for a lost German avant-garde." -- The Village Voice "Highly recommended! One of the finest films from the East German government-sponsored DEFA film library!" -- Video Librarian

An Alain Resnais art film parading in antifascist uniform… Klein’s montage at times echoes Eisenstein, at others parodies Leni Riefenstahl, or subscribes to the European ’60s code of successively radical changes in shot lengths. -- Boston Phoenix

… an eccentric reenactment of an event from history. The Gleiwitz Case suggests a more starched, controlled Dr. Strangelove crossed with the formal austerity of Triumph of the Will, and its tone falls just short of loco. -- Felicia Feaster, Creative Loafing

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