Director Arthur Hiller (Love Story, Silver Streak), working from screenwriter Edward Anhalt's (Becket) adaptation, transforms actor/playwright Robert Shaw's The Man in the Glass Booth into a film the Los Angeles Times dubbed, "daring, outrageous, utterly provocative, endlessly ambiguous and strikingly effective." Millionaire Jewish entrepreneur Arthur Goldman (Maximilian Schell) benevolently rules his financial empire from a penthouse apartment overlooking Manhattan. Seemingly at the edge of sanity, Goldman holds forth on everything from Papal edicts to ex-wives, from baseball to his family's massacre in a Nazi concentration camp. When Goldman remarks on a blue Mercedes continuously parked outside his building, Goldman's captive audience of assistant (Lawrence Pressman) and chauffeur (Henry Brown) dismiss their boss' anxiety as encroaching paranoia. But each of Goldman's passionate, seemingly capricious ravings are transformed into a shocking, inadvertent deposition when Israeli agents capture Goldman and put him on trial as Adolph Dorf, the commandant of the concentration camp where Goldman's family was supposedly exterminated. In a trial scene of unrelenting intensity, Academy Award winner Schell (Judgement at Nuremburg) crafts what The Detroit Free Press called "a white-hot lead performance," mutating from eccentric Goldman to sociopathic Dorf and beyond. The riddle of Dorf's true identity becomes wrapped in an enigma of cunning self-treachery and single minded obsession. Veteran cinematographer Sam Leavitt enables Hiller to coax a vividly personal and electrifyingly intelligent dual portrait out of Schell. The Man in the Glass Booth is a timeless drama of surprising intimacy and indefatigable courage, "possessing," declared the LA Times "a remarkably resilient sense of lightness for all the profound questions it ponders."

MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH, THE (DVD MOVIE)

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Schell is Arthur Goldman, a wealthy Jewish industrialist living in a Manhattan highrise apartment. Goldman is apparently a recluse, who deals with the world through his personal assistant, Charlie (Lawrence Pressman). At first, Arthur seems like a regular guy, albeit expressing outrageous views on Jews and Judaism, but it becomes apparent to the audience that the man has serious issues when he's seen burning the skin under his upper arm with a candle flame. Then, the audience and Charlie are dumbfounded when an Israeli hit team breaks in, kidnaps Goldman, and carries him off to trial in Israel as a war criminal - a former Nazi concentration camp commandant, Adolph Dorf. Goldman insists pretrial that he be allowed to wear a full SS uniform. For his own protection, then, he faces his accusers as THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH. Bullet-proof glass, that is, considering the emotional volatility of the charges to camp survivors that are present.

Schell received Oscar and Golden Globe Best Actor nominations for his depiction of a man so tortured by guilt that he would go to extremes to exorcise it. Personal guilt for having survived the Holocaust; collective Jewish guilt for not having fought back. Taking on the persona of Dorf, Goldman gleefully mocks the Jews for their meekness as they went to slaughter. The sad end to the trial is one of the most emotionally compelling scenes I've ever watched.

THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH was one of the first VHS tapes I purchased back in 1979 when I bought my first video recorder. (Both the tape and the recorder were MUCH more expensive back then!) Do yourself a favor and rent this film (along with THE BELIEVER) for a thought-provoking double feature on the psyche-twisting nature of guilt.

14 of 14 found the following review helpful:

Maximilian Schell should have won the Oscar for this in 1975Dec 10, 2003
By Mark Marcus
Thirty years ago, under the aegis of the "American Film Theatre," Arthur Hiller directed a movie based on a novel by writer, director and actor Robert Shaw (famous for his performance in "Jaws" as the fisherman who came to a bad end in the mouth of a great white shark). Whatever doubts one has about the plausibility of an enormously wealthy entrepreneur, whose schizophrenia tears him between the morally opposite identities of a sadistic concentration camp commandant, and a Jewish holocaust survivor, Maximilian Schell as "The Man In the Glass Booth," gives a riviting and explosive performance. The story is divided into two acts; the first half taking place in Arthur Goldman's luxurious Manhattan penthouse apartment, and the second half in an Israeli courtroom. The final courtroom scene, when Goldman's true identity is revealed, is astonishing.

9 of 9 found the following review helpful:

A psycho-fable of the highest meritMay 07, 2004
By Theodore Voelkel
Yes, yes I know all the fulminations comparing this film to the play. I haven't seen the play nor read the novel, so I'm judging purely by the film, which I rate at the very highest. OF COURSE the movie is "contrived" as Leonard Maltin's movie guide has it, that's what fables do (talking wolves, trees that sing, clouds that weep and preach a moral), they present contrived situations in order to elucidate. This psycho-fable unearths the ghoulish byplay of fire and ice in all of us, Jew or Bosch, whichever side of the barbed wire of things you stand. Schell's acting is superlative, and the LANGUAGE is English at its nightmare-wittiest. To summarize: you can't like "Doctor Strangelove" and scorn this film: they're two sides of the same rifle butt.

Dr. Theodore Voelkel
Winchester Mass.

4 of 4 found the following review helpful:

Images of the Holocaust rekindledNov 24, 2006
By Cory D. Slipman
That Maximilian Schell's outstanding acting performance in "The Man in the Glass Booth" did not garner a deserved Oscar is only made understandable by the fact that Jack Nicholson was honored for his portrayal of McMurphy in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Schell was mesmerizing in his portrayal of bombastically eccentic and fabulously wealthy Jewish architect Arthur Goldman. Ensconsed in a palatial and luxuriously appointed penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park, Schell is served by his dutiful adminstrative assistant Charlie Cohn played by Lawrence Pressman.

An astute businessman, Schell is plagued by images from his past which included internment in a concentration camp. With Schell's flaky personality firmly established, the plot takes an unforseen twist. Schell is abducted by Israeli agents who spirit him back to Israel to stand trial as a notorious Nazi war criminal. Alleged to be Colonel Dorff, a monster responsible for murderous, heinous crimes against humanity, Schell plead his case acting in his own defense.

Based on a successful play written by talented and tempestuous actor Robert Shaw, "The Man in the Glass Booth" forces us to confront the reality of the lives permanently altered by the horrors of the Holocaust.

3 of 3 found the following review helpful:

I have been searching for this film for 32 years!Jan 01, 2007
By Sara "Harriet Tubman admirer"
I had no idea that this film is finally available, and I'm delighted. I'll buy it at once. I saw it in its debut showing -- where i was living at that time (1975) while I was in college, and found it extraordinarily moving. I'm an appreciator of Maxillian Schell and found him at the top of his form in this film. In fact, I've searched for this film (call me crazy) every 3 or 4 years for the last 32 years in video rental stores, stores selling videos, and then where DVDs are sold. So I'm stunned it is finally out. That year (1975) the other standout film in the American Film Theatre production series (to which I had a subscription) was an avant guarde film that became a bit of a cult classic, and couldn't be more different, "The Maids."

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