"The Good German": We'll always have real '40s noirs

The problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in the crazy world of "The Good German," Steven Soderbergh's elegant noir that comes off as an uneven homage to '40s filmmaking, most overtly "Casablanca." Based on the 2001 novel by Joseph Kanon, set in 1945 Berlin just after Hitler's defeat, Soderbergh's black-and-white film is an exercise in style and often a fascinating one. But ultimately, its lack of emotional involvement may leave an audience cold; like most homages, it pales in contrast to the films to which it pays tribute.

George Clooney, who carries his leading-man looks as lightly as a breeze, plays war correspondent Jake Geismer, in Berlin to cover the Potsdam Peace Conference. Cpl. Tully (Tobey Maguire), the young American serviceman assigned to be his driver, draws Jake into the circle of his girlfriend, Lena (Cate Blanchett), an enigmatic German woman haunted by the war. "I survived," she says, her face glowing icy-white, leaving us to imagine what survival might have entailed. But Jake and Lena have met before, as lovers during the war. Now forever changed, they come together in response to a tragedy midfilm, as a murder mystery unfolds.

Movie review

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"The Good German," with George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire, Beau Bridges, Tony Curran, Leland Orser. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, from a screenplay by Paul Attanasio, based on the novel by Joseph Kanon. 108 minutes. Rated R for language, violence and sexual content. Pacific Place.

Soderbergh, who also acted as the film's director of photography (under the pseudonym Peter Andrews) and editor (as Mary Ann Bernard), went to great lengths to re-create the feel of a '40s film. His actors, lit only by incandescent lights and recorded only by boom mikes (using no body microphones, which required the actors to project their voices distinctly), look chilly and angular in the film's shadowy black-and-white. The score (by Thomas Newman) is melodramatic and seemingly ever-present; the shots are composed carefully and formally, often at a slight distance. Effects are primitive, as they would have been in the '40s; when Clooney and Maguire go for a drive, the scenery behind them is clearly from another film. (Much of the film's location footage is from period films; footage from Billy Wilder's "A Foreign Affair" — shot in post-World War II Berlin — was used in the driving scenes.)

All of this is interesting to watch, up to a point — the point at which you realize that it's overwhelmed the film itself. "The Good German" gets lost amidst its references; it doesn't stand by itself but is held up by the films that inspired it. And the actors get a bit lost in the fog. Clooney fares best; his classic features look at home above a uniform, and his Jake has a wry decency. Blanchett gives a performance that's technically breathtaking — she looks like Garbo and sounds like Dietrich — but from which a character never emerges; it's the fault of a screenplay, by Paul Attanasio, that fails to capture Lena's complexities. But she's dazzling, with her voice elegantly drooping to previously unheard valleys, and her eyes gazing, often wordlessly, from below slender brows.

"The Good German" culminates, as you'd imagine it would, in a late scene on an airport runway, with Blanchett standing tall in an Ingrid Bergman-esque hat as she and Clooney draw close together in the rain for a few last words. It's "Casablanca," and not "Casablanca"; less romantic, more gritty and ultimately less memorable. Turns out, Sam, that sometimes you can't play it again.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com