Berlin 36 (Kaspar Heidelbach, 2009)

In the run-up to the 1936 Olympics, the Nazis were in a quandary: they had to demonstrate their society to be at least superficially tolerant to avoid an American boycott of the games, and yet of course were loath to have any Jewish representation. In this context, the story of Gretel Bergmann, the Jew who was Germany's best high-jumper at the time, should provide a fresh angle on the worn-out subject of the persecution of the time. The true story even includes a man raised as a woman as one of her competitors: there is material in abundance here for the taking.
Sadly, most of it goes to waste. Karoline Herfurth, as Bergmann, projects one-key sullenness just as the performance of her rival with the terrible secret (rather undermined by having such a blatantly male actor in the role) is little more than scared eye-flitting all the way through. The atmosphere at the training camp, where most of the film takes place, is also irritatingly reminiscent of a bad American high school film, complete with a duo of girl bullies. The criticisms that the film received for taking liberties with the facts are then fairly irrelevant in the light of its failure to do anything dramatically useful with the changes.

4/10