Review of It Happened on July 20th

The total number of attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler has never been truly established but the fact that Hitler escaped them all is absolutely mind-boggling. He sustained minor injuries in what is undoubtedly the most renowned of these plots, that of July 1944. Had not the suitcase containing the bomb been moved behind a thick table leg seconds before the blast.....pure supposition of course. Following the failed attempt the gruesome fates of the well-intentioned conspirators and the subsequent purge of thousands have been well-documented. G.W.Pabst has chosen to depict the events in a clinical, matter-of-fact manner and although it cannot be faulted as a factual account, judged purely as a film it is regrettably rather dull. We are at least spared the spectacle of a ranting Hitler and just see the back of an actor's head. The film is of value as an historical document but could not a director of Pabst's ability have made it slightly more 'entertaining'?