Overrated and overhyped

best movie i've ever seen.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I am amazed that none of the reviews of this movie on IMDb mention that this film … as written by Robert Shaw … is a ro·man à clef (look it up if you do not know) … for the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was arrested in 1960 by the Masada and taken to Israel for trial. He was in fact was the "Man in the Glass Booth".Yes Maximillian Schell was off the charts in this performance … but the greatest facet to the film is that it replays Eichmann's trial. Eichmann was amazing in his conviction that all of the Final Solution was logical and justified and pedestrian … and we should all see this for what it is worth.Yes … I was totally annoyed by the Arthur Goldman character in the first half of the film … but I was mesmerized by the way this film played out. Schell should have beat Nicholson for the academy award! He is a massively underrated actor (see him in Judgement in Nuremberg and you will agree).

"Booth," is Schell. Nominated for an Academy Award, he came up against Jack Nicholson in "One flew over the cuckoo's nest." Watch each film, then gauge each actor's performance. Then do it again. As fine as Nicholson is, he is a couple of classes behind Schell. Schell spent years specialising in this type of role, and absolutely perfected it in "booth". Olivier and Brando must take a secondary role to Schell, and I say that fully remembering Olivier's monologue in Rebecca, which was absolutely riveting.I have many favourite films, Cinema Paradiso, Schindler's List, The Train, Wake in Fright, The Producers, Casablanca, to name a few. My choice is fairly orthodox, you would have to agree! But Schell makes "booth" my number one choice as greatest film ever. And Max is the greatest practitioner of the craft of acting I have ever seen.As for the controversy associated with this film, I can fully understand it. No one comes out smelling to good in this movie, but in the end, it is humanity on trial, and human failings are, or should be forgiven.

I can only posit my take on the meaning of this movie based on what was on the screen and not by what Shaw's novel put forth. That said, I found that the meaning and subtext of this movie is amazing.While an atheist myself, I could clearly see what would be a recasting of Christ's passion in a modern context. What "sins of the world" to be borne by a Jewish man could be more obvious than the burden of the Shoah brought upon him? I see Arthur Goldman's allusions to Jesus throughout, the references about the Catholic Church's "forgiving the Jews" for deicide, his staging of the super before knowingly putting himself in the crosshairs of the Mossad to capture him, and finally most telling... his crucifixion like pose against the inside of the booth at the end, as the magnitude of the Holocaust finally descends upon him.Did anyone else see this powerful subtext of the movie?

It's too bad this great film has never been issued as a video or aDVD. I remember seeing it at a special showing in 1975.Maximillian Schell's performance is brilliant., one of his very best, Although Eichmann is presented as a great catch, "the worst Naziof all" (more important than Hitler, Goering, or Himmler)? Inretrospect his role in the Holocaust was mainly an administrativeone (organizing the train schedules for deportation). He was not involved in the actual killing of Jews but was the mostimportant figure the Israeli's could come up with.