The Film 'Diplomacy' Imagines the Confrontation that Saved Paris During WWII

Volker Schlöndorff, Oscar-winning German director of "The Tin Drum," tells us about his new film “Diplomacy.,” which he wrote and directs. It dramatizes a fictionalized all-night confrontation between the steely Nazi General Dietrich von Choltitz and a wily Swedish consul, Raoul Nordling, over the fate of Paris. As the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944, Hitler gives orders that the city should not fall into enemy hands, or if it does, then “only as a field of rubble.” The Nazi’s have already planted mines planted on the Eiffel Tower, in the Louvre and Notre Dame, and on the bridges over the Seine. Nordling tries to persuade Choltitz to abandon his plan to destroy the city. “Diplomacy” opens October 15 at Film Forum.