5/10
Often overlooked in the wake of Fassbender's version, Alfred Doblin's novel was actually first made into a movie 50 years prior, with Doblin himself co-writing the screenplay. Usefully included in the Criterion release of the Fassbender edition, I decided to see how the same story was told in 80 minutes, versus Fassbender's 898 minutes. As you'd expect...it's a tiny bit skimpier on some details, heh. It really distills Doblin's own story down into a pretty generic tale of redemption and even slight propaganda. In fact, propaganda aside, I can't really see what the point of making the novel into a movie was at this point. It's not often a more recent adaptation crushes the older into dust but I think Fassbender's clearly did that.
As a side note, I feel like I've devoted so much time to a story that I haven't particularly cared for that I might as well say to hell with it and read the original novel too.
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