Saw this film the other night for the first time. I'm in my early 70's and Jewish, I've always had strong feelings about the Nazis and about the question of German knowledge of, and participation in this horrible chapter in history.
"The Mortal Storm" is by no means a documentary, nor can it be seen as a deep, philosophical film. Yet, inadvertently or not, the characters and plot make it clear that Nazism was a cancer that reached into every aspect of life-from education to social events.
It's odd that a melodrama can have such powerful overtones, conveying horror with minimal bloodshed or even directly identifying the Roths as Jews. The film , for me, resonates more deeply than "Schindler's List", a Spielberg epic that somehow overlooks the fact that without Schindler, Krupp, et al, Hitler might have been a crank on a street corner, screaming to the wind.
The cast, Stewart, Sullavan, Morgan, etc., made me think I was watching a spin off of "Shop Around the Corner". I asked my wife, "Is this a Lubitsch film?" Watching these fine actors being caught in the nightmare of Hitlerism was a jarring note. Frank Morgan in a concentration camp? Margaret Sullivan dying in Stewart's arms? Ultimately, I saw that the casting(even Dan Dailey without taps) made the tragedy even deeper. We knew these people, albeit through the movies, but we felt their anguish all the more because we were watching the suffering of "friends".
Hannah Ahrendt wrote about the banality of evil...this film brings home the point.
"The Mortal Storm" is by no means a documentary, nor can it be seen as a deep, philosophical film. Yet, inadvertently or not, the characters and plot make it clear that Nazism was a cancer that reached into every aspect of life-from education to social events.
It's odd that a melodrama can have such powerful overtones, conveying horror with minimal bloodshed or even directly identifying the Roths as Jews. The film , for me, resonates more deeply than "Schindler's List", a Spielberg epic that somehow overlooks the fact that without Schindler, Krupp, et al, Hitler might have been a crank on a street corner, screaming to the wind.
The cast, Stewart, Sullavan, Morgan, etc., made me think I was watching a spin off of "Shop Around the Corner". I asked my wife, "Is this a Lubitsch film?" Watching these fine actors being caught in the nightmare of Hitlerism was a jarring note. Frank Morgan in a concentration camp? Margaret Sullivan dying in Stewart's arms? Ultimately, I saw that the casting(even Dan Dailey without taps) made the tragedy even deeper. We knew these people, albeit through the movies, but we felt their anguish all the more because we were watching the suffering of "friends".
Hannah Ahrendt wrote about the banality of evil...this film brings home the point.